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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..195b6a4 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #50497 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50497) diff --git a/old/50497-0.txt b/old/50497-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index bedd6c6..0000000 --- a/old/50497-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,10454 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Back to Life, by Philip Gibbs - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: Back to Life - -Author: Philip Gibbs - -Release Date: November 19, 2015 [EBook #50497] -Last Updated: November 6, 2016 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACK TO LIFE *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by Google Books - - - - - - - - - -BACK TO LIFE - -By Philip Gibbs - -London: William Heinemann - -1920 - - - - - -BOOK I--THE END OF THE ADVENTURE - - - - -I - - -It is hard to recapture the spirit of that day we entered Lille. Other -things since have blurred its fine images. - -At the time I tried to put down in words the picture of that scene when, -after four years’ slaughter of men, the city, which had seemed a world -away, was open to us a few miles beyond the trench-lines; the riven -trees, the shell-holes, and the stench of death, and we walked across -the canal, over a broken bridge, into that large town where--how -wonderful it seemed I--there were roofs on the houses and glass in the -windows, and crowds of civilian people waiting for the first glimpse of -British khaki. - -Even now remembrance brings back to me figures that I saw only for a -moment or two, but remain sharply etched in my mind, and people I met -in the streets who told me the story of four years in less than -four minutes and enough to let me know their bitterness, hatred, -humiliations, terrors, in the time of the German occupation.... I have -re-read the words I wrote, hastily, on a truculent typewriter which I -cursed for its twisted ribbon, while the vision of the day was in my -eyes. They are true to the facts and to what we felt about them. Other -men felt that sense of exaltation, a kind of mystical union with the -spirit of many people who had been delivered from evil powers. It is of -those other men that I am now writing, and especially of one who was my -friend--Wickham Brand, with the troubled soul, whom I knew in the years -of war and afterwards in the peace which was no peace to him. - -His, was one of the faces I remember that day, as I had a glimpse of it -now and then, among crowds of men and women, young girls and children, -who surged about him, kissing his hands and his face when he stooped a -little (he was taller than most of them) to meet the wet lips of some -half-starved baby held up by a pallid woman of Lille, or to receive the -kiss of some old woman who clawed his khaki tunic, or of some girl who -hung on to his belt. There was a shining wetness in his eyes, and the -hard lines of his face had softened as he laughed at all this turmoil -about him, at all these hands robbing him of shoulder-straps and badges, -and at all these people telling him a hundred things together--their -gratitude to the English, their hatred of the Germans, their abominable -memories. His field-cap was pushed back from his high, furrowed forehead -from which at the temples the hair had worn thin, owing to worry or a -steel hat. His long, lean face, deeply tanned, but powdered with white -dust, had an expression of tenderness which gave him a kind of priestly -look, though others would have said “knightly” with, perhaps, equal -truth. Anyhow, I could see that for a little while Brand was no longer -worrying about the casualty lists and the doom of youth, and was giving -himself up to an exaltation that was visible and spiritual in Lille in -the day of liberation. - -The few of us who went first into Lille while our troops were in a wide -are round the city, in touch, more or less, with the German rearguards, -were quickly separated in the swirl of the crowd that surged about us, -greeting us as conquering heroes, though none of us were actual fighting -men, being war correspondents, intelligence officers (Wickham Brand and -three other officers were there to establish an advanced headquarters), -with an American doctor--that amazing fellow “Daddy” Small--and our -French _liaison_ officer, Pierre Nesle. Now and again we met in the -streets and exchanged words. - -I remember the doctor and I drifted together at the end of the Boulevard -de la Liberté. A French girl of the middle-class had tucked her hand -through his right arm and was talking to him excitedly, volubly. On his -other arm leaned an old dame in a black dress and bonnet who was -also delivering her soul of its pent-up emotion to a man who did not -understand more than a few words of her French. A small boy dressed as -a Zouave was walking backwards, waving a long tricolour flag before the -little American, and a crowd of people made a close circle about him, -keeping pace. - -“Assassins, bandits, robbers!” gobbled the old woman. “They stole all -our copper, monsieur. The very mattresses off our beds. The wine out of -our cellars. They did abominations.” - -“Month after month we waited,” said the girl, with her hand through the -doctor’s right arm. “All that time the noise of the guns was loud in -our ears. It never ceased, monsieur, until to-day. And we used to -say: ‘To-morrow the English will come!’ until at last some of us lost -heart--not I, no, always I believed in victory!--and said, ‘The English -will never come!’ Now you are here, and our hearts are full of joy. It -is like a dream. The Germans have gone!” - -The doctor patted the girl’s hand and addressed me across the tricolour -waved by the small Zouave. - -“This is the greatest day of my life! And I am perfectly ashamed -of myself. In spite of my beard and my gig-lamps and my anarchical -appearance, these dear people take me for an English officer and a -fighting hero. And I feel like one. If I saw a German now I truly -believe I should cut his throat. Me--a non-combatant and a man of peace! -I’m horrified at my own blood-thirstiness. The worst of it is I’m -enjoying it. I’m a primitive man for a time, and find it stimulating. -To-morrow I shall repent. These people have suffered hell’s torments. I -can’t understand a word the little old lady is telling me but I’m sure -she’s been through infernal things. And this pretty girl. She’s a peach, -though slightly tuberculous, poor child. My God--how they hate! There is -a stored-up hatred in this town enough to burn up Germany by mental -telepathy. It’s frightening. Hatred and joy, I feel these two passions -like a flame about us. It’s spiritual. It’s transcendental. It’s the -first time I’ve seen a hundred thousand people drunk with joy and hate. -I’m against hate, and yet the sufferings of these people make me see red -so that I want to cut a German throat!” - -“You’d stitch it up afterwards, doctor,” I said. - -He blinked at me through his spectacles and said: “I hope so. I hope -my instinct would be as right as that. The world will never get forward -till we have killed hatred. That’s my religion.” - -“Bandits! Assassins!” grumbled the old lady. “Dirty people!” - -“_Vivent les Anglais!_” shouted the crowd, surging about the little man -with the beard. - -The American doctor spoke in English in a large explanatory way. - -“I’m American. Don’t you go making any mistake. I’m an Uncle Sam. The -Yankee boys are further south and fighting like hell, poor lads. I don’t -deserve any of this ovation, my dears.” - -Then in French, with a strong American accent, he shouted: “_Vive la -France!_‘Rah! ‘Rah! ‘Rah!” - -“_Merci, merci, mon Général!_” said an old woman, making a grab at the -little doctor’s Sam Brown belt and kissing him on the beard. The crowd -closed round him and bore him away.... - -I met another of our crowd when I went to a priest’s house in a turning -off the Rue Royale. Pierre Nesle, our _liaison_ officer--a nice simple -fellow, who had always been very civil to me--was talking to the -priest outside his door, and introduced me in a formal way to a tall, -patrician-looking old man in a long black gown. It was the Abbé Bourdin, -well known in Lille as a good priest and a patriot. - -“Come indoors, gentlemen,” said the old man. “I will tell you what -happened to us, though it would take four years to tell you all.” - -Sitting there in the priest’s room, barely furnished, with a few oak -chairs and a writing-desk littered with papers, and a table covered with -a tattered cloth of red plush, we listened to a tragic tale, told finely -and with emotion by the old man into whose soul it had burned. It was -the history of a great population caught by the tide of war before many -could escape, and placed under the military law of an enemy who tried to -break its spirit. They failed to break it in spite of an iron discipline -which denied them all liberty. For any trivial offence by individuals -against German rule the whole population was fined or shut up in their -houses at three in the afternoon. There were endless fines, unceasing -and intolerable robberies under the name of “perquisitions.” That had -not broken the people’s spirit. There were worse things to bear--the -removal of machinery from the factories, the taking away of the young -men and boys for forced labour, and then, the greater infancy of that -night when machine-guns were placed at the street corners and German -officers ordered each household to assemble at the front door and chose -the healthy-looking girls by the pointing of a stick and the word, -“You--you!” for slave-labour--it was that--in unknown fields far away. - -The priest’s face blanched at the remembrance of that scene. His voice -quavered when he spoke of the girls’ screams--one of them had gone -raving mad--and of the wailing that rose among their stricken families. -For a while he was silent, with lowered head and brooding eyes which -stared at a rent in the threadbare carpet, and I noticed the trembling -of a pulse on his right temple above the deeply-graven wrinkles of his -parchment skin. Then he raised his head and spoke harshly. - -“Not even that could break the spirit of my people. They only said, ‘We -will never forget and never forgive!’ They were hungry--we did not -get much food--but they said, ‘Our sons who are fighting for us -are suffering worse things. It is for us to be patient.’ They were -surrounded by German spies--the secret police--who listened to their -words and haled them off to prison upon any pretext. There is hardly -a man among us who has not been in prison. The women were made to do -filthy work for German soldiers, to wash their lousy clothes, to scrub -their dirty barracks, and they were insulted, humiliated, tempted, by -brutal men.” - -“Was there much of that brutality?” I asked. - -The priest’s eyes grew sombre. - -“Many women suffered abominable things. I thank God that so many kept -their pride and their honour. There were, no doubt, some bad men and -women in the city--disloyal, venal, weak, sinful--may God have mercy -on their souls; but I am proud of being a Frenchman when I think of how -great was the courage, how patient was the suffering of the people of -Lille.” - -Pierre Nesle had listened to that monologue with a visible and painful -emotion. He became pale and flushed by turns, and when the priest spoke -about the forcible recruitment of the women a sweat broke out on his -forehead, and he wiped it away with a handkerchief. - -I see his face now in profile, sharply outlined against some yellowing -folios in a bookcase behind him, a typical Parisian face in its -sharpness of outline and pallid skin, with a little black moustache -above a thin, sensitive mouth. Before I had seen him mostly in gay -moods--though I had wondered sometimes at the sudden silences into which -he fell and at a gloom which gave him a melancholy look when he was -not talking, or singing, or reciting poetry, or railing against French -politicians, or laughing almost hysterically at the satires of -Charles Fortune--our “funny man”--when he came to our mess. Now he was -suffering, as if the priest’s words had probed a wound--though not the -physical wound which had nearly killed him in Souchez Wood. - -He stood up from the wooden chair with its widely-curved arms in which -he had been sitting stiffly, and spoke to the priest. - -“It is not amusing, _mon père_, what you tell us, and what we have all -guessed. It is one more chapter of tragedy in the history of our poor -France. Pray God the war will soon be over.” - -“With victory!” said the old priest. “With an enemy beaten and bleeding -beneath our feet. The Germans must be punished for all their crimes, or -the justice of God will not be satisfied.” - -There was a thrill of passion in the old man’s voice and his nostrils -quivered. - -“To all Frenchmen that goes without saying,” said Pierre Nesle. “The -Germans must be punished, and will be, though no vengeance will repay us -for the suffering of our _poilus_--nor for the agony of our women behind -the lines, which, perhaps, was the greatest of all.” - -The Abbé Bourdin put his claw-like old hands on the young man’s -shoulders and drew him closer and kissed his Croix de Guerre. - -“You have helped to give victory,” he said. “How many Germans have you -killed? How many, eh?” - -He spoke eagerly, chuckling with a kind of childish eagerness for good -news. - -Pierre Nesle drew back a little and a faint touch of colour crept into -his face, and then left it whiter. - -“I did not count corpses,” he said. He touched his left side and laughed -awkwardly. “I remember better that they nearly made a corpse of me.” - -There was a moment’s silence, and then my friend spoke in a casual kind -of way. - -“I suppose, _mon père_, you have not heard of my sister being in Lille -by any chance? Her name was Marthe. Marthe Nesle.” - -The Abbé Bourdin shook his head. - -“I do not know the name. There are many young women in Lille. It is a -great city.” - -“That is true,” said Pierre Nesle. “There are many.” - -He bowed over the priest’s hand, and then saluted. - -“_Bon jour, mon père, et merci mille fois_.” - -So we left, and the Abbé Bourdin spoke his last words to me: “We owe -our liberation to the English. We thank you. But why did you not come -sooner? Two years sooner, three years. With your great army?” - -“Many of our men died to get here,” I said. “Thousands.” - -“That is true. That is true. You failed many times, I know. But you were -so close. One big push--eh? One mighty effort? No?” - -The priest spoke a thought which I had heard expressed in the crowds. -They were grateful for our coming, immensely glad, but could not -understand why we had tried their patience so many years. That had been -their greatest misery, waiting, waiting. - -I spoke to Pierre Nesle on the doorstep of the priest’s house. - -“Have you an idea that your sister is in Lille?” - -“No,” he said. “No. At least not more than the faintest hope. She is -behind the lines somewhere--anywhere. She went away from home before the -war--she was a singer--and was caught in the tide.” - -“No news at all?” I asked. - -“Her last letter was from Lille. Or rather a postcard with the Lille -stamp. She said, I am amusing myself well, little brother.’ She and I -were good comrades. I look for her face in the crowds. But she may be -anywhere--Valenciennes, Maubeuge--God knows!” - -A shout of “_Vive la France!_” rose from a crowd of people surging up -the street. Pierre Nesle was in the blue uniform of the _chasseurs à -pied_, and the people in Lille guessed it was theirs because of its -contrast to our khaki, though the “_horizon bleu_” was so different from -the uniforms worn by the French army of ‘14. To them now, on the day of -liberation, Pierre Nesle, our little _liaison_ officer, stood for the -armies of France, the glory of France. Even the sight of our khaki did -not fill them with such wild enthusiasm. So I lost him again as I had -lost the little American doctor in the surge and whirlpool of the crowd. - - - - -II - - -I was building up in my mind the historic meaning of the day. Before -nightfall I should have to get it written--the spirit as well as the -facts, if I could--in time for the censors and the despatch-riders. The -facts? By many scraps of conversation with men and women in the streets -I could already reconstruct pretty well the life of Lille in time of -war. I found many of their complaints rather trivial. The Germans had -wanted brass and had taken it, down to the taps in the washing-places. -Well, I had seen worse horrors than that. They had wanted wool and had -taken the mattresses. They had requisitioned all the wine but had paid -for it at cheap rates. These were not atrocities. The people of Lille -had been short of food, sometimes on the verge of starvation, but not -really starved. They complained of having gone without butter, milk, -sugar; but even in England these things were hard to get. No, the -tragedy of Lille lay deeper than that. A sense of fear that was always -with them. “Every time there was a knock at the door,” said one man, “we -started up in alarm. It was a knock at our hearts.” At any time of -the day or night they were subject to visits from German police, to -searches, arrests, or orders to get out of their houses or rooms for -German officers or troops. They were denounced by spies, Germans or -debased people of their own city, for trying to smuggle letters to -their folk in other towns in enemy occupation, for concealing copper -in hiding-places, for words of contempt against the Kaiser or the -Kommandatur, spoken at a street corner between one friend and another. -That consciousness of being watched, overheard, reported and denounced -poisoned the very atmosphere of their lives, and the sight of the -field-grey men in the streets, the stench of them--the smell was -horrible when German troops marched back from the battlefields--produced -a soul-sickness worse than physical nausea. I could understand -the constant fret at the nerves of these people, the nagging -humiliation--they had to doff hats to every German officer who swaggered -by--and the slow-burning passion of people, proud by virtue of their -race, who found themselves controlled, ordered about, bullied, punished -for trivial infractions of military regulations, by German officials of -hard, unbending arrogance. That must have been abominable for so long -a time; but as yet I heard no charges of definite brutality, or of -atrocious actions by individual enemies. The worst I had heard was that -levy of the women for forced labour in unknown places. One could imagine -the horror of it, the cruelty of it to girls whose nerves were already -unstrung by secret fears, dark and horrible imaginings, the beast-like -look in the eyes of men who passed them in the streets. Then the -long-delayed hope of liberation--year after year--the German boasts of -victory, the strength of the German defence that never seemed to weaken, -in spite of the desperate attacks of French and British, the preliminary -success of their great offensive in March and April, when masses of -English prisoners were herded through Lille, dejected, exhausted, hardly -able to drag their feet along between their sullen guards--by heaven, -these people of Lille had needed much faith to save them from despair! -No wonder now that on the first day of liberation some, of them were -wet-eyed with joy, and others were lightheaded with liberty. - -In the Grande Place below the old balustraded Town Hall I saw young -Cyril Clatworthy, one of the Intelligence crowd, surrounded by a group -of girls who were stroking his tunic, clasping his hands, pushing each -other laughingly to get nearer to him. He was in lively conversation -with the prettiest girl, whom he kept in front of him. It was obvious -that he was enjoying himself as the central figure of this hero-worship, -and as I passed the boy (twenty-four that birthday, he had told me -a month before) I marvelled at his ceaseless capacity for amorous -adventure, with or without a moment’s notice. A pretty girl, if -possible, or a plain one if not, drew him like a magnet, excited all his -boyish egotism, called to the faun-spirit that played the pipes of Pan -in his heart. It was an amusing game for him, with his curly brown hair -and Midshipman Easy type of face. For the French girls whom he had met -on his way--little Marcelle on Cassel Hill, Christine at Corbie on the -Somme, Marguérite in the hat-shop at Amiens (what became of her, poor -kid?)--it was not so amusing when he “blew away,” as he called it, and -had a look at life elsewhere. - -He winked at me, as I passed, over the heads of the girls. - -“The fruits of victory!” he called out. “There is a little Miss -Brown-Eyes here who is quite enchanting.” - -It was rather caddish of me to say: “Have you forgotten Marguérite -Aubigny?” - -He thought so, too, and reddened angrily. - -“Go to blazes!” he said. - -His greatest chum, and one of mine--Charles Fortune--was standing -outside a _café_ in the big Place, not far from the Vieille Bourse, with -its richly-carved Renaissance front. Here there was a dense crowd, but -they kept at a respectful distance from Fortune, who, with his red -tabs and red-and-blue arm-band and row of ribbons (all gained by heroic -service over a blotting-pad in a Nissen hut) looked to them, no doubt, -like a great general. He had his “heroic” face on, rather mystical and -saintly. (He had a variety of faces for divers occasions--such as the -“sheep’s face” in the presence of generals who disliked brilliant men, -the “intelligent” facer-bright and inquiring--for senior officers who -liked easy questions to which they could give portentous answers, the -“noble” face for the benefit of military chaplains, foreign visitors to -the war-zone, and batmen before they discovered his sense of humour; -and the “old-English-gentleman” face at times for young Harding, who -belonged to a county family with all its traditions, politics, and -instincts, and permitted Fortune to pull his leg, to criticise generals, -and denounce the British Empire as a licensed jester.) - -Fortune was addressing four gentlemen of the Town Council of Lille who -stood before him, holding ancient top-hats. - -“Gentlemen,” said Charles Fortune in deliberate French, with an -exaggerated accent, “I appreciate very much the honour you have just -paid me by singing that heroic old song, ‘It’s a long, long way to -Tipperary.’ I desire, however, to explain to you that it is not as yet -the National Anthem of the British people, and that, personally, I have -never been to Tipperary, that I should find some difficulty in finding -that place on the map, and that I never want to go there. This, however, -is of small importance, except to British generals, to whom all small -things are of great importance--revealing, therefore, their minute -attention to details, even when it does not matter--which, I may say, -is the true test of the military mind which is so gloriously winning -the war, after many glorious defeats (I mean victories) and----” (Here -Fortune became rather tangled in his French grammar, but rescued -himself after a still more heroic look). “And it is with the deepest -satisfaction, the most profound emotion, that I find myself in this -great city of Lille on the day of liberation, and on behalf of the -British Army, of which I am a humble representative, in spite of these -ribbons which I wear on my somewhat expansive chest, I thank you from my -heart, with the words, ‘_la France!_’” - -Here Fortune heaved a deep sigh, and looked like a field marshal while -he waited for the roar of cheers which greeted his words. The mystical -look on his face became intensified as he stood there, a fine heroic -figure (a trifle stout for lack of exercise), until he suddenly caught -sight of a nice-looking girl in the crowd nearest to him, and gave her -an elaborate wink, as much as to say, “You and I understand each other, -my pretty one! Beneath this heroic pose I am really human.” - -The effect of that wink was instantaneous. The girl blushed vividly and -giggled, while the crowd shouted with laughter. - -“_Quel numéro! Quel drôle de type!_” said a man by my side. - -Only the four gentlemen of the Town Hall, who had resumed their -top-hats, looked perplexed at this grotesque contrast between the heroic -speech (it had sounded heroic) and its anti-climax. - -Fortune took me by the arm as I edged my way close to him. - -“My dear fellow, it was unbelievable when those four old birds sang -‘Tipperary’ with bared heads. I had to stand at the salute while they -sang three verses with tears in their eyes. They have been learning it -during four years of war. Think of that! And think of what’s happening -in Ireland--in Tipperary--now! There’s some paradox here which contains -all the comedy and pathos of this war. I must think it out. I can’t -quite get at it yet, but I feel it from afar.” - -“This is not a day for satire,” I said. “This is a day for sentiment. -These people have escaped from frightful things----” - -Fortune looked at me with quizzical grey eyes out of his handsome, -mask-like face. - -“_Et tu, Brute?_ After all our midnight talks, our laughter at the -mockery of the gods, our intellectual slaughter of the staff, our -tearing down of all the pompous humbug which has bolstered up this silly -old war.” - -“I know. But to-day we can enjoy the spirit of victory. It’s real, here. -We have liberated all these people.” - -“We? You mean the young Tommies who lie dead the other side of the -canal? We come in and get the kudos. Presently the generals will come -and say, ‘We did it! Regard our glory! Fling down your flowers! Cheer -us, good people, before we go to lunch.’ They will not see behind -them the legions they sent to slaughter by ghastly blunders, colossal -stupidity, invincible pomposity.” - -Fortune broke into song. It was an old anthem of his: - -“_Blear-eyed Bill, the Butcher of the Boche_.” - -He had composed it, after a fourth whisky, on a cottage piano in his -Nissen hut. In crashing chords he had revealed the soul of a general -preparing a plan of battle--over the telephone. It never failed to make -me laugh, except that day in Lille when it was out of tune, I thought, -with the spirit about us. - -“Let’s put the bitter taste out of our mouth to-day,” I said. - -Fortune made his sheep-face, saluted behind his ear, and said, “Every -inch a soldier--I don’t think!” - - - - -III - - -It was then we bumped straight into Wickham Brand, who was between a -small boy and girl, holding his hands, while a tall girl of sixteen or -so, with a yellow pig-tail slung over her shoulder, walked alongside, -talking vivaciously of family experiences under German rule. Pierre -Nesle was on the other side of her. - -“In spite of all the fear we had--oh, how frightened we were -sometimes!--we used to laugh very much. _Maman_ made a joke of -everything--it was the only way. _Maman_ was wonderfully brave, except -when she thought that father might have been killed.” - -“Where was your father?” asked Brand. “On the French side of the lines?” - -“Yes, of course. He was an officer in the artillery. We said good-bye -to him on August 2nd of the first year, when he went off to the dépôt -at Belfort. We all cried except _maman_--father was crying, too, but -_maman_ did not wink away even the tiniest tear until father had gone. -Then she broke down, so that we all howled at the sight of her. Even -these babies joined in. They were only babies then.” - -“Any news of him?” asked Brand. - -“Not a word. How could there be? Perhaps in a few days he will walk into -Lille. So _maman_ says.” - -“That would be splendid!” said Brand. “What is his name?” - -“Chéri, M. le Commandant Anatole Chéri, 59th Brigade, _artillerie -lourde._” - -The girl spoke her father’s name proudly. - -I saw a startled look come into the eyes of Pierre Nesle as he heard -the name. In English he said to Brand: “I knew him at Verdun. He was -killed.” - -Wickham Brand drew a sharp breath, and his voice was husky when he -spoke, in English, too. - -“What cruelty it all is!” - -The girl with the pig-tail--a tall young creature with a delicate face -and big brown eyes--stared at Pierre Nesle and then at Wickham Brand. -She asked an abrupt question of Pierre. - -“Is my father dead?” - -Pierre Nesle stammered something. He was not sure. He had heard that the -Commandant Chéri was wounded at Verdun. - -The girl understood perfectly. - -“He is dead, then? _Maman_ will be very sorry.” - -She did not cry. There was not even a quiver of her lips. She shook -hands with Brand and said: “I must go and tell _maman_. Will you come -and see us one day?” - -“With pleasure,” said Brand. - -“Promise?” - -The girl laughed as she raised her finger. - -“I promise,” said Brand solemnly. - -The girl “collected” the small boy and girl, holding their heads close -to her waist. - -“Is father dead?” said the small boy. - -“Perhaps. I believe so,” said the elder sister. - -“Then we shan’t get the toys from Paris?” said the small girl. - -“I am afraid not, _coquine?_” - -“What a pity!” said the boy. - -Pierre Nesle took a step forward and saluted. - -“I will go with you, if you permit it, mademoiselle. It is perhaps in a -little way my duty, as I met your father in the war.” - -“Thanks a thousand times,” said the girl. “_Maman_ will be glad to know -all you can tell her.” - -She waved to Brand a merry _au revoir_. - -We stood watching them cross the Grande Place, that tall girl and the -two little ones, and Pierre. - -Fortune touched Brand on the arm. - -“Plucky, that girl,” he said. “Took it without a whimper. I wonder if -she cared?” - -Brand turned on him rather savagely. - -“Cared? Of course she cared. But she had expected it for four years, -grown up to the idea. These war children have no illusions about the -business. They know that the odds are in favour of death.” - -He raised his hands above his head with a sudden passionate gesture. - -“Christ God!” he said. “The tragedy of those people! The monstrous -cruelty of it all!” - -Fortune took his hand and patted it in a funny affectionate way. - -“You are too sensitive, Wicky. ‘A sensitive plant in a garden grew’--a -war-garden, with its walls blown down, and dead bodies among the little -daisies-o. I try to cultivate a sense of humour and a little irony. -It’s a funny old war, Wicky, believe me, if you look at it in the right -light.” - -Wickham groaned. - -“I see no humour in it, nor light anywhere.” - -Fortune chanted again the beginning of his anthem: - -“_Blear-eyed Bill, the Butcher of the Boche_.” - -As usual there was a crowd about us, smiling, waving handkerchiefs and -small flags, pressing forward to shake hands and to say “_Vivent les -Anglais!_” - -It was out of that crowd that a girl came and stood in front of us, with -a wave of her hand. - -“Good morning, British officers! I’m English--or Irish, which is good -enough. Welcome to Lille.” - -Fortune shook hands with her first and said very formally, in his -mocking way: “How do you do? Are you by chance my long-lost sister? -Is there a strawberry-mark on your left arm?” She laughed with a big, -open-mouthed laugh, on a contralto note that was good to hear. - -“I’m everybody’s sister who speaks the English tongue, which is fine -to the ears of me after four years in Lille. Eileen O’Connor, by your -leave, gentlemen.” - -“Not Eileen O’Connor of Tipperary?” asked Fortune gravely. “You know the -Long Long Way, of course?” - -“Once of Dublin,” said the girl, “and before the war, of Holland Street, -Kensington, in the village of London. Oh, to hear the roar of ‘buses in -the High Street and to see the glint of sunlight on the Round Pond!” - -She was a tall girl, shabbily dressed in an old coat and skirt with a -bit of fur round her neck and hat, but with a certain look of elegance -in the thin line of her figure and the poise of her head. Real Irish, by -the look of her dark eyes and a rather irregular nose and humorous lips. -Not pretty in the English way, but spirited, and with some queer charm -in her. - -Wickham Brand was holding her hand. - -“Good Lord! Eileen O’Connor? I used to meet you, years ago, at the -Wilmots--those funny tea-parties in Chelsea.” - -“With farthing buns and cigarettes, and young boys with big ideas!” - -The girl laughed with a kind of wonderment, and stood close to Wickham -Brand, holding his Sam Brown belt and staring up into his face. - -“Why, you must be--you must be---- you are--the tall boy who used to -grow out of his grey suits and wrote mystical verse and read Tolstoy, -and growled at civilisation and smoked black pipes, and fell in love -with elderly artists’ models. Wickham Brand!” - -“That’s right,” said Brand, ignoring the laughter of Fortune and myself. -“Then I went to Germany and studied their damned philosophy, and then -I became a briefless barrister, and after that took to writing -unsuccessful novels. Here I am, after four years of war, ashamed to be -alive when all my pals are dead.” - -He glanced at Fortune and me, and said, “Or most of ‘em. - -“It’s the same Wicky I remember,” said the girl, “and at the sight of -you I feel I’ve gone back to myself as a tousled-haired thing in a short -frock and long black stockings. The good old days before the war. Before -other things and all kinds of things.” - -“Why on earth were you in Lille when the war began?” asked Brand. - -“It just happened. I taught painting here. Then I was caught with the -others. We did not think They would come so soon.” - -She used the word “They” as we all did, meaning the grey men. - -“It must have been hell,” said Brand. - -“Mostly hell,” said Miss O’Connor brightly. “At least, one saw into -the gulfs of hell, and devilishness was close at hand. But there were -compensations, wee bits of heaven. On the whole I enjoyed myself.” - -“Enjoyed yourself?” - -Brand was startled by that phrase. - -“Oh, it was an adventure. I took risks--and came through. I lived all of -it--every minute. It was a touch-and-go game with the devil and death, -and I dodged them both. _Dieu soit merci!_” She laughed with a little -throw-back of the head, showing a white full throat above the ragged bit -of fur. A number of French women pressed about her. Some of them patted -her arms, fondled her hands. One woman bent down and kissed her shabby -jacket. - -“_Elle était merveilleuse, la demoiselle,_” said an old Frenchman by my -side. “She was marvellous, sir. All that she did for the wounded, for -your prisoners, for many men who owe their lives to her, cannot be told -in a little while. They tried to catch her. She was nearly caught. It is -a miracle that she was not shot. A miracle, monsieur!” - -Other people in the crowd spoke to me about “_la demoiselle_.” They were -mysterious. Even now they could not tell me all she had done. But she -had risked death every day for four years. Every day. Truly it was a -miracle she was not caught. - -Listening to them, I missed some of Eileen O’Connor’s own words to -Brand, and saw only the wave of her hand as she disappeared into the -crowd. - -It was Brand who told me that he and I and Fortune had been invited to -spend the evening with her, or an “hour or so. I saw that Wicky, as we -called him, was startled by the meeting with her, and was glad of it. - -“I knew her when we were kids,” he said. “Ten years ago--perhaps more. -She used to pull my hair! Extraordinary, coming face to face with her in -Lille, on this day of all days.” - -He turned to Fortune with a look of command. - -“We ought to get busy with that advanced headquarters. There are plenty -of big houses in these streets.” - -“_Ce qu’on appelle un embarras de choix_,” said Fortune, with his rather -comical exaggeration of accent. “And Blear-eyed Bill wants us to go on -beating the Boche. I insist on a house with a good piano--German for -choice.” - -They went off on their quest, and I to my billet, which had been found -by the major of ours, where I wrote the story of how we entered Lille on -a typewriter with a twisted ribbon, which would not write quickly enough -all I wanted to tell the world about a day of history. - - - - -IV - - -I had the luck to be billeted in Lille at the house of Madame Chéri, in -the Rue Esquermoise. - -This lady was the mother of the girl with the pig-tail and the two -children with whom Wickham Brand had made friends on this morning of -liberation--the wife of that military officer whom Pierre Nesle had -known at Verdun and knew to be killed. It was my luck, because there -were children in the house--the pig-tailed girl, Hélène, was more a -woman than a child, though only sixteen--and I craved for a touch of -home life and children’s company after so long an exile in the war-zone, -always among men who talked of war, thought of it, dreamed of it, year -in, year out. - -Madame Chéri was, I thought, when I saw her first, a beautiful woman, -not physically--because she was too white and worn--but spiritually, in -courage of soul. Pierre Nesle, our _liaison_ officer, told me how she -had received the news of her husband’s death--unflinchingly, without -a cry. She knew, she said, in her heart that he was dead. Some queer -message had reached her one night during the Verdun battles. It was no -ghost, or voice, but only a sudden cold conviction that her man had -been killed. For the children’s sake she had pretended that their father -might come back. It gave them something to look forward to. The little -ones were always harping on the hope that, when peace came, this -mysterious and glorious man, whom they remembered only vaguely as one -who had played bears with them and had been the provider of all good -things, would return with rich presents from Paris--tin soldiers, -queen-dolls, mechanical toys. Hélène, the elder girl, was different. She -had looked curiously at her mother when the children prattled like that -and Madame Chéri had pretended to believe in the father’s homecoming. -Once or twice the girl had said, “Papa may be killed,” in a -matter-of-fact way. Yet she had been his devoted comrade. They had been -such lovers, the father and daughter, that sometimes the mother had -been a little jealous, so she said, in her frank way, to Pierre Nesle, -smiling as she spoke. The war had made Hélène a realist, like most -French girls, to whom the idea of death became commonplace, almost -inevitable, as the ceaseless slaughter of men went on. The German losses -had taught them that. - -I had the colonel’s dressing-room--he had attained the grade of colonel -before Verdun, so Pierre told me--and Madame Chéri came in while I -was there to see that it was properly arranged for me. Over his iron -bedstead (the Germans had taken the woollen mattress, so that it had -been replaced by bags of straw) was his portrait as a lieutenant of -artillery, as he had been at the time of his marriage. He was a handsome -fellow, rather like Hélène, with her delicate profile and brown eyes, -though more like, said Madame Chéri, their eldest boy, Edouard. - -“Where is he?” I asked, and that was the only time I saw Madame Chéri -break down utterly. - -She began to tell me that Edouard had been taken away by the Germans, -among all the able-bodied men and boys who were sent away from Lille -for digging trenches behind the lines, in Easter of ‘16, and that he had -gone bravely, with his little pack of clothes over his shoulder, saying, -“It is nothing, _maman_. My father taught me the word _courage_. In a -little while we shall win, and I shall be back. _Courage, courage!_” - -Madame Chéri repeated her son’s words proudly, so that I seemed to see -the boy with that pack on his shoulder and a smile on his face. Then, -suddenly, she wept bitterly, wildly, her body shaken with a kind of -ague, while she sat on the iron bedstead with her face in her hands. - -I repeated the boy’s words. - -“Courage, courage, madam!” - -Proudly she wailed out in broken sentences:-- - -“He was such a child!... He caught cold so easily!... He was so -delicate!... He needed mother-love so much!... For two years no word has -come from him!” In a little while she controlled herself and begged -me to excuse her. We went down together to the dining-room, where the -children were playing and Hélène was reading; and she insisted upon my -drinking a glass of wine from the store which she had kept hidden from -the Germans in a pit which Edouard had dug in the garden in the first -days of the occupation. The children were delighted with that trick, and -roared with laughter. - -Hélène, with a curl of her lip, spoke bitterly. - -“The Boche is a stupid animal. One can dupe him easily.” - -“Not always easily,” said Madame Chéri. She opened a secret cupboard -behind a bookcase standing against the panelled wall. - -“I hid all my brass and copper here. A German police officer came, and -said, ‘Have you hidden any copper, madame?’ I said, ‘There is nothing -hidden.’ ‘Do you swear it?’ he asked. ‘I swear it,’ I answered very -haughtily. He went straight to the bookcase, pushed it on one side, -tapped the wall, and opened the secret cupboard’, which was stuffed full -of brass and copper. ‘You are a liar, madame,’ he said, ‘like all -Frenchwomen.’ ‘And you are an insolent pig, like all Germans,’ I -remarked. That cost me a fine of ten thousand francs.” - -Madame Chéri saw nothing wrong in swearing falsely to a German. I think -she held that nothing was wrong to deceive or to destroy any individual -of the German race, and I could understand her point of view when Pierre -Nesle told me of one thing that had happened which she never told to me. -It was about Hélène. - -A German captain was billeted in the house. They ignored his presence, -though he tried to ingratiate himself. Hélène hated him with a cold and -deadly hatred. She trembled if he passed her on the stairs. His presence -in the house, even if she did not see him but only heard him move in -his room, made her feel ill. Yet he was very polite to her, and said, -“_Guten gnadiges Fràulein_,” whenever they met. To Edouard, also, he was -courteous and smiling, though Edouard was sullen. He was a stout -little man, with a round rosy face and little bright eyes behind big -black-rimmed glasses, an officer in the Kommandantur, and formerly a -schoolmaster. Madame Chéri, was polite to him, but cold, cold as ice. -After some months, she found him harmless, though objectionable, because -German. It did not seem dangerous to leave him in the house one evening -when she went to visit a dying friend--Madame Vailly. She was later than -she meant to be--so late that she was liable to arrest by the military -police if they saw her flit past in the darkness of the unlit streets. -When she came home she slipped the latch-key into the door and went -quietly into the hall. The children would be in bed and asleep. At the -foot of the stairs a noise startled her. It was a curious creaking, -shaking noise, as of a door being pushed by some heavy weight, -then banged by it. It was the door at the top of the stairs, on the -left--Helène’s room. - -“_Qu’est-ce que tu fais là?_” said Madame Chéri. - -She was very frightened with some unknown fear, and held tight to the -banister as she went upstairs. There was a glimmer of light on the -landing. It was from a candle which had almost burnt out and was -guttering in a candlestick placed on the topmost stair. A grotesque -figure was revealed by the light--Schwarz, the German officer, in his -pyjamas, with a helmet on his head and unlaced boots on his feet. The -loose fat of the man, no longer girded by a belt, made him look like a -mass of jelly as he had his shoulder to the door, shoving and grunting -as he tried to force it open. He was swearing to himself in German, -and, now and then, called out softly in French, in a kind of drunken -German-French: “_Ouvrez, kleines Madchen, ma jolie Schatz. Ouvrez -donc._” - -Madame Chéri was paralysed for a moment by a shock of horror; quite -speechless and motionless. Then suddenly she moved forward and spoke in -a fierce whisper. - -“What are you doing, beast?” - -Schwarz gave a queer snort of alarm. - -He stood swaying a little, with the helmet on the back of his head. The -candlelight gleamed on its golden eagle. His face was hotly flushed and -there was a ferocious look in his eyes. Madame Chéri saw that he was -drunk. - -He spoke to her in horrible French, so Pierre Nesle told me, imitating -it savagely, as Madame Chéri had done to him. The man was filthily -drunk, and declared that he loved Hélène and would kill her if she did -not let him love her. Why did she lock her door like that? He had been -kind to her. He had smiled at her. A German officer was a human being, -not a monster. Why did they treat him as a monster, draw themselves away -when he passed, become silent when he wished to speak with them, stare -at him with hate in their eyes? The French people were all devils, proud -as devils. - -Another figure stood on the landing. It was Edouard--a tall, slim -figure, with a white face and burning eyes, in which there was a look of -fury. - -“What is happening, _maman?_” he said coldly. “What does this animal -want?” - -Madame Chéri trembled with a new fear. If the boy were to kill that man, -he would be shot. She had a vision of him standing against a wall.... - -“It is nothing,” she said. “This gentleman is ill. Go back to bed, -Edouard. I command you.” - -The German laughed stupidly. - -“To bed, _shafskopf_. I am going to open your sister’s door. She loves -me. She calls to me. I hear her whisper, ‘_Ich liebe dich!_’” - -Edouard had a stick in his hand. It was a heavy walking-stick which had -belonged to his father. Without a word he sprang forward, raised -his weapon, and smashed it down on the German’s head. It knocked -off Schwarz’s helmet, which rolled from the top to the bottom of the -staircase, and hit the man a glancing blow on the temple. He fell like -a log. Edouard smiled, and said, “_Très bien._” Then he rattled the lock -of his sister’s door and called out to her: “Hélène.... Have no fear. He -is dead. I have killed him.” - -It was then that Madame Chéri had her greatest fear. There was no sound -from Hélène. She did not answer any of their cries. She did not open the -door to them. They tried to force the lock, as Schwarz had done, but, -though the lock gave at last, the door would not open, kept closed by -some barricade behind it. Edouard and his mother went out into the yard, -and the boy climbed up to his sister’s window and broke the glass to -go through. Hélène was lying in her nightdress on the bedroom floor, -unconscious. She had moved a heavy wardrobe in front of the door, -by some supernatural strength which came from fear. Then she had -fainted.... To his deep regret, Edouard had not killed the German. - -Schwarz had crawled back to his bedroom when they went back into the -house, and next morning wept to Madame Chéri and implored forgiveness. -There had been a little banquet, he said, and he had drunk too much. - -Madame Chéri did not forgive. She called at the Kommandantur, where the -General saw her and listened to her gravely. He did not waste words. - -“The matter will be attended to,” he said. - -Captain Schwarz departed that day from the house in the Rue Esquermoise. -He was sent to a battalion in the line and was killed somewhere near -Ypres. - - - - -V - - -Wickham Brand paid his promised visit to the Chéri family, according -to his pledge to Hélène, whom he had met in the street the previous day, -and he had to drink some of the hidden wine, as I had done, and heard -the story of its concealment and of Madame’s oath about the secret hoard -of copper. I think he was more disconcerted than I had been by that -avowal, and told me afterwards that he believed no Englishwoman would -have sworn to so deliberate a lie. - -“That’s because the English are not so logical,” I said, and he puzzled -over that. - -He was greatly taken with Hélène, as she with him, but he risked their -friendship in an awkward moment when he expressed the hope that the -German offer of peace (the one before the final surrender) would be -accepted. - -It was Madame Chéri who took him up on that, sharply, and with a kind of -surprised anguish in her voice. She hoped, she said, that no peace would -be made with Germany until French and British and American troops had -smashed the German armies, crossed the German frontier, and destroyed -many German towns and villages. She would not be satisfied with any -peace that came before a full vengeance, so that German women would -taste the bitterness of war as Frenchwomen had drunk deep of it, and -until Germany was heaped with ruins as France had been. - -Wickham Brand was sitting with the small boy on his knees, and stroked -his hair before answering. - -“_Dites, donc!_” said Hélène, who was sitting on the hearthrug, looking -up at his powerful profile, which reminded me always of a Norman knight, -or, sometimes, of a young monk worried about his soul and the devil. - -He had that monkish look now when he answered. - -“I don’t know,” he said. “I have felt like that often. But I have come -to think that the sooner we get blood out of our eyes the better for all -the world. I have seen enough dead Germans--and dead English and dead -French--to last a lifetime. Many of the German soldiers hate the war, -as I know, and curse the men who drove them on to it. They are -trapped. They cannot escape from the thing they curse, because of their -discipline, their patriotism----” - -“Their patriotism!” said Madame Chéri. - -She was really angry with Brand, and I noticed that even Hélène drew -back a little from her place on the rug and looked perplexed and -disappointed. Madame Chéri ridiculed the idea of German patriotism. -They were brutes who liked war except when they feared defeat. They had -committed a thousand atrocities out of sheer joy in bestial cruelty. -Their idea of patriotism was blood-lust and the oppression of people -more civilised than themselves. They hated all people who were not -savages like themselves. - -Wickham Brand shook his head. - -“They’re not all as bad as that. I knew decent people among them before -the war. For a time, of course, they went mad. They were poisoned by the -damnable philosophy of their leaders and teachers.” - -“They liked the poison,” said Madame Chéri. “They lapped it up. It is in -their blood and spirits. They are foul through and through.” - -“They are devils,” said Hélène. She shuddered as though she felt very -cold. - -Even the small boy on Brand’s knees said: “_Sales Boches!_” - -Brand groaned in a whimsical way. - -“I have said all those things a thousand times! They nearly drove me -mad. But now it’s time to stop the river of blood--if the German army -will acknowledge defeat. I would not go on a day after that, for our own -sakes--for the sake of French boys and English. Every day more of war -means more dead of ours, more blind, more crippled, and more agony of -soul. I want some of our boyhood to be saved.” - -Madame Chéri answered coldly. - -“Not before the Germans have been punished. Not before that, if we all -die.” - -Hélène sprang up with a passionate gesture. - -“All German babies ought to be strangled in their cradles! Before they -grow up to be fat, beastly men.” - -She was thinking of Schwarz, I imagine. It was the horror of remembrance -which made her so fierce. Then she laughed, and said: “Oh, _là là_, let -us be glad because yesterday we were liberated. Do not quarrel with an -English officer, _maman_. He helped to save us.” - -She put her hands on Wickham Brand’s shoulders and said: “_Merci, mon -capitaine!_” - -So the conversation turned, and Wickham won them back by his courtesy, -and by a tribute to the courage of French civilians behind the lines, of -whom he told many haunting stories. - -But when I walked round with him to his mess--we were going round later -to see Eileen O’Connor--he referred back to the incident. - -“Daddy Small is right.” (He referred to the little American doctor.) -“The hatred of these people is transcendental. It is like a spiritual -flame. It is above all self-interest, kindly, human instincts, life -itself. That woman would sacrifice herself, and her children, as quietly -as she heard the death of her husband, rather than grant the Germans -peace without victory and vengeance. How can there be any peace, -whatever treaty is signed? Can Europe ever get peace with all this -hatred as a heritage?” - - - - -VI - - -We walked silently towards the Boulevard de la Liberté, where Brand’s -little crowd had established their headquarters. - -“Perhaps they’re right,” he said presently. “Perhaps the hatred is -divine.... I may be weakening, because of all the horror.” - -Then he was silent again, and while I walked by his side I thought back -to his career as I had known it in the war, rather well. He had always -been tortured by agonised perplexities. I had guessed that by the -look of the man and some of his odd phrases, and his restlessness and -foolhardiness. It was in the trenches by Fricourt that I had first seen -him--long before the battles of the Somme. He was sitting motionless on -a wooden box, staring through a periscope towards the mine craters and -the Bois Français in No Man’s Land. The fine hardness of his profile, -the strength of his jaw--not massive, but with one clean line from ear -to chin--and something in the utter intensity of his attitude, attracted -my attention, and I asked the colonel about him. - -“Who is that fellow--like a Norman knight?” - -The colonel of the K.R.R. laughed as we went round the next bay, ducking -our heads where the sandbags had slipped down. - -“Further back than Norman,” he said. “He’s the primitive man.” - -He told me that Wickham Brand--a lieutenant then--was a young barrister -who had joined the battalion at the beginning of ‘15. He had taken up -sniping and made himself a dead shot. He had the hunter’s instinct and -would wait hours behind the sandbags for the sight of a German head in -the trendies opposite. He seldom missed his man, or that part of his -body which showed for a second. Lately he had taken to the habit of -crawling out into No Man’s Land and waiting in some shell-hole for the -dawn, when Germans came out to mend their wire or drag in a dead body. -He generally left another dead man as a bait for the living. Then he -would come back with a grim smile and eat his breakfast wolfishly, after -cutting a notch in one of the beams of his dug-out. - -“He’s a Hun-hater, body and soul,” said the colonel. “We want more of -‘em. All the same, Brand makes me feel queer by his ferocity. I like a -humorous fellow who does his killing cheerfully.” - -After that I met Brand and took a drink with him in his dug-out. He -answered my remarks gruffly for a time. - -“I hear you go in for sniping a good deal,” I said, by way of -conversation. - -“Yes. It’s murder made easy.” - -“Do you get many targets?” - -“It’s a waiting game. Sometimes they get careless.” He puffed at a black -old pipe, quite silent for a time. Presently he told me about a “young -‘un” who popped his head over the parapet twice to stare at something on -the edge of the mine crater. - -“I spared him twice. The third time I said, ‘Better dead,’ and let go at -him. The kid was too easy to miss.” Something in the tone of his voice -told me that he hated himself for that. - -“Rather a pity,” I mumbled. - -“War,” he said. “Bloody war.” - -There was a candle burning on the wooden bench on which he leaned his -elbow, and by the light of it I saw that his eyes were bloodshot. There -was a haggard look on his face. - -“It must need some nerve,” I said awkwardly, “to go out so often in No -Man’s Land. Real pluck.” - -He stared at me as though surprised, and then laughed harshly. - -“Pluck? What’s that? I’m scared stiff half the time. Do you think I like -it?” - -He seemed to get angry, was angry, I think. - -“Do any of us like it? These damn things that blow men to bits, make -rags of them, tear their bowels out, and their eyes? Or to live on top -of a mine crater, as we are now, never knowing when you’re going up in -smoke and flame? If you like that sort of thing yourself you can take my -share. I have never met a man who did.” - -Yet when Brand was taken out of the trenches--by a word spoken over the -telephone from corps headquarters--because of his knowledge of German -and his cousinship to a lady who was a friend of the corps commander’s -niece, he was miserable and savage. I met him many times after that as -an intelligence officer at the corps cages, examining prisoners on days -of battle. - -“An _embusqué_ job!” he said. “I’m saving my skin while the youngsters -die.” - -He stood outside his hut one day on a morning of battle in the Somme -fields--up by Pozières. No prisoners had yet come down. He forgot my -presence and stood listening to the fury of gun-fire and watching the -smoke and flame away there on the ridge. - -“Christ!” he cried. “Why am I here? Why aren’t I with my pals up there, -getting blown to blood and pulp? Blood and pulp! Blood and pulp!” - -Then he remembered me, and turned in a shamefaced way and said, -“Sorry!... I feel rather hipped to-day.” - -I was present sometimes at his examination of prisoners--those poor, -grey, muddy wretches who came dazed out of the slime and shambles. -Sometimes he bullied them harshly, in fluent German, and they trembled -at his ferocity of speech, even whimpered now and then. But once or -twice he was in quite a different mood with them and spoke gently, -assenting when they cursed the war and its misery and said that all they -wanted was peace and home again. - -“Aren’t you fellows going to revolt?” he asked one man--a _Feldwebel._ -“Aren’t you going to tell your war lords to go to hell and stop all this -silly massacre before Germany is _kaput?_” - -The German shrugged his shoulders. - -“We would if we could. It is impossible. Discipline is too strong for -us. It has enslaved us.” - -“That’s true,” said Brand. “You are slaves of a system.” - -He spoke a strange sentence in English as he glanced over to me. - -“I am beginning to think we are all slaves of a system. None of us can -break the chains.” - -It was after that day that Brand took a fancy to me, for some reason, -inviting me to his mess, where I met Charles Fortune and others, and it -was there that I heard amazing discussions about the philosophy of war, -German psychology, the object of life, the relation of Christianity -to war, and the decadence of Europe. Brand himself sometimes led these -discussions, with a savage humour which delighted Charles Fortune, who -egged him on. He was always pessimistic, sceptical, challenging, -bitter, and now and then so violent in his criticisms of England, the -Government, the Army Council, the Staff, and above all, the Press, that -most of his fellow officers--apart from Fortune--thought he went “a bit -too far.” - -Dear old Harding, who was Tory to the backbone, with a deep respect for -all in authority, accused him of being a “damned revolutionary,” and -for a moment it looked as though there would be hot words, until Brand -laughed in a good-natured way and said, “My dear fellow, I’m only -talking academic rot. I haven’t a conviction. Ever since the war began -I have been trying to make head or tail of things in a sea-fog of doubt. -All I know is that I want the bloody orgy to end, somehow and anyhow.” - -“With victory,” said Harding solemnly. - -“With the destruction of Prussian philosophy everywhere,” said Brand. - -They agreed on that, but I could see that Brand was on shifting ground -and I knew, as our friendship deepened; that he was getting beyond a -religion of mere hate, and was looking for some other kind of faith. -Occasionally he harked back, as on the day in Lille when I walked by his -side. - - - - -VII - - -I dined with him in his mess that evening, before going on with him -to spend an hour or two with Eileen O’Connor, who had a room in some -convent on the outskirts of Lille. The advanced headquarters of this -little group of officers had been established in one of those big -private houses which belong to the rich manufacturers and business -people of Lille (rich before the war, but with desolate factories -stripped of all machinery during the German occupation and afterwards), -with large, heavily-furnished rooms built round a courtyard and barred -off from the street by the big front door. There was a motor lorry -inside the door, which was wide open, and some orderlies were unloading -camp-beds, boxes of maps, officers’ kit, a mahogany gramophone, and -other paraphernalia, under the direction of a young cockney sergeant, -who wanted to know why the blazes they didn’t look slippy. - -“Don’t you know there’s a war on?” he asked a stolid old soldier--one of -the heroes of Mons--who was sitting on a case of whisky, with a wistful -look, as though reflecting on the unfair privileges of officers with so -much wealth of drink. - -“War’s all right if you’re not too close to it,” said the Mons hero. -“I’ve seen enough. I’ve done my bleeding bit for King and country. South -Africa, Egypt----” - -“Shut your jaw,” said the sergeant. “And down that blarsted gramophone.” - -“Ah!” said the Mons hero. “We didn’t ‘ave no blarsted gramophones in -South Africa. This is a different kind of war. More comfort about it, if -you’re not in the trenches.” - -Wickham Brand took me through the courtyard and mentioned that the -colonel had come up from St. Omer. - -“Now we’re sure to beat the Boche,” he said. “Listen!” - -From a room to the left of the courtyard came the sound of a flute -playing one of Bach’s minuets, very sweetly, with an old-fashioned -grace. - -“A wonderful army of ours!” said Brand. “I can’t imagine a German -colonel of the Staff playing seventeenth century music on a bit of ivory -while the enemy is fighting like a tiger at bay.” - -“Perhaps that’s our strength,” I answered. “Our amateurs refuse to take -the war too seriously. I know a young gunner major who travels a banjo -in his limber, and at Cambrai I saw fellows playing chuck-penny within -ten yards of their pals’ dead bodies--a pile of them.” - -The colonel saw us through his window and waved his flute at us. When -I went into the room, after a salute at the doorway, I saw that he had -already littered it with artistic untidiness--sheets of torn music, -water-colour sketches, books of poetry, and an array of splendid shining -boots, of which a pair stood on the mahogany sideboard. - -“A beautiful little passage this,” said Colonel Lavington, smiling at me -over the flute, which he put to his lips again. He played a bar or two -of old-world melody, and said, “Isn’t that perfect? Can’t you see the -little ladies in their ^puffed brocades and high-heeled shoes!” - -He had his faun-like look, his clean-shaven face with long nose and -thin, humorous mouth, lighted up by his dark smiling eyes. - -“Not a bad headquarters,” he said, putting down the flute again. “If we -can only stay here a little while, instead of having to jog on -again. There’s an excellent piano in the dining-room, German, thank -goodness--and Charles Fortune and I can really get down to some serious -music.” - -“How’s the war?” I asked. - -“War?” he said absent-mindedly. “Oh, yes, the war! That’s going on all -right. They’d be out of Tournai in a few days. Perhaps out of Maubeuge -and Mons. Oh, the game’s up! Very soon the intellectuals will be looking -round for a living in dear old London. My goodness, some of us will find -peace a difficult job! I can see Boredom approaching with its colossal -shadow.... After all, it has been a great game, on the whole.” - -I laughed, but something stuck in my throat. Colonel Lavington -played the flute, but he knew his job, and was in touch with General -Headquarters and all its secret information. It was obvious that he -believed the war was going to end--soon. Soon, O Lord, after all the -years of massacre. - -I blurted out a straight question. - -“Do you think there’s a real chance of peace?” - -The colonel was reading a piece of music, humming it with a la, la, la. - -“Another month and our job’s done,” he said. “Have you heard that bit of -Gluck? It’s delicious.” - -I stayed with him a little while and did not follow a note of his music. -I was excited by the supreme hope he had given me. So there was to be an -end of massacre, and my own hopes had not been false. - -At the mess table that night Charles Fortune was in good form. We sat in -a room which was rather handsomely furnished, in a heavy way, with big -bronzes on the mantelpiece (ticketed for exemption from requisition -as family heirlooms), and some rather good portraits of a French -family--from the eighteenth century onwards--on the panelled walls. -The _concierge_ had told us that it had been the mess of a German -headquarters and this gave Fortune his cue, and he entertained us with -some caricatures of German generals and officers, amazingly comic. He -drank his soup in the style of a German general and ate his potato -pie as a German intelligence officer, who had once been a professor of -psychology at Heidelberg. - -The little American doctor, “Daddy” Small, as we called him, had been -made an honorary member of the mess, and he smiled at Fortune through -his spectacles, with an air of delighted surprise that such things -should be. - -“You English,” he said in his solemn way, “are the most baffling people -in the world. I have been studying you since I came to France, and all -my preconceived ideas have been knocked on the head. We Americans think -you are a hard, arrogant, selfish people, without humour or sympathy, -made in set moulds, turned out as types from your university and public -schools. That is all wrong. I am beginning to see that you are more -human, more various, more whimsical than any race in the world. You -decline to take life seriously. You won’t take even death seriously. -This war--you make a joke of it. The Germans--you kill them in great -numbers, but you have a secret liking for them. Fortune’s caricatures -are very comical--but not unkind. I believe Fortune is a pro-German. -You cannot laugh at the people you hate. I believe England will forgive -Germany quicker than any other nation--far quicker than the Americans. -France, of course, will never forgive.” - -“No,” said Pierre Nesle, who was at the end of the table. “France will -never forgive.” - -“We are an illogical people,” said the colonel. “It is only logical -people who can go on hating. Besides, German music is so-good! So good!” - -Harding, who read no paper but the _Morning Post_, said that as far as -he was concerned he would never speak to a German again in his life. He -would like to see the whole race exterminated. But he was afraid of the -Socialists with their pestilential doctrine of “brotherhood of man.” - Lloyd George also filled him with the gravest misgivings. - -Dr. Small’s eyes twinkled at him: “There is the old caste that speaks. -Tradition against the new world of ideas. Of course there will always -be _that_ conflict.... That is a wonderful phrase, ‘the pestilential -doctrine of the brotherhood of man.’ I must make a note of it.” - -“Shame oh you, doctor,” said Fortune. “You are always jotting down notes -about us. I shall find myself docketed as ‘English gentleman, grade 3; -full-blooded, inclined to obesity, humorous, strain of insanity due to -in-breeding, rare.’” - -Dr. Small laughed in a high treble, and then was serious. - -“I’m noting down everything. My own psychology, which alarms me; facts, -anecdotes, scenes, words. I want to find a law somewhere, the essential -thing in human nature. After the war--if there is any afterwards--I want -to search for a way out of the jungle. This jungle civilisation. There -must be daylight somewhere for the human race.” - -“If you find it,” said Brand earnestly, “tell me, doctor.” - -“I will,” said Dr. Small, and I remembered that pledge afterwards, when -he and Brand were together in a doomed city, trying to avert the doom, -because of that impulse which urged them to find a little daylight -beyond the darkness. - -Young Clatworthy jerked his chair on the polished boards and looked -anxiously at the Colonel, who was discoursing on the origins of art, -religion, sex, the perception of form. - -Colonel Lavington grinned at him. - -“All right, Cyril. I know you have got a rendezvous with some girl. -Don’t let us keep you from your career of infamy.” - -“As a matter of fact, sir, I met a sweet little thing yesterday----” - Clatworthy knew that his reputation as an amorist did not displease the -colonel, who was a romantic and loved youth. - -In a gust of laughter the mess broke up. Charles Fortune and the colonel -prepared for an orgy of Bach over the piano in the drawing-room of -that house in Lille. Those who cared to listen might--or not, as they -pleased. Brand and I went out into the streets, pitch-dark now, unlit -by any glimmer of gas, and made our way to the convent where the girl -Eileen O’Connor lodged. We passed a number of British soldiers in the -Boulevard de la Liberté, wearing their steel hats and carrying their -packs. - -A group of them stopped under a doorway to light cigarettes. One of them -spoke to his pals. - -“They tell me there’s some bonny wenches in this town.” - -“Ay,” said another, “an’ I could do wi’ some hugging in a cosy billet.” - -“Cosy billet!” said the third, with a cockney voice. “Town or trenches, -the poor bloody soldier gets it in the neck. Curse this pack! I’m fed up -with the whole damn show. I want peace.” - -A hoarse laugh answered him. - -“Peace! You don’t believe that fool’s talk in the papers, chum? It’s a -hell of a long way to the Rhine, and you and I’ll be dead before we get -there.” - -They slouched off into the darkness, three points of light where their -cigarettes glowed. - -“Poor lads!” said Brand. - - - - -VIII - - -We fumbled our way to a street on the edge of the canal, according to -Brand’s uncanny sense of direction and his remembrance of what the -Irish girl had told him. There we found the convent, a square box-like -building behind big gates. We pulled a bell which jangled loudly, -and presently the gate opened an inch, letting through the light of a -lantern which revealed the black-and-white coif of a nun. - -“_Qui va là?_” - -Brand told her that we had come to see Miss O’Connor, and the gate was -opened wider and we went into the courtyard, where a young nun stood -smiling. She spoke in English. - -“We were always frightened when the bell rang during the German -occupation. One never knew what might happen. And we were afraid for -Miss O’Connor’s sake.” - -“Why?” asked Brand. - -The little nun laughed. - -“She did dangerous work. They suspected her. She came here after her -arrest. Before then she had rooms of her own. Oh, _messieurs_, her -courage, her devotion! Truly, she was heroic!” - -She led us into a long corridor with doors on each side, and out of one -door came a little group of nuns with Eileen O’Connor. - -The Irish girl came towards us with outstretched hands which she gave -first to Brand. She seemed excited at our coming and explained that the -Reverend Mother and all the nuns wanted to see us to thank England by -means of us, to hear something about the war and the chance of victory -from the first English officers they had seen. - -Brand was presented to the Reverend Mother, a massive old lady with a -slight moustache on the upper lip and dark luminous eyes, reminding me -of the portrait of Savonarola at Florence. The other nuns crowded round -us, eager to ask questions, still more eager to talk. Some of them were -quite young and pretty, though all rather white and fragile, and they -had a vivacious gaiety so that the building resounded with laughter. It -was Eileen O’Connor who made them laugh by her reminiscences of girlhood -when she and Brand were “_enfants terribles_,” when she used to pull -Brand’s hair and hide the pipe he smoked too soon. She asked him to take -off his field-cap so that she might see whether the same old unruly tuft -still stuck up at the back of his head, and she and all the nuns clapped -hands when she found it was so, in spite of war-worry and steel hats. -All this had to be translated into French for the benefit of those who -could not understand such rapid English. - -“I believe you would like to give it a tug now,” said Brand, bending his -head down, and Eileen O’Connor agreed. - -“And indeed I would, but for scandalising a whole community of nuns, to -say nothing of Reverend Mother.” - -The Reverend Mother laughed in a curiously deep voice, and a crowd of -little wrinkles puckered at her eyes. She told Miss O’Connor that even -her Irish audacity would not go as far as that, which was a challenge -accepted on the instant. - -“One little tug, for old times’ sake,” said the girl, and Brand yelped -with pretended pain at the vigour of her pull, while all the nuns -screamed with delight. - -Then a clock struck and the Reverend Mother touched Eileen (as -afterwards I called her) on the arm and said she would leave her with -her friends. One by one the nuns bowed to us, all smiling under their -white _bandeaux,_ and then went down the corridor through an open door -which led into a chapel, as we could see by twinkling candlelight. -Presently the music of an organ and of women’s voices came through the -closed doors. - -Eileen O’Connor took us into a little parlour where there were just four -rush chairs and a table, and on the clean whitewashed walls a crucifix. - -Brand took a chair by the table, rather awkwardly, I thought. - -“How gay they are!” he said. “They do not seem to have been touched by -the horrors of war.” - -“It is the gaiety of faith,” said Eileen. “How else could they have -survived the work they have done, the things they have seen? This -convent was a shambles for more than three years. These rooms were -filled with wounded, German wounded, and often English wounded, who were -prisoners. They were the worst cases for amputation and butcher’s work, -and the nuns did all the nursing. They know all there is to know of -suffering and death.” - -“Yet they have not forgotten how to laugh!” said Brand. “That is -wonderful. It is a mystery to me.” - -“You must have seen bad things,” said Eileen. “Have you lost the gift of -laughter?” - -“Almost,” said Brand, “and once for a long time.” - -Eileen put her hands to her breast. - -“Oh, learn it again,” she said. “If we cannot laugh we cannot work. Why, -I owe my life to a sense of humour.” - -She spoke the last words with more than a trivial meaning. They seemed -to tell of some singular episode, and Brand asked her to explain. - -She did not explain then. She only said some vague things about laughing -herself out of prison and stopping a German bullet with a smile. - -“Why did the devils put you in prison?” asked Brand. - -She shrugged her shoulders. - -“In Lille it was bad form if one had not been arrested once at least. I -was three weeks in a cell half the size of this, and twenty women were -with me there. There was very little elbow-room!” - -She proved her sense of humour then by that deep-throated laugh of hers, -but I noticed that just for a second behind the smile in her eyes -there crept a shadow as at the remembrance of some horror, and that she -shivered a little, as though some coldness had touched her. - -“It must have been like the Black Hole of Calcutta,” said Brand, -measuring the space with his eyes. “Twenty women herded in a room like -that!” - -“With me for twenty-one,” said Eileen. “We had no means of washing.” - -She used an awful phrase. - -“We were a living stench.” - -“Good God!” said Brand. - -Eileen O’Connor waved back the remembrance. “Tell me of England and of -Ireland. How’s the little Green Isle? Has it done well in the war?” - -“The Irish troops fought like heroes,” said Brand. - -“But there were not enough of them. Recruiting was slow, and there -was--some trouble.” - -He did not speak about the Irish Rebellion. - -“I heard about it vaguely, from prisoners,” said the girl. “It was -England’s fault, I expect. Dear old blundering, muddle-headed England, -who is a tyrant through fear, and twists Irish loyalty into treason by -ropes of red tape in which the Irish mind gets strangled and awry. -Well, there’s another subject to avoid. I want to hear only good things -to-night. Tell me of London, of Kensington Gardens, of the way from -Strand to Temple Bar, of the lights that gleam along the Embankment when -lovers go hand-in-hand and see stars in the old black river. Are they -all there?” - -“They are all changed,” said Brand. “It is a place of gloom. There are -no lights along the embankment. They have dowsed their glims for fear of -air-raids. There are few lovers hand-in-hand. Some of the boys lie dead -round Ypres, or somewhere on the Somme, or weep out of blind eyes, or -gibber in shell-shock homes, or try to hop on one leg--while waiting for -artificial limbs--or trudge on, to-night, towards Maubeuge, where German -machine-guns wait for them behind the ditches. Along the Strand goes -the painted flapper, luring men to hell. In Kensington Gardens there are -training camps for more boys ear-marked for the shambles, and here and -there among the trees young mothers who are widows before they knew -their wifehood. There is vice, the gaiety of madness, the unspeakable -callousness of people who get rich on war, or earn fat wages, and in -small stricken homes a world of secret grief. That is London in time of -war. I hate it.” - -Brand spoke with bitterness and a melancholy that startled the girl who -sat with folded hands below the crucifix on the whitewashed wall behind -her. - -“Dear God! Is it like that?” - -She stared at the wall opposite as though it were a window through which -she saw London. - -“Yes, of course it is like that. Here in Lille we thought we were -suffering more than anybody in the world. That was our egotism. We did -not realise--not in our souls--that everywhere in the world of war there -was equal suffering, the same cruelty, perhaps the same temptation to -despair.” - -Brand repented, I think, of having led the conversation into such -abysmal gloom. He switched off to more cheerful things and gave some -elaborate sketches of soldiers he knew, to which Eileen played up -with anecdotes of rare comedy about the nuns--the fat nun who under the -rigour of war rations became as slim as a willow and was vain of her new -grace; the little French mm who had no fear of German officers and dared -their fury by prophecies of defeat--but was terrified of a mouse in -the refectory; the Reverend Mother, who borrowed a safety-razor from an -English Tommy--he had hidden it in his shirt--to shave her upper lip, -lest the Germans should think her a French _poilu_ in disguise. - -More interesting to me than anything that was said were the things -unspoken by Eileen and Brand. In spite of the girl’s easy way of -laughter, her quick wit, her avoidance, if possible, of any reference -to her own suffering, I seemed to see in her eyes and in her face the -strain of a long ordeal, some frightful adventure of life in which she -had taken great hazards--the people had told me she had risked her life -often--and a woman’s courage which had been tested by that experience -and had not failed, though perhaps at breaking-point in the worst hours. -I supposed her age was twenty-six or so (I guessed it right this side -of a year), but there was already a streak of grey in her dark hair, -and her eyes, so smiling as a rule, looked as if they had often wept. -I think the presence of Brand was a great pleasure to her--bringing to -Lille a link with her childhood--and I saw that she was studying the -personality of this newly-found friend of hers, and the strong -character of his face, not unscathed by the touch of war, with curious, -penetrating interest. I felt in the way, and left them together with a -fair excuse--I had always work to do--and I was pleased that I did -so, they were so obviously glad to have a more intimate talk about old -friends and old times. - - - - -IX - - -I gained by my unselfishness (I did not want to go), for the Reverend -Mother met me in the corridor and stood talking, to me about Eileen -O’Connor, and told me part of the girl’s story, which I found strange -in its drama, though she left out the scene of greatest interest, as I -heard later from Eileen herself. - -The girl had come to Lille just before the war, as an art mistress in -an “_Ecole de Jeunes Filles_” (her parents in Kensington had too big a -family to keep them all), with lessons twice a week at the convent, and -private pupils in her own rooms. She learned to speak French quickly and -charmingly, and her gift of humour, her Irish frankness and comradeship -made her popular among her pupils, so that she had many invitations to -their homes and became well known in the best houses of Lille--mostly -belonging to rich manufacturers. A commonplace story till then. But -when the Germans occupied Lille this Irish girl became one of the chief -characters in a drama that was exciting and fantastic to the point of -melodrama. It was she who organised the Lille branch of a secret society -of women, with a network all over northern France and Belgium--the world -remembers Nurse Cavell at Brussels--for the escape of young civilians -of military age and prisoners of war, combining that work (frightfully -perilous) with espionage on German movements of troops and other facts -that might be of value to the Belgian Army, and through them to England -and France. It was out of an old book of Jules Verne called “The -Cryptogram” that she copied the cypher in which she wrote her messages -(in invisible ink on linen handkerchiefs and rags), and she had an -audacity of invention in numberless small tricks and plots which -constantly broke through the meshes of the German network of military -police. - -“She had a contempt for their stupidity,” said the Reverend Mother. -“Called them dunderheads, and one strange word of which I do not know -the meaning--‘yobs’--and I trembled at the risks she took.” - -She lived with one maid in two rooms on the ground floor of a house near -the Jardin d’Eté, the rest of the house being used as the headquarters -of the German Intelligence Section of the Northern District. All day -long officers went in and out, and by day and night there were always -sentries at the door. Yet it was there that was established also the -headquarters of the Rescue Committee. It was on account of her Irish -name and parentage that Eileen O’Connor was permitted to remain in the -two rooms to the left of the courtyard, entered by a separate door. The -German Kommandant was a man who firmly believed that the Irish nation -was ready to break out into revolt against the English, and that all -Irish--men and women--hated the British Empire as much as any Prussian. -Eileen O’Connor played up to this _idée fixe_, saw the value of it as -a wonderful means of camouflage, lent the Kommandant books on Irish -history dealing with the injustice of England to Ireland (in which -she firmly believed as a staunch Nationalist), and educated him so -completely to the belief that she was anti-English (as she was in -politics, though not in war) that he had no doubt of her. - -Here the Reverend Mother made a remark which seemed to illuminate Eileen -O’Connor’s story, as well as her own knowledge of human nature. - -“The child has beautiful eyes and a most sweet grace. Irish history may -not account for all.” - -“This German Kommandant,” I asked, “what sort of a man was he?” - -“For a German not altogether bad,” said the Reverend Mother. “Severe -and ruthless like them all, but polite when there was no occasion to -be violent. He was of good family, as far as there are such things in -Germany. A man of sixty.” - -Eileen O’Connor, with German permission, continued her work as art -mistress at the _Ecole de Jeunes Filles_. After six months she was -permitted to receive private pupils in her two rooms on the ground floor -of the Intelligence Headquarters, in the same courtyard, though not in -the same building. Her pupils came with drawing-boards and paint-boxes. -They were all girls with pigtails and short frocks--not so young as -they looked, because three or four at least, including the Baronne de -Villers-Auxicourt, were older than schoolgirls. They played the part -perfectly, and the sentries smiled at them and said, “_Guten Tag, -schönes Fraulein_,” as each one passed. They were the committee of the -Rescue Society: Julienne de Quesnoy, Marcelle Barbier, Yvonne Marigny, -Marguérite Cléry, and Alice de Taffin, de Villers-Auxicourt. - -Eileen O’Connor was the director and leading spirit. It seems to me -astonishing that they should have arranged the cypher, practised it, -written down military information gathered from German conversations -and reported to them by servants and agents under the very noses of the -German intelligence officers, who could see into the sitting-room as -they passed through French windows and saluted Eileen O’Connor and her -young ladies if they happened to meet their eyes. It is more astonishing -that, at different times, and one at a time, many fugitives (including -five British soldiers who had escaped from the Citadel) slept in the -cellar beneath that room, changed into German uniforms belonging to men -who had died at the convent hospital--the Reverend Mother did that part -of the plot--and walked quietly out in the morning by an underground -passage leading to the Jardin d’Eté. The passage had been anciently -built but was blocked up at one end by Eileen O’Connor’s cellar, and -she and the other women broke the wall, one brick at a time, until -after three months the hole was made. Their finger-nails suffered in the -process, and they were afraid that the roughness of their hands might -be noticed by the officers, but in spite of German spectacles they saw -nothing of that. Eileen O’Connor and her friends were in constant touch -with the prisoners of the Citadel and smuggled food to them. That -was easy. It was done by bribing the German sentries with tobacco and -meat-pies. They were also in communication with other branches of the -work in Belgium, so that fugitives were passed on from town to town, and -house to house. Their success made them confident, after many horrible -fears, and for a time they were lulled into a sense of security. -That was rudely crashed when Eileen O’Connor, the young Baronne de -Villers-Auxicourt, and Marcelle Barbier were arrested one morning in -September of ‘17 on a charge of espionage. They were put into separate -cells of the civil prison, crowded with the vilest women of the slums -and stews, and suffered something like torture because of the foul -atmosphere, the lack of sanitation and unspeakable abomination. - -“Only the spirit of Christian martyrdom could remain cheerful in such -terrible conditions,” said the Reverend Mother. “Our dear Eileen was -sustained by a great faith and wonderful gaiety. Her laughter, her -jokes, her patience, her courage, were an inspiration even to the poor -degraded women who were prisoners with her. They worshipped her. We, -her friends, gave her up for lost, though we prayed unceasingly that she -might escape death. Then she was brought to trial.” - -She stood alone in the court. The young Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt had -died in prison owing to the shock of her arrest and a weak heart. A -weak heart, though so brave. Eileen was not allowed to see her on her -deathbed, but she sent a message almost with her last breath. It was the -one word “courage!” Mlle. Marcelle Barbier was released before the trial -for lack of direct evidence. - -Eileen’s trial was famous in Lille. The court was crowded and the German -military tribunal could not suppress the loud expressions of sympathy -and admiration which greeted her, nor the angry murmurs which -interrupted the prosecuting officer. She stood there, wonderfully calm, -between two soldiers with fixed bayonets. She looked very young and -innocent between her guards, and it is evident that her appearance made -a favourable impression on the court. The President, after peering at -her through his horn spectacles, was not so ferocious in his manner as -usual when he bade her be seated. - -The evidence seemed very strong against her. “She is lost” was the -belief of all her friends in court. One of the sentries at the Citadel, -jealously savage because another man had received more tobacco than -himself--on such a trivial thing did this girl’s life hang--betrayed -the system by which the women’s committee sent food to the French -and English prisoners. He gave the names of three of the ladies and -described Eileen O’Connor as the ringleader. The secret police watched -her, and searched her rooms at night. They discovered the cypher and -the key, a list of men who had escaped, and three German uniforms in a -secret cupboard. They had been aided in their search by Lieutenant Franz -von Kreuzenach, of the Intelligence Bureau, who was the chief witness -for the prosecution, and whose name was recommended to the court for -the vigilance and zeal he had shown in the detection of the conspiracy -against the Army and the Fatherland. It was he who had found the secret -cupboard and had solved the key to the cypher. - -“We will take the lieutenant’s evidence in due course,” said the -President. “Does that complete the indictment against this prisoner?” - -Apart from a savage elaboration of evidence based upon the facts -presented and a demand that the woman’s guilt, if the court were -satisfied thereof, should be punished by death, the preliminary -indictment by the prosecution ended. - -It was a terrible case, and during its revelations the people in court -were stricken with dread and pity for the girl who was now sitting -between the two soldiers. They were all staring at her, and some at -least--the Reverend Mother among them--noticed with surprise that when -the officer for the prosecution ended his speech she drew a deep breath, -raised her head, as though some weight of fear had been lifted from her, -and--laughed. - -It was quite a merry laugh, with that full blackbird note of hers, and -the sound of it caused a strange sensation in the court. The President -blinked repeatedly, like an owl blinded by a ray of sunlight. He -addressed the prisoner in heavy, barbarous French. - -“You are charged with conspiracy against our German martial law. The -punishment is death. It is no laughing matter, Fraulein.” - -They were stem words, but there was a touch of pity in that last -sentence. - -“_Ce riest pas une affaire pour rire, Fràulein._” - -Eileen O’Connor, said the Reverend Mother, who was to be called as a -witness on her behalf, bowed in a gracious way to the President, -but with a look of amusement that was amazing to the German officers -assembled for her trial. Some of them scowled, but there were others, -the younger men, who whispered, and smiled also with no attempt to -disguise their admiration of such courage. - -“Perhaps it was only I,” said the Reverend Mother, “who understood the -child’s joyous relief which gave her this courage. I had waited with -terrible dread for the announcement of the discovery of the secret -passage. That it had been discovered I knew, for the German Lieutenant, -Franz von Kreuzenach, had come round to me and very sternly questioned -me about a case of medicine which he had found there, stamped with the -name of our convent.” - -“Then,” I said, “this Franz von Kreuzenach must have suppressed some of -the evidence. By what motive----” - -The Reverend Mother interrupted me, putting her hand on my sleeve with a -touch of protest. - -“The good God works through strange instruments, and may touch the -hardest heart with His grace. It was indeed a miracle.” - -I would give much to have been in that Court at Lille when Eileen -O’Connor was permitted to question the German lieutenant, who was the -chief witness against her. - -From what I have heard, not only from the Reverend Mother, but from -other people of Lille who were present at the trial, she played with -this German officer, making him look very foolish, ridiculing him in a -merry, contemptuous way before the court. Indeed, he seemed strangely -abashed before her. - -“The cypher!... Have you ever been a schoolboy, or were you born a -lieutenant in the German Army?” - -Franz von Kreuzenach admitted that he had once been a boy--to the -amusement of his brother officers. - -Had he ever read stories of adventure, fairy tales, romances, or did -he spend his childhood in the study of Nietzsche, Haegel, Schopenhauer, -Kant, Goethe, von Bemhardi, Karl Marx------- - -When she strung off these names--so incongruous in association--even the -President permitted a slight smile to twist his thin hard mouth. - -Franz von Kreuzenach said that he had read some fairy tales and stories -of adventure. Might he ask the _gnadiges Fraulein_---- - -“Yes,” said the President, “what has this to do with your case, -Fràulein? I desire to give you full liberty in your defence, but this is -entirely irrelevant to the evidence.” - -“It is my case!” cried Miss O’Connor. “Listen to the next question, Herr -President. It is the key of my defence.” - -Her next question caused laughter in court. - -“I ask the Herr Lieutenant whether, as a boy, or a young man, he has -read the romances of the French writer, Jules Verne?” - -Franz von Kreuzenach looked abashed, and blushed like a schoolboy. His -eyes fell before the challenging look of the Irish girl. - -“I have read some novels by Jules Verne, in German translations.” - -“Oh, in German translations--of course!” said Miss O’Connor. “German -boys do not learn French very well.” - -“Keep to the case,” said the President. “In heaven’s name, Fraulein, -what has this to do with your defence?” - -She raised her hand, for patience, and said, “Herr President, my -innocence will soon be clear.” - -She demanded of the witness for the prosecution whether he had ever read -the novel by Jules Verne called “The Cryptogram.” He said that he had -read it only a few days ago. He had discovered it in her room. - -Eileen O’Connor turned round eagerly to the President. - -“I demand the production of that book.” - -An orderly was sent to the lieutenant’s rooms to fetch it. It was clear -that the President of the Court made a black mark against Franz von -Kreuzenach for not having mentioned its discovery to the Court. As yet, -however, he could not see the bearing of it on the case. - -Then, with the book in her hand, Eileen O’Connor turned to the famous -cryptogram, showed how it corresponded exactly with her own cypher, -proved that the pieces of paper found in her rooms were copies of the -Jules Verne cypher in the handwriting of her pupils. - -“You see, Herr President!” she cried eagerly. - -The President admitted that this was proved, but, as he asked, leaning -forward in his chair, for what purpose had they copied out that cypher? -Cyphers were dangerous things to write in time of war. Deadly things. -Why did these ladies want to learn the cypher? - -It was then that Eileen O’Connor was most brilliant. She described in -a simple and girlish way how she and her pupils worked in their little -room. While they copied freehand models, one of them read out to the -others, books of romance, love, adventure, to forget the gloom of -life and the tragedy of war. One of those books was Jules Verne’s -“Cryptogram.” It had fascinated them. It had made them forget the -misery of war. They were romantic girls, imaginative girls. Out of sheer -merriment, to pass the hours, they had tried to work out the cypher. -They had written love-letters to imaginary young men in those secret -numbers. Here Eileen, smiling ironically, read out specimens of the -letters that had been found. - -“Come to the corner of the Rue Esquermoise at 9.45. You will know me -because I shall be wearing a blue bow in a black hat.” - -That was the romantic imagination of the Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt. - -“When you see a lady standing outside the Jardin d’Eté, with a little -brown dog, speak to her in French and say, ‘_Comme il fait froid -aujourd’hui, mademoiselle_.’ If she answers, ‘_Je ne vous comprends -pas, monsieur_,’ you will understand that she is to be trusted, and you -must follow her.” - -That was a romantic idea to which Eileen herself pleaded guilty. - -“Herr President,” said Eileen, “you cannot put old heads on young -shoulders, even in time of war. A party of girls will let their foolish -little minds run upon ideas of love, even when the sound of guns is not -far away. You, Herr President, will understand that perfectly.” - -Perhaps there was something in the character of the President that made -this a chance hit. All the German officers laughed, and the President -shifted in his seat and flushed to the top of his bald, vulture-like -head. - -The possession of those German uniforms was also explained in the -prettiest way by Eileen O’Connor. They were uniforms belonging to three -handsome young German soldiers who had died in hospital. They had kept -them to return to their mothers after the war, those poor German mothers -who were weeping for their sons. This part of her defence touched the -German officers deeply. One of them had tears in his eyes. - -The list of escaped fugitives was harder to explain, but again an Irish -imagination succeeded in giving it an innocent significance. It had been -compiled by a prisoner in the Citadel and given to Eileen as a proof -that his own hope of escape was not in vain, though she had warned him -of the fearful risk. “The poor man gave me the list in sheer simplicity, -and in innocence I kept it.” - -Simply and touchingly she admitted her guilt in smuggling food to French -and British prisoners, and to German sentries, and claimed that her -fault was only against military regulations, but in humanity was -justified. - -“I am Irish,” she said. “I have in my heart the remembrance of English -crimes to Ireland--old, unforgettable crimes that still cry out for the -justice and the liberty which are denied my country.” - -Some of the younger German officers shook their heads approvingly. -They liked this Irish hatred of England. It was according to their -text-books. - -“But,” said the Irish girl, “the sufferings of English prisoners--you -know here of their misery, their hunger, their weakness in that Citadel -where many have died and are dying--stirred my compassion as a woman -to whom all cruelty is tragic, and all suffering of men a call to that -mother-love which is in the spirit of all their womanhood, as you know -by your German women--as I hope you know. Because they were starved -I tried to get them food, as I would to starving dogs or any poor -creatures caught in the trap of war or of men’s sport. To that I confess -guilty, with gladness in my guilt.” - -The Reverend Mother, standing there in the whitewashed corridor of the -convent, in the flickering light of an oil lantern, which gleamed on the -white ruff round her neck and the silver cross on her breast, though her -face was shadowed in the cavern of her black headdress, repeated this -speech of Eileen O’Connor as though in hearing it first she had learnt -it by heart. - -“The child was divinely inspired, monsieur. Our Lady stood by her side, -prompting her. I am sure of that.” - -The trial lengthened out, until it was late in the evening when the -judge summed up. He spoke again of the gravity of the accusation, the -dread punishment that must befall the prisoner if her guilt were proved, -the weight of evidence against her. For a time he seemed to press her -guilt heavily, and the court was gloomy. The German officers looked -grave. One thing happened in the course of his speech which affected the -audience profoundly. It was when he spoke of the romantic explanation -that had been offered by the prisoner regarding the secret cypher. - -“This lady,” he said, “asks me to believe that she and her companions -were playing a simple girlish game of make-believe. Writing imaginary -letters to mythical persons. Were these young ladies--nay, is she, -herself--so lacking in woman’s charm that she has no living man to love -her, and needs must write fictitious notes to nonexistent men?” - -The President said these words with portentous solemnity. Perhaps only -a German could have spoken them. He paused and blinked at the German -officers below him. Suddenly into the silence of the court came a ripple -of laughter, clear and full of most mirthful significance. - -Eileen O’Connor’s laugh bewitched the crowded court, and there was a -roar of laughter, in which all the officers joined. By that laugh more -even than by her general gaiety, her courage and eloquence, she won her -life. - -“I said a decade of the rosary to our Blessed Lady,” said the Reverend -Mother, “and thanked God that this dear child’s life would not be taken. -I was certain that those men would not condemn her to death. She was -acquitted on the charge of espionage, and sentenced to two weeks’ -imprisonment for smuggling food to prisoners, by a verdict of seven -against three. Only when she left the court did she fall into so deep a -swoon that for a little while we thought her dead.” - -The Reverend Mother had told her story well. She held me in a deep -strained interest. It was rather to myself than to her that I spoke the -words which were my comment at the end of this narrative. - -“How splendid!... But I am puzzled about that German lieutenant, Franz -von Kreuzenach. He kept the real evidence back.” - -“That,” said the Reverend Mother solemnly, “was a great mystery, and a -miracle.” - -Wickham Brand joined us in the passage, with Eileen O’Connor by his -side. - -“Not gone yet?” said Wickham. - -“I have been listening to the tale of a woman’s courage,” I said, and -when Eileen gave me her hand, I raised it to my lips, in the French -style, though not in gallantry. - -“Reverend Mother,” she said, “has been exalting me to the seventh heaven -of her dear heart.” - -On my way back to Brand’s mess I told him all I had heard about Eileen’s -trial, and I remember his enthusiasm. - -“Fine! Thank heaven there are women like that in this blood-soaked -world. It saves one from absolute despair.” - -He made no comment about the suppression of evidence, which was a puzzle -to me. - -We parted with a “So long, old man,” outside his headquarters, and I did -not see him until a few days later. - - - - -X - - -It was Frederick E. Small, the American doctor attached to Brand’s -crowd, who was with me on a night in Lille, before the armistice, when -by news from the colonel we were stirred by the tremendous hope--almost -a certainty--that the end of the war was near. I had been into Courtrai, -which the enemy had first evacuated and then was shelling. It was not a -joyous entry like that into Lille. Most of the people were still down -in their cellars, where for several days they had been herded together -until the air became foul. On the outskirts I had passed many groups -of peasants with their babies and old people, trudging past our guns, -trekking from one village to another in search of greater safety, or -standing in the fields where our artillery was getting into action, and -where new shell craters should have warned them away, if they had had -more knowledge of war. For more than four years I had seen, at different -periods, crowds like that, after the first flight of fugitives in -August of ‘14, when the world seemed to have been tilted up and great -populations in France and Belgium were in panic-stricken retreat from -the advancing edge of war. I knew the types, the attitudes, the very -shape of the bundles, in these refugee processions, the haggard look of -the mothers pushing their perambulators, the bewildered look of old men -and women, the tired sleepy look of small boys and girls, the stumbling -dead-beat look of old farm horses dragging carts piled high with -cottage furniture. As it was at the beginning so it was at the end--for -civilians caught in the fires of war. With two other men I went into the -heart of Courtrai and found it desolate, and knew the reason why, when, -at the corner of the Grande Place, a heavy shell came howling and burst -inside a house with frightful explosive noise, followed by a crash of -masonry. The people were wise to keep to their cellars. Two girls, -not so wise, made a dash from one house to another, and were caught by -chunks of steel and killed close to the church of St. Martin, where they -lay all crumpled up in a clotted pool of blood. A man came up to me, -utterly careless of such risks, and I hated to stand talking to him with -the shells coming every half-minute overhead. - -There was a fire of passion in his eyes, and at every sentence he spoke -to me his voice rose and thrilled as he denounced the German race for -all they had done in Courtrai, for their robberies, their imprisonments, -their destruction of machinery, their brutality. The last Kommandant of -Courtrai was von Richthofen, father of the German aviator, and he was a -hard, ruthless man, and kept the city under an iron rule. - -“All that, thank God, is finished now,” said the man. “The English have -delivered us from the beast!” As he spoke, another monstrous shell came -overhead, but he took no notice of it, and said, “We are safe now from -the enemy’s evil power!” It seemed to me a comparative kind of safety. -I had no confidence in it when I sat in the parlour of an old lady who, -like Eileen O’Connor, in Lille, had been an Irish governess in Courtrai, -and who now, living in miserable poverty, sat in a bed-sitting-room -whose windows and woodwork had been broken by shell-splinters. “Do you -mind shutting the door, my dear?” she said. “I can’t bear those nasty -bombs.” I realised with a large, experienced knowledge that we might be -torn to fragments of flesh at any moment by one of those nasty “bombs,” - which were really eight-inch shells; but the old lady did not worry, and -felt safe when the door was shut. - -Outside Courtrai, when I left, lay some khaki figures in a mush of -blood. They were lads whom I had seen unloading ammunition that morning -on the bank of the canal. One had asked me for a light, and said, -“What’s all this peace talk?... Any chance?” A big chance, I had told -him. Home for Christmas, certain sure this time. The boy’s eyes had -lighted up for a moment, quicker than the match which he held in the cup -of his hands. - -“Jesus! Back for good, eh?” - -Then the light went out of his eyes as the match flared up. - -“We’ve heard that tale a score of times. ‘The Germans are weakening. The -Huns ‘ave ‘ad enough!...’ Newspaper talk. A man would be a mug----” - -Now the boy lay in the mud, with half his body blown away.... I was glad -to get back to Lille for a spell, where there were no dead bodies in the -roads. And the colonel’s news, straight from G.H.Q.--which, surely, were -not playing up the old false optimism again!--helped one to hope that, -perhaps, in a week or two the last boys of our race, the lucky ones, -would be reprieved from that kind of bloody death which I had seen so -often, so long, so heaped up, in many fields of France and Flanders, -where the flower of our youth was killed. - -Dr. Small was excited by the hope brought back by Colonel Lavington. He -sought me out in my billet, _Madame Chéri_, and begged me to take a walk -with him. (It was a moonlight night, but no double throb of a German -air-engine came booming over Lille.) He walked at a hard pace, with -the collar of his “British warm” tucked up to his ears, and talked in a -queer disjointed monologue, emotionally, whimsically. I remember some -of his words, more or less--anyhow, the gist of his thoughts, “I’m not -worrying any more about how the war will end. We’ve won! Remarkable, -that, when one thinks back to the time, less than a year ago, when the -best thing seemed a draw. I’m thinking about the future. What’s the -world going to be afterwards? That’s my American mind--the next job, so -to speak.” - -He thought hard while we paced round our side of the Jardin d’Eté, where -the moonlight made the bushes glamorous and streaked the tree trunks -with a silver line. - -“This war is going to have prodigious effects on nations; on -individuals, too. I’m scared. We’ve all been screwed up to an intense -pitch--every nerve in us is beyond the normal stretch of nature. After -the war there will be a sudden relaxing. We shall be like bits of chewed -elastic. Rather like people who have drugged themselves to get through -some big ordeal. After the ordeal their nerves are all ragged. They -crave the old stimulus, though they dread it. They’re depressed--don’t -know what’s the matter--get into sudden rages--hysterical--can’t settle -to work--go out for gaiety and get bored. I’ve seen it many times in -bad cases. Europe--yes, and America, too--is going to be a bad case. A -neurotic world--Lord, it’ll take some healing!” - -For a time his thoughts wandered round the possible terms of peace and -the abasement of Germany. He prophesied the break-up of Germany, the -downfall of the Emperor and of other thrones. - -“Crowns will be as cheap as twenty cents,” he said. He hoped for the -complete overthrow of Junkerdom--“all the dirty dogs,” as he called the -Prussian war lords and politicians. But he hoped the Allies would be -generous with the enemy peoples--“magnanimous” was the word he used. - -“We must help the spirit of democracy to rise among them,” he said. “We -must make it easy for them to exorcise the devil. If we press them too -hard, put the screw on to the torture of their souls (defeat will be -torture to a proud people), they will nourish a hope of vengeance and go -back to their devil for hope.” - -I asked him whether he thought his President would lead the world to a -nobler stage of history. - -He hesitated at that, groped a little, I thought, among old memories and -prejudices. - -“Why,” he said, “Wilson has the biggest chance that ever came to a human -being--the biggest chance and the biggest duty. We are rich (too darned -rich) and enormously powerful when most other peoples are poor and -weak--drained of wealth and blood. That’s our luck, and a little bit, -perhaps, our shame, though our boys have done their bit all right -and are ready to do more; and it’s not their fault they weren’t here -before--but we’re hardly touched by this war as a people, except -spiritually. There we’ve been touched by the finger of Fate. (God, if -you like that better!) So, with that strength behind him, the President -is in a big way of business. He can make his voice heard, stand for a -big idea. God, sonny, I hope he’ll do it! For the world’s sake, for the -sake of all these suffering people, here in this city of Lille, and in a -million little towns where people have been bashed by war.” - -I asked him if he doubted Wilson’s greatness, and the question -embarrassed him. - -“I’m loyal to the man,” he said. “I’ll back him if he plays straight and -big. Bigness, that’s what we want. Bigness of heart as well as bigness -of brain. Oh, he’s clever, though not wise in making so many enemies. -He has fine ideas and can write real words. Things which speak. True -things. I’d like to be sure of his character--its breadth and strength, -I mean. The world wants a nobleman, bigger than the little gentlemen of -politics; a leader calling to the great human heart of our tribes and -lifting them, with one grand gesture, out of the mire of old passions -and vendettas and jealousies to a higher plane of--common sense. Out of -the jungle to the daylight of fellowship. Out of the jungle.” - -He repeated those words twice, with a reverent solemnity. He believed -that so much emotion had been created in the heart of the world that, -when the war ended, anything might happen if a leader came--a new -religion of civilisation, any kind of spiritual and social revolution. - -“We might kill cruelty,” he said. “My word, what a victory that would -be!” - - - - -XI - - -Our conversation was interrupted by a figure that slipped out of the -darkness of some doorway, hesitated before us, and then spoke in French. - -“You are English officers? May I speak with you?” - -It was a girl, whom I could see only vaguely in the darkness--she stood -in the shadow of a doorway beyond the moonlight--and I answered her that -I was English and my friend American. - -“Is there any way,” she asked, “of travelling from Lille, perhaps to -Paris? In a motor car, for example? To-night?” - -I laughed at this startling request, put so abruptly. It was already -nine o’clock at night! - -“Not the smallest chance in the world, mademoiselle! Paris is far from -Lille.” - -“I was stupid,” said the girl. “Not all the way to Paris, but to some -town outside Lille. Any town. There are motor cars always passing -through the streets. I thought if I could get a little place in one----” - -“It is difficult,” I said. “As a matter of fact, it is forbidden for -officers to take civilians except in case of saving them from danger--in -shelled places.” - -She came suddenly out of the shadow into the moonlight, and I saw that -she was a girl with red hair and a face strangely white. I knew by the -way she spoke--the accent--as well as by the neatness of her dress, that -she was not a working-girl. She was trembling painfully, and took hold -of my arm with both her hands. - -“Monsieur, I beg of you to help me. I beseech you to think of some way -in which I may get away from Lille to-night. It is a matter of extreme -importance to me.” - -A group of young men and women came up the street arm-in-arm, shouting, -laughing, singing the “Marseillaise.” They were civilians, with two of -our soldiers among them, wearing women’s hats. - -Before I could answer the girl’s last words, she made a sudden retreat -into the dark doorway, and I could see dimly that she was cowering back. - -Dr. Small spoke to me. “That girl is scared of something. The poor child -has got the jim-jams.” - -I went closer to her and heard her breathing. It was quite loud. It was -as though she were panting after hard running. - -“Are you ill?” I asked. - -She did not answer until the group of civilians had passed. They did not -pass at once, but stood for a moment looking up at a light burning in -an upper window. One of the men shouted something in a loud voice--some -word in _argot_--which I did not understand, and the women screeched -with laughter. Then they went on, dancing with linked arms, and our two -soldiers in the women’s hats lurched along with them. - -“I am afraid!” said the girl. - -“Afraid of what?” I asked. - -I repeated the question--“Why are you afraid, mademoiselle?”--and she -answered by words which I had heard a million times since the war began -as an explanation of all trouble, tears, ruin, misery. - -“_C’est la guerre!_” - -“Look out!” said the little doctor. “She’s fainting.” - -She had risen from her cowering position and stood upright for a moment, -with her hand against the doorpost. Then she swayed, and would have -fallen if the doctor had not caught her. Even then she fell, -indeed, though without hurt, because he could not support her sudden -weight--though she was of slight build--and they sank together in a kind -of huddle on the doorstep. - -“For the love of Mike!” said Dr. Small. He was on his knees before her -now, chafing her cold hands. She came to in about a minute, and I leaned -over her and asked her where she lived, and made out from her faint -whisper that she lived in the house to which this doorway belonged, in -the upper room where the light was burning. With numbed fingers--“cold -as a toad,” said “Daddy” Small--she fumbled at her bodice and drew out a -latchkey. - -“We had better carry her up,” I said, and the doctor nodded. - -The front door opened into a dimly-lit passage, uncarpeted, and with -leprous-looking walls. At one end was a staircase with heavy banisters. -The doctor and I supported the girl, who was able to walk a little now, -and managed to get her to the first landing. - -“Where?” I asked, and she said, “Opposite.” - -It was the front room looking on to the street. A lamp was burning on -the round table in the centre of the room, and I saw by the light of it -the poverty of the furniture and its untidiness. At one end of the room -was a big iron bedstead with curtains of torn lace, and on the wooden -chairs hung some soiled petticoats and blouses. There was a small -cooking-stove in a corner, but no charcoal burned in it, and I remember -an ebony-framed mirror over the mantelpiece. I remember that mirror -vividly. I remember, for instance, that a bit of the ebony had broken -off, showing the white plaster underneath, and a crack in the right-hand -corner of the looking-glass. - -Probably my eyes were attracted to it because of a number of photographs -stuck into the framework. They were photographs of a girl in a variety -of stage costumes; and glancing at the girl, whom the doctor had put -into a low arm-chair, I saw that they were of her. But with all the -tragic difference between happiness and misery; worse than that--between -unscathed girlhood and haggard womanhood. This girl with red hair and -a white waxen face was pretty still. There was something more than -prettiness in the broadness of her brow and the long tawny lashes that -were now veiling her closed eyes as she sat with her head back against -the chair, showing a long white throat. But her face was lined with an -imprint of pain, and her mouth, rather long and bow-like, was drawn with -a look of misery. - -The doctor spoke to me--in English, of course. - -“Half-starved, I should say. Or starved.” - -He sniffed at the stove and the room generally. - -“No sign of recent cooking.” - -He opened a cupboard and looked in. - -“Nothing in the pantry, sonny. I guess the girl would do with a meal.” - -I did not answer him. I was staring at the photographs stuck into -the mirror, and saw one that was not a girl’s portrait. It was the -photograph of a young French lieutenant. I crossed the room and looked -at it closer, and then spoke to the little doctor in a curiously -unexcited voice, as one does in moments of living drama. - -“This girl is Pierre Nesle’s sister.” - -“For the love of Mike!” said the little doctor, for the second time that -night. - -The girl heard the name of Pierre Nesle and opened her eyes wide, with a -wondering look. - -“Pierre Nesle? That is my brother. Do you know him?” - -I told her that I knew him well and had seen him in Lille, where he was -looking for her, two days ago. He was now in the direction of Courtrai. - -The girl was painfully agitated and uttered pitiful words. - -“Oh, my little brother!” she murmured. “My dear little comrade!” She -rose from her chair, steadying herself with one hand on the back of it, -and with feverish anxiety said that she must go at once. She must leave -Lille. - -“Why?” I asked. “Why do you want to leave Lille?” - -“I am afraid!” she answered again, and burst into tears. - -I turned to the doctor and translated her words. - -“I can’t understand this fear of hers--this desire to leave Lille.” - -Dr. Small had taken something off the mantelpiece--a glass tube with -some tablets--which he put in his pocket. - -“Hysteria,” he said. “Starvation, war-strain, and--drugs. There’s a -jolly combination for a young lady’s nerves! She’s afraid of herself, -old ghosts, the horrors. Wants to run away from it all, forgetting that -she carries her poor body and brain with her. I know the symptoms--even -in little old New York in time of peace.” - -He had his professional manner. I saw the doctor through his soldier’s -uniform. He spoke with the authority of the medical man in a patient’s -bedroom. He ordered me to go round to my mess and bring back some -food, while he boiled up a kettle and got busy. When I returned, after -half-an-hour, the girl was more cheerful. Some of the horrors had passed -from her in the doctor’s company. She ate some of the food I had brought -in a famished way, but after a few mouthfuls sickened at it and would -eat no more. But a faint colour had come into her cheeks and gave -her face a touch of real beauty. She must have been extraordinarily -attractive before the war--as those photographs showed. She spoke of -Pierre with adoration. He had been all that was good to her before she -left home (she hated her mother!) to sing in cabarets and café concerts. - -“I cannot imagine Pierre as a lieutenant!” she remarked, with a queer -little laugh. - -Dr. Small said he would get some women in the house to look after her in -the night, but she seemed hostile to that idea. - -“The people here are unkind. They are bad women here. If I died they -would not care.” - -She promised to stay in the house until we could arrange for Pierre to -meet her and take her away to Paris. But I felt the greatest pity for -the girl when we left her alone in her miserable room. The scared look -had come back to her face. I could see that she was in terror of being -alone again. - -When we walked back to our billets the doctor spoke of the extraordinary -chance of meeting the girl like that--the sister of our _liaison_ -officer. The odds were a million to one against such a thing. - -“I always feel there’s a direction in these cases,” said Daddy Small. -“Some Hand that guides. Maybe you and I were being led to-night. I’d -like to save that girl, Marthe.” - -“Is that her name?” - -“Marthe de Méricourt, she calls herself, as a singing-girl. I guess -that’s why Pierre could not hear of her in this town.” - -Later on the doctor spoke again. - -“That girl is as much a war victim as if she had been shell-shocked -on the field of battle. The casualty lists don’t say anything about -civilians, not a darned thing about broken hearts, stricken women, -diseased babies, infant mortality--all the hell of suffering behind the -lines. May God curse all war devils!” - -He put his hand on my shoulder and said in a very solemn way: “After -this thing is finished--this grisly business--you and I, and all men of -goodwill, must put our heads together to prevent it happening again. I -dedicate whatever life I have to that.” - -He seemed to have a vision of hope. - -“There are lots of good fellows in the world. Wickham Brand is one -of ‘em. Charles Fortune is another. One finds them everywhere on your -side and mine. Surely we can get together when peace comes and make a -better System somehow!” - -“Not easy, doctor.” - -He laughed at me. - -“I hate your pessimism!... We must get a message to Pierre Nesle.... -Good-night, sonny!” - -On the way back to my billet I passed young Clatworthy. - -He was too engrossed to see me, having his arm round a girl who was -standing with him under an unlighted lamp-post. She was looking up into -his face on which the moonlight shone--a pretty creature, I thought. - -“_Je t’adore!_” she murmured, as I passed quite close; and Clatworthy -kissed her. - -I knew the boy’s mother and sisters, and wondered what they would think -of him if they saw him now with this little street-walker. To them -Cyril was a white knight _sans peur et sans reproche_. The war had not -improved him. He was no longer the healthy lad who had been captain -of his school, with all his ambition in sport, as I had known him five -years before. Sometimes, in spite of his swagger and gallantry, I saw -something sinister in his face, the look of a soiled soul. Poor kid! He, -too, would have his excuse for all things: - -“_C’est la guerre!_” - - - - -XII - - -It was five o’clock on the following evening that I saw the girl Marthe -again. The doctor and I had arranged to go round to her lodging after -dinner, by which time we hoped to have a letter for her from Pierre, by -despatch-rider. But Brand was with me in the afternoon, having looked -into my billet with an English conversation-book for Hélène, who was -anxious to study our way of speech. Madame Chéri insisted upon giving -him a glass of wine, and we stood talking in her drawing-room a while -about the certain hope of victory, and then trivial things. Hélène was -delighted with her book and Brand had a merry five minutes with her, -teaching her to pronounce the words. - -“_C’est effroyable!_” cried Hélène. “‘Through’... ‘Tough’ ‘Cough ‘... -_Mon Dieu, comme c’est difficile!_ There is no rule in your tongue.” - -Madame Chéri spoke of Edouard, her eldest boy, who had disappeared into -the great silence, and gave me a photograph of him, in case I should -meet him in our advance towards the Rhine. She kissed the photograph -before giving it to me, and said a few words which revealed her strong -character, her passionate patriotism. - -“If he had been four years older he would have been a soldier of France. -I should have been happy if he could have fought for his country, and -died for it, like my husband.” - -Brand and I left the house and went up towards the Grande Place. I was -telling him about Pierre Nesle’s sister and our strange meeting with her -the night before. - -“I’m precious glad,” said Brand, “that no sister of mine was behind -German lines. God knows how much they had to endure. Imagine their -risks! It was a lucky escape for that girl Hélène. Supposing she had -failed to barricade her door?” - -When we came into the Grande Place we saw that something was happening. -It was almost dark after a shadowy twilight, but we could see a crowd of -people surging round some central point of interest. Many of them were -laughing loudly. There was some joke in progress. The women’s tongues -sounded most loud and shrill. - -“They’re getting back to gaiety,” said Brand. “What’s the jest, I -wonder?” - -A gust of laughter came across the square. Above it was another sound, -not so pleasant. It was a woman’s shrieks--shriek after shriek, most -blood-curdling, and then becoming faint. - -“What the devil----!” said Brand. - -We were on the edge of the crowd and I spoke to a man there. - -“What’s happening?” - -He laughed in a grim way. - -“It’s the _coiffure_ of a lady.. They are cutting her hair.” - -I was mystified. - -“Cutting her hair?” - -A woman spoke to me, by way of explanation, laughing like the man. - -“Shaving her head, monsieur. She was one of those who were too -complaisant with German officers. You understand? There were many of -them. They ought to have their heads cut off as well as their hair.” - -Another man spoke gruffly. - -“There would be a good many headless corpses if that were so. To their -shame be it said. It was abominable. No pride. No decency.” - -“But the worst will escape,” said another. “In private houses. The -well-dressed demoiselles!” - -“_Tuez-les!_” cried a woman. “_Tuez-les!_” - -It was a cry for killing, such as women had screamed when pretty -aristocrats were caught by the mobs of the French Revolution. - -“My God!” said Brand. - -He shouldered his way through the crowd, and I followed him. The people -made a gap for us, seeing our uniforms, and desired us to enjoy the -joke. What I saw when I came closer was a group of young men holding a -limp figure. One of them was brandishing a large pair of scissors, as -large as shears. Another held up a tangled mass of red hair. - -“_Regardez!_” he shouted to the crowd, and they cheered and laughed. - -I had seen the hair before, as I knew when I saw a girl’s face, -dead-white, lifeless, as it seemed, and limp against a man’s shoulder. - -“It is Marthe!” I said to Brand. “Pierre Nesle’s sister.” - -A curious sense of faintness overcame me, and I felt sick. - -Brand did not answer me, but I saw his face pale under its tan. He -pushed forward through the crowd and I lost sight of him for a few -moments. After that I saw him carrying the girl; above the heads of the -people, I saw her head flopping from side to side horribly, a head with -close-cropped hair. They had torn her clothes off her shoulders, which -were bleeding. - -“Help me,” said Brand. - -I am not quite clear what happened. I have only a vague remembrance of -the crowd making way for us, with murmurs of surprise and some hostile -cries of women. I remember helping Brand to carry the girl--enormously -heavy she seemed with her dead weight--but how we managed to get her -into Dr. Small’s car is to this day a blank in my mind. We must have -seen and hailed him at the corner of the Grande Place as he was going -back to his billet. I have a distinct recollection of taking off my -Burberry and laying it over the girl, who was huddled in the back of -the car, and of Brand saying, “Where can we take her?” I also remember -trying to light a cigarette and using many matches which went out in the -wind. It was Brand’s idea that we should go to Madame Chéri’s house for -sanctuary, and by the time we had driven to that place we had left the -crowd behind and were not followed. - -“You go in and explain things,” said Brand. “Ask Madame to give the girl -a refuge.” - -I think Madame Chéri was startled by the sight of the car, and perhaps -by some queer look I had. I told her what had happened. This girl was -the sister of Pierre Nesle, whom Madame Chéri had met. The crowd, for -some reason, had cut off her hair. Would Madame save the poor child, who -was unconscious? - -I shall never forget the face or speech of that lady, whom I had found -so kind. She drew herself up very stiffly and a relentless expression -hardened her face. - -“If you were not English I should say you desired to insult me, sir. -The people have cut off the creature’s hair. ‘For some reason,’ you say. -There is only one reason. Because she was faithless to her country and -to her sex, and was familiar with men who were the enemies of France, -the murderers of our men, robbers and assassins. She has been well -punished. I would rather burn down my house than give her shelter. If -they gave her to the dogs to tear in pieces I would not lift my little -finger to save her.” - -Hélène came in, and was surprised at the emotion of her mother’s voice. - -“What is it, little _maman?_” - -Madame Chéri regained control of herself, which for a moment she had -lost in a passion that shook her. - -“It is a little matter. This officer and I have been talking about vile -people who sold themselves to our enemy. He understands perfectly.” - -“I understand,” I said gravely. “There is a great deal of cruelty in the -world, madame, and less charity than I had hoped.” - -“There is, praise be to God, a little justice,” said Madame Chéri very -calmly. - -“_Au revoir, madame!_” - -“_Au revoir, monsieur!_” - -“_Au revoir, mademoiselle!_” - -I was shocked then at the callousness of the lady. It seemed to me -incredible. Now I am no longer shocked, but understand the horror that -was hers, the loathing for a daughter of France who had--if the mob -were not mistaken--violated the code of honour which enabled the French -people to resist German brutality, even German kindness, which they -hated worse, with a most proud disdain. That girl outside, bleeding and -senseless in the car, had been friendly with German officers, notorious -in her company with them. Otherwise she would not have been seized by -the crowd and branded for shame. There was a fierce protective instinct -which hardened Madame Chéri against charity. Only those who have -seen what war means to women close to it, in enemy hands, may truly -understand, and, understanding, curse war again for all its destruction -of souls and bodies. - - - - -XIII - - -Brand and Dr. Small were both astonished and indignant. - -“Do you mean to say she shuts her door against this poor bleeding girl?” - said Brand. - -The American doctor did not waste words. He only used words when there -was no action on hand. - -“The next place?” he said. “A hospital?” - -I had the idea of the convent where Eileen O’Connor lodged. There was -a sanctuary. Those nuns were vowed to Christian charity. They would -understand and have pity. - -“Yes,” said Brand, and he called to the driver. - -We drove hard to the convent, and Brand was out of the car before it -stopped, and rang the bell with such a tug that we heard it jangling -loudly in the courtyard. - -It seemed long before the little wicket opened and a woman’s voice said, -“_Qui est la?_” - -Brand gave his name and said, “Open quickly, _ma sour_. We have a woman -here who is ill.” - -The gate was opened, and Brand and I lifted out the girl, who was still -unconscious, but moaning slightly, and carried her into the courtyard, -and thence inside the convent to the whitewashed passage where I had -listened so long to the Reverend Mother telling me of the trial scene. - -It was the Reverend Mother who came now, with two of her nuns, while the -little portress stood by, clasping her hands. - -“An accident?” said the Reverend Mother. “How was the poor child hurt?” - -She bent over the girl, Marthe--Pierre Nesle’s sister, as I remembered -with an added pity--pulled my Burberry from her face and shoulders and -glanced at the bedraggled figure there. - -“Her hair has been cut off,” said the old nun. “That is strange! There -are the marks of finger-nails on her shoulder. What violence was it, -then?” - -Brand described the rescue of the girl from the mob, who would have -torn her to pieces, and as he spoke I saw a terrible look come into the -Reverend Mother’s face. - -“I remember--1870,” she said harshly. “They cut the hair of women who -had disgraced themselves--and France--by their behaviour with German -soldiers. We thought then that it was a light punishment... we think so -now, monsieur!” - -One of the nuns, a young woman who had been touching the girl’s head, -smoothing back her tousled, close-cropped hair, sprang up as though she -had touched an evil thing and shrank back. - -Another nun spoke to the Reverend Mother. - -“This house would be defiled if we took in a creature like that. God -forbid, Reverend Mother----” - -The old Superior turned to Brand, and I saw how her breast was heaving -with emotion. - -“It would have been better, sir, if you had left this wretched woman to -the people. The voice of the people is sometimes the voice of God. If -they knew her guilt their punishment was just. Reflect what it means to -us--to all our womanhood. Husbands, fathers, brothers were being killed -by these Germans. Our dear France was bleeding to death. Was there any -greater crime than that a Frenchwoman should show any weakness, any -favour, to one of those men who were helping to cause the agony of -France, the martyrdom of our youth?” - -Brand stammered out a few words. I remember only two: “Christian -charity!” - -The American doctor and I stood by silently. Dr. Small was listening -with the deepest attention, as though some new truth about human nature -were being revealed to him. - -It was then that a new voice was raised in that whitewashed corridor. -It was Eileen O’Connor’s Irish contralto, and it vibrated with -extraordinary passion as she spoke in French. - -“Reverend Mother!... I am dismayed by the words you have spoken. I do -not believe, though my ears have heard them. No, they are unbelievable! -I have seen your holiness, your charity, every day for four years, -nursing German prisoners, and English, with equal tenderness, with a -great pity. Not shrinking from any horror or the daily sight of -death, but offering it all as a sacrifice to God. And now, after our -liberation, when we ought to be uplifted by the Divine favour that has -come to us, you would turn away that poor child who lies bleeding at our -feet, another victim of war’s cruelty. Was it not war that struck her -down? This war which has been declared against souls as well as bodies! -This war on women, as well as on fighting-men who had less need of -courage than some of us! What did our Lord say to a woman who was taken -by the mob? ‘He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first -stone!’ It was Mary Magdalen who kissed His feet, and wiped them with -her hair. This girl has lost her hair, but perhaps Christ has taken it -as a precious napkin for His wounds. We who have been lucky in escape -from evil--shall we cast her out of the house which has a cross above -its roof? I have been lucky above most women in Lille. If all things -were known, I might be lying there in that girl’s place, bleeding and -senseless, without this hair of mine. Reverend Mother--_remember Franz -von Kreuzenach!_” - -We--Dr. Small, Brand, and I--were dumbfounded by Eileen O’Connor’s -passionate outcry. She was utterly unconscious of us and looked only at -the Reverend Mother, with a light in her eyes that was more intensely -spiritual than I had seen before in any woman’s face. - -The old nun seemed stricken by Eileen’s words. Into her rugged old face, -all wrinkled about the eyes, crept an expression of remorse and shame. -Once she raised her hands, slowly, as though beseeching the girl to -spare her. Then her hands came down again and clasped each other at her -breast, and her head bowed so that her chin was dug into her white bib. -Tears came into her eyes and fell unheeded down her withered cheeks. -I can see now the picture of us all standing there in the whitewashed -corridor of the convent, in the dim light of a hanging lantern--we three -officers standing together, the huddled figure of Marthe Nesle lying -at our feet, half covered with my trench-coat, but with her face lying -sideways, white as death under her cropped red hair, and her bare -shoulders stained with a streak of blood; opposite, the old Mother, with -bowed head and clasped hands; the two young nuns, rigid, motionless, -silent; and Eileen O’Connor, with that queer light on her face and her -hands stretched out with a gesture of passionate appeal. - -The Reverend Mother raised her head and spoke--after what seemed like a -long silence, but was only a second or two, I suppose. - -“My child, I am an old woman, and have said many prayers. But you have -taught me the lesson, which I thought I knew, that the devil does not -depart from us until our souls have found eternal peace. I am a wicked -old woman, and until you opened my eyes I was forgetful of charity and -of our Lord’s most sweet commands.” - -She turned to us now with an air of wonderful dignity and graciousness. - -“Gentlemen, I pray you to carry this wounded girl to my own cell. -To-night I will sleep on bare boards.” - -One of the young nuns was weeping bitterly. - -So we lifted up Marthe Nesle, and, following the Reverend Mother, -carried her to a little white room and laid her on an iron bedstead -under a picture of the Madonna below which burned an oil lamp on a -wooden table. The American doctor asked Eileen O’Connor to bring him -some hot water. - -Brand and I went back in the car, and I dined at his mess again. - - - - -XIV - - -Colonel Lavington was discussing the art of the sonnet and the -influence of Italian culture in Elizabethan England. From that subject -he travelled to the psychology of courage, which in his opinion, for the -moment, was founded on vanity. - -“Courage,” he said, with that gallant look of his which I had seen with -admiration when he walked up the old duckboards beyond Ypres, with -a whimsical smile at “crumps” bursting abominably near--he had done -bravely in the old days as a battalion commander. “Courage is merely a -pose before the mirror of one’s own soul and one’s neighbours. We are -all horribly afraid in moments of danger, but some of us have the -gift of pretending that we don’t mind. That is vanity. We like to look -heroes, even to ourselves. It is good to die with a _beau geste_, though -death is damnably unpleasant.” - -“I agree, colonel,” said Charles Fortune. “Always the right face for the -proper occasion. But it wants a lot of practice.” - -He put on his gallant, devil-may-care face, and there was appreciative -laughter from his fellow officers. - -Harding, the young landowner, was of opinion that courage depended -entirely on the liver. - -“It is a matter of physical health,” he said. “If I am out-of-sorts, -my _moral_ goes down to zero. Not that I’m ever really brave. Anyhow, I -hate things that go off. Those loud noises of bursting shells are very -objectionable. I shall protest against Christmas crackers after the -war.” - -Young Clatworthy was in the sulks, and sat very silent during all this -badinage. - -“What’s the matter?” I asked, and he confided to me his conviction, -while he passed the salt, that “life was a rummy game.” - -“Hipped?” I said, and his answer was, “Fed up to the back teeth!” - -That seemed to me curious, after the glimpse I had had of him with a -little lady of Lille. The boy explained himself somewhat under cover of -the colonel’s conversation, which was holding the interest of the mess. - -“We’re living unnaturally,” he said. “It’s all an abnormal show, and we -pretend to be natural and normal when everything that happens round us -is fantastic and disorderly.” - -“What’s your idea?” I enquired. It was the first time I had heard the -boy talk seriously, or with any touch of gravity. - -“Hard to explain,” he said. “But, take my case to-day. This morning I -went up the line to interrogate the latest batch of P.O.W.’s.” (He meant -prisoners of war.) “A five-point-nine burst within ten yards of my car, -the other side of Courtrai, killed my driver and missed me by a couple -of inches. I felt as sick as a dog when I saw Saunders crumpled over his -steering-wheel with blood pouring down his neck. Not that it’s the first -time I’ve seen blood!” - -He laughed as he gave a glance at his wound-stripe, and I remembered -the way in which he had gained his M.C. at Gommecourt--one of three left -alive in his company. - -“We had been talking, three minutes before, about his next leave. He had -been married in ‘16, after the Somme, and hadn’t seen his wife since. -Said her letters made him ‘uneasy.’ Thought she was drinking because of -the loneliness. Well, there he was--finished--and a nasty sight. I went -off to the P.O.W. cage and examined the beggars--one of them, as -usual, had been a waiter at the ‘Cecil,’ and said, ‘How’s dear old -London?’--and passed the time of day with Bob Mellett--you know, the -one-armed lad. He laughed no end when he heard of my narrow squeak. So -did I--though it’s hard to see the joke. He lent me his car on the way -back, and somewhere outside Courtrai we bumped over a dead body with a -queer soft squelch. It was a German--a young ‘un--and Bob Mellett said, -‘_He_ won’t be home for Christmas!’ Do you know Bob?--he used to cry at -school when a rat was caught. Queer, isn’t it? Now here I am, sitting at -a white table-cloth, listening to the colonel’s talk, and pretending -to be interested. I’m not a bit, really. I’m wondering why that bit of -shell hit Saunders and not me. Or why I’m not lying in a muddy road as a -bit of soft squelch for staff cars to bump over. And on top of that I’m -wondering how it will feel to hang up a bowler hat again in a house -at Wimbledon, and say, ‘Cheerio, mother!’ to the mater (who will be -knitting in the same armchair--chintz-covered--by the piano) and read -the evening paper until dinner’s ready, take Ethel to a local dance, and -get back into the old rut of home life in a nice family, don’t you know? -With all my memories! With the ghosts of _this_ life crowding up! Ugly -ghosts, some of ‘em! Dirty ghosts!... It’s inconceivable that we can -ever go back to the funny old humdrum! I’m not sure that I want to.” - -“You’re hipped,” I told him. “You’ll be glad to get back all right. -Wimbledon will be Paradise after what you’ve been through.” - -“Oh, Lord, _I’ve_ done nothing,” said the boy. “Fact is, I’ve been -talking tripe. Forget it.” - -But I did not forget, and remembered every word later, when I heard his -laughter on Armistice night. - -A despatch-rider stood outside the door in his muddy overalls and Brand -went to get his message. It was from Pierre Nesle. - -“I am mad with joy that you have found Marthe! Alas! I cannot get back -for a week. Tell her that I am still her devoted comrade and loving -brother.--Pierre.” Brand handed me the slip and said, “Poor devil!” I -went back to my billet in Madame Chéri’s house, and she made no allusion -to our conversation in the afternoon, but was anxious, I thought, to -assure me of her friendship by special little courtesies, as when she -lighted my candle and carried it upstairs before saying good-night. -Hélène was learning English fast and furiously, and with her arm round -her mother’s waist said, “Sleep well, sir, and very good dreams to you!” - which I imagine was a sentence out of her text-book. - - - - -XV - - -They were great days--in the last two weeks before the Armistice! For -me, and for many men, they were days of exultation, wild adventure, -pity, immense hope, tremendous scenes uplifted by a sense of victory; -though for others, the soldiers who did the dirty work, brought up lorry -columns through the mud of the old battlefields far behind our new front -line, carried on still with the hard old drudgery of war, they were days -not marked out by any special jubilation, or variety, or hope, but -just like all the others that had gone before since first they came to -France. - -I remember little scenes and pictures of those last two weeks as they -pass through my mind like a him drama; episodes of tragedy or triumph -which startled my imagination, a pageantry of men who had victory -in their eyes, single figures who spoke to me, told me unforgettable -things, and the last dead bodies who fell at the very gate of peace. - -One of the last dead bodies I saw in the war was in the city of -Valenciennes, which we entered on the morning of November 3rd. Our guns -had spared the city which was full of people, but the railway station -was an elaborate ruin of twisted iron and broken glass. Rails were torn -up and sleepers burnt. Our airmen, flying low day after day during the -German retreat, had flung down bombs, which had torn the fronts off the -booking-offices and made match-wood of the signal-boxes and sheds. For -German soldiers detraining here it had been a hellish place, and the -fire of our flying-men had been deadly accurate. I walked through the -ruin out into the station square. It was empty of all life, but one -human figure was there all alone. It was the dead body of a young German -soldier, lying with outstretched arms, on his back, in a pool of blood. -His figure formed a cross there on the cobblestones, and seemed to me -a symbol of all that youth which had been sacrificed by powers of -monstrous evil. His face was still handsome in death, the square, -rough-hewn face of a young peasant. - -There was the tap-tap-tap of a German machine-gun somewhere on the -right of the square. As I walked forward all my senses were alert to the -menace of death. It would be foolish, I thought, to be killed at the end -of the war--for surely the end was very near? And then I had a sudden -sharp thought that perhaps it would be well if this happened. Why should -I live when so many had died? The awful job was done, and my small part -in it. I had seen it through from start to finish, for it was finished -but for a few days of waiting. It might be better to end with it, for -all that came afterwards would be anticlimax. I remember raising my -head and looking squarely round at that staccato hammering of the German -machine-gun, with an intense desire that a bullet might come my way. But -I went on untouched into the town.... As in Courtrai, a fury of gun-fire -overhead kept the people in their houses. Our field batteries were -firing over the city and the enemy was answering. Here and there I saw -a face peering out of a broken window, and then a door opened, and a man -and woman appeared behind it with two thin children. The woman thrust -out a skinny hand and grasped mine, and began to weep. She talked -passionately, with a strange mingling of rage and grief. - -“Oh, my God!” she said, “those devils have gone at last! What have they -not made us suffer! My husband and I had four little houses--we were -innkeepers--and last night they sent us to this part of the town and -burnt all of them.” She used a queer word in French. “Last night,” she -said, “they made a devil’s _charivari_ and set many houses on fire.” - -Her husband spoke to me over his wife’s shoulder. - -“Sir, they have stolen everything, broken everything, ground us down for -four years. They are bandits and robbers.” - -“We are hungry,” said the thin girl. - -By her side the boy, with a white pinched face, echoed her plaint. - -“We have eaten our bread and I am hungry.” - -They had some coffee left, and asked me to go inside and drink it with -them, but I could not wait. - -The woman held my wrist tight in her skinny hands. - -“You will come back?” she asked. - -“I will try,” I said. - -Then she wept again and said: “We are grateful to the English soldiers. -It is they who saved us.” - -That is one out of a hundred little scenes that I remember in those last -two weeks when, not without hard fighting, for the German machine-gun -rearguards fought bravely to the end, our troops entered many towns and -villages, and liberated many thousands of poor people. I remember the -girls of a little town called Bohain who put on their best frocks and -clean pinafores to welcome us. It was not until a little while that we -found they were starving and had not even a crust of bread in all -the town. Then the enemy started shelling, and some of the girls were -killed, and many were suffocated by gas shells. That was worse in St. -Amand, by Valenciennes, where all the women and children took refuge in -the cellars. The German batteries opened fire with yellow cross shell as -our guns passed through. Some of our men, and many of their horses, lay -dead in the streets as I passed through; but worse things happened in -the cellars below the houses. The heavy gas of the yellow cross shells -filtered down to where the women and their babies cowered on their -mattresses. They began to choke and gasp, and babies died in the arms of -dying mothers.... Dr. Small, our American, went with a body of English -doctors and nurses to the rescue of St. Amand. “I’ve seen bad things,” - he told me. “I am not weak in the stomach--but I saw things in those -cellars which nearly made me vomit.” - -He put a hand on my shoulder and blinked at me through his glasses. - -“It’s no good cursing the Germans. As soon as your troops entered the -village they had a right to shell. That’s war. We should do the same. -War’s war. I’ve been cursing the Germans in elaborate and eccentric -language. It did me good. I feel all the better for it. But all the same -I was wrong. It’s war we ought to curse. War which makes these things -possible among civilised peoples. It’s just devilry. Civilised people -must give up the habit. They must get cured of it. You have heard of -typhoid-carriers? They are people infected with the typhoid microbe who -spread the disease. When peace comes we must hunt down the war-carriers, -isolate them, and, if necessary, kill them.” - -He waved his hand to me and went off in an ambulance filled with -suffocated women. - -I met Brand in Valenciennes five days after our liberation of the city, -when our troops were making their formal entry with band and banners. -He came up to me and said, “Have you heard the news?” I saw by his face -that it was good news, and I felt my heart give a lurch when I answered -him. - -“Tell me the best.” - -“Germany is sending plenipotentiaries, under a white flag, to Foch. They -know it is unconditional surrender.... And the Kaiser has abdicated.” - -I drew a deep breath. Something seemed to lift from my soul. The sky -seemed to become brighter, as though a shadow had passed from the face -of the sun. - -“Then it’s the end?... The last battle has been fought!” - -Brand was staring at a column of troops--all young fellows of the 4th -Division. His eyes were glistening, with moisture in them. - -“Reprieved!” he said. “The last of our youth is saved!” - -He turned to me suddenly, and spoke in the deepest melancholy. - -“You and I ought to be dead. So many kids were killed. We’ve no right to -be alive.” - -“Perhaps there is other work to do,” I answered him, weakly, because I -had the same thought. - -He did not seem sure of that. - -“I wonder!... If we could help to save the next generation.” - -In the Place d’Armes of Valenciennes there was a great crowd, and many -of our generals and staff officers on the steps and below the steps of -the Hôtel de Ville. Brand and I caught a glimpse of Colonel Lavington, -looking very gallant and debonair, as usual. Beside him was Charles -Fortune, with his air of a staff officer dreadfully overworked in the -arrangement of victory, modest in spite of his great achievements, -deprecating any public homage that might be paid him. This careful mask -of his was slightly disarranged for a moment when he winked at me under -the very nose of the great general whom he had set to music--“Blear-eyed -Bill, the Butcher of the Boche,” who stood magnificent with his great -chest emblazoned with ribbons. The Prince of Wales was there, shifting -from one leg to another, chatting gaily with a group of staff officers. -A bevy of French girls advanced with enormous bouquets and presented -them to the Prince and his fellow officers. The Prince laughed and -blushed like a schoolboy, sniffed at the flowers, did not know what -to do with them. The other officers held the bouquets with equal -embarrassment, with that strange English shyness which not even war -could cure. - -Some officers close to me were talking of the German plea for armistice. - -“It’s abject surrender!” said one of them. - -“The end!” said another, very solemnly. “Thank God!” - -“The end of a dirty business!” said a young machine-gun officer. I -noticed that he had three wound-stripes. - -One of them, holding a big bouquet, began to dance, pointing his toes, -cutting abbreviated capers in a small space among his comrades. - -“Not too quick for me, old dears! Back to peace again!... Back to life! -Hooray!” - -The colours of many flags fluttered upon the gables of the Place -d’Armes, and the balconies were draped with the Tricolour, the Union -Jack, and the Stars and Stripes. Old citizens wore tall hats saved up -for this day, and girls had taken their lace from hiding-places where -the Germans had not found it, and wore it round their necks and wrists -for the honour of this day. Old women in black bonnets sat in the centre -of window-places and clapped their hands--their wrinkled, hard-working -old hands--to every British soldier who passed, and thousands were -passing. Nobody heard a word of the speeches spoken from the Town Hall -steps, the tribute of the councillors of Valenciennes to the glory of -the troops who had rescued their people from servitude under a ruthless -enemy, nor the answer of Sir Henry Home, the Army Commander, expressing -the pride of his soldiers in the rescue of that fair old city, and their -admiration for the courage of its people. Every word was overwhelmed by -cheering. Then the pipers of a Highland Division, whose fighting I had -recorded through their years of heroic endurance, played a march tune, -and the music of those pipes was loud in the square of Valenciennes and -in the hearts of its people. The troops marched past, and thousands of -bayonets shone above their steel helmets.... - - - - -XVI - - -I was in Mons on the day of Armistice, and on the roads outside when -I heard the news that the Germans had surrendered to all our terms, -and that the “Cease fire” would sound at eleven o’clock. It was a misty -morning, with sunlight glinting through the mist and sparkling in -the coppery leaves of autumn trees. There was no heavy bombardment in -progress round Mons--only now and then the sullen bark of a gun. The -roads were crowded with the usual transport of war--endless columns of -motor-lorries and horse-wagons, and mule-teams, crawling slowly forward, -and infantry battalions trudging alongside with their heavy packs. I -stared into the faces of the marching men, expecting to see joy in their -eyes, wondering why they were not singing--because to-day the guns would -be silent and the fighting finished. Their packs weighed heavy. The mud -from passing lorries splashed them with great gobs of filth. Under their -steel hats the sweat ran down. They looked dead-beat, and marched in -a grim fine of tired men. But I noticed that the transport wagons were -decorated with small flags, and these bits of fluttering colour were -stuck into the harness of gun horses and mules. From the other way came -another tide of traffic--crowds of civilians, who were middle-aged men -and boys, and here and there women pushing hand-carts, and straining -forward with an eager, homing look. The men and boys were carrying -bundles, too heavy for many of them, so that they were bent under their -burdens. But each one had added the last straw but one to his weight by -fastening a flag to his bundle or his cap. I spoke to some of them, and -they told me that they were the civilians from Lille, Valenciennes, and -other towns, who had been taken away by the Germans for forced labour -behind the lines. Two days ago the Germans had said, “We’ve no more use -for you. Get back to your own people. The war is over.” - -They looked worn and haggard, like men who had been shipwrecked. Some of -the boys were weak and sat down on the roadside with their bundles and -could go no farther. Others trudged on gamely, with crooks which -they had cut from the hedges, and only stopped to cry, “_Vivent les -Anglais!_” as our soldiers passed. I looked into many of their faces, -remembering the photograph of Edouard Chéri which had been given to -me by his mother. Perhaps he was Somewhere in those troops of homing -exiles. But he might have been any one of those lanky boys in ragged -jackets and broken boots, and cloth caps pulled down over the ears. - -Just outside Mons, at one minute to eleven o’clock, there was a little -desultory firing. Then a bugle blew, somewhere in a distant field, one -long note. It was the “Cease fire”! A cheer coming faintly over the -fields followed the bugle-call. Then there was no other sound where I -stood but the scrunching of wheels of gun limbers and transport wagons, -the squelch of mud in which horses and mules trudged, and the hard -breathing of tired men marching by under their packs. So, with a curious -lack of drama, the Great Adventure ended! That bugle had blown the -“Cease fire” of a strife which had filled the world with agony and -massacre; destroyed millions of men; broken millions of lives; ruined -many great cities and thousands of hamlets, and left a long wide belt of -country across Europe where no tree remained alive and all the earth was -ravaged; crowded the world with maimed men, blind men, mad men, diseased -men; flung Empires into anarchy, where hunger killed the children and -women had no milk to feed their babies; and bequeathed to all fighting -nations a heritage of debt beneath which many would stagger and fall. -It was the “Cease fire” of all that reign of death, but sounded very -faintly across the fields of France. - -In Mons Canadian soldiers were being kissed by French girls. Women were -giving them wine in the doorways, and these hard-bitten fellows, tough -as leather, reckless of all risk, plastered with mud which had worn into -their skins and souls, drank the wine and kissed the women, and lurched -laughing down the streets. There would be no strict discipline in Mons -that night. They had had enough of discipline in the dirty days. Let it -go on the night of Armistice! Already at mid-day some of these soldiers -were unable to walk except with an arm round a comrade’s neck, or round -the neck of strong peasant girls who screeched with laughter when they -side-slipped or staggered. They had been through hell, those men. They -had lain in ditches, under frightful fire, among dead men and bleeding -men. Who would grudge them their bit of fun on Armistice night? Who -would expect saintship of men who had been taught in the school of war, -taught to kill quick lest they be killed, to see the worst horrors of -the battlefield without going weak, to educate themselves out of the -refinements of peaceful life where Christian virtues are easy and not -meant for war? - - -“Come here, lassie. None of your French tricks for me. I’m -Canadian-born. It’s a kiss or a clout from me.” - -The man grabbed the girl by the arm and drew her into a barn. - -On the night of Armistice in Mons, where, at the beginning of the war, -the Old Contemptibles had first withstood the shock of German arms (I -saw their ghosts there in the market place), there would be the devil -to pay--the devil of war, who plays on the passions of men, and sets his -trap for women’s souls. But I went away from Mons before nightfall, and -travelled back to Lille, in the little old car which had gone to many -strange places with me. - -How quiet it was in the open countryside when darkness fell! The guns -were quiet at last, after four years and more of labour. There were -no fires in the sky, no ruddy glow of death. I listened to the silence -which followed the going down of the sun, and heard the rustling of the -russet leaves and the little sounds of night in peace, and it seemed as -though God gave a benediction to the wounded soul of the world. ‘Other -sounds rose from the towns and fields in the deepening shadow-world of -the day of Armistice. They were sounds of human joy. Men were singing -somewhere on the roads, and their voices rang out gladly. Bugles were -playing. In villages from which the enemy had gone out that morning -round about Mons crowds of figures surged in the narrow streets, and -English laughter rose above the chatter of women and children. - - - - -XVII - - -When I came into Lille rockets were rising above the city. English -soldiers were firing off Verey lights. Above the houses of the city in -darkness rose also gusts of cheering. It is strange that when I heard -them I felt like weeping. They sounded rather ghostly, like the voices -of all the dead who had fallen before this night of Armistice. - -I went to my billet at Madame Chéri’s house, from which I had been -absent some days. I had the key of the front door now and let myself -into the hall. The diningroom door was open, and I heard the voices -of the little French family, laughing, crying, hysterical. Surely -hysterical! - -“_O mon Dieu! O mon petit Toto! Comme tu es grandi! Comme tu es -maigre!_” - -I stood outside the door, understanding the thing that had happened. - -In the centre of the room stood a tall, gaunt boy in ragged clothes, in -the embrace of Madame Chéri, and with one hand clutched by Hélène and -the other by the little Madeleine, her sister. It was Edouard who had -come back. - -He had unloosed a pack from his shoulder, and it lay on the carpet -beside him, with a little flag on a broken stick. He was haggard, with -high cheek-bones prominent through his white, tightly-drawn skin, and -his eyes were sunk in deep sockets. His hair was in a wild mop of black, -disordered locks. He stood there, with tears streaming from his eyes, -and the only words he said were: - -“_Maman! O maman! maman!_” - -I went quietly upstairs and changed my clothes, which were all -muddy. Presently there was a tap at my door and Hélène stood there, -transfigured with joy. She spoke in French. - -“Edouard has come back--my brother! He travelled on an English lorry.” - -“Thank God for that,” I said. “What gladness for you all!” - -“He has grown tall,” said Hélène. She mopped her eyes and laughed and -cried at the same time. “Tall as a giant, but oh! so thin! They starved -him all the time. He fed only on cabbages. They put him to work digging -trenches behind the line--under fire. The brutes! The devils!” - -Her eyes were lit up by passion at the thought of this cruelty and her -brother’s suffering. Then her expression changed to a look of pride. - -“He says he is glad to have been under fire--like father. He hated it, -though, at the time, and said he was frightened! I can’t believe that. -Edouard was always brave.” - -“There’s no courage that takes away the fear of shellfire--as far as I’m -concerned,” I told her, but she only laughed and said, “You men make a -pose of being afraid.” - -She spoke of Edouard again, hugging the “thought of his return. - -“If only he were not so thin and so tired! I find him changed. The poor -boy cries at the sight of _maman_--like a baby.” - -“I don’t wonder,” I said. “I should feel like that if I had been a -prisoner of war and was now home again.” - -Madame Chéri’s voice called from downstairs: “Hélène! _Où es-tu? Edouard -veut te voir!_” - -“Edouard wants me,” said Hélène. - -She seemed rejoiced at the thought that Edouard had missed her, even -for this minute. She took my hand and kissed it, as though wishing me to -share her joy and to be part of it, and then ran downstairs. - - - - -XVIII - - -I went out to the officers’ club which had been established in Lille, -and found Brand there, and Fortune, and young Clatworthy, who made a -place for me at their table. - -Two large rooms which had been the dining and drawingrooms of a private -mansion were crowded with officers, mostly English, but with here and -there a few Americans and French, seated at small tables, waited on by -the girls we called Waacs (of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps). Two -old-fashioned candelabra of cut-glass gave light to each room, and I -remember that the walls were panelled with wood painted a greyish-white -below a moulding of fruit and flowers. Above the table where my friends -sat was the portrait of a French lady of the eighteenth century, in an -oval frame of tarnished gilt. - -I was late for the meal on Armistice night, and many bottles of -champagne had already been opened and drunk. The atmosphere reeked with -the smell of food, the fumes of wine and cigarette smoke, and there was -the noise of many men talking and laughing. I looked about the tables -and saw familiar faces. There were a good many cavalry officers in the -room where I sat, and among them officers of the Guards and the Tank -Corps, aviators, machine-gunners, staff officers of infantry divisions, -French interpreters, American _liaison_ officers, A.P.M.’s, town -majors, and others. The lid was off at last. All these men were -intoxicated with the thought of the victory we had won--complete, -annihilating--and of this Armistice which had ended the war and made -them sure of life. Some of them were a little drunk with wine, but not -enough at this hour to spoil their sense of joy. - -Officers rose at various tables to make speeches, cheered by their own -groups, who laughed and shouted and did not listen. - -“The good old British Army has done the trick at last----” - -“The old Hun is down and out.” - -“Gentlemen, it has been a damned tough job----” - -Another group had burst into song: - -“_Here’s to good old beer, put it down, put it down!_” - -“The cavalry came into its own in the last lap. We’ve fought mounted and -fought dismounted. We’ve rounded up innumerable Huns. We’ve ridden down -machine-guns----” - -Another group was singing independently: - - “There’s a long, long trail a-winding, - - To the land of my dreams.” - -A toast was being pledged at the next table by a Tank officer, who -stood on a chair with a glass of champagne-raised high above his head: -“Gentlemen, I give you the toast of the Tank Corps. This war was won by -the Tanks----” - -“Pull him down!” shouted two lads at the same table. “Tanks be damned! -It was the poor old bloody infantry all the time.” - -One of them pulled down the little Tank officer with a crash and stood -on his own chair. - -“Here’s to the foot-sloggers--the infantry battalions, Tommy Atkins and -his company officer, who did all the dirty work and got none of the -reward, and did most of the dying.” - -A cavalry officer with a monocle immovably screwed in his right eye -demanded the attention of the company, and failed to get it. - -“We all know what we have done ourselves, and what we failed to do. I -give you the toast of our noble Allies, without whom there would be no -Armistice to-night. I drink to the glory of France----” - -The words were heard at several tables, and for once there was a general -acknowledgment of the toast. - -“_Vive la France!_” - -The shout thundered out from all the tables, so that the candelabra -rattled. Five French interpreters in various parts of the room rose to -respond. - -There were shouts of “The Stars and Stripes--Good old Yanks--Well done, -the U.S.A.!” and I was sorry Dr. Small was still at Valenciennes. I -should like him to have heard those shouts. An American staff officer -was on his feet, raising his glass to “England.” - -Charles Fortune stood up at my table. He reminded me exceedingly at -that moment of old prints portraying George IV. in his youth--“the First -Gentleman of Europe”--slightly flushed, with an air of noble dignity and -a roguish eye. - -“Go to it, Fortune,” said Brand. “Nobody’s listening, so you can say -what you like.” - -“Gentlemen,” said Fortune, “I venture to propose the health of our late -enemy, the Germans.” - -Young Clatworthy gave an hysterical guffaw. - -“We owe them a very great debt,” said Fortune. - -“But for their simplicity of nature and amiability of character the -British Empire--that glorious conglomeration of races upon which the sun -utterly declines to set--would have fallen into decay and debility as -a second-class Power. Before the war the German Empire was gaining our -trade, capturing all the markets of the world, waiting at table in all -the best hotels, and providing all the music in the _cafés-chantants_ -of the universe.... With that immense unselfishness so characteristic -of their race, the Germans threw away these advantages and sacrificed -themselves for the benefit of the British. By declaring war they enabled -all the ancient virtues of our race to be revived. Generals sprang up -in every direction--especially in Whitehall, Boulogne and Rouen. Staff -officers multiplied exceedingly. British indigestion--the curse of our -race--became subject to a Sam Brown belt. Business men, mostly bankrupt, -were enriched enormously. Clergymen thundered joyfully from their -pulpits and went back to the Old Testament for that fine old law, -‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ Elderly virgins married the -youngest subalterns. The youngest flapper caught the eldest and wiliest -of bachelors. Our people were revivified, gentlemen--revivified-” - -“Go easy,” growled Brand. “This is not a night for irony.” - -“Even I,” said Charles Fortune, with a sob of pride in his voice, -“even I, a simple piano-tuner, a man of music, a child of peace and -melody--Shut up, Brand!--became every inch a soldier!” - -He drew himself up in a heroic pose and, raising his glass, cried out: -“Here’s to our late enemy--poor old Fritz!” - -A number of glasses were raised amidst a roar of laughter. - -“Here’s to Fritz--and may the Kaiser roast at Christmas!” - -“And they say we haven’t a sense of humour,” said Charles Fortune -modestly, and opened a new bottle of champagne. - -Brand had a sense of humour, and had laughed dining Fortune’s oration, -knowing that beneath its mockery there was no malice. But I noticed that -he had no spontaneous gaiety on this night of Armistice and sat rather -silent, with a far-away look in his eyes and that hag-ridden melancholy -of his. - -Young Clatworthy was between me and Brand, drinking too heavily, I -thought. Brand thought so too, and gave him a word of caution. - -“That champagne is pretty bad. I’d ‘ware headaches, if I were you, -young’un.” - -“It’s good enough,” said Clatworthy. “Anything to put me in the right -spirit.” - -There was an unnatural glitter in his eyes, and he laughed too easily -at any joke of Fortune’s. Presently he turned his attention to me, and -began talking excitedly in a low monologue. - -“Funny to think it’s the last night! Can you believe it? It seems a -lifetime since I came out in ‘14. I remember the first night, when I -was sent up to Ypres to take the place of a subaltern who’d been knocked -out. It was Christmas Eve, and my battalion was up in the line round -Hooge. I detrained at Vlamertinghe. ‘Can any one tell me the way to -Hooge?’ I asked one of the traffic men, just like a country cousin at -Piccadilly Circus. He looked at me in a queer way, and said, ‘It’s the -same way to hell, sir. Straight on until you get to Ypres, then out of -the Menin Gate and along the road to Hell-fire Corner. After that you -trust to luck. Some young gentlemen never get no further.’ I damned -his impertinence and went on, till I came to the Grande Place in Ypres, -where I just missed an eight-inch shell. It knocked out a gun-team. -Shocking mess it made. ‘The same way to hell,’ I kept saying, until I -fell into a shell-hole along the Menin Road. But, d’you know, the fellow -was wrong, after all.” - -“How?” I asked. - -Young Clatworthy drank up his wine and laughed, as though very much -amused. - -“Why, _that_ wasn’t the way to hell. It was the other way.” - -I was puzzled at his meaning and wondered if he were really drunk. - -“What other way?” - -“Behind the lines--in the back areas. I should have been all right if I -had stuck in the trenches. It was in places like Amiens that I went to -the devil.” - -“Not as bad as that,” I said. - -“Mind you,” he continued, lighting a cigarette and smiling at the -flame, “I’ve had pleasant times in this war, between the bad ones, and, -afterwards, in this cushy job. Extraordinarily amusing and agreeable -along the way to hell. There was little Maiguérite in Amiens--such a -kid! Funny as a kitten! She loved me not wisely, but too well. I had -just come down from the Somme battles then. That little idyll with -Marguérite was like a dream. We two were Babes in the Wood. We plucked -the flowers of life and didn’t listen to the howling of the wolves -beyond the forest.” - -He jerked his head up and listened, and repeated the words: - -“The howling of the wolves!” - -Somebody was singing “John Peel”: - - “D’ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay. - - D’ye ken John Peel at the break of day, - - D’ye ken John Peel when he’s far, far away. - - With, his horn, and his hounds in. the morning?” - -Cyril Clatworthy was on his feet, joining in the chorus with a loud -joyous voice. - - “We’ll follow John Peel through fair and through foul. - - If we want a good hunt in the morning!’’ - -“Bravo! Bravo!” - -He laughed as he sat down. - -“I used to sing that when I was captain of the school,” he said. “A long -time ago, eh? How many centuries?... I was as clean a fellow as you’d -meet in those days. Keen as mustard on cricket. Some bat, too! That was -before the dirty war, and the stinking trenches, and fever, and lice, -and dead bodies, and all that. But I was telling you about Yvonne, -wasn’t I?” - -“Marguérite,” I reminded him. - -“No. Yvonne. I met her at Cassel. A brown-eyed thing. Demure. You know -the type?... One of the worst little sluts I ever met. Oh, a wicked -little witch... Well, I paid for that affair. That policeman was wrong.” - -“What policeman?” I asked. - -“The traffic man at Vlamertinghe. ‘It’s the same way to hell,’ he said, -meaning Hooge. It was the other way, really. All the same, I’ve had some -good hours. And now it’s Armistice night.... Those fellows are getting -rather blue, aren’t they? It’s the blinking cavalry who used to get in -the way of the infantry, blocking up the roads with their ridiculous -horses and their preposterous, lances. Look here, old man, there’s one -thing I want to know. Tell me, as a wise owl.” - -“What is that?” I asked, laughing at his deference to my wisdom. - -“How are we going to get clean enough for peace?” - -“Clean enough?” - -I could not follow the drift of his question, and he tried to explain -himself. - -“Oh, I don’t mean the soap and water business. But morally, spiritually, -intellectually, and all that? Some of us will want a lot of scrubbing -before we sit down in our nice little Christian families, somewhere at -Wimbledon or Ealing. Somehow I funk peace. It means getting back again -to where one started, and I don’t see how it’s possible.... Good Lord, -what tripe I’ve been talking!” - -He pulled the bow of one of the “Waacs” and undid her apron. - -“_Encore une bouteille de champagne, mademoiselle!_” he said in his best -French, and started singing “La Marseillaise.” Some of the officers were -dancing the fox trot and the bunny hug. - -Brand rose with a smile and a sigh. - -“Armistice night!” he said. “Thank God there’s a crowd of fellows left -to do the dancing.... I can’t help thinking of the others.” - -He touched a glass with his lips to a silent toast, and I saw that -he drank to ghosts. Then he put the glass down and laid his hand on -Clatworthy’s shoulder. - -“Care for a stroll?” he said. “This room is too fuggy.” - -“Not I, old lad,” said the boy. “This is Armistice night--and the end of -the adventure. See it through!” - -Brand shook his head and said he must breathe fresh air. Fortune -was playing a Brahms concerto in the style of a German master on the -table-cloth. - -I followed Brand, and we strolled through the dark streets of Lille and -did not talk. In each of our minds was the stupendous thought that -it was the last night of the war--the end of the adventure, as young -Clatworthy had said. God! It had been a frightful adventure from first -to last--a fiery furnace in which youth had been burnt up like grass. -How much heroism we had seen, how much human agony, ruin, hate, cruelty, -love! There had been comradeship and laughter in queer places and -perilous hours. Comradeship, perhaps that was the best of all: the -unselfish comradeship of men. But what a waste of life! What a lowering -of civilisation! Our heritage--what was it, after victory? Who would -heal the wounds of the world? - -Brand suddenly spoke, after our long tramp in the darkness, past windows -from which came music, and singing, and shouts of laughter. He uttered -only one word, but all his soul was in it. - -“Peace!” - -That night we went to see Eileen O’Connor and to enquire after the girl -Marthe. Next day Pierre Nesle was coming to find his sister. - - - - -XIX - - -Eileen O’Connor had gone back from the convent to the rooms she had -before her trial and imprisonment. I was glad to see her in a setting -less austere than the whitewashed parlour in which she had first -received us. There was something of her character in the sitting-room -where she had lived so long during the war, and where with her girl -friends she had done more dangerous work than studying the elements of -drawing and painting. In that setting, too, she looked at home--“The -Portrait of a Lady,” by Lavery, as I saw her in my mind’s eye, when -she sat in a low armchair by the side of a charcoal stove, with the -lamplight on her face and hair and her dress shadowy. She wore a black -dress of some kind, with a tiny edge of lace about the neck and a string -of coloured beads so long that she twisted it about her fingers in her -lap. The room was small, but cosy in the light of a tall lamp on an iron -stand shaded with red silk. Like all the rooms I had seen in Lille--not -many--this was panelled, with a polished floor, bare except for one -rug. On the walls were a few etchings framed in black--London views -mostly--and some water-colour drawings of girls’ heads, charmingly done, -I thought. They were her own studies of some of her pupils and friends, -and one face especially attracted me because of its delicate and -spiritual beauty. - -“That was my fellow prisoner,” said Eileen O’Connor. “Alice de -Villers-Auxicourt. She died before the trial--happily, because she had -no fear.” - -I noticed one other thing in the room which was pleasant to see--an -upright piano, and upon a stool by its side a pile of old songs which I -turned over one by one as we sat talking. They were English and Irish, -mostly from the seventeenth century onwards, but among them I found -some German songs, and on each cover was written the name of Franz -von Kreuzenach. At the sight of that name I had a foolish sense of -embarrassment and dismay, as though I had discovered a skeleton in the -cupboard, and I slipped them hurriedly between other sheets. - -Eileen was talking to Wickham Brand. She did not notice my confusion. -She was telling him that Marthe, Pierre’s sister, was seriously ill -with something like brain-fever. The girl had regained consciousness at -times, but was delirious, and kept crying out for her mother and Pierre -to save her from some horror that frightened her. The nuns had made -enquiries about her through civilians in Lille. Some of them had heard -of the girl under her stage name--“Marthe de Méricourt.” She had sung -in the _cabarets_ before the war. After the German occupation she had -disappeared for a time. Somebody said she had been half-starved and -was in a desperate state. What could a singing-girl do in an “occupied” - town? She reappeared in a restaurant frequented by German officers and -kept up by a woman of bad character. She sang and danced there for a -miserable wage, and part of her duty was to induce German officers -to drink champagne--the worst brand for the highest price. A horrible -degradation for a decent girl! But starvation, so Eileen said, has -fierce claws. Imagine what agony, what terror, what despair must have -gone before that surrender! To sing and dance before the enemies of your -country! - -“Frightful!” said Brand. “A girl should prefer death.” - -Eileen O’Connor was twisting the coloured beads between her fingers. She -looked up at Wickham Brand with a deep thoughtfulness in her dark eyes. - -“Most men would say that. And all women beyond the war zone, safe and -shielded. But death does not come quickly from half-starvation in a -garret without fire, in clothes that are worn threadbare. It is not the -quick death of the battlefield. It is just a long-drawn misery.... Then -there is loneliness. The loneliness of a woman’s soul. Do you understand -that?” - -Brand nodded gravely. “I understand the loneliness of a man’s soul. I’ve -lived with it.” - -“Worse for a woman,” said Eileen. “That singing-girl was lonely in -Lille. Her family--with that boy Pierre--were on the other side of the -lines. She had no friends here before the Germans came.” - -“You mean that afterwards----” - -Brand checked the end of his sentence and the line of his mouth -hardened. - -“Some of the Germans were kind,” said Eileen. “Oh, let us tell the truth -about that! They were not all devils.” - -“They were our enemies,” said Brand. - -Eileen was silent for another moment, staring down at those queer beads -of hers in her lap, and before she spoke again I think her mind was -going back over many episodes and scenes during the German occupation of -Lille. - -“It was a long time--four years. A tremendous time for hatred to hold -out against civility, kindness, and--human nature.... Human nature is -strong; stronger than frontiers, nations, even patriotism.” - -Eileen O’Connor flung her beads back, rose from the low chair and turned -back her hair with both hands with a kind of impatience. - -“I’ve seen the truth of things, pretty close--almost as close as death.” - -“Yes,” said Brand in a low voice. “You were pretty close to all that.” - -The girl seemed to be anxious to plunge deep into the truth of the -things she had seen. - -“The Germans--here in Lille--were of all kinds. Everything there was in -the war, for them, their emotion, their pride in the first victories, -their doubts, fears, boredom, anguish, brutality, sentiment, found a -dwelling-place in this city behind the battle-front. Some of them--in -the administration--stayed here all the time, billeted in French -families. Others came back from the battlefields, horror-stricken, -trying to get a little brief happiness--forgetfulness. There were lots -of them who pitied the French people and had an immense sympathy with -them. They tried to be friends. Tried hard, by every sort of small -kindness in their billets.” - -“Like Schwarz in Madame Chéri’s house,” said Brand bitterly. It seemed -to me curious that he was adopting a mental attitude of unrelenting -hatred to the Germans, when, as I knew, and as I have told, he had been -of late on the side of toleration. That was how his moods swung when as -yet he had no fixed point of view. - -“Oh, yes, there were many beasts,” said Eileen quickly. - -“But others were different. Beasts or not, they were human. They had -eyes to see and to smile, lips to talk and tempt. It was their human -nature which broke some of our hatred. There were young men among them, -and in Lille girls who could be angry for a time, disdainful longer, -and then friendly. I mean lonely, half-starved girls, weak, miserable -girls--and others not starved enough to lose their passion and need of -love. German boys and French girls--entangled in the net of fate.... God -pity them!” - -Brand said, “I pity them, too.” - -He walked over to the piano and made an abrupt request, as though to -change the subject of conversation. - -“Sing something... something English!” - -Eileen O’Connor sang something Irish first, and I liked her deep voice, -so low and sweet. - - “There’s one that is pure as an angel - - And fair as the flowers of May, - - They call her the gentle maiden - - Wherever she takes her way. - - - Her eyes have the glance of sunlight - - As it brightens the blue sea-wave, - - And more than the deep-sea treasure - - The love of her heart I crave. - - - “Though parted afar from my darling, - - I dream of her everywhere; - - The sound of her voice is about me, - - The spell of her presence there. - - - And whether my prayer be granted, - - Or whether she pass me by, - - The face of that gentle maiden - - Will follow me till I die.” - -Brand was standing by the piano, with the light of the tall lamp on his -face, and I saw that there was a wetness in his eyes before the song was -ended. - -“It is queer to hear that in Lille,” he said. “It’s so long since I -heard a woman sing, and it’s like water to a parched soul.” - -Eileen O’Connor played the last bars again and, as she played, talked -softly. - -“To me, the face of that gentle maiden is a friend’s face. Alice de -Villers-Auxicourt, who died in prison.” - - “And whether my prayer be granted, - - Or whether she pass me by, - - The face of that gentle maiden - - Will follow me till I die.” - -Brand turned over the songs, and suddenly I saw his face flush, and I -knew the reason. He had come to the German songs on which was written -the name of Franz von Kreuzenach. - -He turned them over quickly, but Eileen pulled one out--it was a -Schubert song--and opened its leaves. - -“That was the man who saved my life.” - -She spoke without embarrassment, simply. - -“Yes,” said Brand. “He suppressed the evidence.” - -“Oh, you know?” - -I told her that we had heard part of the tale from the Reverend Mother, -but not all of it. Not the motive, nor what had really happened. - -“But you guessed?” - -“No,” I answered sturdily. - -She laughed, but in a serious way. - -“It is not a hard guess, unless I am older than I feel, and uglier than -the mirror tells me. He was in love with me.” - -Brand and I looked absurdly embarrassed. Of course we _had_ guessed, but -this open confession was startling, and there was something repulsive in -the idea to both of us who had come through the war-zone into Lille, and -had seen the hatred of the people for the German race, and the fate of -Pierre Nesle’s sister. - -Eileen O’Connor told us that part of her story which the Reverend Mother -had left out. It explained the “miracle” that had saved this girl’s -life, though, as the Reverend Mother said, perhaps the grace of God was -in it as well. Who knows? - -Franz von Kreuzenach was one of the intelligence officers whose -headquarters were in that courtyard. After service in the trenches with -an infantry battalion he had been stationed since 1915 at Lille until -almost the end. He had a lieutenant’s rank, but was Baron in private -life, belonging to an old family in Bonn. Not a Prussian, therefore, but -a Rhinelander, and without the Prussian arrogance of manner. Just before -the war he had been at Oxford--Brasenose College--and spoke English -perfectly, and loved England with a strange, deep, unconcealed -sentiment. - -“Loved England?----” exclaimed Brand at this part of Eileen’s tale. - -“Why not?” asked Eileen. “I’m Irish, but I love England, in spite of all -her faults and all my grievances! Who can help loving England that has -lived with her people?” - -This Lieutenant von Kreuzenach was two months in Lille before he spoke -a word with Eileen. She passed him often in the courtyard and always -he saluted her with great deference. She fancied she noticed a kind of -wistfulness in his eyes, as though he would have liked to talk to her. -He had blue eyes, sad sometimes, she noticed, and a clean-cut face, -rather delicate and pale. - -One day she dropped a pile of books in the yard all of a heap as he was -passing, and he said, “Allow me,” and helped to pick them up. One of the -books was “Puck of Pook’s Hill,” by Kipling, and he smiled as he turned -over a page or two. - -“I love that book,” he said in perfect English. “There’s so much of the -spirit of old England in it. History, too. That’s fine about the Roman -wall, where the officers go pig-sticking.” - -Eileen O’Connor asked him if he were half English--perhaps he had -an English mother?--but he shook his head and said he was wholly -German--_echt Deutsch_. - -He hesitated for a moment as though he wanted to continue the -conversation, but then saluted and passed on. - -It was a week or so later when they met again, and it was Eileen -O’Connor who said “Good-morning” and made a remark about the weather. - -He stopped, and answered with a look of pleasure and boyish surprise. - -“It’s jolly to hear you say ‘Good-morning’ in English. Takes me straight -back to Oxford before this atrocious war. Besides----” - -Here he stopped and blushed. - -“Besides what?” asked Eileen. - -“Besides, it’s a long time since I talked to a lady. Among officers one -hears nothing but war-talk--the last battle, the next battle, technical -jargon, ‘shop,’ as the English say. It would be nice to talk about -something else--art, music, poetry, ideas.” - -She chaffed him a little, irresistibly. - -“Oh, but you Germans have the monopoly of all that! Art, music, poetry, -they are all absorbed into your _Kultur_--properly Germanised. As for -ideas--what is not in German philosophy is not an idea.” - -He looked profoundly hurt, said Eileen, “Some Germans are very narrow, -very stupid, like some English perhaps. Not all of us believe that -German _Kultur_ is the only knowledge in the world.” - -“Anyhow,” said Eileen O’Connor, “I’m Irish, so we needn’t argue about -the difference between German and English philosophy.” He spoke as if -quoting from a text-book. - -“The Irish are a very romantic race.” - -That, of course, had to be denied by Eileen, who knew her Bernard Shaw. - -“Don’t you believe it,” she said. “We’re a hard, logical, relentless -people, like all peasant folk of Celtic stock. It’s the English who are -romantic and sentimental, like the Germans.” - -He was amazed at those words (so Eileen told us) and then laughed -heartily in his very boyish way. - -“You are pleased to make fun of me. You are pulling my leg, as we said -at Oxford.” - -So they took to talking for a few minutes in the courtyard when they -met, and Eileen noticed that they met more often than before. She -suspected him of arranging that, and it amused her. By that time she had -a staunch friend in the old Kommandant who believed her to be an enemy -of England and an Irish patriot. She was already playing the dangerous -game under his very nose, or at least within fifty yards of the -blotting-pad over which his nose used to be for many hours of the day in -his office. - -It was utterly necessary to keep him free from any suspicion. His -confidence was her greatest safeguard. It was therefore unwise to refuse -him (an honest, stupid old gentleman) when he asked whether now and -again he might bring one of his officers and enjoy an hour’s music -in her rooms after dinner. He had heard her singing, and it had gone -straight to his heart. There was one of his officers, Lieutenant Baron -Franz von Kreuzenach, who had a charming voice. They might have a little -musical recreation which would be most pleasant and refreshing. - -“Bring your Baron,” said Eileen. “I shall not scandalise my neighbours -when the courtyard is closed.” - -Her girl-friends were scandalised when they heard of these musical -evenings--two or three times a month--until she convinced them that -it was a service to France, and a life insurance for herself and them. -There were times when she had scruples. She was tricking both those -men who sat in her room for an hour or two now and then, so polite, so -stiffly courteous, so moved with sentiment when she sang old Irish songs -and Franz von Kreuzenach sang his German songs. She was a spy, in plain -and terrible language, and they were utterly duped. On more than one -night while they were there an escaped prisoner was in the cellar below, -with a German uniform and cypher message, and all directions for escape -across the lines. Though they seldom talked about the war, yet now and -again by casual remarks they revealed the intentions of the German army -and its _moral_, or lack of _moral_. With the old Kommandant she did not -feel so conscience-stricken. To her he was gentle and charming, but to -others a bully, and there was in his character the ruthlessness of -the Prussian officer on all matters of “duty,” and he hated England -ferociously. - -With Franz von Kreuzenach it was different. He was a humanitarian, and -sensitive to all cruelty in life. He hated, not the English, but the war -with real anguish, as she could see by many words he let fall from time -to time. - -He was, she said, a poet, and could see across the frontiers of hatred -to all suffering humanity, and so revolted against the endless, futile -massacre and the spiritual degradation of civilised peoples. It was -only in a veiled way he could say these things in the presence of his -superior officer, but she understood. She understood another thing as -time went on--nearly eighteen months all told. She saw quite clearly, -as all women must see in such a case, that this young German was in love -with her. - -“He did not speak any word in that way,” said Eileen when she told us -this, frankly, in her straight manner of speech, “but in his eyes, in -the touch of his hand, in the tones of his voice, I knew that he loved -me, and I was very sorry.” - -“It was a bit awkward,” said Brand, speaking with a strained attempt at -being casual. I could see that he was very much moved by that part of -the story, and that there was a conflict in his mind. - -“It made me uneasy and embarrassed,” said Eileen. “I don’t like to be -the cause of any man’s suffering, and he was certainly suffering because -of me. It was a tragic thing for both of us when I was found out at -last.” - -“What happened?” asked Brand. - -The thing that happened was simple--and horrible. When Eileen and her -companions were denounced by the sentry at the Citadel the case was -reported to the Kommandant of the Intelligence Office, who was in charge -of all anti-espionage business in Lille. He was enormously disturbed by -the suspicion directed against Eileen. It seemed to him incredible, at -first, that he could have been duped by her. After that, his anger was -so violent that he became incapable of any personal action. He ordered -Franz von Kreuzenach to arrest Eileen and search her rooms. “If she -resist, shoot her at once,” he thundered out. - -It was at seven o’clock in the evening when Baron Franz von Kreuzenach -appeared at Eileen’s door with two soldiers. He was extremely pale and -agitated. - -Eileen rose from her little table, where she was having an evening meal -of. soup and bread. She knew the moment had come which in imagination -she had seen a thousand times. - -“Come in, Baron!” - -She spoke with an attempt at cheerfulness, but had to hold to the back -of her chair to save herself from falling, and she felt her face become -white. - -He stood for a moment in the room, silently, with the two soldiers -behind him, and when he spoke, it was in a low voice, in English. “It is -my painful duty to arrest you, Miss O’Connor.” - -She pretended to be amazed, incredulous, but it was, as she knew, a -feeble mimicry. - -“Arrest me? Why, that is--ridiculous! On what charge?” - -Franz von Kreuzenach looked at her in a pitiful way. - -“A terrible charge: Espionage and conspiracy against German martial -law... I would rather have died than do this--duty.” - -Eileen told us that he spoke that word “duty” as only a German could--as -that law which for a German officer is above all human things, all -kindly relationships, all escape. She pitied him then more, she said, -than she was afraid for herself, and told him that she was sorry the -duty had fallen to him. He made only one other remark before he took her -away from her rooms. - -“I pray God the evidence will be insufficient.” - -There was a military car waiting outside the courtyard, and he opened -the door for her to get in and sat opposite to her. The two soldiers -sat together next to the driver, squeezed close--they were both stout -men--with their rifles between their knees. It was dark in the streets -of Lille and in the car. Eileen could only see the officer’s face -vaguely and white. He spoke again as they were driven quickly. - -“I have to search your rooms to-night. Have you destroyed your papers?” - -He seemed to have no doubt about her guilt, but she would not admit it. - -“I have no papers of which I am afraid.” - -“That is well,” said Franz von Kreuzenach. - -He told her that the Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt and Marcelle Barbier -had been arrested also, and that news was like a death-blow to the girl. -It showed that their conspiracy had been revealed, and she was stricken -at the thought of the fate awaiting her friends, those young delicate -girls, who had been so brave in taking risks. - -Towards the end of the journey, which was not far, Franz von Kreuzenach -began speaking in a low, emotional voice. - -Whatever happened, he said, he prayed that she might think of him with -friendship, not blaming him for that arrest, which was in obedience to -orders. He would ever be grateful to her for her kindness, and the songs -she had sung. They had been happy evenings to him when he could see -her and listen to her voice. He looked forward to them in a hungry way, -because of his loneliness. - -“He said--other things,” added Eileen, and she did not tell us, though -dimly we guessed at the words of that German officer who loved her. At -the gate of the prison he delivered her to a group of military police, -and then saluted as he swung round on his heel. - -The next time she saw him was at her trial. Once only their eyes -met, and he became deadly pale and bent his head. During her -cross-examination of him he did not look at her, and his embarrassment, -his agony--she could see that he was suffering--made an unfavourable -impression on the court, who thought he was not sure of his evidence and -was making blundering answers when she challenged him. She held him up -to ridicule, but all the time was sorry for him, and grateful to him, -because she knew how much evidence against her he had concealed. - -“He behaved strangely about that evidence,” said Eileen. “What puzzles -me still is why he produced so much and yet kept back the rest. You see, -he put in the papers he had found in the secret passage, and they were -enough to have me shot, yet he hushed up the fact about the passage, -which, of course, was utterly damning. It looked as though he wanted to -give me a sporting chance. But that was not his character, because he -was a simple young man. He could have destroyed the papers as easily -as he kept back the fact about the underground passage, but he produced -them, and I escaped only by the skin of my teeth. Read me that riddle, -Wickham Brand!” - -“It’s easy,” said Brand. “The fellow was pulled two ways. By duty -and--sentiment.” - -“Love,” said Eileen in her candid way. - -“Love, if you like... It was a conflict. Probably his sense of duty (I -know these German officers!) was strong enough to make him hand up -the papers to his superior officers. He couldn’t bring himself to burn -them--the fool! Then the other emotion in him----” - -“Give it a name,” said Eileen, smiling in her whimsical way. - -“That damned love of his,” said Brand, “tugged at him intolerably, -and jabbed at his conscience. So he hid the news about the passage and -thought what a fine fellow he was. Mr. Facing-Both-Ways. Duty and love, -both sacrificed!... He’d have looked pretty sick if you’d been shot, and -it wasn’t to his credit that you weren’t.” - -Eileen O’Connor was amused with Brand’s refusal to credit Franz von -Kreuzenach with any kindness. - -“Admit,” she said, “that his suppression of evidence gave me my chance. -If all were told, I was lost.” - -Brand admitted that. - -“Admit also,” said Eileen, “that he behaved like a gentleman.” - -Brand admitted it grudgingly. - -“A German gentleman.” - -Then he realised his meanness, and made amends. - -“That’s unfair! He behaved like a good fellow. Probably took big risks. -Every one who knows what happened must be grateful to him. If I meet him -I’ll thank him.” - -Eileen O’Connor held Brand to that promise, and asked him for a favour -which made him hesitate. - -“When you go on to the Rhine will you take him a letter from me?” - -“It’s against the rules,” said Brand rather stiffly. - -Eileen pooh-poohed those rules, and said Franz von Kreuzenach had broken -his for her sake. - -“I’ll take it,” said Brand. - -That night when we left Eileen O’Connor’s rooms the Armistice was still -being celebrated by British soldiers. Verey lights were rising above -the houses, fired off by young officers as symbols of their own soaring -spirits. Shadows lurched against us in the dark streets as officers and -men went singing to their billets. Some girls of Lille had linked arms -with British Tommies and were dancing in the darkness with screams of -mirth. In one of the doorways a soldier with his steel hat at the back -of his head and his rifle lying at his feet kept shouting one word in a -drunken way: “Peace!... Peace!” - -Brand had his arm through mine, and when we came to his headquarters he -would not let me go. - -“Armistice night!” he said. “Don’t let’s sleep just yet. Let’s hug the -thought over a glass of whisky. The war is over!... No more blood!... No -more of its tragedy!” - -Yet we had got no farther than the hall before we knew that tragedy had -not ended with the Armistice. - -Colonel Lavington met us and spoke to Brand. - -“A bad thing has happened. Young Clatworthy has shot himself... upstairs -in his room.” - -“No!” - -Brand started back as if he had been hit. He had been fond of -Clatworthy, as he was of all boys, and they had been together for many -months. It was to Brand that Clatworthy wrote his last strange note, and -the colonel gave it to him then in the hall. - -I saw it afterwards, written in a big scrawl--a few lines which now I -copy out:-- - -“_Dear old Brand,--It’s the end of the adventure. Somehow I funk Peace. -I don’t see how I can go back to Wimbledon as if nothing had happened -to me. None of us are the same as when we left, and I’m quite different. -I’m going over to the pals on the other side. They will understand. -Cheerio!_ - -“_Cyril Clatworthy_.” - -“I was playing my flute when I heard the shot,” said the colonel. - -Brand put the letter in his pocket and made only one comment. - -“Another victim of the war-devil.... Poor kid!” - -Presently he went up to young Clatworthy’s room, and stayed there a long -time. - -A few days later we began to move on towards the Rhine by slow stages, -giving the German Army time to get back. In Brand’s pocket-book was the -letter to Franz von Kreuzenach from Eileen O’Connor. - - -END OF BOOK I. - - - - - -BOOK II--THROUGH HOSTILE GATES - - - - -I - - -The advance of the Allied Armies towards the Rhine was by definite, -slow stages, enabling the German Army to withdraw in advance of us with -as much material of war as was left to them by the conditions of the -Armistice. On that retreat of theirs they abandoned so much that it was -clearly impossible for them to resist our demands by fighting again, -however hard might be the peace terms. Their acceptance of the Armistice -drawn up by Marshal Foch with a relentless severity in every clause, so -that the whole document was a sentence of death to the German military -system, proved that they had no more “fight” in them. It was the most -abject and humiliating surrender ever made by a great nation in the -hour of defeat, and an acknowledgment before the whole world that their -armies had broken to bits, in organisation and in spirit. - -On the roads for hundreds of kilometres out from Mons and Le Cateau, -past Brussels and Liège and Namur, was the visible proof of the -disintegration and downfall of what had been the greatest military -machine in the world. Mile after mile and score after score of miles, on -each side of the long straight roads, down which, four years before, the -first German Armies had marched in endless columns after the first brief -check at Liège, with absolute faith in victory, there lay now abandoned -guns, trench mortars, aeroplanes, motor lorries, motor cars and -transport wagons. Those monstrous guns which had pounded so much of our -young flesh to pulp, year after year, were now tossed into the ditches, -or overturned in the wayside fields, with broken breech-blocks or -without their sights. - -It was good to see them there. Field-guns, upturned, thrust their -muzzles into the mud, and Belgian peasant-, boys made cock-shies of -them. I liked to see them at that game. Here also was the spectacle of -a war machine which had worn out until, like the “one-hoss shay,” it had -fallen to pieces. Those motor lorries, motor cars, and transport wagons -were in the last stage of decrepitude, their axles and spokes all rusty, -their woodwork cracked, their wheels tied round with bits of iron in -the place of tyres. Everywhere were dead horses worn to skin and bones -before they had fallen. For lack of food and fats and rubber and labour -the German material of war was in a sorry state before the failure of -their man-power in the fighting fields after those years of massacre -brought home to them the awful fact that they had no more strength to -resist our onslaughts. - -One of those who pointed the moral of all this was the little American -doctor, Edward Small, and he found an immense satisfaction in the sight -of those derelict wrecks of the German war-devils. He and I travelled -together for some time, meeting Brand, Harding, and other friends, in -towns like Liège and Namur. I remember him now, standing by a German -howitzer--a colossus--sprawling out of a ditch. He chuckled in a goblin -way, with his little grey beard thrust up by a muffler which he had tied -over his field-cap and under his chin. (It was cold, with a white mist -which clung damply to our faces.) He went so far in his pleasure as -to pick up a big stone (like those Belgian boys) and heave it at the -monster. - -“Fine!” he said. “That devil will never again vomit out death upon men -crouching low in ditches--fifteen miles away. Never again will it smash -through the roofs of farmhouses where people desired to live in peace, -or bash big holes in little old churches where folk worshipped through -the centuries--a loving God!... Sonny, this damned thing is symbolical. -Its overthrow means the downfall of all the machinery of slaughter which -has been accumulated by civilised peoples afraid of each other. In -a little while, if there’s any sense in humanity after this fearful -lesson, we shall put all our guns on to the scrap-heap and start a new -era of reasonable intercourse between the peoples of the world.” - -“Doctor,” I answered, “there’s a mighty big ‘If’ in that long sentence -of yours.” - -He blinked at me with beads of mist on his lashes. - -“Don’t you go wet-blanketing my faith in a step-up for the human race! -During the next few months we’re going to re-arrange life. We are going -to give Fear the knock-out blow.... It was Fear that was the cause of -all this horrible insanity and all this need of sacrifice. Germany was -afraid of being ‘hemmed in’ by England, France and Russia. Fear, more -than the lust of power, was at the back of her big armies. France was -afraid of Germany trampling over her frontiers again. Russian Czardom -was afraid of revolution within her own borders and looked to war as -a safety-valve. England was afraid of the German Navy and afraid of -Germans at Calais and Dunkirk. All the little Powers were afraid of the -big Powers and made their beastly little alliances as a life insurance -against the time when they would be dragged into the dog-fight. -Now, with the German bogey killed--the most formidable and frightful -bogey--Austria disintegrated, Russia groping her way with bloodshot -eyes to a new democracy, a complete set of fears has been removed. The -spirits of the peoples will be uplifted, the darkness of fear having -passed from them. We are coming out into the broad sunlight of sanity, -and mankind will march to better conquests than those of conscript -armies. Thank God, the United States of America (and don’t you forget -it!) will play a part in this advance to another New World.” - -It was absurd to argue with the little man in a sodden field on the road -to Liège. Besides, though I saw weak links in his chain of reasoning, I -did not want to argue. - -I wanted to believe also that our victory would not be a mere vulgar -triumph of the old kind, one military power rising upon the ruins of its -rival, one great yell (or many) of “Yah--we told you so!” but that it -would be a victory for all humanity, shamed by the degradation of its -orgy of blood, in spite of all pride in long-enduring manhood, and that -the peoples of the world, with one common, enormous, generous instinct, -would cry out, “The horror has passed! Never again shall it come upon -us.... Let us pay back to the dead by contriving a better way of life -for those who follow!” The chance of that lay with living youth, if they -would not allow themselves to be betrayed by their old men. That also -was a mighty “If,” but I clung to the hope with as passionate a faith as -that of the little American doctor.... - -The way to the Rhine lay through many cities liberated from hostile -rule, through many wonderful scenes in which, emotion surged like a -white flame above great crowds. There was a pageantry of life which I -had never before seen in war or in peace, and those of us who went that -way became dazed by the endless riot of colour, and our ears were tired -by a tumult of joyous sound. In Brussels, Bruges, Ghent, Liège, Namur, -Venders, banners waved above every house. Flags--flags--flags of many -nations and designs, decorated the house-fronts, were draped on the -balconies, were entwined in the windows, came like flames above the -heads of marching crowds. Everywhere there was the sound of singing -by multitudes, and through those weeks one song was always in the air, -triumphant, exultant, intoxicating, almost maddening in its effect -upon crowds and individuals--the old song of liberty and revolt: “La -Marseillaise.” With it, not so universal, but haunting in constant -refrain between the outbursts of that other tune, they sang “La -Brabançonne” of Belgium and quaint old folk-songs that came to life -again with the spirit of the people. Bells pealed from churches in which -the Germans had left them by special favour. The belfry of Bruges had -not lost its carillon. In Ghent, when the King of the Belgians rode -in along flower-strewn ways, under banners that made one great canopy, -while cheers swept up and around him to his grave, tanned, melancholy -face, unchanged by victory--so I had seen him in his ruined towns among -his dead--I heard the great boom of the cathedral bell. In Brussels, -when he rode in later, there were many bells ringing and clashing, and -wild cheering, which to me, lying in an upper room after a smash on -the Field of Waterloo, seemed uncanny and inhuman, like the murmur of -innumerable ghost-voices. Into these towns, and along the roads through -Belgium to the Meuse, bands were playing and soldiers singing, and -on each man’s rifle was a flag or a flower. In every city there was -carnival. It was the carnival of human joy after long fasting from the -pleasure of life. Soldiers and civilians, men and women, sang together, -linked arms, danced together through many streets, in many towns. In -the darkness of those nights of Armistice one saw the eyes of people -sparkling, laughing, burning; the eyes of girls lit up by inner fires, -eager, roving, alluring, untamed; and the eyes of soldiers, surprised, -amused, adventurous, drunken, ready for any kind of fun; and sometimes -in those crowds, dead eyes, or tortured eyes, staring inwards and not -outwards, because of some remembrance which came like a ghost between -them and carnival. - -In Ghent there were other sounds besides music and laughter, and -illuminations too fierce and ruddy in their glow to give me pleasure. At -night I heard the screams of women. I had no need to ask the meaning of -them. I had heard such screams before, when Pierre Nesle’s sister Marthe -was in the hands of the mob. But one man told me, as though I did not -know. - -“They are cutting off some ladies’ hair. Six of them--the hussies! They -were too friendly with the Germans, you understand? Now they are being -stripped, for shame. There are others, monsieur. Many, many, if one only -knew. Hark at their howling!” - -He laughed heartily, without any touch of pity. I tried to push my way -nearer to try by some word of protest to stop that merry sport with -hunted women. The crowds were too dense, the women too far away. In any -case no word of mine would have had effect. I went into a restaurant and -ordered dinner, though not hungry. Brand was there, sitting alone till -I joined him. The place was filled with French and Belgian officers and -womenfolk. The swing-door opened and another woman came in and sat a few -tables away from ours. She was a tall girl, rather handsome, and better -dressed than the ordinary _bourgeoisie_ of Ghent. At least, so it seemed -to me when she hung up some heavy furs on the peg above her chair. - -A waiter advanced towards her, and then, standing stock-still, began to -shout, with a thrill of fury in his voice. He shouted frightful words in -French, and one sentence which I remember now. - -“A week ago you sat here with a German officer!” - -The Belgian officers were listening gravely. One of them half-rose from -his chair with a flushed, wolfish face. I was staring at the girl. She -was white to the lips, and held on to a brass rail as though about to -faint. Then, controlling herself instantly, she fumbled at the peg, -pulled down her furs and fled through the swing-door... She was another -Marthe. - -Somebody laughed in the restaurant, but only one voice. For a moment -there was silence, then conversation was resumed, as though no figure -of tragedy had passed. The waiter who had denounced the woman swept some -crumbs off a table and went to fetch some soup. - -Brand did not touch his food. - -“I feel sick,” he said. - -He pushed his plate away and paid the bill. - -“Let’s go.” - -He forgot to ask whether I wanted to eat--he was absent-minded in that -way--but I felt like him, and avoiding the Grande Place we walked by -hazard to a part of the city where some fires were burning. The sky was -reddened and we smelt smoke, and presently felt the heat of flames. - -“What new devilry?” asked Brand. “Can’t these people enjoy peace? Hasn’t -there been enough violence?” - -“Possibly a bonfire,” I said, “symbolical of joy and warmth after cold -years!” - -Coming closer, I saw that Brand was right. Black figures like dancing -devils were in the ruddy glare of a savage fire up a side street of -Ghent. In other streets were other fires. Close to where we stood was -an old inn, called the Hotel de la Demie-Lune--the Hotel of the -Half-Moon--and its windows had been heaved out, and inside the rooms -Belgian soldiers and citizens were flinging out tables and chairs and -planks and wainscoting to feed the bonfire below, and every time the -flames licked up to the new fuel there were shouts of joy from the -crowd. - -“What does it mean?” asked Brand, and a man in the crowd told us that -the house had been used as the headquarters of a German organisation for -“Flemish Activists”--or Flamagands, as they were called--whose object -was to divide the Walloons, or French-speaking Belgians, from the -Flemings, in the interests of Germany. - -“It is the people’s revenge for those who have tried to sow seeds of -hatred among-them,” said the man. - -Other people standing by spoke disapprovingly of the scene. - -“The Germans have made too many fires in this war,” said an elderly -man in a black hat with a high crown and broad brim, like a portrait by -Franz Hals. “We don’t want to destroy our own houses now the enemy has -gone. That is madness.” - -“It seems unnecessary!” said Brand. - -As we made our way back we saw the light of other fires, and heard -the noise of smashing glass and a splintering of woodwork. The mob was -sacking shops which had traded notoriously with the Germans. Out of -one alley a man came running like a hunted animal. We heard his breath -panting as he passed. A shout of “Flamagand! Flamagand!” followed him, -and in another second a mob had caught him. We heard his death-cry -before they killed him like a rat. - -Never before in the history of the world had such crowds gathered -together as now in Brussels, Ghent or Liège. French and English soldiers -walked the same streets, khaki and sky-blue mingling. These two races -had met before, not as friends, in some of these towns--five centuries -and more before in history. But here also were men from Canada, -Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the new world which had come -to the old world on this adventure, paying back something to the old -blood and the old ghosts because of their heritage, yet strangely aloof -on the whole from these continental peoples, not understanding them, -despising them. - -The English soldier took it all as it came, with that queer adaptability -of his to any environment or any adventure, with his simple human touch. - -“Better than the old Ypres salient,” said one of them, grinning at me -after a game of kiss-in-the-ring at Venders. He wiped the sweat from his -face and neck, and as he raised his arm I saw by his gold stripes that -he had been three times wounded. Yes, that was better than the old hell. -He roared with laughter when one of his comrades went into the ring with -a buxom girl while the crowd danced round him, holding hands, singing, -laughing, pulling him this side and that. - -The man who had just left the ring spoke to me again in a confidential -way. - -“My wife wouldn’t like it if she’d seen me just then. I shan’t tell ‘er. -She wouldn’t understand. Nobody can understand the things we’ve done, -the things we’ve thought, nor the things we’ve seen, unless they’ve been -through with us... and we don’t understand, neither!” - -“Who does?” I asked, to express agreement with him, but he took my words -as a question to be answered. - -“P’raps Gord knows. If so, ‘E’s a clever One, ‘E is!... I wish I ‘ad -‘alf ‘Is sense.” - -He drifted away from me with a gurgle of laughter at a girl who pushed -his cap on one side. - -Along the kerbstone of the market-place some transport wagons were -halted, and the drivers were cooking their evening meal over a charcoal -stove, as though on one of the roads of war, while a crowd of Belgians -roared with laughter at their by-play with clasp-knives, leaden spoons, -and dixies. One of them was a cockney humorist--his type was always -to be found in any group of English soldiers--and was performing a -pantomime for the edification of the onlookers and his own pleasure. - -A woman standing on the edge of this scene touched me on the sleeve. - -“Are you going forward to the Rhine, _mon lieutenant?_” - -I told her “yes,” and that I should soon be among the Germans. - -She gave a little tug to my sleeve, and spoke in a kind of coaxing -whisper. - -“Be cruel to them, _mon lieutenant!_ Be hard and ruthless. Make them -suffer as we have suffered. Tread on their necks so that they squeal. -_Soyez cruel._” - -Her face and part of her figure were in the glow from the charcoal fire -of the transport men, and I saw that she was a little woman, neatly -dressed, with a thin, gentle, rather worn-looking face. Those words, -“_Soyez cruel!_” gave me a moment’s shock, especially because of the -soft, wheedling tone of her voice. - -“What would you do,” I asked in a laughing way, “if you were in my -place?” - -“I dream at nights of what I would like to do. There are so many things -I would like to do for vengeance. I think all German women should be -killed to stop them breeding. That is one thing.” - -“And the next?” I asked. - -“It would be well to kill all German babies. Perhaps the good God will -do it in His infinite wisdom.” - -“You are religious, madame?” - -“We had only our prayers,” she said, with piety. - -A band of dancing people bore down upon us and swept us apart. From -a high balcony an Italian who had been a prisoner of war sang “La -Marseillaise,” and though these people’s ears had been dinned with it -all day, though their throats were hoarse with singing it, they listened -to it now, again, as though it were a new revelation. The man sang with -passion in his voice, as powerful as a trumpet, more thrilling than -that. The passion of four years’ agony in some foul prison-camp inspired -him now, as he sang that song of liberty and triumph. - - “Allons, Enfants de la patrie! - - Le jour de gloire est arrivé!” - -The crowd took up the song again, and it roared across the square -of Venders until another kind of music met and clashed with it, and -overwhelmed it with brazen notes. It was the town band of Venders, -composed of twenty-five citizens, mostly middle-aged and portly--some -old and scraggy, in long frock-coats and tall pot-hats. Solemnly, with -puffed cheeks, they marched along, parting the waves of people as they -went, as it seemed, by the power of their blasts. They were playing an -old tune called “Madelon”--its refrain comes back to me now with the -picture of that carnival in Venders, with all those faces, all that -human pressure and emotion--and behind them, as though following the -Pied Piper (twenty-five pied pipers!) came dancing at least a thousand -people, eight abreast, with linked arms or linked hands. They were young -Belgian boys and girls, old Belgian men and women, children, British -soldiers, American soldiers, English, Scottish, Irish, Canadian, -Australian, Russian, and Italian ex-prisoners of war just liberated from -their prison-camps, new to liberty. They were all singing that old song -of “Madelon,” and all dancing in a kind of jig. Other crowds, dancing -and singing, came out of side-streets into the wide Grande Place, -mingled, like human waves meeting, swirled in wild, laughing eddies. -Carnival after the long fasting. - -Brand clutched me by the arm and laughed in his deep, hollow voice. - -“Look at that old satyr!... I believe Daddy Small is Pan himself!” - -It was the little American doctor. He was in the centre of a row of -eight in the vanguard of a dancing column. A girl of the _midinette_ -type--pretty, impudent, wild-eyed, with a strand of fair hair blowing -loose from her little fur cap--was clinging to his arm on one side, -while on the other was a stout, middle-aged woman with a cheerful -Flemish face and mirth-filled eyes. Linked up with the others they -jigged behind the town band. Dr. Small’s little grey beard had a -raffish look. His field cap was tilted back from his bony forehead. His -spectacles were askew. He had the happy look of careless boyhood. He -did not see us then, but later in the evening detached himself from the -stout Flemish lady, who kissed him on both cheeks, and made his way to -where Brand and I stood under the portico of a hotel. - -“Fie, doctor!” said Brand. “What would your old patients in New York say -to this Bacchanalian orgy?” - -“Sonny,” said the doctor, “they wouldn’t believe it. It’s incredible!” - -He wiped the perspiration from his brow, threaded his fingers through -his grey beard, and laughed in that shrill way which was his habit when -excited. - -“My word, it was good fun! I became part of a people’s joy. I had their -sense of escape from frightful things. Youth came back to me. Their -songs danced in my blood. In spite of my goggles and my grey beard that -buxom lady adored me as though I were the young Adonis. The little girl -clasped my hand as though I were her younger brother. Time rolled back -from the world. Old age was touched with the divine elixir. In that -crowd there is the springtime of life, when Pan played on his pipes -through pagan woods. I wouldn’t have missed it for a million dollars!” - -That night Brand and I and some others (Charles Fortune among them) were -billeted in a small hotel which had been a German headquarters a few -days before. There was a piano in the billiard room, and Fortune touched -its keys. Several notes were broken but he skipped them deftly and -improvised a musical caricature of “Daddy” Small dancing in the -carnival. He, too, had seen that astonishing vision, and it inspired him -to grotesque fantasies. In his imagination he brought a great general -to Venders--“Blear-eyed Bill, the Butcher of the Boche”--and gave him -a _pas seul_ in the Grande Place, like an elephant gambolling in green -fields and trumpeting his joy. - -Young Harding was moody, and confided to me that he did not like the -idea of crossing the German frontier and going to Cologne. - -“There will be dirty work,” he said, “as sure as fate. The Huns will -begin sniping and then we shall have to start reprisals. Well, if they -ask for it I hope we shall give it them. Without mercy, after all they -have done. At the first sign of treachery I hope the machine-guns will -begin to play. Every time I see a Hun I shall feel like slitting his -throat.” - -“Well, you’ll get into a murderous state of mind,” I answered him. -“We shall see plenty, and live among them. I expect they will be tame -enough.” - -“Some poor devils of ours will be murdered in their beds,” said Harding. -“It makes my blood boil to think of it. I only hope we shan’t stand any -nonsense. I’d like to see Cologne Cathedral go up in flames. That would -be a consolation.” - -Charles Fortune broke away from his musical fantasy of “Blear-eyed -Bill” and played a bar or two of the “Marseillaise” in ragtime. It was -a greeting to Pierre Nesle, who came into the room quietly in his _képi_ -and heavy motor-coat, with a salute to the company. - -“_Bon soir, petit Pierre!_” said Fortune, “_qu’il y a, -done--quoi?--avec ta figure si sombre, si mélancolique, d’une tristesse -pitoyable_----” - -Pierre Nesle inspired him to sing a little old French _chanson_ of -Pierrot disconsolate. - -Pierre had just motored down from Lille--a long journey--and was blue -with cold, as he said, warming his hands at the charcoal stove. -He laughed at Fortune’s jesting, begged a cigarette from Harding, -apologised for keeping on his “stink-coat” for a while until he had -thawed out--and I admired the boy’s pluck and self-control. It was the -first time I had seen him since he had gone to Lille to see his sister. -I knew by the new lines about his eyes and mouth, by a haggard, older -look he had that he had seen that sister of his--Marthe--and knew her -tragedy. - -It was to Brand’s room that he went after midnight, and from Brand, a -day later, I heard what had happened. He had begun by thanking Brand -for that rescue of his sister in Lille, in a most composed and courteous -way. Then suddenly that mask fell from him and he sat down heavily in -a chair, put his head down on his arms upon the table and wept like a -child in uncontrollable grief. Brand was immensely distressed and -could not think of any word to comfort him. He kept saying, “Courage! -Courage!” as I had said to Madame Chéri when she broke down about her -boy Edouard, as the young Baronne had sent word to Eileen from her -prison death-bed, and as so many men and women had said to others who -had been stricken by the cruelties of war. - -“The boy was down and out,” said Brand. “What could I say? It is one of -those miseries for which there is no cure. He began to talk about his -sister when they had been together at home, in Paris before the war. She -had been so gay, so comradely, so full of adventure. Then he began to -curse God for having allowed so much cruelty and men for being such -devils. He cursed the Germans, but then, in most frightful language, -most bitterly of all he cursed the people of Lille for having tortured -a woman who had been starved into weakness, and had sinned to save her -life. He contradicted himself then, violently, and said, ‘It was no sin. -My sister was a loyal girl to France. In her soul she was loyal. So she -swore to me on her crucifix. I would have killed her if she had been -disloyal.’... So there you are! Pierre Nesle is broken on the wheel of -war, like so many others. What’s the cure?” - -“None,” I said, “for his generation. One can’t undo the things that are -done.” - -Brand was pacing up and down his bedroom, where he had been telling me -these things, and now, at my words, he stopped and stared at me before -answering. - -“No. I think you’re right. This generation has been hard hit, and we -shall go about with unhealed wounds. But the next generation?... -Let’s try to save it from all this horror! If the world will only -understand----” - -The next day we left Venders and crossed the German frontier on the way -to the Rhine. - - - - -II - - -Brand and I, who were inseparable now, and young Harding, who had -joined us, crossed the Belgian frontier with our leading troop of -cavalry--the Dragoon Guards--and entered Germany on the morning of -December 4th. For three days our advanced cavalry outposts had been -halted on the frontier line beyond Venders and Spa. The scenery had -become German already--hill-country, with roads winding through fir -forests above deep ravines, where red undergrowth glowed like fire -through the rich green of fir-trees, and where, on the hillsides and in -the valleys, were wooden _châlets_ and villas with pointed turrets like -those in the Black Forest. - -We halted this side of a little stone bridge over the stream which -divides the two countries. A picket of Dragoons was holding the bridge -with double sentries, under orders to let no man pass until the signal -was given to advance. - -“What’s the name of this place?” asked Brand of a young cavalry officer -smoking a cigarette and clapping his hands to keep warm. - -“Rothwasser, sir,” said that child, removing the cigarette from his -lips. He pointed to a small house on rising ground beyond, a white -building with a slate roof, and said: “That’s the first house in -Germany. I don’t suppose they’ll invite us to breakfast.” - -Brand and I leaned over the stone bridge, watching and listening to the -swirl of tawny water over big grey stones. - -“The Red Water,” said Brand. “Not a bad name when one thinks of the -rivers of blood that have flowed between our armies and this place. It’s -been a long journey to this little bridge.” - -We stared across the brook and were enormously stirred (I was, at least) -by the historic meaning of this scene. Over there, a few yards away, -was Germany, the fringe of what had been until some weeks ago the mighty -German Empire. Not a human being appeared on that side of the stone -bridge. There was no German sentry facing ours. The gate into Germany -was open and unguarded. A deep silence was over there by the pine-woods -where the undergrowth was red. I wondered what would happen when we -rode through that silence and that loneliness into the first German -town--Malmédy--and afterwards through many German towns and villages on -the way to the Rhine.... - -Looking back on that adventure, I remember our psychological sensations, -our surprise at the things which happened and failed to happen, the -change of mind which gradually dawned upon some of our officers, the -incredulity, resentment, suspicion, amazement, which overcame many of -them because of the attitude of the German people whom they met for the -first time face to face without arms in their hands. I have already said -that many of our officers had a secret dread of this advance into German -territory, not because they were afraid of danger to their own skins, -but because they had a greater fear of being called upon to do -“dirty work” in the event of civilians sniping and any sign of the -_franc-tireur_. They had been warned by the High Command that that might -happen, and that there must be a ruthless punishment of any such crimes. - -“Our turn for atrocities!” whispered young cavalry officers, remembering -Louvain and Alost, and they hated the idea. We were in the state of -mind which led to some of the black business in Belgium when the Germans -first advanced--nervous, ready to believe any rumour of treacherous -attack, more afraid of civilian hostility than of armed troops. A single -shot fired by some drunken fool in a German village, a single man of -ours killed in a brawl, or murdered by a German out for vengeance, might -lead to most bloody tragedy. Rumour was already whispering of ghastly -things. - -I remember on the first day of our advance meeting a young officer -of ours in charge of an armoured car which had broken down across the -frontier, outside a village. - -“I’d give a million pounds to get out of this job,” he said gloomily. - -“What’s the matter?” I asked. - -He told me that the game was already beginning, and swore frightful -oaths. - -“What game?” - -“Murder,” he answered sharply. “Don’t you get the news? Two of our -fellows have been killed in that village. Sniped from the windows. -Presently I shall be told to sweep the streets with machine-guns. Jolly -work, what?” - -He was utterly wrong, though where he heard the lie which made him -miserable I never knew. I walked into the village and found it peaceful. -No men of ours had been killed there. No men of ours had yet entered it. - -The boy who was to go forward with the leading cavalry patrol across the -Rothwasser that morning had “the needle” to the same degree. He leaned -sideways in his saddle and confided his fears to me with laughter which -did not conceal his apprehensions. - -“Hope there’s no trouble.... Haven’t the ghost of an idea what to do -if the Hun turns nasty. I don’t know a word of their beastly language -either! If I’m the boy who takes the wrong turning, don’t be too hard -on me!” - -It was a Sunday morning, with a cold white fog on the hill-tops, -and white frost on fir-trees and red bracken. Our cavalry and horse -artillery, with their transport drawn up on the Belgian side of the -frontier before the bugle sounded for the forward march, were standing -by their horses, clapping hands, beating chests, stamping feet. The men -wore their steel hats as though for an advance in the usual conditions -of warfare, and the troopers of the leading patrol rode forward with -drawn swords. They rode at the trot through pine forests along the edge -of deep ravines in which innumerable “Christmas-trees” were powdered -with glistening frost. There was the beat of horses’ hoofs on frozen -roads, but the countryside was intensely silent. The farmhouses we -passed and cottages under the shelter of the woods seemed abandoned. -No flags hung out from them like those millions of flags which had -fluttered along all the miles of our way through Belgium. Now and again, -looking back at a farmhouse window, I saw a face there, staring out, but -it was quickly withdrawn. A dog came out and barked at us savagely. - -“First sign of hostility!” said the cavalry lieutenant, turning round in -his saddle and laughing boyishly. The troopers behind him grinned under -their steel hats and then looked stem again, glancing sideways into the -glades of those silent fir-woods. - -“It would be easy to snipe us from those woods,” said Harding. “Too -damned easy!” - -“And quite senseless,” said Brand. “What good would it do them?” - -Harding was prepared to answer the question. He had been thinking it -out. - -“The Hun never did have any sense. He’s not likely to get it now. -Nothing will ever change him. He is a bad, treacherous, evil swine. We -must be prepared for the worst, and if it comes----” - -“What?” asked Brand. - -Harding had a grim look, and his mouth was hard. - -“We must act without mercy, as they did in Louvain.” - -“Wholesale murder, you mean?” said Brand harshly. - -“A free hand for machine-guns,” said Harding, “if they ask for it.” - -Brand gave his usual groan. - -“Oh, Lord!... Haven’t we finished with blood?” - -We dipped down towards Malmédy. There was a hairpin turn in the road and -we could see the town below us in the valley--a German town. - -“Pretty good map-reading!” shouted the cavalry kid. He was pleased with -himself for having led his troop on the right road, but I guessed that -he would be glad to halt this side of the mystery that lay in that town -where Sunday bells were ringing. - -A queer thing happened then. Up a steep bank was a party of girls. -German girls, of course, and the first civilians we had seen. A flutter -of white handkerchiefs came from them. They were waving to us. - -“Well, I’m damned!” said Harding. - -“Not yet,” answered Brand ironically, but he was as much astonished as -all of us. - -When we came into Malmédy the cavalry patrol halted in the market square -and dismounted. It was about midday and the German people were coming -out of church. Numbers of them surrounded us, staring at the horses, -whose sleek look seemed to amaze them, and at the men who lit up -cigarettes and loosened the straps of their steel hats. Some girls -patted the necks of the horses and said: “_Wundershon!_” - -A young man in the crowd in black civilian clothes with a bowler hat -spoke in perfect English to the sergeant-major: “Your horses are looking -fine! Ours are skin and bones. When will the infantry be here?” - -“Haven’t an idea,” said the sergeant-major gruffly. - -Another young man addressed himself to me in French, which he spoke as -though it were his native tongue. - -“Is this the first time you have been in Germany, monsieur?” - -I told him I had visited Germany before the war. - -“You will find us changed,” he said. “We have suffered very much, and -the spirit of the people is broken. You see, they have been hungry so -long.” - -I looked round at the crowd and saw some bonny-faced girls among them -and children who looked well-fed. It was only the younger men who had a -pinched look. - -“The people here do not seem hungry,” I said. - -He explained that the state of Malmédy was not so bad. It was only a -big-sized village and they could get produce from the farms about. All -the same, they were on short commons and were underfed. Never any meat. -No fats. “_Ersatz_” coffee. In the bigger towns there was real hunger, -or, at least, an _unternahrung_ or malnutrition, which was causing -disease in all classes, and great mortality among the children. - -“You speak French well,” I told him, and he said that many people in -Malmédy spoke French and German in a bi-lingual way. It was so close to -the Belgian frontier. - -“That is why the people here had no heart in the war, even in the -beginning. My wife was a Belgian girl. When I was mobilised she said, -‘You are going to kill my brothers,’ and wept very much. I think that -killed her. She died in ‘16.” - -The young man spoke gravely but without any show of emotion. He narrated -his personal history in the war. He had been in the first and second -battles of Ypres, then badly wounded and put down at the base as a clerk -for nearly two years. After that, when German man-power was running -short, he had been pushed into the ranks again and had fought in -Flanders, Cambrai, and Valenciennes. Now he had demobilised himself. - -“I am very glad the war is over, monsieur. It was a great stupidity from -the beginning. Now Germany is ruined.” - -He spoke in a simple, matter-of-fact way, as though describing natural -disturbances of life, regrettable, but inevitable. - -I asked him whether the people farther from the frontier would be -hostile to the English, troops, and he seemed surprised at my question. - -“Hostile! Why, sir?.... The war is over, and we can now be friends -again. Besides, the respectable people and the middle classes”--he used -the French word _bourgeoisie_--“will be glad of your coming. It is a -protection against the evil elements who are destroying property -and behaving in a criminal way--the sailors of the fleet and the low -ruffians.” - -_The war is over, and we can be friends again!_ That sentence in the -young man’s speech astonished me by its directness and simplicity. -Was that the mental attitude of the German people? Did they think that -England would forget and shake hands? Did they not realise the passion -of hatred that had been aroused in England by the invasion of Belgium, -the early atrocities, the submarine war, the sinking of the _Lusitania_, -the execution of Nurse Çavell, the air-raids over London--all the range -and sweep of German frightfulness? - -Then I looked at our troopers. Some of them were chatting with the -Germans in a friendly way. One of them close to me gave a cigarette to -a boy in a college cap who was talking to him in schoolboy English. -Another was in conversation with two German girls who were patting his -horse. We had been in the German village ten minutes. There was no sign -of hatred here, on one side or the other. Already something had happened -which in England, if they knew, would seem monstrous and incredible. A -spell had been broken, the spell which for four years had dominated the -souls of men and women. At least, it seemed to have been broken in the -village where for the first time English soldiers met the people of the -nation they had fought and beaten. These men of the first cavalry patrol -did not seem to be nourishing thoughts of hatred and vengeance. -They were not, it seemed, remembering atrocities. They were meeting -fellow-mortals with human friendliness, and seemed inclined to talk to -them and pass the time of day. Astounding! - -I saw Wickham Brand talking to a group of German children--boys in -sailor caps with the words _Hindenburg, Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, -Unterseeboot_, printed in gold letters on the cap-bands, and girls with -yellow pigtails and coloured frocks. He pulled out a packet of chocolate -from a deep pocket of his British warm and broke it into small pieces. - -“Who would like a bit?” he asked in German, and there was a chorus of -“_Bitte!... Bitte schön!_” He held out a piece to the prettiest child, a -tiny fairy-like thing with gold-spun hair, and she blushed very vividly -and curtseyed when she took the chocolate, and then kissed Brand’s long -lean hand. Young Harding was standing near. He had an utterly bewildered -expression, as a man who sees the groundwork of his faith slipping -beneath him. He turned to me as I strolled his way and looked at me with -wide astonished eyes. - -“I don’t understand!” he stammered. “Haven’t these people any pride? -This show of friendliness--what does it mean? I’d rather they scowled -and showed their hatred than stand round fawning on us.... And our men! -They don’t seem to bear any malice. Look at that fellow gossiping with -those two girls! It’s shameful.... What have we been fighting for if it -ends in this sort of thing? It makes it all a farce!” - -He was so disturbed, so unnerved, by the shock of his surprise that -there were tears of vexation in his eyes. - -I could not argue with him or explain things to him. - -I was astonished myself, quite baffled by a German friendliness that was -certainly sincere and not a mask hiding either hatred or humiliation. -Those people of Malmédy were pleased to see us. As yet I could not -get the drift of their psychology, in spite of what the young -French-speaking German had told me. I gave Harding the benefit of that -talk. - -“This is a frontier town,” I said. “These people are not real Germans in -their sympathies and ideas.” - -That seemed to comfort Harding a little. He clung on to the thought -that when we had got beyond the frontier we should meet the hatred he -expected to see. He wanted to meet it. He wanted to see scowling looks, -deep humiliation, a shameful recognition of defeat, the evil nature of -the people we had been fighting. Otherwise, to him, the war was all a -lie. For four years he had been inspired, strengthened, and upheld by -hatred of the Germans. He believed not only in every atrocity story that -appeared in English newspapers, but also, in accordance with all else -he read, that every German was essentially and unutterably vile, brutal, -treacherous, and evil. The German people were to him a race apart--the -Huns. They had nothing in common with ordinary human nature, with its -kindliness and weakness. They were physically, mentally, and morally -debased. They were a race of devils, and they could not be allowed to -live. Civilisation could only be saved by their extermination, or -if that were impossible, by their utter subjection. All the piled-up -slaughter of British youth and French youth was to him justified by the -conviction that the last man of ours must die if need be in order to -crush Germany and kill Germans. It is true that he had not died, nor -even had been wounded, but that was his ill-luck. He had been in the -cavalry, and had not been given many chances of fighting. Before -the last phase, when the cavalry came into their own, he had been -transferred to the Intelligence (though he did not speak a word of -German) in order to organise their dispatch-rider service. He knew -nothing about dispatch-riding, but his cousin was the brother-in-law -of a general’s nephew, and he had been highly recommended for this -appointment, which had surprised and annoyed him. Still, as a young -man who believed in obedience to authority and in all old traditional -systems such as patronage and privilege, he had accepted the post -without protest. It had made no difference to his consuming hatred of -the Hun. When all his companions were pessimistic about final victory -he had remained an optimist, because of his faith that the Huns must be -destroyed or God would be betrayed. When some of his colleagues who -had lived in Germany before the war praised the German as a soldier and -exonerated the German people from part at least of the guilt of their -war lords, he tried to conceal his contempt for this folly (due to the -mistaken generosity of the English character) and repeated his own creed -of abhorrence for their race and character. “The only good German is -a dead German,” he said, a thousand times, to one’s arguments pleading -extenuating circumstances for German peasants, German women, German -children.... But now in this village of Malmédy on our first morning -across the frontier, within three minutes of our coming, English -troopers were chatting with Germans as though nothing had happened to -create ill-feeling on either side. Brand was giving chocolate to German -children, and German girls were patting the necks of English horses. - -“Yes,” he said, after my attempted explanation. “We’re too close to the -frontier. These people are different. Wait till we get on a bit. I’m -convinced we shall have trouble, and at the slightest sign of it we -shall sweep the streets with machine-gun fire. I’ve got my own revolver -handy, and I mean to use it without mercy if there’s any treachery.” - - - - -III - - -Harding had no need to use his revolver on the way to the Rhine or -in Cologne, where he stayed for some months after Armistice. We went on -with the cavalry into many villages and small towns, by slow stages, -the infantry following behind in strength, with guns and transport. The -girls outside Malmédy were not the only ones who waved handkerchiefs at -us. Now and then, it is true, there were scowling looks from men who -had obviously been German officers until a few weeks ago. Sometimes in -village inns the German inn-keeper would be sullen and silent, leaving -his wife or his maidservant to wait upon us. But even that was rare. -More often there was frank curiosity in the eyes of the people who -stared at us, and often unconcealed admiration at the smart appearance -of our troops. Often German inn-keepers welcomed our officers with bows -and smiles and prepared meat meals for us (in the country districts), -while explaining that meat was scarce and hardly tasted by ordinary -folk. Their wives and their maidservants praised God that the war was -over. - -“It lasted too long!” they said. “Oh, the misery of it! It was madness -to slaughter each other like that!” - -Brand and I went into a little shop to buy a toothbrush. - -The woman behind the counter talked about the war. - -“It was due to the wickedness of great people,” she said. “There are -many people who grew rich out of the war. They wanted it to go on and on -so that they could get more rich. They gorged themselves while the poor -starved. It was the poor who were robbed of their life-blood.” - -She did not speak passionately, but with a dull kind of anger. - -“My own life-blood was taken,”, she said presently, after wrapping up -the tooth-brush. “First they took Hans, my eldest. He was killed almost -at once--at Liège. Then they took my second-born, Friedrich. He was -killed at Ypres. Next, Wilhelm died--in hospital at Brussels. He had -both his legs blown off. Last they took little Karl, my youngest. He was -killed by an air-bomb, far behind the lines, near Valenciennes.” - -A tear splashed on the bit of paper in which she had wrapped the -tooth-brush. She wiped it away with her apron. - -“My man and I are now alone,” she said, handing us the packet. “We are -too old to have more children. We sit and talk of our sons who are dead, -and wonder why God did not stop the war.” - -“It is sad,” said Brand. He could find nothing else to say. Not with -this woman could he argue about German guilt. - -“_Ja, es ist traurig_.” - -She took the money with a “_Danke schön_.” - -In the town of Mürren I spent some time with Brand and others in. the -barracks where a number of trench-mortars and machine-guns were being -handed over by German officers according to the terms of the Armistice. -The officers were mostly young men, extremely polite, anxious to save -us any kind of trouble, marvellous in their concealment of any kind of -humiliation they may have felt--_must_ have felt--in this delivery of -arms. They were confused only for one moment, and that was when a boy -with a wheelbarrow trundled by with a load of German swords--elaborate -parade swords with gold hilts. - -One of them laughed and passed it off with a few words in English. - -“There goes the old pomp and glory---to the rubbish-heap!” - -Brand made things easier by a tactful sentence. - -“The world will be happier when we are all disarmed.” - -A non-commissioned officer talked to me. He had been a hairdresser in -Bayswater and a machine-gunner in Flanders. He was a little fellow with -a queer cockney accent. - -“Germany is _kaput_. We shall have a bad time in front of us. No money. -No trade. All the same, it will be better in the long run. No more -conscription; no more filthy war. We’re all looking to President Wilson -and his ‘Fourteen Points.’ There is the hope of the world. We can hope -for a good peace--fair all round. Of course we’ll have to pay, but we -shall get liberty, like in England.” - -Was the man sincere? Were any of these people sincere? Or were they -crawling, fawning, hiding their hatred, ready for any treachery? I could -not make up my mind.... - -We went into Cologne some days before our programme at the urgent -request of the _Burgermeister_. We were invited in! The German seamen -of the Grand Fleet had played the devil, as in all the towns they had -passed through. They had established a Soldiers’ and Workmen’s Council -on the Russian system, raised the Red Flag, liberated the criminals from -the prisons. Shops had been sacked, houses looted. The _Burgermeister_ -desired British troops to ensure law and order. - -There was no disorder visible when we entered Cologne. The -revolutionaries had disappeared. The streets were thronged with -middle-class folk, among whom were thousands of men who had taken -off their uniforms a few days before our coming, or had “civilised” - themselves by tearing off their shoulder-straps and badges. As our -first squadron rode into the great cathedral square on the way to the -Hohenzollem Bridge many people in the crowds turned their heads away and -did not glance at the British cavalry. We were deliberately ignored, -and I thought that for the Germans it was the best attitude, with most -dignity. Others stared gravely at the passing cavalcade, showing no -excitement, no hostility, no friendliness, no emotion of any kind. Here -and there I met eyes which were regarding me with a dark, brooding look, -and others in which there was profound melancholy. That night, when I -wandered out alone and lost my way, and asked for direction, two young -men, obviously officers until a few days back, walked part of the way to -put me right and said “_Bitte schön! Bitte!_” when I thanked them, and -saluted with the utmost courtesy.... I wondered what would have happened -in London if we had been defeated and if German officers had walked -out alone at night and lost themselves in by-streets and asked the way. -Imagination fails before such a thought. Certainly our civility would -not have been so easy. We could not have hidden our hatred like that, if -these were hiding hatred. - -Somehow, I could not find even the smouldering fires of hate in any -German with whom I spoke that day. I could find only a kind of dazed and -stupor-like recognition of defeat, a deep sadness among humble people, -a profound anxiety as to the future fate of a ruined Germany, and a hope -in the justice of England and America. - -A score of us had luncheon at the Domhof Hotel, opposite the cathedral -which Harding had hoped to see in flames. The manager bowed us in as -if we had been distinguished visitors in time of peace. The head-waiter -handed us the menu and regretted that there was not much choice of food, -though they had scoured the country to provide for us. He and six other -waiters spoke good English, learnt in London, and seemed to have had no -interruption in their way of life, in spite of war. They were not rusty -in their art, but masters of its service according to tradition. Yet -they had all been in the fighting-ranks until the day of Armistice, and -the head-waiter, a man of forty, with hair growing grey and the look of -one who had spent years in a study rather than in front-line trenches -after table management, told me that he had been three times wounded -in Flanders, and in the last phase had been a machine-gunner in the -rearguard actions round Grevilliers and Bapaume. He revealed his mind to -me between the soup and the stew--strange talk from a German waiter. - -“I used to ask myself a hundred thousand times, ‘Why am I here--in this -mud--fighting against the English whom I know and like? What devil’s -meaning is there in all this? What are the evil powers that have forced -us to this insane massacre?’ I thought I should go mad, and I desired -death.” - -I did not argue with him, for the same reason that Brand and I did not -argue with the woman behind the counter who had lost four sons. I did -not say, “Your war lords were guilty of this war. The evil passion -and philosophy of you German people brought this upon the world--your -frightfulness.” I listened to a man who had been stricken by tragedy, -who had passed through its horrors and was now immensely sad. - -At a small table next to us were the boy who had led the first cavalry -patrol and two fellow-officers. They were not eating their soup. They -were talking to the waiter, a young fellow who was making a map with -knives and spoons. - -“This is the village of Fontaine Notre Dame,” he said. “I was just here -with my machine-gun when you attacked.” - -“Extraordinary!” said one of the young cavalry officers. “I was here, -at the corner of this spoon, lying on my belly with my nose in the -mud--scared stiff.” - -The German waiter and the three officers laughed together. Something had -happened which had taken away from them the desire to kill each other. -Our officers did not suspect there might be poison in their soup. The -young waiter was not nervous lest one of the knives he laid should be -thrust into his heart.... - -Some nights later I met Wickham Brand in the Hohestrasse. He took me by -the arm and laughed in a strange, ironical way. - -“What do you think of it all?” he asked. - -I told him that if old men from St. James’s Street clubs in London, and -young women in the suburbs clamouring for the Kaiser’s head, could be -transported straight to Cologne without previous warning of the things -they would see, they would go raving mad. - -Brand agreed. - -“It knocks one edgewise--even those of us who understand.” - -We stood on one side, by a shop window filled with beautiful -porcelain-ware, and watched the passing crowd. It was a crowd of German -middle-class, well dressed, apparently well fed. The girls wore heavy -furs. The men were in black coats and bowler hats, or in military -overcoats and felt hats. Among them, not aloof, but mingling with them, -laughing with them, were English and Canadian soldiers. Many of them -were arm-in-arm with German girls. Others were surrounded by groups of -young Germans who had been, unmistakably, soldiers until a few weeks -earlier. English-speaking Germans were acting as interpreters in the -exchange of experiences, gossip, opinions. The German girls needed no -interpreters. Their eyes spoke, and their laughter. - -Brand and I went into an immense _café_ called the “Germania,” so -densely crowded that we had to wander round to find a place, foggy with -tobacco-smoke through which electric light blazed, noisy with the -music of a loud, unceasing orchestra, which, as we entered, was playing -selections from “Patience.” Here also were many English and Canadian -officers and men, sitting at the same tables with Germans, who laughed -and nodded at them, clinked their mugs or wine-glasses with them, and -raised bowler hats to British Tommies when they left the tables -with friendly greetings on both sides. There was no orgy here, no -impropriety. Some of the soldiers were becoming slightly fuddled with -Rhine wine, but not noisily. “Glad eyes” were passing between them -and German girls, or conversations made up by winks and signs and -oft-repeated words, but all quietly and respectfully in outward -behaviour. - -Brand and I were wedged close to a table at which sat one of our -sergeant-majors, a corporal, a middle-aged German woman, and two -German girls. One of the girls spoke English remarkably well, and the -conversation of our two men was directed to her, and through her to the -others. Brand and I were eavesdroppers. - -“Tell your ma,” said the sergeant-major, “that I shouldn’t have been -so keen to fight Germans if I had known they were such pleasant, decent -people, as far as I find ‘em at present, and I take people as I find -‘em.” - -The girl translated to her mother and sister and then answered: “My -mother says the war was prepared by the rich people in Europe, who made -the people mad by lies.” - -“Ah,” said the sergeant-major, “I shouldn’t wonder! I know some of them -swine. All the same, of course, you began it, you know.” - -There was another translation, and the girl answered again: “My mother -says the Germans didn’t begin it. The Russians began it by moving their -armies. The Russians hated us and wanted war.” - -The sergeant-major gave a snort of laughter. - -“The Russians?... They soon tired of it, anyhow. Let us all down, eh?” - -“What about atrocities?’’ said the corporal, who was a cockney. - -“Atrocities?” said the English-speaking girl. “Oh, yes, there were many. -The Russians were very cruel.” - -“Come oft it,” said the corporal. “I mean German atrocities.” - -“German?” said the girl. “No, our soldiers were well behaved--always! -There were many lies told in the English papers.” * - -“That’s true enough,” said the sergeant-major. “Lies? Why, they fed us -up with lies. ‘The Germans are starving. The Germans are on their last -legs.’ ‘The great victory at Neuve Chapelle.’ God! I was in that great -victory. The whole battalion cut to pieces and not an officer left. A -bloody shambles--and no sense in it.... Another drop of wine, my dear?” - -“Seems to me,” said the cockney corporal, “that there was a deal of -dirty work on both sides. I’m not going to say there wasn’t no German -atrocities--lies or no lies--becos saw a few of ‘em myself, an’ no -mistake. But what I says now is what I says when I lay in the lousy -trenches with five-point-nines busting down the parapets. -The old devil ‘as got us all by the legs!’ I said, and ‘ad a -fellow-feelin’ for the poor blighters on the other side of the barbed -wire lying in the same old mud. Now I’m beginning to think the Germans -are the same as us, no better nor no worse, I reckon. Any ‘ow, you -can tell your sister, miss, that I like the way she does ‘er ‘air. It -reminds me of my Liz.” - -The English-speaking German girl did not understand this speech. She -appealed to the sergeant-major. - -“What does your friend say?” - -The sergeant-major roared with laughter.. - -“My chum says that a pretty face cures a lot of ill-feeling. -Your sister is a sweet little thing, he says. _Comprenney?_ Perhaps -you had better not translate that part to your ma. Have another drop of -wine, my dear.” - -Presently the party rose from the table and went out, the sergeant-major -paying for the drinks in a lordly way and saying, “After you, ma’am,” to -the mother of the two girls. - -“All this,” said Brand when they had gone, “is very instructive.... And -I’ve been making discoveries.” - -“What kind?” - -Brand looked away into the vista of the room, and his eyes roved about -the tables where other soldiers of ours sat with other Germans. - -“I’ve found out,” he said, “that the British hatred of a nation breaks -down in the presence of its individuals. I’ve discovered that it is not -in the character of English fighting-men--Canadian, too, by the look of -it--to demand vengeance from the innocent for the sins of the guilty. -I’m seeing that human nature, ours anyhow, swings back to the normal as -soon as an abnormal strain is released. It is normal in human nature -to be friendly towards its kind, in spite of five years’ education in -savagery.” - -I doubted that, and told him so, remembering scenes in Ghent and Lille, -and that girl Marthe, and the woman of Venders. That shook Brand a -little from his new point of view, and he shifted his ground with the -words: “Perhaps I’m wrong there.” - -‘He told me of other “discoveries” of his, after conversation with many -German people, explaining perhaps the lack of hostility and humiliation -which had surprised us all. They were glad to see the English because -they were afraid of the French and Belgians, with their desire for -vengeance. They believed in English fair-play in spite of all the wild -propaganda of the war. Now that the Kaiser had fled and Germany was a -Republic, they believed that, in spite of defeat and great ruin, there -would be a peace which would give them a chance of recovery, and a new -era of liberty, according to the pledges of President Wilson and the -terms of the “Fourteen Points.” They believed they had been beaten by -the hunger blockade, and not by the failure of the German Armies in the -field, and they would not admit that as a people they were more guilty -in the war than any others of the fighting nations. - -“It is a sense of guilt,” said Brand, “that must be brought home to -them. They must be convinced of that before they can get clean again and -gain the world’s forgiveness.” - -He leaned over the table with his square face in the palms of his hands. - -“God knows,” he said, “that there was evil on both sides. We have our -Junkerdom, too. The philosophy of our old men was not shining in its -Christian charity. We share the guilt of the war. Still, the Germans the -aggressors. They must acknowledge that.” - -“The German war lords and militarists,” I suggested. “Not that woman who -lost her four sons, nor peasants dragged from their ploughs, ignorant of -_Welt-politik_.” - -“It’s all a muddle,” said Brand. “I can’t sort it out. I’m full of -bewilderment and contradictions. Sometimes when I look at these Germans -in the streets, some of them so smug, I shudder and say, ‘These are the -people who killed my pals,’ and I’m filled with cold rage. But when they -tell me all they suffered, and their loathing of the war, I pity them -and say, ‘They were trapped, like we were, by false ideas, and false -systems, and the foul lies of politicians, and the dirtiness of old -diplomacy, and the philosophy of Europe leading up to that.” - -Then he told me something which interested me more at the time than his -groping to find truth, because a touch of personal drama is always more -striking to the mind than general aspects and ideas. - -“I’m billeted at the house of Franz von Kreuzenach. You -remember?--Eileen’s friend.” - -I was astounded at that. - -“What an amazing coincidence!” - -“It was no coincidence,” he said. “I arranged it. I had that letter to -deliver, and I wanted to meet the fellow. As yet, however, I have only -seen his mother and sister. They are very civil.” - -So did Wickham Brand “ask for trouble,” as soldiers say, and certainly -he found it before long. - - - - -IV - - -The first meeting between Wickham Brand and young Franz von Kreuzenach -had been rather dramatic, according to my friend’s account of it, and he -did not dramatise his stories much, in spite of being (before the war) -an unsuccessful novelist. It had happened on the third night after -his presentation of the billeting-paper which by military right of -occupation ordered the owners of the house to provide a bedroom and -sitting-room for an officer. There had been no trouble about that. The -_Madchen_ who had answered the door of the big white house in a side -street off the Kaiserring had dropped a curtsey, and in answer to -Brand’s fluent and polite German said at once, “_Kommmen Sie herein, -bitte_,” and took him into a drawing-room to the right of the hall, -leaving him there while she went to fetch “_die gnadige Baronin_,” that -is to say, the Baroness von Kreuzenach. Brand remained standing, and -studied the German drawing-room to read its character as a key to that -of the family under whose roof he was coming by right of conquest, for -that, in plain words, was the meaning of his presence. - -It was a large square room, handsomely and heavily furnished in an -old-fashioned style, belonging perhaps to the Germany of Bismarck, but -with here and there in its adornment a lighter and more modern touch. -On one wall, in a gilt frame to which fat gilt cupids clung, was a -large portrait of William I. of Prussia, and on the wall opposite, in a -similar frame, a portrait of the ex-Kaiser William II. Brand saw also, -with an instant thrill of remembrance, two large steel engravings from -Winterhalter’s portraits of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He had -seen them, as a child, in his grandfather’s house at Kew, and in -the houses of schoolfellows’ grandfathers, who cherished these -representations of Victoria and Albert with almost religious loyalty. -The large square of Turkey carpet on polished boards, a mahogany -sideboard, and some stiff big armchairs of clumsily carved oak, -were reminiscent of German furniture and taste in the period of the -mid-nineteenth century, when ours was equally atrocious. The later -period had obtruded itself into that background. There was a piano in -white wood at one end of the room, and here and there light chairs -in the “New Art” style of Germany, with thin legs and straight -uncomfortable backs. The most pleasing things in the room were some -porcelain figures of Saxon and Hanover ware, little German ladies with -pleated gowns and low-necked bodices, and, on the walls, a number of -water-colour drawings, mostly of English scenes, delicately done, with -vision and a nice sense of atmosphere. - -“The younger generation thrusting out the old,” thought Brand, “and the -spirit of both of them destroyed by what has happened in five years.” - -The door opened, he told me, when he had taken stock of his -surroundings, and there came in two women, one middle-aged the other -young. He guessed that he was in the presence of Frau von Kreuzenach and -her daughter, and made his bow, with an apology for intruding upon them. -He hoped that they would not be in the least degree disturbed by his -billeting-order. He would need only a bedroom and his breakfast. - -The Baroness was courteous but rather cold in her dignity. She was a -handsome woman of about forty-eight, with very fair hair streaked with -grey, and a thin, aristocratic type of face, with thin lips. She wore a -black silk dress with some fur round her shoulders. - -“It will be no inconvenience to us, sir,” she answered in good English, -a little hard and over-emphasised. “Although the English people are -pleased to call us Huns”--here she laughed good-humouredly--“I trust -that you will not be too uncomfortable in a German house, in spite -of the privations due to our misfortunes and the severity of your -blockade.” - -In that short speech there was a hint of hostility--masked under a -graciousness of manner--which Wickham Brand did not fail to perceive. - -“As long as it is not inconvenient----” he said awkwardly. - -It was the daughter who now spoke, and Brand was grateful for her -friendly words and impressed by her undeniable and exceptional good -looks. That she was the daughter of the older woman was clear at a -glance. She had the same thin face and fair hair, but youth was on her -side, and her finely-chiselled features had no hardness of line that -comes from age or bitterness. Her hair was like spun gold, as one -sees it in Prussia more, I fancy, than in southern Germany, and her -complexion was that perfect rose-red and lily-white which often belongs -to German girls, and is doll-like if they are soft and plump, as many -are. This girl’s fault was thinness, but to Brand, not a sentimentalist -nor quickly touched by feminine influence (I have written that, but on -second thoughts believe that under Brand’s ruggedness there was a deep -strain of sentiment, approaching weakness), she seemed flower-like and -spiritual. So he told me after his early acquaintance with her. - -Her first words to him were charming. - -“We have suffered very much from the war, sir, but we welcome you to our -house, not as an enemy, because the war finished with the Armistice, but -as an Englishman who may come to be our friend.” - -“Thanks,” said Brand. - -He could find nothing else to say at the moment, but spoke that one word -gratefully. - -The mother added something to her daughter’s speech. - -“We believed the English were our friends before they declared war upon -us. We were deeply saddened by our mistake.” - -“It was inevitable,” said Brand, “after what had happened.” - -The daughter--her name was Elsa--put her hand on her mother’s arm with a -quick gesture of protest against any other words about the war. - -“I will show Captain Brand to his rooms.” - -Brand wondered at her quickness in knowing his name after one glance -at his billeting-paper, and said, “Please do not trouble, _gnàdiges -Fraulein_,” when he saw a look of disapproval, almost of alarm, on the -mother’s face. - -“It will be better for Truda to show the gentleman to his rooms. I will -ring for her.” - -Elsa von Kreuzenach challenged her mother’s authority by a smile of -amusement, and there was a slight deepening of that delicate colour -in her face. “Truda is boiling the usual cabbage for the usual -_Mittagessen._ I will go, mother.” - -She turned to Brand with a smile and bowed to him. - -“I will act as your guide upstairs, Captain Brand. After that you may -find your own way. It is not difficult.” - -Brand, who described the scene to me, told me that the girl went very -quickly up a wide flight of stairs so that in his big riding boots he -found it difficult to keep pace with her. She went down a long corridor -lined with etchings on the walls, and opened a white door leading into -a big room furnished as a library. There was a wood fire burning there, -and at a glance Brand noticed one or two decorations on the walls--a -pair of foils with a fencing-mask and gauntlets, some charcoal -drawings--one of a girl’s head, which was this girl’s when that gold -hair of hers hung in two Gretchen pig-tails--and some antlers. - -“Here you can sit and smoke your pipe,” said Elsa von Kreuzenach. “Also, -if you are bored, you can read those books. You see we have many English -authors--Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, G. K. Chesterton, Kipling--heaps. My -brother and I used to read all we could get of English books.” - -Brand remembered that Franz von Kreuzenach had read Kipling. He had -quoted “Puck of Pook’s Hill” to Eileen O’Connor. - -“Now and then,” he said, “I may read a little German.” - -“Pooh!” said the girl. “It is so dull, most of it. Not exciting, like -yours.” - -She opened another door. - -“Here is your bedroom. It used to belong to my brother Heinrich.” - -“Won’t he want it?” asked Brand. - -He could have bitten his tongue out for that question when the girl -answered it. - -“He was killed in Flanders.” - -A sudden sadness took possession of her eyes and Brand said, “I’m -sorry.” - -“Yes. I was sorry, too, and wept for weeks. He was a nice boy, so jolly, -as you say. He would have been an artist if he had lived. All those -charcoal sketches are by him.” - -She pointed to the drawing of a young man’s head over the -dressing-table. - -“That is my brother Franz. He is home again, _Gott sei dank!_ Heinrich -worshipped him.” - -Brand looked at the portrait of the man who had saved Eileen O’Connor. -He had Eileen’s letter to him in his pocket. It was a good-looking head, -clean-cut, with frank eyes, rather noble. - -“I hope we shall meet one day,” said Brand. - -Elsa von Kreuzenach seemed pleased with those words. - -“He will like to meet you--ever so much. You see, he was educated at -Oxford, and does not forget his love for England.” - -“In spite of the war?” asked Brand. - -The girl put both her hands to her breast. - -“The war!” she said. “Let us forget the years when we all went mad. It -was a madness of hate and of lies and of ignorance--on both sides. The -poor people in all countries suffered for the sins of the wicked men -who made this war against our will and called out our evil passions. -The wicked men in England were as bad as those in Germany. Now it is for -good people to build up a new world out of the ruins that war made, the -ruin of hearts.” - -She asked a direct question of Brand, earnestly. - -“Are you one of those who will go on hating?” - -Brand hesitated. He could not forget many things. He knew, so he told -me, that he had not yet killed the old hatred that had made him a sniper -in No Man’s Land. Many times it surged up again. He could not forgive -the Germans for many cruelties. To this girl, then, he hedged a little. - -“The future must wipe out the past. The peace must not be for -vengeance.” - -At those last words the blue eyes of Elsa von Kreuzenach lighted up -gladly. - -“That is the old English spirit! I have said to my mother and father a -thousand times, ‘England is generous at heart. She loves fair play. Now -that victory is hers she will put away base passions and make a noble -peace that will help us out of our agony and ruin. All our hope is with -England, and with the American President, who is the noblest man on -earth.’” - -“And your father and mother?” asked Brand. “What do they say?” - -The girl smiled rather miserably. - -“They belong to the old school. Franz and I are of the younger -generation... My father denounces England as the demon behind all the -war-devils, and little mother finds it hard to forgive England for -joining the war against us, and because the English Army killed -Heinrich. You must be patient with them.” - -She spoke as though Brand belonged already to their family life and -would need great tact. - -She moved towards the door, and stood framed there in its white -woodwork, a pretty figure. - -“We have two maidservants for this great house,” she said. “The war -has made us poor. Truda and Gretchen they are called. They are -both quarrelling for the pleasure of waiting on you. They are both -frightfully excited to have an English officer in the house.” - -“Queer!” said Brand, laughing. - -“Why queer?” asked Elsa von Kreuzenach. “I am a little excited, too.” - -She made a half-curtsey, like an early Victorian girl; and then closed -his door, and Brand was sorry, as he told me quite frankly, that he was -left alone. - -“The girl’s a pretty piece of Dresden china,” he said. - -When I chaffed him with a “Take care, old lad!” he only growled and -muttered, “Oh, to hell with that! I suppose I can admire a pretty thing, -even if it’s made in Germany?” - -Brand told me that he met Elsa’s father and brother on the third evening -that he slept in the Kreuzenachs’ house. When he arrived that evening at -about five o’clock, the maid-servant, Truda, who “did” his bedroom and -dusted his sitting-room with a German passion for cleanliness and with -many conversational advances, informed him with a look of mysterious -importance that the “Old Man” wanted to see him in the drawing-room. - -“What old man?” asked Brand, at which Truda giggled and said, “The old -Herr Baron.” - -“He hates the English like ten thousand devils,” added Truda -confidentially. - -“Perhaps I had better not go then,” was Brand’s answer. - -Truda told him that he would have to go. When the old Herr Baron asked -for a thing it had to be given him. The only person who dared to disobey -him was Frâulein Elsa, who was very brave and a “_hubsches Madchen._” - -Brand braced himself for the interview, but felt extremely nervous -when Truda rapped at the drawingroom door, opened it, and announced in -German: “The English officer!” - -The family von Kreuzenach was in full strength, obviously waiting for -his arrival. The Baroness was in an evening gown, of black silk showing -her bare neck and arms. She was sitting stiffly in a high-backed chair -by the piano, and was very handsome in her cold way. - -Her husband, General von Kreuzenach, was pretending to read a book by -the fireside. He was a tall, bald-headed, heavy-jowled man with a short -white moustache. The ribbon of the Iron Cross was fastened to the top -buttonhole of his frock-coat. - -Elsa was sitting on a stool by his side, and on a low seat, with his -back to the fire, was a tall young man with his left arm in a sling, -whom Brand knew at once to be Franz von Kreuzenach, Eileen O’Connor’s -friend. - -When Brand came into the room everybody rose in a formal, frightening -way, and Elsa’s mother rose very graciously and spoke to her husband. - -“This, Baron, is Captain Brand, the English officer who is billeted in -our house.” - -The Baron bowed stiffly to Brand. - -“I hope, sir, that my servants are attending to your needs in every way. -I beg of you to believe that as an old soldier I wish to fulfil my duty -as an officer and a gentleman, however painful the circumstances in -which you find us.” - -Brand replied with equal gravity, regretting his intrusion, and -expressing his gratitude for the great courtesy that had been shown to -him. Curiously, he told me, he had a strong temptation to laugh. The -enormous formality of the reception touched some sense of absurdity -so that he wanted to laugh loudly and wildly. Probably that was sheer -nervousness. - -“Permit me to present my son,” said the lady. “Lieutenant Franz von -Kreuzenach.” - -The young man came forward and clicked heels in the German fashion, but -his way of shaking hands and his easy “How do you do?” were perfectly -English. For a moment Brand met his eyes, and found them frank and -friendly. He had a vision of this man sitting in Eileen O’Connor’s -room, gazing at her with love in his eyes, and, afterwards, embarrassed, -shameful, and immensely sad in that trial scene. - -Elsa also shook hands with him and helped to break the hard ice of -ceremony. - -“My brother is very glad to meet you. He was at Oxford, you know. Come -and sit here. You will take tea, I am sure.” - -They had prepared tea for him specially, and Elsa served it like an -English girl, charmingly. - -Brand was not an easy conversationalist. His drawingroom manners were -_gauche_ always, and that evening in the German drawing-room he felt, he -told me, “a perfect fool,” and could think of no small talk. Franz von -Kreuzenach helped him out by talking about Oxford, and Brand felt more -at ease when he found that the young German officer knew some of his -old college friends and described a “rag” in his own third year. The -old Baron sat stiffly, listening with mask-like gravity to this -conversation. Elsa laughed without embarrassment at her brother’s -description of à “debagging” incident, when the trousers of a proctor -had been removed in “the High,” and the Frau von Kreuzenach permitted -herself a wintry smile. - -“Before the war,” she said, “we wished our children to get an English -education. Elsa went to a school at Brighton. We were very fond of -England.” - -The general joined in the conversation for the first time. - -“It was a weakness. Without offence, sir, I think that our German youth -would have been better employed at German universities, where education -is more seriously regarded, and where the national spirit is fostered -and strengthened.” - -Brand announced that he had been to Heidelberg University, and agreed -that German students take their studies more seriously than English. - -“We go to our universities for character more than for knowledge.” - -“Yes,” said the elder von Kreuzenach. “It is there the English learn -their Imperialism and political ambitions. From their point of view they -are right. English pride--so arrogant--is a great strength.” - -Franz von Kreuzenach toned down his father’s remark. - -“My father uses the word pride in its best sense--pride of race and -tradition. Personally, what struck me most at Oxford was the absence of -all deliberate philosophical influence. The men were very free in their -opinions. Most of those in my set were anti-imperialists and advanced -Liberals, in a light-hearted way. But I fancy most of them did not worry -very much about political ideas. They were up for ‘a good time,’ -and made the most of youth, in sport and companionship. They laughed -enormously. I think the Germans laugh too little. We are lacking in a -national sense of humour, except of a coarse and rustic type.” - -“I entirely disagree with you, Franz,” said the elder man sternly. “I -find my own sense of humour sufficiently developed. You are biassed by -your pro-English sympathy, which I find extraordinary and regrettable -after what has happened.” - -He turned to Brand and said that as a soldier he would understand that -courtesy to individuals did not abolish the sacred duty of hating a -country which was essentially hostile to his own in spirit and in act. - -“England,” he added, “has behaved in an unforgivable way. For many years -before the war she plotted the ruin of Germany in alliance with Russia -and France. She challenged Germany’s trade interests and national -development in every part of the globe, and built a great fleet for the -sole purpose of preventing Germany’s colonial expansion. England has -always been our enemy since she became aware of our increasing strength, -for she will brook no rival. I do not blame her, for that is the right -of her national egotism. But as a true German I have always recognised -the inevitability of our conflict.” - -Brand had no need to answer this denunciation, for Elsa von Kreuzenach -broke into her father’s speech impatiently. - -“You are too bad, father! Captain Brand does not wish to spend the -evening in political argument. You know what Franz and I think. We -believe that all the evil of the war was caused by silly old hatred and -greedy rivalries. Isn’t the world big enough for the free development -of all its peoples? If not, then life is not worth living, and the human -race must go on killing each other until the world is a wilderness.” - -“I agree,” said Brand, looking at Elsa. “The peoples of Europe must -resist all further incitements to make war on each other. Surely the -American President has given us all a new philosophy by his call for a -League of Nations, and his promise of peace without vengeance, with the -self-determination of peoples.” - -“That is true,” said Franz von Kreuzenach. “The Allies are bound by -Wilson’s ‘Fourteen Points.’ We agreed to the Armistice on that basis, -and it is because of the promise that lies in those clauses--the charter -of a New World--that the German people, and the Austrians, accept their -defeat with resignation, and look forward with hope--in spite of our -present ruin--to a greater liberty and to a more beautiful democracy.” - -“Yes,” said Elsa, “what my brother says, Captain Brand, explains the -spirit with which your English soldiers have been received on the Rhine. -Perhaps you expected hostility, hatred, black looks? No, the German -people welcome you, and your American comrades, because the bitterness -of defeat is softened by the knowledge that there is to be no more -bloodshed--alas, we are drained of blood!--and that the peace will begin -a nobler age in history for all of us.” - -The general shifted in his chair so that it scraped the polished boards. -A deep wave of colour swept up to his bald head. - -“Defeat?” he said. “My son and daughter talk of defeat!... There was no -defeat. The German Armies were invincible to the last. They never lost a -battle. They fell back, not because of their own failure but because the -heart of the German people was sapped by the weakness of hunger, caused -by the infamous English blockade, which starved our women and children. -_Ja_, even our manhood was weakened by starvation. Still more, our -civilians were poisoned by a pestilential heresy learnt in Russia, a -most damnable pacifism, which destroyed their will to win. Our glorious -armies were stabbed in the back by anarchy and treachery.” - -“It is defeat, sir, all the same,” said Franz von Kreuze-nach, with grim -deference, to his father. “Let us face the tragedy of the facts. As an -officer of the rearguard defence, I have to admit, too, that the German -Armies were beaten in the field. Our war machine was worn out and -disintegrated by the repeated blows that struck us. Our man-power was -exhausted, and we could no longer resist the weight of the Allied -Armies. The Americans had immense reserves of men to throw in against -us. We could only save ourselves by retreat. Field Marshal von -Hindenburg himself has admitted that.” - -The general’s face was no longer flushed with angry colour. He was very -white, with a kind of dead look, except for the smouldering fire of his -eyes. He spoke in a low, choking voice, in German. - -“If I had known that a son of mine, bearing the name of Franz von -Kreuzenach, would have admitted the defeat of the German Army before an -officer of an enemy power I would have strangled him at birth.” - -He grasped the arms of his chair and made one or two efforts to rise, -but could not do so. - -“Anna!” he commanded harshly, to his wife, “give me your arm. This -officer will excuse me, I trust. I feel unwell.” - -Franz von Kreuzenach went quickly over to his father, before his mother -could rise. - -“Father, I deeply regret having pained you. The truth is tragic -enough----” - -The old man answered him ferociously. - -“You have not spoken truth, but lies. You are a disgrace to the rank of -a German officer and to my name. You have been infected by the poison of -socialism and anarchy. Anna--your arm!” - -Elsa’s mother stooped over her husband and lifted his hand to her lips. - -“_Mein lieber Mann_,” she said very softly. - -The old man rose stiffly, leaning on his wife’s arm, and bowed to Brand. - -“I beg you to excuse me, sir. As a German soldier I do not admit the -words ‘defeat’ or ‘retreat,’ even when spoken within my own household. -The ever-glorious German Army has never been defeated, and has never -retreated--except according to plan. I wish you goodnight.” - -Brand was standing, and bowed to the general in silence. - -It was a silence which lasted after the husband and wife had left the -room. The girl Elsa was mopping her eyes. Franz von Kreuzenach stood, -very pale, by the empty chair in which his father had sat. He was the -first to speak. - -“I’m awfully sorry. I ought not to have spoken like that before my -father. He belongs to the old school.” - -Brand told me that he felt abominably uncomfortable, and wished with all -his heart that he had not been billeted in this German house. - -Elsa rose quickly and put her hand on her brother’s arm. - -“I am glad you spoke as you did, Franz. It is hateful to hurt our dear -father, but it is necessary to tell the truth now, or we cannot save -ourselves, and there will be no new era in the world. It is the younger -generation that must re-shape the world, and that cannot be done if we -yield to old falsehoods and go the way of old traditions.” - -Franz raised his sister’s hand to his lips, and Brand told me that his -heart softened at the sight of that caress, as it had when Elsa’s mother -kissed the hand of her old husband. It seemed to him symbolical of the -two generations, standing together, the old against the young, the young -against the old. - -“In England, also,” he said, “we have those who stand by hate, and those -who would break with the old traditions and forget, as soon as possible, -old enmities.” - -“It is the new conflict,” said Franz von Kreuzenach solemnly. “It will -divide the world and many houses, as Christ’s gospel divided father from -son and blood-brothers. It is the new agony.” - -“The new hope,” said Elsa passionately. - -Brand made an early excuse to retire to his room, and Franz von -Kreuzenach conducted him upstairs and carried his candlestick. - -“Thanks,” said Brand, in the doorway of his room. Then suddenly -he remembered Eileen O’Connor’s letter, and put his hand into his -breast-pocket for his case. - -“I have a letter for you,” he said. - -“So?” The young German was surprised. - -“From a lady in Lille,” said Brand. “Miss Eileen O’Connor.” - -Franz von Kreuzenach started violently, and for a moment or two he -was incapable of speech. When he took the letter from Brand his hand -trembled. - -“You know her?” he said at last. - -“I knew her in old days and met her in Lille,” answered - -Brand. “She told me of your kindness to her. I promised to thank you -when I met you. I do so now.” - -He held out his hand and Franz von Kreuzenach grasped it in a hard grip. - -“She is well?” he asked, with deep emotion. - -“Well and happy,” said Brand. - -“That is good.” - -The young German was immensely embarrassed, absurdly self-conscious and -shy. - -“In Lille,” he said, “I had the honour of her friendship.” - -“She told me,” answered Brand. “I saw some of your songs in her room.” - -“Yes, I sang to her.” - -Franz von Kreuzenach laughed awkwardly. Then suddenly a look of -something like fear--certainly alarm--changed his expression. - -“I must beg of you to keep secret any knowledge of my--my -friendship--with that lady. She acted--rashly. If it were known, even -by my father, that I did--what I did--my honour, perhaps even my life, -would be unsafe. You understand, I am sure.” - -“Perfectly,” said Brand. - -“As a German officer,” said Franz von Kreuzenach, “I took great risk.” - -He emphasised his words. - -“As a German officer I took liberties with my duty--because of a higher -law.” - -“A higher law than discipline,” said Brand. “Perhaps a nobler duty than -the code of a German officer.” - -He spoke with a touch of irony, but Franz von Kreuzenach was unconscious -of that. - -“Our duty to God,” he said gravely. “Human pity. Love.” - -An expression of immense sentiment filled his eyes An Englishman would -have masked it more guardedly. - -“Good-night,” said Brand, “and thanks again.” - -The young German clicked his heels and bowed. - -“Good-night, sir.” - -Brand went to bed in a leisurely way, and before sleeping heard a violin -being played in the room above his own. By the tune he remembered the -words of an old song, as Eileen O’Connor had sung it in Lille, and as he -had learnt it in his own home before the war. - - “There’s one that is pure as an angel, - - And fair as the flowers of May, - - They call her the gentle maiden - - Wherever she takes her way.” - -Franz von Kreuzenach was having an orgy of sentiment, and Brand, -somehow, envied him. - - - - -V - - -Our entry into Cologne and life among the people whom we had -been fighting for four years and more was an amazing psychological -experience, and not one of us there on the Rhine could escape its subtle -influence upon our opinions and subconscious state of mind. Some of our -officers, I am sure, were utterly unaware of the change being wrought -in them by daily association with German civilians. They did not realise -how, day by day, their old beliefs on the subject of “the Hun” were -being broken down by contact with people who behaved with dignity for -the most part, and according to the ordinary rules of human nature. -Charles Fortune, our humorist, delighted to observe these things, and -his irony found ready targets in Cologne, both among British officers -and German civilians, neither of whom he spared. I remember that I -was walking one day down Hohestrasse with young Harding, after the -proclamation had been issued (and enforced with numerous arrests and -fines by the A.P.M. and the military police) that all German civilians -were to salute British officers by doffing their hats in the streets. -The absurdity of it was so great that in a crowded street..like the -Hohestrasse the civilian people would have had to remain bareheaded, -owing to the constant passing of our officers. - -Fortune saluted Harding and myself not only with one hand but with two. -He wore his “heroic” face, wonderfully noble and mystical. - -“How great and glorious is the British Army!” he said. “How immense are -the power and majesty of the temporary lieutenant! For four years and -a half have we fought to crush militarism. Nine hundred thousand men of -ours have died explosive deaths in order to abolish the philosophy -of Zabernism--you remember!--the claim of the military caste to the -servility of civilian salutes. Two million men of ours are blind, -crippled, shell-shocked, as martyrs for democracy made free of Junkerdom -by the crushing of the Hun. Now, by a slight error in logic (the -beautiful inconsistency of our English character), we arrest, fine, or -imprison any German man or child who does not bare his head before a -little English subaltern from Peckham Rye or Tooting in a ‘Gor’blimy’ -cap! How great and good we are! How free from hypocrisy! How splendid -our victory for the little peoples of the earth!” - -Young Harding, who had been returning salutes solemnly and mechanically -to great numbers of Germans, flushed a little. - -“I suppose it’s necessary to enforce respect. All the same, it’s a -horrid bore.” - -Fortune wagged his hand behind his ear to an elderly German who took off -his bowler hat. The man stared at him in a frightened way, as though the -English officer had suddenly gone mad and might bite him. - -“Strange!” said Fortune. “Not yet have they been taught the beauty of -the Guards’ salute. That man ought to be put into a dark cell, with -bread and water, and torture from 9 a.m. till mid-day on Wednesdays and -Fridays.” - -Fortune was vastly entertained by the sight of British soldiers walking -about with German families in whose houses they were billeted. Some of -them were arm-inarm with German girls, a sergeant-major was carrying -a small flaxen-haired boy on whose sailor’s cap was the word -“_Vaterland_.” - -“Disgraceful!” said Fortune, looking sternly at Harding. “In spite of -all our atrocity tales, our propaganda of righteous hate, our training -of the young idea that a Hun must be killed at sight--‘the only good -German is a dead German,’ as you remember, Harding--these soldiers -of ours are fraternising with the enemy and flirting with the enemy’s -fair-haired daughters, and carrying infant Huns shoulder-high. Look at -that sergeant-major forgetting all my propaganda. Surely he ought to cut -the throat of that baby Hindenburg! My heart aches for Blear-eyed Bill, -the Butcher of the Boche. All his work undone. All his fury fizzled. -Sad! sad!” Harding looked profoundly uncomfortable at this sarcasm. He -was billeted with a German family who treated him as an honoured friend. -The mother, a dear old soul, as he reluctantly admitted, brought him an -early cup of tea in the morning, with his shaving-water. Three times he -had refused it, remembering his oath never to accept a favour from male -or female Hun. On the fourth time his will-power weakened under the old -lady’s anxious solicitations and his desire for the luxury of tea before -dressing. He said “_Danke schön_,” and afterwards reproached himself -bitterly for his feeble resistance. He was alarmed at his own change -of heart towards these people. It was impossible for him to draw -back solemnly or with pompous and aloof dignity when the old lady’s -grandchild, a little girl of six, waylaid him in the hall dropped a -curtsey in the pretty German style, and then ran forward to kiss his -hand and say, “_Guten Tag, Herr Offizier!_” - -He bought a box of chocolate for her in the Hohestrasse and then walked -with it irresolutely, tempted to throw it into the Rhine, or to give -it to a passing Tommy. Half-an-hour later he presented it to little -Elizabeth, who received it with a cry of delight, and, jumping on to -his knee, kissed him effusively on both cheeks. Young Harding adored -children, but felt as guilty at these German kisses as though he had -betrayed his country and his faith. - -One thing which acted in favour of the Germans was the lack of manners -displayed by some young English officers in the hotels, restaurants, -and shops. In all armies there are cads, and ours was not without them, -though they were rare. The conditions of our military occupation -with absolute authority over the civilian people provided a unique -opportunity for the caddish instincts of “half-baked” youth. They came -swaggering into Cologne determined to “put it across the Hun” and “to -stand no nonsense.” So they bullied frightened waiters, rapped their -sticks on shop-counters, insulted German shop-girls, and talked loudly -about “Hunnish behaviour” in restaurants where many Germans could hear -and understand. - -Harding, Fortune and I were in the Domhof Hotel when one such scene -occurred. A group of noisy subalterns were disputing the cost of their -meal and refusing to pay for the wine. - -“You stole all the wine in Lille,” shouted one lieutenant of ours. “I’m -damned if I’ll pay for wine in Cologne.” - -“I stole no wine in Lille, sir,” said the waiter politely. “I was never -there.” - -“Don’t you insult English officers,” said one of the other subalterns. -“We are here to tread on your necks.” - -Fortune looked at me and raised his eye-brows. - -“It isn’t a good imitation,” he said. “If they want to play the game of -frightfulness, they really ought to do better than that. They don’t even -make the right kind of face.” - -Harding spoke bitterly. - -“Cads!... Cads!... Somebody ought to put them under arrest.” - -“It doesn’t really impress the Germans,” said Fortune. “They know it’s -only make-believe. You see, the foolish boys are paying their bill. -Now, if I, or Blear-eyed Bill, were to do the Junker stunt, we should at -least look the real ogres.” - -He frowned horribly, puffed out his cheeks, and growled and grumbled -with an air of senile ferocity--to the great delight of a young German -waiter watching him from a corner of the room, and already aware that -Fortune was a humorist. - -The few cads among us caused a reaction in the minds of all men of -good manners, so that they took the part of the Germans. Even various -regulations and restrictions ordered by the military governor during -the first few months of our occupation were resented more by British -officers and men than by the Germans themselves. The opera was closed, -and British officers said, “What preposterous nonsense! How are the -poor devils going to earn their living, and how are we going to amuse -ourselves?” - -The wine-concerts and restaurants were ordered to shut down at ten -o’clock, and again the British Army of Occupation “groused” exceedingly -and said, “We thought this war had been fought for liberty. Why all this -petty tyranny?” Presently these places were allowed to stay open till -eleven, and all the way down the Hohestrasse, as eleven o’clock struck, -one saw groups of British officers and men, and French and American -officers, pouring out of a _Wein-stube, Kunstler Conzert or Bier-halle_, -with farewell greetings or promises of further rendezvous with laughing -German girls, who seemed to learn English by magic. - -“Disgraceful!” said young Harding, who was a married man with a pretty -wife in England for whom he yearned with a home-sickness which he -revealed to me boyishly when we became closer friends in this German -city. - -“Not disgraceful,” said the little American doctor, who had joined us -in Cologne, “but only the fulfilment of nature’s law, which makes man -desire woman. Allah is great!... But juxtaposition is greater.” - -Dr. Small was friends with all of us, and there was not one among our -crowd who had not an affection and admiration for this little man whose -honesty was transparent, and whose vital nervous energy was like a fresh -wind to any company in which he found himself. It was Wickham Brand, -however, who had captured the doctor’s heart most of all, and I think I -was his “second best.” Anyhow, it was to me that he revealed his opinion -of Brand, and some of his most intimate thoughts. - -“Wickham has the quality of greatness,” he said. “I don’t mean to say -he’s great now. Not at all. I think he’s fumbling and groping, not sure -of himself, afraid of his best instincts, thinking his worst may be -right. But one day he will straighten all that out and have a call as -loud as a trumpet. What I like is his moodiness and bad temper.” - -“Queer taste, doctor!” I remarked. “When old Brand is in the sulks -there’s nothing doing with him. He’s like a bear with a sore ear.” - -“Sure!” said Dr. Small. “That’s exactly it. He is biting his own sore -ear. I guess with him, though, it’s a sore heart. He keeps moping and -fretting and won’t let his wounds heal. That’s what makes him different -from most others, especially you English. You go through frightful -experiences and then forget them and say, ‘Funny old world, young -fellah! Come and have a drink.’ You see civilisation rocking like a boat -in a storm, but you say, in your English way, ‘Why worry?’... Wickham -worries. He wants to put things right, and make the world safer for the -next crowd. He thinks of the boys who will have to fight in the next -war--wants to save them from his agonies.” - -“Yes, he’s frightfully sensitive underneath his mask of ruggedness,” I -said. - -“And romantic,” said the doctor. - -“Romantic?” - -“Why, yes. That girl, Eileen O’Connor, churned up his heart all right. -Didn’t you see the worship in his eyes? It made me feel good.” - -I laughed at the little doctor, and accused him of romanticism. - -“Anyhow,” I said, more seriously. “Eileen O’Connor is not without -romance herself, and I don’t know what she wrote in that letter to Franz -von Kreuzenach, but I suspect she re-opened an episode which had best -be closed.... As for Brand, I think he’s asking for trouble of the same -kind. If he sees much of that girl Elsa I won’t answer for him. She’s -amazingly pretty, and full of charm from what Brand tells me.” - -“I guess he’ll be a darned fool if he fixes up with that girl,” growled -the doctor. - -“You’re inconsistent,” I said. “Are you shocked that Wickham Brand -should fall in love with a German girl?” - -“Not at all, sonny,” said Dr. Small. “As a biologist I know you can’t -interfere with natural selection, and a pretty girl is an alluring -creature, whether she speaks German or Icelandic. But this girl, Elsa -von Kreuzenach, is not up to a high standard of eugenics.” - -I was amused by the doctor’s scientific disapproval. - -“What’s wrong with her?” I asked. “And when did you meet her?” - -“Sonny,” said the doctor, “what do you think I’ve been doing all these -weeks in Cologne? Drinking coffee at the Domhof Hotel with the A.P.M. -and his soldier-policemen? Watching the dancing-girls every evening in -wine-rooms like this?” - -We sat in a _Wein-stube_ as we talked, for the sake of light and a -little music. It was typical of a score of others in Cologne, with -settees of oak divided from each other in “cosy corners” hung with -draperies of green and red silk; and little tables to which waiters -brought relays of Rhine wines in tall thin bottles for the thirstiness -of German civilians and British officers. At one end of the room was -a small stage, and an orchestra composed of a pianist who seemed to be -suffering from a mild form of shell-shock (judging from a convulsive -twitch), a young German-Jew, who played the fiddle squeakily, and a -thin, sad-faced girl behind a ‘cello. Every now and then a bald-headed -man in evening clothes mounted the stage and begged the attention of the -company for a dance by the well-known artist Fraulein So-and-so. From -behind a curtain near the wine-bar came a dancing-girl, in the usual -ballet dress and the usual fixed and senseless smile, who proceeded to -perform Pavlova effects on a stage two yards square, while the young Jew -fiddler flattened himself against the side curtain with a restricted use -of his bow, and the pianist with the shell-shock lurched sideways as he -played to avoid her floppy skirts, and the girl behind the ‘cello drew -deep chords with a look of misery. - -“These are pretty dull spots,” I said to the little doctor, “but -where have you been spending your time? And when did you meet Elsa von -Kreuzenach?” - -Dr. Small told me that he had been seeking knowledge in the only place -where he could study social health and social disease--hospitals, -work-shops, babies’ _crèches_, slum tenements. He was scornful of -English officers and correspondents who summed up the social state of -Germany after a stroll down the Hohestrasse, a gorge of _ersatz_ pastry -(“Filth” he said) in the tea-shops, and a dinner of four courses in a -big hotel on smuggled food at fantastic prices. - -“You might as well judge Germany by the guzzling swine in this place as -England by a party of profiteers at Brighton. The poor middle-classes -and the labourers stay indoors after their day’s job and do not exhibit -their misery in the public ways.” - -“Real misery?” I asked. “Hunger?” - -Dr. Small glowered at me through his goggles. - -“Come and see. Come and see the mothers who have no milk for their -babes, and the babes who are bulbousheaded, with rickets. Come and see -the tenement lodgings where working families sit round cabbage soup as -their chief meal, with bread that ties their entrails into knots but -gives ‘em a sense of fulness not enjoyed by those who have no bread. -Man, it’s awful. It tears at one’s heart. But you needn’t go into the -slums to find hunger--four years of under-nourishment which has weakened -growing girls so that they swoon at their work or fall asleep through -weakness in the tram cars. In many of the big houses where life looks so -comfortable, from which women come out in furs, looking so rich, these -German people have not enough to eat, and what they eat is manufactured -in the chemist’s shop and the _ersatz_ factories. I found that out from -that girl, Elsa von Kreuzenach.” - -“How?” I asked. - -“She is a nurse in a babies’ _crèche_, poor child. Showed me round -with a mother-look in her eyes, while all the scrofulous kiddies cried, -‘_Guten Tag! Guten Tag!_’ like the quacking of ducks. ‘After to-morrow,’ -she said, ‘there will be no more milk for them. What can we do for them -then, doctor? They will wither and die.’ Those were her words, and I saw -her sadness. I saw something else presently. I saw her sway a little, -and she fell like that girl Marthe on the doorstep at Lille. ‘For the -love of Mike!’ I said, and when she pulled round bullied her. - -“‘What did you have for breakfast?’ I asked. - -“‘_Ersatz_ coffee,’ she said, laughing, ‘and a bit of bread. A good -_fruhstuck_, doctor.’ - -“‘Good be hanged!’ I said. ‘What did you have for lunch?’ - -“‘Cabbage soup and _ein kleines brodchen_,’ she says. ‘After four years -one gets used to it.’ - -“‘What will you have for dinner?’ said I, not liking the look of things. - -“She laughed, as though she saw a funny joke. - -“‘Cabbage soup and turnips,’ she said, ‘and a regular feast.’ - -“‘I thought your father was a Baron,’ I remarked in my sarcastic way. - -“‘That’s true,’ she says, ‘and an honest man he is, and therefore poor. -It is only the profiteers who feed well in Germany. All through the war -they waxed fat on the flesh-and-blood of the men who fought and died. -Now they steal the food of the poor by bribing the peasants to sell -their produce at any price.’ _Schleichandlung_ is the word she used. -That means ‘smuggling.’ It also means hell’s torture, I hope, for -those who do it.... So there you are. If Wickham Brand marries Elsa von -Kreuze-nach, he marries a girl whose health has been undermined by -four years’ semi-starvation. What do you think their children will be? -Rickety, tuberculous, undersized, weak-framed. Wickham Brand deserves -better luck than that, sonny.” - -I roared with laughter at the little doctor, and told him he was looking -too far ahead, as far as Brand and the German girl were concerned. This -made him angry, in his humorous way, and he told me that those who don’t -look ahead fail to see the trouble under their nose until they fall over -it. - -We left the _Wein-stube_ through a fog of smoke. Another dancing girl -was on the tiny stage, waving her arms and legs. An English officer, -slightly fuddled, was writing a cheque for his bill and persuading the -German manager to accept it. Two young French officers were staring at -the dancing-girl with hostile eyes. Five young Germans were noisy round -six tall bottles of _Liebfraumilch_. The doctor and I walked down to -the bank of the Rhine below the Hohenzollern bridge. Our sentries were -there, guarding heavy guns which thrust their snouts up from tarpaulin -covers. - -Two German women passed, with dragging footsteps, and one said wearily, -“_Ach, lieber Gott!_” - -The doctor was silent for some time after his long monologue. He stared -across the Rhine, on whose black surface lights glimmered with a milky -radiance. Presently he spoke again, and I remember his words, which -were, in a way, prophetic. - -“These German people are broken. They _had_ to be broken. They are -punished. They _had_ to be punished. Because they obeyed the call of -their leaders, which was to evil, their power has been overthrown and -their race made weak. You and I, an Englishman, an American, stand here, -by right of victory, overlooking this river which has flowed through -two thousand years of German history. It has seen the building-up of the -German people, their industry, their genius, their racial consciousness. -It has been in the rhythm of their poetry and has made the melody of -their songs. On its banks lived the little people of German fairy-tales, -and the heroes of their legends. Now there are English guns ready to -fire across the water and English, French and American soldiers pacing -this road along the Rhine, as victors and guards of victory. What hurt -to the pride of this people! What a downfall! We must be glad of that -because the German challenge to the world was not to be endured by free -peoples. That is true, and nothing can ever alter its truth or make it -seem false. I stand firm by that faith. But I see also, what before -I did not see, that many of these Germans were but slaves of a system -which they could not change, and spellbound by old traditions, old -watch-words, belonging to the soul of their race, so that when they were -spoken they had to offer their lives in sacrifice. High powers above -them arranged their destiny, and the manner and measure of their -sacrifice, and they had no voice, or strength, or knowledge, to -protest--these German peasants, these boys who fought, these women and -children who suffered and starved. Now it is they, the ignorant and -the innocent, who must go on suffering, paying in peace for what their -rulers did in war. Men will say that is the Justice of God. I can see -no loving God’s work in the starvation of babes, nor in the weakening of -women so that mothers have no milk. I see only the cruelty of men. It is -certain now that, having won the war, we must be merciful in peace. We -must relieve the blockade, which is still starving these people. We must -not go out for vengeance but rather to rescue. For this war has involved -the civilian populations of Europe and is not limited to armies. A -treaty of peace will be with Famine and Plague rather than with defeated -generals and humiliated diplomats. If we make a military peace, without -regard to the agonies of peoples, there will be a tragic price to pay -by victors as well as by vanquished. For the victors are weak too. Their -strength was nearly spent. They--except my people--were panting to -the last gasp when their enemy fell at last. They need a peace of -reconciliation for their own sakes, because no new frontiers may save -them from sharing the ruin of those they destroy, nor the disease of -those they starve. America alone comes out of the war strong and rich. -For that reason we have the power to shape the destiny of the human -race, and to heal, as far as may be, the wounds of the world. It is our -chance in history. The most supreme chance that any race has had since -the beginning of the world. All nations are looking to President Wilson -to help them out of the abyss and to make a peace which shall lead the -people out of the dark jungle of Europe. My God!... If Wilson will be -noble and wise and strong, he may alter the face of the world, and win -such victory as no mortal leader ever gained. If not--if not--there will -be anguish unspeakable, and a worse darkness, and a welter of anarchy -out of whose madness new wars will be bred, until civilisation drops -back to savagery, or disappears. _I am afraid!_” - -He spoke those last words with a terrible thrill in his rather high, -harsh voice, and I, too, standing there in the darkness, by the Rhine, -had a sense of mighty powers at work with the destiny of many peoples, -and of risks and chances and hatreds and stupidities thwarting the -purpose of noble minds and humble hearts after this four years’ -massacre.... And I was afraid. - - - - -VI - - -Symptoms of restless impatience which had appeared almost as soon as -the signing of the Armistice began to grow with intensity among all -soldiers who had been long in the zone of war. Their patience, so -enduring through the bad years, broke at last. They wanted to go home, -desperately. They wanted to get back to civil life, in civil clothes. -With the Armistice all meaning had gone out of their khaki uniform, -out of military discipline, out of distinctions of rank, and out of the -whole system of their soldiers’ life. They had done the dirty job, they -had faced all its risks, and they had gained what glory there might be -in human courage. Now they desired to get back to their own people, and -their own places, and the old ways of life and liberty. - -They remembered the terms of their service--these amateurs who had -answered the call in early days. “For the duration of the war.” Well, -the war was finished. There was to be no more fighting--and the wife -wanted her man, and the mother her son. “Demobilisation” became the word -of hope, and many men were sullen at the delays which kept them in -exile and in servitude. The men sent deputations to their officers. The -officers pulled wires for themselves which tinkled little bells as far -away as the War Office, Whitehall, if they had a strong enough pull. -One by one, friends of mine slipped away after a word of farewell and a -cheerful grin. - -“Demobbed!... Back to civvies!... Home!” - -Harding was one of those who agonised for civil liberty and release from -military restraint, and the reason of it lay in his pocket-book, where -there was the photograph of a pretty girl--his wife. - -We had become good friends, and he confided to me many things about his -state of mind with a simplicity and a sincerity which made me like -him. I never met a man more English in all his characteristics, or more -typical of the quality which belongs to our strength and our weakness. -As a Harrow boy his manners were perfect, according to the English -code--quiet, unemotional, easy, unobtrusively thoughtful of other -people’s comfort in little things. According to the French code, -he would have been considered cold, arrogant, conceited and stupid. -Certainly he had that touch of arrogance which is in all Englishmen of -the old tradition. All his education and environment had taught him to -believe that English civilisation--especially in the hunting set--was -perfect and supreme. He had a pity rather than contempt for those -unlucky enough to be born Frenchmen, Italians, or of any other race. -He was not stupid by nature--on the contrary, he had sound judgment on -matters within his range of knowledge and a rapid grasp of detail, -but his vision was shut in by those frontiers of thought which limit -public-school life in England and certain sets at Oxford who do not -break free, and do not wish to break free, from the conventional formula -of “good form,” which regulates every movement of their brain as well as -every action of their lives. It is in its way a noble formula, and makes -for aristocracy. My country, right or wrong; loyalty to King and State; -the divine right of the British race to rule uncivilised peoples for -their own good; the undoubted fact that an English gentleman is the -noblest work of God; the duties of “_noblesse oblige_,” in courage, in -sacrifice, in good maimers, and in playing the game, whatever the game -may be, in a sporting spirit. - -When I was in Harding’s company I knew that it was ridiculous to discuss -any subject which lay beyond that formula. It was impossible to suggest -that England had ever been guilty of the slightest injustice, a touch of -greed, or a tinge of hypocrisy, or something less than wisdom. - -To him that was just traitor’s talk. A plea for the better understanding -of Ireland, for a generous measure of “self-determination” would -have roused him to a hot outburst of anger. The Irish to him were all -treacherous, disloyal blackguards, and the only remedy of the Irish -problem was, he thought, martial law and machine-gun demonstrations, -stern and, if need be, terrible. I did not argue with him, or chaff him -as some of his comrades did, and keeping within the prescribed limits of -conversation set by his code, we got on together admirably. Once only -in those days on the Rhine did Harding show an emotion which would have -been condemned by his code. It was due, no doubt, to that nervous -fever which made some wag change the word “demobilisation” into -“demoralisation.” - -He had a room in the Domhof Hotel, and invited me to drink a whiskey -with him there one evening. When I sat on the edge of the bed while he -dispensed the drink, I noticed on his dressing-table a large photograph -of a girl in evening dress--a wonderfully pretty girl, I thought. - -He caught my glance, and after a moment’s hesitation and a visible -blush, said: “My wife.... We were married before I came out, two years -ago exactly.” - -He put his hand into the breast-pocket of his tunic and pulling out a -pocket-book, opened it with a snap, and showed me another photograph. - -“That’s a better one of her.” - -I congratulated him, but without listening to my words he asked me -rather awkwardly whether I could pull any strings for him to get -“demobbed.” - -“It’s all a question of ‘pull,’” he said, “and I’m not good at that kind -of thing. But I want to get home.” - -“Everybody does,” I said. - -“Yes, I know, and of course I want to play the game, and all that. But -the fact is, my wife--she’s only a kid, you know--is rather hipped with -my long absence. She’s been trying to keep herself merry and bright, and -all that, with the usual kind of war-work. You know--charity bazaars, -fancy-dress balls for the wounded, Red Cross work, and all that. Very -plucky, too. But the fact is, some of her letters lately have been -rather--well--rather below par--you know--rather chippy and all that. -The fact is, old man, she’s been too much alone, and anything you can do -in the way of a pull at the War Office----” - -I told him bluntly that I had as much influence at the War Office as the -charwoman in Room M.I. 8, or any other old room--not so much--and he was -damped, and apologised for troubling me. However, I promised to write -to the one High Bird with whom I had a slight acquaintance, and this -cheered him up considerably. - -I stayed chatting for some time--the usual small-talk--and it was only -when I said good-night that he broached another subject which interested -me a good deal. - -“I’m getting a bit worried about Wickham Brand,” he remarked in a casual -kind of way. - -“How’s that?” - -I gathered from Harding’s vague, disjointed sentences that Brand was -falling into the clutches of a German hussy. He had seen them together -at the Opera--they had met as if by accident--and one evening he had -seen them together down by the Rhine outside Cologne. He was bound to -admit the girl was remarkably good-looking, and that made her all -the more dangerous. He hated to mention this, as it seemed like -scandal-mongering about “one of the best,” but he was frightfully -disturbed by the thought that Brand, of all men, should fall a victim -to the wiles of a “lady Hun.” He knew Brand’s people at home--Sir Amyas -Brand, the Member of Parliament, and his mother, who was a daughter of -the Harringtons. - -They would be enormously “hipped” if Wickham were to do anything -foolish. It was only because he knew that I was Wickham’s best chum that -he told me these things, in the strictest confidence. A word of warning -from me might save old Brand from getting into a horrible mess--“and all -that.” - -I pooh-poohed Harding’s fears, but when I left him to go to my own -billet I pondered over his words, and knew that there was truth in them. - -There was no doubt to my mind that Brand was in love with Elsa von -Kreuzenach. At least, he was going through some queer emotional phase -connected with her entry into his life, and he was not happy about it, -though it excited him. The very day after Harding spoke to me on the -subject I was, involuntarily, a spy upon Brand and Fraülein Elsa on a -journey when we were fellow-travellers, though they were utterly unaware -of my presence. It was in one of the long electric trams which go -without a stop from Cologne to Bonn. I did not see Brand until I had -taken my seat in the small first-class smoking car. Several middle-class -Germans were there, and I was wedged between two of them in a corner. -Brand and a girl, whom I guessed to be Elsa von Kreuzenach, were on -the opposite seat, but farthest away from me and screened a little by -a German lady with a large feathered hat. If Brand had looked round the -compartment he would have seen me at once, and I waited to nod to -him, but never once did he glance my way, but turned slightly sideways -towards the girl, so that I only saw his profile. Her face was, in -the same way, turned a little to him, and I could see every shade of -expression which revealed her moods as she talked, and the varying -light in her eyes. She was certainly a pretty thing, exquisite, even, in -delicacy of colour and fineness of feature, with that “spun-gold” hair -of hers; though I thought (remembering Dr. Small’s words) that she had a -worn and fragile look which robbed her of the final touch of beauty. For -some time they exchanged only a few words now and then, which I could -not hear, and I was reading a book when I heard Brand say in his clear, -rather harsh voice: “Will your people be anxious about you?” - -The girl answered in a low voice. I glanced up and saw that she was -smiling, not at Brand, but at the countryside which seemed to travel -past us as the tram went on its way. It was the smile of a girl to whom -life meant something good just then. - -Brand spoke again. - -“I should hate to let your mother think that I have been disloyal to her -confidence. Don’t let this friendship of ours be spoilt by secrecy. I am -not afraid of it!” - -He laughed in a way that was strange to me. There was a note of joy in -it. It was a boy’s laugh, and Brand had gone beyond boyhood in the war. -I saw one or two of the Germans look up at him curiously, and then stare -at the girl, not in a friendly way. She was unconscious of their gaze, -though a wave of colour swept her face. For a second she laid her hand -on Brand’s brown fist, and it was a quick caress. - -“Our friendship is good!” she said. - -She spoke these words very softly, in almost a whisper, but I heard them -in spite of the rattle of the tram-car and the gutteral argument of two -Germans next to me. Those were the only words I heard her say on that -journey to Bonn, and after that Brand talked very little, and then only -commonplace remarks about the time and the scenery. But what I had heard -was revealing, and I was disturbed, for Brand’s sake. - -His eyes met mine as I passed out of the car, but they were unseeing -eyes. He stared straight through me to some vision beyond. He gave his -hand to Elsa von Kreuzenach, and they walked slowly up from the station -and then went inside the cathedral. I had business in Bonn with officers -at our headquarters in the hotel “Der Goldene Stern.” Afterwards I had -lunch with them, and then, with one, went to Beethoven’s house--a little -shrine in which the spirit of the master still lives, with his old -instruments, his manuscript sheets of music, and many relics of his life -and work. - -It was at about four o’clock in the afternoon that I saw Brand and the -German girl again. There was a beautiful dusk in the gardens beyond the -University, with a ruddy glow through the trees when the sun went down, -and then a purple twilight. Some German boys were playing leapfrog -there, watched by British soldiers, and townsfolk passed on their way -home. I strolled the length of the gardens, and at the end which is -near the old front of the University buildings I saw Brand and Elsa von -Kreuzenach together on a wooden seat. It was almost dark where they sat -under the trees, but I knew Brand by his figure and by the tilt of -his field-cap, and the girl by the white fur round her neck. They were -holding hands like lovers in a London park, and when I passed them I -heard Brand speak. - -“I suppose this was meant to be. Fate leads us...” - -When I went back to Cologne by tram that evening I wondered whether -Brand would confide his secret to me. We had been so much together -during the last phase of the war and had talked so much in intimate -friendship that I guessed he would come one day and let me know this new -adventure of his soul. - -Several weeks passed and he said no word of this,-although we went for -walks together and sat smoking sometimes in _cafés_ after dinner. It had -always been his habit to drop into deep silences, and now they lasted -longer than before. Now and then, however, he would be talkative, -argumentative, and passionate. At times there was a new light in -his eyes, as though lit by some inward fire. And he would smile -unconsciously as he blew out clouds of smoke, but more often he looked -worried, nervous, and irritable, as though passing through some new -mental crisis. - -He spoke a good deal about German psychology and the German point of -view, illustrating his remarks sometimes by references to conversations -with Franz von Kreuzenach, with whom he often talked. He had come to -the conclusion that it was quite hopeless to convince even the -broadest-minded Germans that they were guilty of the war. They -admitted freely enough that their military party had used the Serbian -assassination and Austrian fury as the fuel for starting the blaze -in Europe. Even then they believed that the Chancellor and the civil -Ministry of State had struggled for peace until the Russian movements of -troops put the military party into the saddle so that they might ride to -hell. But in any case it was, Brand said, an unalterable conviction of -most Germans that sooner or later the war had been bound to come, as -they were surrounded by a ring of enemies conspiring to thwart their -free development and to overthrow their power. They attacked first as -a means of self-defence. It was an article of faith with them that they -had fought a defensive warfare from the start. - -“That is sheer lunacy!” I said. Brand laughed, and agreed. - -“Idiotic in the face of plain facts, but that only shows how strong is -the belief of people in their own righteousness. I suppose even now most -English people think the Boer War was just and holy. Certainly at the -time we stoned all who thought otherwise. Yet the verdict of the whole -world was against us. They regarded that war as the brutal aggression of -a great power upon a small and heroic people.” - -“But surely,” I said, “a man like Franz von Kreu-zenach admits -the brutality of Germany in Belgium--the shooting of. priests and -civilians--the forced labour of girls--the smashing of machinery--and -all the rest of it?” - -Brand said that Franz von Kreuzenach deplored the “severity” of German -acts, but blamed the code of war which justified such acts. It was not -his view that Germans had behaved with exceptional brutality, but that -war itself is a brutal way of argument. “We must abolish war,” he says, -“not pretend to make it kind.” As far as that goes, I agree with him. - -“How about poison gas, the _Lusitania_, the sinking of hospital ships, -submarine warfare?” - -Brand shrugged his shoulders. - -“The German answer is always the same. War is war, and they were hard -pressed by our superiority in material, man-power and sea-power. We were -starving them to death with our blockade. They saw their children dying -and diseased, their old people carried to the grave, their men weakened. -They had to break through somehow, anyhow, to save their race. I don’t -think we should have stopped at much if England had been ringed round -with enemy ships and the kids were starving in Mayfair and Maida Vale, -and every town and hamlet.” - -He laughed, with a shrug of his shoulders, as he lit his pipe for about -the fifteenth time. - -“Argument is no good,” he said. “I’ve argued into the early hours of the -morning with that fellow Franz von Kreuzenach, who is a fine fellow and -the whitest man I’ve met in Germany. Nothing will convince him that his -people were, more guilty than ourselves. Perhaps he’s right. History -will decide. Now we must start afresh--wipe out the black past, confess -that though the Germans started the war we were all possessed by the -devil--and exorcise ourselves. I believe the German people are ready -to turn over a new leaf and start a fresh chapter of history if we will -help them and give them a chance. They have an immense hope that England -and America will not push them over into the bottomless abyss, now that -they have fulfilled Wilson’s demand to get rid of their old rulers and -fall into line with the world’s democracy. If that hope fails them they -will fall back to the old philosophy of hatred, with vengeance as its -goal--and the damned thing will happen again in fifteen--twenty--thirty -years.” - -Brand made one remark that evening which referred, I fancy, to his love -affair with Elsa von Kreuzenach. - -“There is so much folly in the crowd that one despairs of reaching a -higher stage of civilisation. I am falling back on individualism. The -individual must follow his own ideals, strive for his own happiness, -find friendship and a little love where he can, and stand apart from -world problems, racial rivalries, international prejudices, as far as -he may without being drawn into the vortex. Nothing that he can do -will alter human destiny, or the forces of evolution, or the cycles of -history, which make all striving futile. Let him get out of the rain and -comfort himself with any human warmth he can find. Two souls in contact -are company enough.” - -“Sometimes,” I said, “mob passion tears them asunder and protests -against their union with stones or outlaw judgment. Taboo will exist for -ever in human society, and it is devilish unpleasant for individuals who -violate the rules.” - -“It needs courage,” said my friend. “The risk is sometimes worth -taking.” - - - - -VII - - -Brand decided to take the risk, and though he asked my advice -beforehand, as a matter of friendship, I knew my warnings were useless. -It was about a month after that train journey to Bonn that he came into -my room at the Domhof, looking rather pale but with a kind of glitter in -his eyes. - -“I may as well tell you,” he said abruptly, “that I am going to marry a -German girl.” - -“Elsa von Kreuzenach?” - -“Yes. How did you know?” - -“Just a guess.” - -“It’s against her parents’ wish,” he said, “to say nothing of my -parents, who think I have gone mad. Elsa and I will have to play a lone -hand.” - -“‘Lone’ is not the word,” I suggested. “You are breaking that taboo -we talked of. You will be shunned by every friend you have in the -world--except one or two queer people like myself”--(here he said, -“Thanks,” and grinned rather gratefully)--“and both you and she will be -pariahs in England, Germany, and anywhere on the wide earth where there -are English, Germans, French, Americans and others who fought the war. I -suppose you know that?” - -“Perfectly,” he answered gravely. - -I told him that I was amazed that he of all men should fall in love with -a German girl--he who had seen all the abomination of the war, and had -come out to it with a flaming idealism. To that he answered savagely: -“Flaming idealism be blowed! I came out with blood-lust in my heart, and -having killed until I was sick of killing--German boys who popped their -heads over the parapet--I saw that the whole scheme of things was wrong, -and that the grey men had no more power of escape than the brown men. We -had to go on killing each other because we were both under the same -law, thrust upon us by those directing the infernal machinery of -world-politics. But that’s not the point, and it’s old and stale, -anyhow.” - -“The point is,” I said, “that you will be looked upon as a traitor by -many of your best pals, that you will smash your father and mother, and -that this girl Elsa and you will be profoundly miserable.” - -“We shall be enormously and immensely happy,” he answered, “and that -outweighs everything.” - -He told me that he needed happiness. For more than four years he had -suffered agony of mind in the filth and mud of war. He craved for -beauty, and Elsa fulfilled his ideal. He had been a lonely devil, -and Elsa had offered him the only cure for the worst disease in life, -intimate and eternal love. - -Something prompted me to say words which I deeply regretted as soon as -they were spoken. It was the utterance of a subconscious thought. - -“There is a girl, not German, who might have cured your loneliness. You -and Eileen O’Connor would have made good mates.” - -For some reason he was hit rather hard by that remark. He became -exceedingly pale, and for a moment or two did not answer me. I thought -he would blurt out some angry reply, damning my impudence, but when he -spoke it was in a grave, gentle way which seemed to me more puzzling. - -“Eileen would make a fine wife for any man she liked. But she’s above -most of us.” - -We stayed up talking nearly all that night, and Wickham Brand -described one scene within his recent experiences which must have been -sensational. It was when he announced to the family von Kreuzenach that -he loved Elsa and desired her hand in marriage. - -Brand’s sense of humour came back to him when he told me of this -episode, and he laughed now at the frightfulness of his ordeal. It was -he who had insisted upon announcing the news to Elsa’s parents, to avoid -any charge of dishonesty. Elsa herself was in favour of hiding their -love until peace was declared, when, perhaps, the passionate hostility -of her parents to England might be abated. For Brand’s sake, also, she -thought it would be better. But she yielded to his argument that secrecy -might spoil the beauty of their friendship, and give it an ugly taint. - -“We’ll go through with it straight from the start,” he had cried. - -Elsa’s answer was quick and glad. - -“I have no fear now of anything in the world except the loss of you!” - -Franz von Kreuzenach was the first to know, and Elsa told him. He seemed -stunned with surprise, and then immensely glad, as he took his sister in -his arms and kissed her. - -“Your marriage with an English officer,” he said, “will be the symbol of -reconciliation between England and Germany.” - -After that he remembered his father and mother, and was a coward at -the thought of their hostility. The idea of telling his father, as Elsa -asked him to do, put him into what Brand called “the bluest of blue -funk.” He had the German reverence for parental authority, and though he -went as far as the door-handle of his father’s study he retreated, and -said in a boyish way, speaking in English, as usual, with Brand and his -sister: “I haven’t the pluck! I would rather face shell-fire than my -father’s wrath.” - -It was Brand who “went over the top.” - -He made his announcement formally, in the drawingroom after dinner, in -the curiously casual way which proved him a true Englishman. He cleared -his throat (he told me, grinning at his own mannerism), and during a -gap in the conversation said to the General: “By the way, sir, I have -something rather special to mention to-night.” - -“_Bitte?_” said the old General, with his hard, deliberate courtesy. - -“Your daughter and I,” said Brand, “wish to be married as soon as -possible. I have the honour to ask your consent.” - -Brand told me of the awful silence which followed his statement. It -seemed interminable. Franz von Kreuze-nach, who was present, was as -white as though he had been condemned to death by court-martial. Elsa -was speechless, but came over to Brand’s side and held his hand. Her -mother had the appearance of a lady startled by the sudden appearance of -a poisonous snake. The General sat back in his chair, grasping its arms -and gasping for breath as though Brand had hit him in the stomach. - -It was the mother who spoke first, and ignoring Brand completely, she -addressed her daughter harshly. - -“You are mad, Elsa!” - -“Yes, mother,” said the girl. “I am mad with joy.” - -“This English officer insults us intolerably,” said the mother, still -ignoring Brand by any glance. “We were forced to receive him into our -house. At least he might have behaved with decency and respect.” - -“Mother,” said Elsa, “this gentleman has given me the great honour of -his love.” - -“To accept it,” said the lady, “would be a dishonour so dreadful for a -good German girl that I refuse to believe it possible.” - -“It is true, mother, and I am wonderfully happy.” - -Elsa went over to her mother, sinking down on her knees, and kissing -the lady’s hand. But Frau von Kreu-zenach withdrew her hand quickly, and -then rose from her chair and stood behind her husband, with one hand on -his shoulder. - -The old man had found his means of speech at last. - -He spoke in a low, stern voice to his daughter. Brand was ignored by him -as by the mother. They did not recognise his presence. - -“My daughter,” he said (if Brand remembered his words) “the German -people have been brought to ruin and humiliated by one nation in Europe -who was jealous of our power and genius. That nation was England, our -treacherous, hypocritical enemy. Without England, France would have been -smashed. Without England, our Emperor would have prevailed over all his -enemies. Without the English blockade we should not have been weakened -by hunger, deprived of the raw material necessary to victory, starved so -that our children died and our will to win was sapped. They were English -soldiers who killed my dear son Heinrich, and your brother. The flower -of German manhood was slain by the English in Flanders and on the -Somme.” - -The General spoke very quietly, with an intensity of effort to be calm. -But suddenly his voice rose, said Brand, to a kind of harsh shout. - -“Any German girl who permits herself to love an Englishman is a -traitorous hussy. I would have her stripped and flogged. The curse of -our old German God shall follow her.” - -Another silence, in which there was no sound except the noisy breathing -of the old man, was broken by the hard voice of Frau von Kreuzenach. - -“Your father has spoken, Elsa. There is no more to say.” - -Elsa had become very pale, but she was smiling at Brand, he told me, and -still held his hand in a tight grip. - -“There is something more to say, my dear father and mother,” she -answered. “It is that I love Captain Brand, and that I will follow him -anywhere in the world if he will take me. For love is stronger than -hate, and above all nationality.” - -It was Franz von Kreuzenach who spoke now. He was standing at the table, -facing his father, and it was to his father that he talked. He said that -Elsa was right about love. In spite of the war, the souls of men and -women were not separated by racial boundaries. When two souls touched -and mingled, no hatred of peoples, no patriotic passion, could -intervene. Elsa’s love for an English gentleman was but a symbol of the -peace that was coming, when all countries would be united in a Society -of Nations with equal rights and equal duties, and a common brotherhood. -They saw in the streets of Cologne that there was no natural, inevitable -hatred between English and Germans. The Army of Occupation had proved -itself to be an instrument of goodwill between those who had tried -to kill each other during four years of slaughter. Captain Brand had -behaved with the most charming courtesy and chivalry, according to the -traditions of an English gentleman, and he, Franz von Kreuzenach, was -glad and honoured because this officer desired to take Elsa for his -wife. Their marriage would be a consecration of the new peace. - -The father listened to him silently, except for that hard noise of -breathing. When his son uttered those last words, the old man leaned -forward in his chair, and his eyes glittered. - -“Get out of my house, _Schweinhund!_ Do not come near me again, or I -will denounce you as a traitor and shoot you like a dog.” - -He turned to Elsa with outstretched hand. - -“Go up to bed, girl. If you were younger I would flog you with my -hunting-whip.” - -For the first time he spoke to Brand, controlling his rage with a -convulsive effort. - -“I have not the power to evict you from the house. For the time being -the German people of the Rhineland are under hostile orders. Perhaps you -will find another billet more to your convenience, and more agreeable to -myself.” - -“To-night, sir,” said Brand, and he told me that he admired the old -man’s self-control and his studied dignity. - -Elsa still clasped his hand, and before her family he kissed her. - -“With your leave, or without leave,” he said, “your daughter and I will -be man and wife, for you have no right to stand between our love.” - -He bowed and left the room, and, in an hour, the house. - -Franz von Kreuzenach came into his room before he left, and wrung his -hand. - -“I must go, too,” he said. “My father is very much enraged with me. It -is the break between the young and the old--the new conflict, as we were -saying one day.” - -He was near weeping, and Brand apologised for being the cause of so much -trouble. - -In the hall Elsa came to Brand as the orderly carried out his bags. - -“To-morrow,” she said, “we will meet at Elizabeth von Detmold’s--my true -friend.” - -Her eyes were wet with tears, but she was smiling, and there was, said -Brand, a fine courage shining in her face. - -She put her hands on Brand’s shoulders and kissed him, to the deep -astonishment and embarrassment of the orderly, who stood by. It was from -this man, Brock, that the news of Brand’s “entanglement” spread, -through other orderlies, to officers of his mess, as he knew by the cold -shoulder that some of them turned to him. - - - - -VIII. - - -I met Elsa and Franz von Kreuzenach at the house of Elizabeth von -Detmold in the Hohenzollernring, which became a meeting-place for Brand -and the girl to whom he was now betrothed. Dr. Small and I went round -there to tea at Brand’s invitation, and I spent several evenings there -owing to the friendship of Elizabeth von Detmold, who seemed to like my -company. That lady was in many ways remarkable, and I am bound to say -that in spite of my repugnance to many qualities of the German character -I found her charming. The tragedy of the war had hit her with an -almost particular malignancy. Married in 1914 to a young officer of the -Prussian Guard, she was widowed at the first battle of Ypres. Her three -brothers had been killed in 1915, ‘16 and ‘17. Both her parents had died -during the war, owing to its accumulating horror. At twenty-six years of -age she was left alone in her big house with hardly enough money for its -upkeep, and not enough to supplement the rigid war rations which were -barely sufficient for life. I suppose there were thousands of young -women in Germany--hundreds of thousands--who had the same cause for -sorrow (we do not realise how German families were massacred in that -blood-bath of war, so that even French and British losses pale in -tragedy before their piled dead), but there were few, I am sure, who -faced their grief with such high courage and such unembittered charity. -Like Elsa von Kreuzenach, she devoted her days to suffering childhood in -the _crèches_ and feeding-centres which she had helped to organise, and -she spent many of her evenings in working-women’s clubs, and sometimes -in working-men’s clubs, where she read and lectured to them on social -problems. The war had made her an ardent pacifist, and, to some -extent, a revolutionary of the Liebknecht school. She saw no hope for -civilisation so long as the junker caste remained in Europe, and the -philosophy of militarism, which she believed stood fast not only -in Germany but in France and England, and other nations. She had a -passionate belief, like many other German people at that time, in -President Wilson and his League of Nations, and put all her hopes in the -United States as the one power in the world who could make a peace of -reconciliation and establish a new brotherhood of peoples. After that -she looked to a social revolution throughout the world by which the -working classes should obtain full control of their own destiny and -labour. - -I found it strange to hear that patrician girl, for she was one of -the aristocratic caste, with an elegance that came from long breeding, -adopting the extreme views of revolutionary socialism, not as a pretty -intellectual theory, but with a pasisonate courage that might lead her -to prison or to death in the conflict between the old powers and the -new. - -To Elsa von Kreuzenach she behaved in a protective and mothering way, -and it seemed to me that “Brand’s girl,” as Dr. Small called her, was -the spiritual child of this stronger and more vital character. Elsa, -was, I fancy, timid of those political and pacifist ideas which -Elizabeth von Detmold stated with such frank audacity. She cherished -the spirit of the human charity which gave them their motive power, -but shrank from the thought of the social strife and change which must -precede them. Yet there was nothing doll-like in her character. There -were moments when I saw her face illumined by a kind of mediaeval -mysticism which was the light of a spirit revealed perhaps by the -physical casket which held it, insecurely. Truly she was as pretty and -delicate as a piece of Dresden china, but for Brand’s sake I did not -like the fragile look which hinted at a quick fading of her flower-like -beauty. Her adoration for Brand was, in my opinion, rather pitiful. It -was very German, too, in its meek reverence, as of a mediaeval maid -to knighthood. I prefer the way of French womanhood, convinced of -intellectual equality with men, and with their abiding sense of humour; -or the arrogance of the English girl, who makes her lover prove his -mettle by quiet obedience. Elsa followed Brand with her eyes wherever -he moved, touched his hard, tanned hand with little secret caresses, -and whenever he spoke her eyes shone with gladness at the sound of his -voice. I liked her better when she was talking to our little doctor or -to myself, and, therefore, not absorbed in sentiment. At these times she -was frank and vivacious, and, indeed, had an English way with her which -no doubt she had learnt in her Brighton school. - -Brand interested me intensely at these times. Sometimes I found myself -doubting whether he was really so much in love with his German girl as -he imagined himself to be. I noticed that he was embarrassed by Elsa’s -public demonstrations of love--that way she had of touching his hand, -and another trick of leaning her head against his shoulder. As a typical -Englishman, in some parts of his brain at least, he shrank from exposing -his affection. It seemed to me also that he was more interested in -political and psychological problems than in the by-play of love’s -glances and revealings. He argued long and deeply with Elizabeth von -Detmold on the philosophy of Karl Marx, the anarchist movement in -Berlin, and on the possibility of a Rhineland republic, which was then -being advocated by a party in Cologne and Mainz whose watchword was -“_Los von Berlin!_” and freedom from Prussian domination for the Rhine -provinces. Even with Elsa he led the conversation to discussions about -German mentality, the system of German education, and the possible -terms of peace. Twice at least, when I was present, he differed with -her rather bluntly--a little brutally, I thought--about the German -administration of Belgium. - -“Our people did no more than was allowed by the necessities of war,” - said Elsa. “It was stern and tragic, but not more barbarous than what -other nations would have done.” - -“It was horrible, bloody, and unjustified,” said Brand. - -“All war,” said Elizabeth von Detmold, “is bloody and unjustified. -Directly war is declared the moral law is abrogated. It is simply the -reign of devildom. Why pretend otherwise--or weaken the devilish logic -by a few inconsistencies of sentiment?” - -Brand’s answer to Elsa was not exactly lover-like. I saw the colour fade -from her face at the harshness of his answer, but she leaned her head -against his body (she was sitting by his side on a low stool), and was -silent until her friend Elizabeth had spoken. Then she laughed, bravely, -I thought. - -“We differ in expression, but we all agree. What Wickham thinks is my -thought. I hate to remember how Belgium suffered.” - -Brand was utterly unconscious of his harsh way of speech and of his -unconcealed acknowledgment of Elizabeth von Detmold’s intellectual -superiority in her own drawing-room, so that when she spoke his interest -was directed from Elsa to this lady. - -“Daddy” Small was also immensely impressed by Frau von Detmold’s -character, and he confessed to me that he made notes of her conversation -every time he left her house. - -“That woman,” he said, “will probably be a martyr for civilisation. I -find myself so cussedly in agreement with her that when I go back to New -York I shall probably hang a red flag out of my window and lose all my -respectable patients. She has the vision of the future.” - -“What about Brand and Elsa?” I asked, dragging him down to -personalities. - -He put his arm through mine as we walked down the Hohestrasse. - -“Brand,” he said, in his shrewd way, “is combining martyrdom with -romance--an unsafe combination. The pretty Elsa has lighted up his -romantic heart because of her adoration and her feminine sentiment. -I don’t blame him. At his age--after four years of war and exile--her -gold-spun hair would have woven a web round my heart. Youth is youth, -and don’t you forget it, my lad!” - -“Where does the martyrdom come in?” I asked. - -The little doctor blinked through his horn spectacles. - -“Don’t you see it? Brand has been working out new ideals of life. After -killing a good many German boys, as sniper and chief assassin of the XI. -Corps, he wants to marry a German girl as a proclamation to the -world that he--Wickham Brand--has done with hatred and is out for the -brotherhood of man and the breaking down of the old frontiers. For -that ideal he is going to sacrifice his reputation and make a martyr of -himself--not forgetting that romance is pleasant and Elsa von Kreuzenach -as pretty as a peach! Bless his heart, I admire his courage and his -boyishness.” - -Any doubt I had about the reality of Brand’s passion for Elsa was at -least partly dispelled when he told me, a few nights later, of a tragic -thing that had happened to both of them. - -He came into my room at the “Domhof” as though he had just seen a ghost. -And, indeed, it was a ghost that had frightened him and put a cold hand -between him and Elsa. - -“My dear old man!” I cried at the sight of him. - -“What on earth has happened?” - -“A damnable and inconceivable thing!” - -I poured him out some brandy, and he drank it in gulps. Then he did a -strange and startling thing. Fumbling in his breast-pocket, he pulled -out a silver cigarette-case, and going over to the fireplace, dropped it -into the blaze of the wood logs which I had had lighted because of the -dampness of the room. - -“Why do you do that?” I asked. - -He watched the metal box blacken and then begin to melt. Several times -he poked it so as to get it deeper into the red embers. - -“My poor little Elsa!” he said in a pitiful way. “_Mein hussches -Madel!_” - -The story he told me later was astounding. Even now to people who were -not in the war, who do not know how many strange, fantastic things -happened in that wild nightmare, it will seem improbable and untrue. -Indeed, I think the central fact was untrue, except as a subjective -reality in the minds of Brand and Elsa. - -It happened when they were sitting alone in Elizabeth von Detmold’s -drawing-room. I fancy they must have been embracing each other, -though Brand did not tell me that. Anyhow, Elsa put her hand into his -breast-pocket and in a playful way pulled out his cigarette-case. - -“May I open it?” she asked. - -But she did not open it. She stared at a little monogram on its cover, -and then began to tremble so that Brand was scared. - -“What is the matter?” he said. - -Elsa let the cigarette-case drop on to the carpet. - -“That box!” she said, in an agonised voice. “Where did you find it?” - -Brand remembered where he had found it, though he had not given a -thought to it for more than two years. He had found it on a night in No -Man’s Land out by the Bois Français, near Fricourt. He had been lying -out there on the lip of a mine crater below a hummock of white chalk. -Just before dawn a German patrol had crept out, and he had shot at them. -One man dropped quite close to where Brand lay. After an hour, when dawn -came with a thick white mist rising from the moist earth, Brand crawled -over to the body and cut off its shoulder-straps for identification. It -was the body of a young man, almost a boy, and Brand saw, with a thrill -of satisfaction (it was his “tiger” time), that he had shot him clean -through the heart. A good shot in the twilight of the dawn! He thrust -his hands into the man’s pockets for papers, and found his pay-book and -some letters, and a cigarette-case. With these he crawled back into his -own trench. He remembered reading the letters. One was from the boy’s -sister, lamenting the length of the war, describing the growing hunger -of civilians in Germany, and saying how she prayed every night for her -brother’s safety, and for peace. He had read thousands of German letters -as an intelligence officer afterwards, but he remembered those because -of the night’s adventure. He had handed them over to the adjutant, for -headquarters, and had kept the cigarette-case, having lost his own. It -had the monogram of “H. v. K.” He had never thought about it from that -time to this. Now he thought about it with an intensity of remembrance. - -Brand told Elsa von Kreuzenach that he had found the box in No Man’s -Land. - -“It is my brother Heinrich’s,” she cried. “I gave it to him.” - -She drew back, shivering, from the cigarette-case--or was it from Brand? -When she spoke next it was in a whisper: “Did you kill him?” - -Brand lied to her, and she knew he was lying. She wept bitterly, and -when Brand kissed her she was cold, and fainted in his arms. - -That was Brand’s story, and it was incredible. Even now I cannot help -thinking that such a coincidence could not have happened. There is -plenty of room for doubt about that cigarette-case. It was of a usual -pattern, plain, with a wreath engraved round a monogram. That monogram -“H. v. K.” was astonishing in relation to Elsa von Kreuzenach, but there -are thousands of Germans, I imagine, with the same initials. I know two, -Hermann von Kranitz and Hans von Kurtheim. In a German directory I have -found many other names with those initials. I refuse to believe that -Brand should have gone straight to the house of that boy whom he had -killed in No Man’s Land. - -He believed it, and Elsa was sure of it. That was the tragedy, and the -ghost of the girl’s dead brother stood between them now. - -For an hour or more he paced up and down my room in an agony of mind, -and none of my arguments would convince him or comfort him. - -Several times he spoke one sentence which puzzled me. - -“It makes no difference,” he said. “It makes no difference.” - -I think he meant that it made no difference to his love or purpose. When -one thinks over this incident one is inclined to agree with that view. -He was no more guilty in killing Elsa’s brother, if he did, than in -killing any other German. If their love were strong enough to cross over -fields of dead, the fact that Elsa’s brother lay there, shot by Brand’s -bullet, made, as he said, “no difference.” It only brought home more -closely to two poor individuals the meaning of that world-tragedy. - -Elsa, after her first shock of horror, argued that too, and at the -beginning of March Brand and she stood at the altar together in a church -at the end of the Hohenzollem Ring, and were made man and wife. - -At the ceremony there were present Elizabeth von Detmold, Franz von -Kreuzenach, Dr. Small, and myself, as Brand’s best man. There was, I -think, another presence there, visible only to the minds of Brand and -Elsa, and, strangely enough, to mine. As the bride and bridegroom stood -together before the priest I had a most uncomfortable vision of the dead -body of a German boy lying on the altar beyond them, huddled up as I -had seen many grey figures in the mud of Flanders and Picardy. This idea -was, of course, due to that war-neurosis which, as Dr. Small said, was -the malady of the world. I think at one moment of the service Elsa and -Brand felt some cold touch upon them, for they both looked round in a -startled way. It may have been a draught stealing through the aisle. - -We had tea at Elizabeth von Detmold’s house, and Brand and his wife were -wonderfully self-controlled. They could not be happy beyond the sense of -a spiritual union because Brand had been ordered by telegram to report -at the War Office in London, and was leaving Cologne at four o’clock -that afternoon, while Elsa was going home to her parents, who were -ignorant of her marriage. Brand’s recall, I am convinced, had been -engineered by his father, who was determined to take any step to prevent -his son’s marriage with a German girl. - -Young Harding was going with him, having been given his demobilisation -papers, and being desperately anxious, as I have told, to get home. It -was curious that Brand should be his fellow-traveller that night, and I -thought of the contrast of their journey, one man going to his wife -with eager gladness, the other man leaving his wife after a few hours of -marriage. - -At the end poor Elsa clung to her husband with most passionate grief -and, without any self-consciousness now, because of the depth of his -emotion, Brand, with tears in his eyes, tenderly embraced her. She -walked back bravely with her brother to her mother’s house, while Brand -and I raced to the station where his orderly was waiting with his kit. - -“See you again soon,” said Brand, gripping my hand. - -“Where?” I asked, and he answered gloomily: “God knows.” - -It was not on the Rhine. There was a general exodus of all officers -who could get “demobbed” on any claim or pretext, the small Army of -Occupation settled down to a routine life without adventure, and the -world’s interest shifted to Paris, where the fate of Europe was being -settled by a company of men with the greatest chance in history. I -became a wanderer in a sick world. - -END OF BOOK II. - - - - - -BOOK III--BUILDERS OF PEACE - - - - -I - - -Those of us who had been in exile during the years of war and now -returned to peace found that England had changed in our absence. We -did not know this new England. We did not understand its spirit or its -people. Nor did they understand the men who came back from the many -fronts of war, by hundreds of thousands, now that demobilisation had -become a spate after murmurings that were loud with the menace of revolt -from men who had been long patient. - -These “_revenants,_” the men who came back out of the terror, were -so many Rip van Winkles (of a youthful kind), looking round for the -companions of their boyhood, going to old places, touching old stones, -sitting by the same fireside, but with a sense of ghostliness. A new -generation had arrived since 1914. The children had become boys and -girls; the girls had grown into womanhood precociously. There were -legions of “flappers” in London and other big cities, earning good wages -in Government offices and factories, spending most of their money on the -adornment of their prettiness, self-reliant, audacious, out for the fun -of life, and finding it. The tragedy of the war had not touched them. It -had been a great “lark” to them. They accepted the slaughter of their -brothers or their fathers light-heartedly, after a few bursts of tears -and a period of sentiment in which pride was strongest. They had grown -up to the belief that a soldier is generally killed or wounded, and that -he is glad to take the risk, or, if not, ought to be, as part of the -most exciting and enjoyable game of war. Women had filled many of the -jobs which formerly were the exclusive possession of men, and the men -coming back looked at these legions of women clerks, tram conductors, -ticket collectors, munition workers, plough-girls, and motor drivers -with the brooding thought that they, the men, had been ousted from their -places. A new class had arisen out of the whirlpool of social upheaval. -The profiteers, in a large way of business, had prospered exceedingly -out of the supply and demand of massacre. The profiteer’s wife clothed -herself in furs and jewels. The profiteer’s daughters were dancing by -night and sleeping by day. The farmers and the shopkeepers had made a -good thing out of war. They liked war so long as they were untouched by -air-raids or not afflicted by boys who came back blind or crippled. They -had always been optimists. They were optimists now, and claimed a share -in the merit of the victory that had been won by the glorious watchword -of “business as usual.” They hoped the terms of peace would be merciless -upon the enemy, and they demanded the Kaiser’s head as a pleasant -sacrifice adding spice to the great banquet of victory celebrations. - -Outwardly, England was gay and prosperous and light-spirited. It was -only by getting away from the seething crowds in the streets, from the -dancing crowds, and the theatre crowds, and the shopping crowds, that -men came face to face with private and hidden tragedy. In small houses -or big, there were women who had lost their men and were listless -and joyless, the mothers of only sons who did not come back with the -demobilised tide, and the sweethearts of boys who would never fulfil the -promise that had given hope in life to lonely girlhood. There was a new -rich, but there was also a new poor, and people on small fixed incomes -or with little nest-eggs of capital on which they scraped out life found -themselves reduced to desperate straits by the soaring of prices and the -burden of taxation. Underneath the surface joy of a victorious people -there was bitterness to which victory was a mockery and a haggard grief -at the cost of war in precious blood. But the bitterness smouldered -without any flame of passion, and grief nagged at people’s hearts -silently. - -Many of the men who came back were in a strange mood--restless, morbid, -neurotic. Their own people did not understand them. They could not -understand themselves. They had hated war, most of them, but this peace -seemed flat and unprofitable to their souls. All purpose and meaning -seemed suddenly to have gone out of life. Perhaps it was the narrowness -of English home-life. Men who had travelled to far places of the world, -who had seen the ways of foreign people, and had been part of a great -drama, found themselves back again in a little house, closed in and -isolated by the traditions of English individualism, so that often the -next-door neighbour is a stranger. They had a sense of being suffocated. -They could not stay indoors with the old pleasure in a pipe or a book by -the fireside or a chat with mother or wife. Often they would wander out -on the chance of meeting some of the “old pals,” or, after a heavy sigh, -say, “Oh, God!... let’s go to a theatre or a ‘movie’ show!” The -theatres were crammed with men seeking distraction, yet bored with -their pleasures and relapsing into a deeper moodiness afterwards. Wives -complained that their husbands had “changed.” Their characters had -hardened and their tempers were frayed, so that they were strangely -irritable and given to storms of rage about nothing at all. It was -frightening.... There was an epidemic of violence and of horrible -sensual crimes with women victims, ending often in suicide. There were -mob riots by demobilised soldiers or soldiers still waiting in camps for -demobilisation. Police stations were stormed and wrecked and policemen -killed by bodies of men who had been heroes in the war and now fought -like savages against their fellow-citizens. Some of them pleaded guilty -in court and made queer statements about an utter ignorance of their -own actions after the disorder had begun. It seemed as though they had -returned to the psychology of that war when men, doped with rum, or -drunk with excitement, had leapt over the parapet and remembered nothing -more of a battle until they found themselves panting in an enemy trench -or lying wounded on a stretcher. It was a dangerous kind of psychology -in civil life. - -Labourers back at work in factories or mines or railway stations or -dockyards, after months or years of the soldier-life, did not return to -their old conditions or their old pay with diligence and thankfulness. -They demanded higher wages to meet the higher cost of life and after -that a margin for pleasure, and after that shorter hours for higher pay -and less work in shorter hours. If their demands were not granted they -downed tools and said: “What about it?” Strikes became frequent and -general, and at a time when the cost of war was being added up to -frightful totals of debt which could only be reduced by immense -production the worker slacked off, or suspended his labours, and said: -“Who gets the profits of my sweat?... I want a larger share.” He was -not frightened of a spectre that was scaring all people of property -and morality in the Western world. The spectre of Bolshevism, red-eyed, -dripping with blood, proclaiming anarchy as the new gospel, did not -cause a shiver to the English working man. He said, “What has Russia to -do with me? I’m English. I have fought this war to save England, I have -done the job; now then, where’s my reward?” - -Men who looked round for a living while they lived on an unemployment -dole that was not good enough for their new desires became sullen when -they returned home night after night with the same old story of “Nothing -doing.” The women were still clinging to their jobs. They had earned -their independence by good work in war-time. They hated the thought -of going back to little homes to be household drudges, dependent for -pocket-money on father and brothers. They had not only tasted liberty; -they had made themselves free of the large world. They had proved their -quality and strength. They were as good as men, and mostly better. Why -should they slink back to the little narrow rut of life? But the men -said, “Get out. Give us back our jobs.” - -It was hard on the officer boys--hardest of all on them. They had gone -straight from school to the war, and had commanded men twice as old as -themselves and drawn good pay for pocket-money as first lieutenants, -captains, even majors of air squadrons and tank battalions. They had -gained immense experience in the arts and crafts of war, and that -experience was utterly useless in peace. - -“My dear young man,” said the heads of prosperous businesses who had -been out to “beat the Boche,” even though they sacrificed their only -sons or all their sons (with heroic courage!), “you have been wasting -your time. You have no qualifications whatever for a junior clerkship -in this office. On the contrary, you have probably contracted habits of -idleness and inaccuracy which would cause a lot of trouble. This vacancy -is being filled by a lad who has not been vitiated by military life, and -has nothing to unlearn. Good-morning!” - -And the young officers, after a statement like that, went home with -swear-words learnt in Flanders, and said: “That’s the reward of -patriotism, eh? Well, we seem to have been fooled pretty badly. Next -time we shan’t be so keen to strew the fields of death with our fresh -little corpses.” - -These words, all this murmur from below, did not reach those who sat in -high places. They were wonderfully complacent, except when outbreaks of -violence or the cessation of labour shocked them with a sense of danger. -They arranged peace celebrations before the peace, victory marches when -the fruits of victory were as bitter as Dead Sea fruit in the mouths of -those who saw the ruin of the world; and round a council table in Paris -statesmen of Europe abandoned all the ideals for which the war had been -fought by humble men and killed the hopes of all those who had looked to -them as the founders of a new era of humanity and common sense. - - - - -II - - -It was when the Peace Treaty had been signed, but not ratified by the -representatives of Germany and Austria, that I met some of the friends -with whom I had travelled along many roads of war or had met in scenes -which already seemed far back in history. In London, after a journey to -America, I came again in touch with young Harding, whom I had seen last -on his way home to his pretty wife, who had fretted at his long absence, -and Charles Fortune, whose sense of humour had made me laugh so often -in the time of tragedy. Those were chance meetings in the eddies of -the great whirlpool of London life, as I saw other faces, strange for -a moment or two, until the difference between a field-cap and a bowler -hat, a uniform and civil clothes, was wiped out by a look of recognition -and the sound of a remembered voice. - -Not by chance but by a friendship which had followed me across the world -with written words, I found myself once more in the company of Wickham -Brand, and with him went again to spend some evenings with Eileen -O’Connor, who was now home in Kensington, after that grim drama which -she had played so long in Lille. - -With “Daddy” Small I had been linked up by a lucky chain of coincidences -which had taken us both to New York at the same time and brought us back -to Europe on the same boat, which was the White Star liner _Lapland_. - -My chance meeting with Harding led to a renewal of friendship which was -more of his seeking than mine, though I liked him a good deal. But he -seemed to need me, craving sympathy, which I gave with sincerity, and -companionship, which I could not give so easily, being a busy man. - -It was on the night when London went mad because of peace, though not so -mad, I was told, as on the night of armistice. It all seemed mad to me -when I was carried like a straw in a raging torrent of life which poured -down the Strand, swirled round Trafalgar Square, and choked all channels -westwards and eastwards of Piccadilly Circus. The spirit of London had -broken bounds. It came wildly from mean streets in the slum quarters to -the heart of the West End. The worst elements had surged up and mingled -with the middle-class folk and those who claim exclusiveness by the -power of wealth. In ignorance that all barriers of caste were to be -broken that night, “society” women, as they are called, rather insolent -in their public display of white shoulders and diamonds and furs, set -out in motor cars for hotels and restaurants which had arranged peace -dinners and peace dances. Some of them, I saw, were unaccompanied by -their own men, whom they were to meet later, but the vacant seats in -their open cars were quickly filled by soldiers, seamen, or merry devils -in civil clothes who climbed over the backs of the cars when they were -brought to a standstill in the crush of vast crowds. Those uninvited -guests, some of them wearing women’s bonnets, most of them fluttering -with flags pinned to their coats, all of them provided with noisemaking -instruments, behaved with ironical humour to the pretty ladies, touched -their coiled hair with “ticklers,” blew loud blasts on their toy -trumpets, delivered cockney orations to them for the enjoyment of the -crowds below. Some of the pretty ladies accepted the situation with -courage and good humour, laughing with shrill mirth at their grotesque -companions. Others were frightened and angry. I saw one girl try to beat -off the hands of men clambering about her car. They swarmed into it and -paid no heed to her cries of protest.... - -All the flappers were out in the Strand and in Trafalgar Square and many -streets. They were factory girls, shop girls, office girls, and their -eyes were alight with adventure and a pagan ecstasy. Men teased them -as they passed with the long “ticklers,” and they, armed with the same -weapon, fought duels with these aggressors, and then fled, and were -pursued into the darkness of side-streets, where they were caught and -kissed. Soldiers in uniform, English, Scots, Canadians, Australians, -came lurching along in gangs, arm in arm, then mingled with the girls, -changed headgear with them, struggled and danced and stampeded with -them. Seamen, three sheets in the wind, steered an uneven course through -this turbulent sea of life, roaring out choruses, until each man had -found a maid for the dance of joy. - -London was a dark forest with nymphs and satyrs at play in the glades -and Pan stamping his hoofs like a giddy goat. All the passions let loose -by war, the breaking down of old restraints, the gladness of youth at -escape from death, provided the motive-power, unconscious and primitive, -behind this carnival of the London crowds. From some church a procession -came into Trafalgar Square, trying to make a pathway through the -multitude. A golden cross was raised high, and clergymen in surplices, -with acolytes and faithful women, came chanting solemn words. The crowd -closed about them. A mirthful sailor teased the singing women with his -“tickler.” Loud guffaws, shrill laughter, were in the wake of the -procession, though some men stood to attention as the cross passed, and -others bared their heads, and something hushed the pagan riot a moment. - -At the windows in Pall Mall men in evening clothes who had been officers -in the world-war sat by the pretty women who had driven through the -crowds, looking out on the noisy pageant of the street. A piano-organ -was playing, and two young soldiers danced with ridiculous grace, -imitating the elegance and languorous ecstasy of society dancers. One of -them wore a woman’s hat and skirt, and was wonderfully comic. - -I stood watching them, a little stupefied by all the noise and tumult -of this “Peace” night, and with a sense of tragic irony, remembering -millions of boys who lay dead in quiet fields and the agony of many -peoples in Europe. It was then that I saw young Harding. He was sitting -in his club window just above the dancing soldiers and looking out with -a grave and rather woe-begone face, remarkable in contrast with the -laughing faces of fellow-clubmen and their women. I recognised him after -a moment’s query in my mind, and said: “Hulloa, Harding!” - -He stared at me, and I saw the sudden dawning of remembrance. - -“Come in,” he answered. “I had no idea you were back again!” - -So I went into his club and sat by his side at the open window, glad of -this retreat from the pressure and tumult of the mob below. - -He talked conventionally for a little while, and asked me whether I had -had “a good time” in the States, and whether I was busy, and why the -Americans seemed so hostile to President Wilson. I understood from -him that he approved of the Peace Treaty and was glad that Germany and -Austria had been “wiped off the map” as far as it was humanly possible. - -We chatted like that for what I suppose was something more than half -an hour, while we looked out upon the seething multitude in the street -below, when suddenly the boy’s mask fell from him, so abruptly and -with such a naked revelation of a soul in anguish that concealment was -impossible. - -I saw him lean forward with his elbows on the windowsill and his hands -clenching an iron bar. His face had become like his shirt front, almost -as white as that. A kind of groan came from him, like that of a man -badly wounded. The people on either side of him turned to look at him, -but he was unconscious of them, as he stared at something in the street. -I followed the direction of his eyes and guessed that he was looking at -a motor-car which had been stopped by the crowd, who were surging about -it. It was an open car, and inside were a young man and woman in fancy -dress as Pierrot and Columbine. They were standing up and pelting the -crowd with long coloured streamers, which the mob caught and tossed -back again with shouts of laughter. The girl was very pretty, with an -audacious little face beneath the white sugar-loaf cap, and her eyes -were on fire. Her companion was a merry-eyed fellow, dean-shaven and -ruddy-faced (for he had not chalked it to Pierrot’s whiteness), and -looked to me typical of a naval officer or one of our young airmen. I -could see nothing to groan about in such a sight. - -“What’s wrong, Harding?” - -I touched him on the elbow, for I did not like him to give himself away -before the other company in the window-seat. - -He rose at once, and walked in a stumbling way across the room, while I -followed. The room was empty where we stood. - -“Aren’t you well?” I asked. - -He laughed in a most tragic way. - -“Did you see those two in the car, Pierrot and Columbine?” - -I nodded. - -“Columbine was my wife. Pierrot is now her husband. Funny, isn’t it?” - -My memory went back to that night in Cologne, less than six months -before, when Harding had asked me to use my influence to get him -demobilised, and as an explanation of his motive opened his pocket-book -and showed me the photograph of a pretty girl, and said, “That’s -my wife;... she is hipped because I have been away so long.” I felt -enormously sorry for him. - -“Come and have a whisky in the smoke-room,” said Harding. “I’d like a -yarn, and we shall be alone.” - -I did not want him to tell me his tale. I was tired of tragic history. -But I could not refuse. The boy wanted to unburden himself. I could see -that, though for quite a time after we had sat on each side of the wood -fire he hesitated in getting to the point and indulged in small talk -about his favourite brand of cigars and my evil habit of smoking the -worst kind of cigarettes. - -Suddenly we plunged into what were the icy waters of his real thoughts. - -“About my wife... I’d like you to know. Others will tell you, and you’d -have heard already if you hadn’t been away so long. But I think you -would get a wrong notion from others. The fact is, I don’t blame Evelyn. -I would like you to understand that. I blame the Germans for everything.” - -“The Germans?” - -That was a strange statement, and I could not see the drift of it until -he explained his meaning. - -“The Germans made the war, and the war took me away from Evelyn just -after our marriage.... Imagine the situation, a kid of a girl, wanting -to be merry and bright, eager for the fun of life, and all that, left -alone in a big old house in the country, or when she got fed up with -that in a big gloomy house in town. She got fed up with both pretty -quick. I used to get letters from her--every day for a while--and she -used to say in every one of them, ‘I’m fed up like Billy-O.’ That was -her way of putting it, don’t you know, and I got scared. But what -could I do out there except write and tell her to try and get busy with -something? Well, she got busy all right!” - -Harding laughed again in his woeful way, which was not good to hear. -Then he became angry and passionate, and told me it was all the fault of -“those damned women.” - -I asked him what “damned women,” and he launched into a wild -denunciation of a certain set of women--most of the names he mentioned -were familiar to me from full-length portraits in the _Sketch_ and -_Tatler_--who had spent the years of war in organising fancy bazaars, -charity matinées, private theatricals for Red Cross funds, “and all -that,” as Harding remarked in his familiar phrase. He said they were -rotten all through, utterly immoral, perfectly callous of all the death -and tragedy about them, except in a false, hysterical way at times. - -“They were ghouls,” he said. - -Many of them had married twice, three times, even more than that, before -the boys who were killed were cold in their graves. Yet those were -the best, with a certain respect for convention. Others had just let -themselves go. They had played the devil with any fellow who came within -their circle of enticement, if he had a bit of money, or could dance -well, or oiled his hair in the right way. - -“They corrupted English society,” said Harding, “while they smiled and -danced, and dressed in fancy clothes, and posed for their photos in the -papers. It was they who corrupted Evelyn when the poor kid was fighting -up against her loneliness and very hipped, and all that.” - -“Who was the man?” I asked, and Harding hesitated before he told me. -It was with frightful irony that he answered: “The usual man in most of -these cases, the man who is often one’s best pal. Damn him!” - -Harding, seemed to repent of that curse; at least, his next words were -strangely inconsistent. - -“Mind you, I don’t blame him, either. It was I who sent him to Evelyn. -He was in the Dragoons with me, and when he went home on leave I said, -‘Go and cheer up my little wife, old man. Take her to a theatre or two, -and all that. She’s devilishly lonely.’ Needless to say, he fell in love -with her. I might have known it. As for Evelyn, she was immensely taken -with young Dick. He was a bit of a humorist and made her laugh. Laughter -was a devilish good thing in war-time. That was where Dick had his pull. -I might have known _that!_ I was a chuckle-headed idiot.” - -The end of the story was abrupt, and at the time I found it hard to find -extenuating circumstances in the guilt of the girl who had smashed -this boy Harding. She lied to him up to the very moment of his -demobilisation; at least, she gave him no clue to her purpose until -she hit him, as it were, full in the face with a mortal blow to his -happiness. - -He had sent her a wire with the one word “Demobilised,” and then had -taken the next train back and a cab from Charing Cross to that house of -his at Rutland Gate. - -“Is the mistress well?” he had asked one of the maids when his kit was -handled in the hall. - -“The mistress is out, sir,” said the maid, and he remembered afterwards -that she looked queerly at him, with a kind of pity. - -There was the usual note waiting for him. Evelyn was “very sorry.” She -hated causing her husband the grief she knew he would feel, but she and -Dick could not do without each other. The war had altered everything, -and many wives to many husbands. She hoped Harding would be happy after -a bit.... - -Harding was not happy. When he read that note he went a little mad, and -roamed round London with an automatic pistol, determined to kill his -former friend if he could set eyes on him. Fortunately, he did not find -him. Evelyn and Dick had gone off to a village in Devonshire, and after -three days with murder in his heart Harding had been very ill and had -gone into a nursing-home. There, in his weakness, he had, he told me, -“thought things out.” The result of his meditations amounted to no -more than the watchword of many people in years of misery: “_C’est la -guerre!_” - -It was the war which had caused his tragedy. It had put too great a -strain on human nature, or at least on human nerves and morals. It -had broken down the conventions and traditions of civilised life. The -Germans had not only destroyed many towns and villages, but many homes -and hearts far from the firing-line. They had let the devil loose. - -“Quite a number of my pals,” said Harding, “are in the same boat with -me. They either couldn’t stick their wives, or their wives couldn’t -stick them. It gives one a sense of companionship!” - -He smiled in a melancholy way, but then confessed to loneliness--so many -of his real pals had gone west--and asked whether he could call on me -now and then. It was for that reason that he came to my house fairly -often, and sometimes Fortune, who came too at times, made him laugh, as -in the old days. - - - - -III - - -Fortune and I met also in a crowd, but indoors. Brand and Eileen -O’Connor were both to be at one of the evening parties which assembled -every now and then in a flat at Chelsea belonging to Susy Whincop, -designer of stained glass, driver of ambulances for the Scottish Women’s -Convoy, and sympathetic friend before the war of any ardent soul who -grew long hair if a man, short hair if a woman, and had some special -scheme, philosophy, or inspiration for the welfare of humanity. - -I had known Susy and her set in the old days. They were the minor -intellectuals of London, and I had portrayed some of them in a novel -called “Intellectual Mansions,” which they did not like, though I loved -them all. They wrote little poems, painted little pictures, produced -little plays, and talked about all subjects under heaven with -light-hearted humour, an arrogance towards popular ideas, and a quick -acceptance of the new, the unusual and the revolutionary in art and -thought. Into their way of life war crashed suddenly with its thunder -notes of terror. All that they had lived for seemed to be destroyed, -and all their ideals overthrown. They had believed in beauty, and it was -flung into the mud, and bespattered with blood, and buried beneath the -ugly monsters of war’s idolatry. - -They had been devotees of liberty, and were made slaves of the drill -sergeant and other instruments of martial law. They had been enemies -of brutality, cruelty, violence, but all human effort now was for the -slaughter of men, and the hero was he who killed most with bayonet or -bomb. Their pretty verses were made of no account. Their impressionistic -paintings were not so useful as the camouflage of tin huts. Their little -plays were but feeble drama to that which now was played out on the -world’s stage to the roar of guns and the march of armies. They went -into the tumult and fury of it all, and were lost. I met some of them, -like Fortune and Brand, in odd places. Many of them died in the dirty -ditches. Some of them wrote poems before they died, stronger than -their work before the war, with a noble despair or the exaltation of -sacrifice. Others gave no sign of their previous life, and were just -absorbed into the ranks--ants in these legions of soldier-ants. Now -those who had escaped with life were coming back to their old haunts, -trying to pick up old threads, getting back, if they could, to the old -ways of work, hoping for a new inspiration out of immense experience, -but not yet finding it. - -In Susy Whincop’s flat some of them had gathered when I went there, and -when I looked round upon them, seeing here and there vaguely-remembered -faces, I was conscious of a change that had overtaken them, and, with a -shock, wondered whether I too had altered so much in those five years. -I recognised Peter Hallam, whom I had known as a boy just down from -Oxford, with a genius (in a small way) for satirical verse and a talent -for passionate lyrics of a morbid and erotic type. Yes, it was certainly -Peter, though his face had hardened and he had cropped his hair short -and walked with one leg stiff. - -He was talking to a girl with bobbed hair. It was Jennie Southcombe, -who had been one of the heroines of the Serbian retreat, according to -accounts of newspaper correspondents. - -“My battery,” said Peter, “plugged into old Fritz with open sights for -four horns. We just mowed ‘em down.” - -Another face rang a little bell in my memory. Surely that was Alfred -Lyon, the Futurist painter? No, it could not be, for Lyon had dressed -like an Apache, and this man was in conventional evening clothes and -looked like a Brigadier in mufti. Alfred Lyon?... Yes, there he was, -though he had lost his pose--cribbed from Murger’s _Vie de Bohème_--and -his half-starved look, and the wildness in his eyes. As he passed Susy -Whincop he spoke a few words, which I overheard. - -“I’ve abandoned Futurism. The present knocked that silly. Our little -violence, which shocked Suburbia, was made ridiculous by the enormous -thing that smashed every convention into a cocked hat.’ I’m just going -to put down some war scenes--I made notes in the trenches--with that -simplicity of the primitive soul to which we went back in that way of -life. The soldier’s point of view, his vision, is what I shall try for.” - -“Splendid!” said Susy. “Only, don’t shrink from the abomination. We’ve -got to make the world understand--and remember.” - -I felt a touch on my sleeve, and a voice said, “Hulloa!... Back again?” - -I turned and saw an oldish-young man, with white hair above a lean, -clean-shaven face and sombre eyes. I stared, but could not fix him. - -“Don’t you remember?” he said. “Wetherall, of the Stage Society!” - -“Oh, Lord, yes!” - -I grasped his hand, and tried to keep the startled look out of my eyes. -But he saw it, and smiled. - -“Four years as a prisoner of the Turk have altered me a bit. This white -hair, eh? And I feel like Rip van Winkle.” - -He put into words something which I had been thinking since my arrival -in Susy’s rooms. - -“We are the _revenants_, the ghosts who have come back to their old -haunts. We are pretending that everything is the same as before, and -that we are the same. But it’s all different, and we have changed most -of all. Five years of war have dug their hoofs into the faces of most -people in this crowd. Some of them look fifteen, twenty, years older, -and I expect they’ve been through a century of experience and emotion.” - -“What’s coming out of it?” I asked. “Anything big?” - -“Not from us,” said Wetherall. “Most of us are finished. Our nerves have -gone to pieces, and our vitality has been sapped. We shall put down a -few notes of things seen and understood. But it’s the next generation -that will get the big vision, or the one after next.” - -Then I was able to shake hands with Susy Whincop, and, as I have said, -she left me in no doubt about the change that four years of war had made -to me. - -She held me at arm’s length, studying my face. - -“Soul alive!” she said. “You’ve been through it all right! Hell’s -branding-irons have been busy with a fair-faced man.” - -“As bad as that?” I asked, and she answered very gravely, “As bad as -that.” - -She had hardly changed, except for a few streaks of grey in her brown -hair. Her low, broad forehead was as smooth as before; her brown eyes -shone with their old steady light. She had not lost her sense of humour, -though she had seen a good deal of blood and agony and death. - -“How’s humanity?” I asked, and she laughed and Shrugged her shoulders. - -“What can one do with it? I thought we were going to catch the old devil -by the tail and hold him fast, but he’s broken loose again. This peace! -Dear God!... And all the cruelty and hatred that have survived the -massacre! But I don’t despair even now. In this room there is enough -good-will and human kindness to create a new world. We’re going to have -a good try to make things better by-and-by.” - -“Who’s your star to-night?” I asked. “Who is the particular -Hot-Gospeller with a mission to convert mankind?” - -“I’ve several,” said Susy. - -She glanced round the room, and her eyes rested on a little man with -goggles and a goatee beard, none other than my good friend Dr. Small, -with whom I had travelled down many roads. I had no notion that he knew -Susy or was to be here to-night. - -“There’s one great soul--a little American doctor whose heart is as -big as humanity itself, and whose head is filled with the wisdom of the -wise.” - -“I know him,” I said, “and I agree with you.” - -He caught our eyes fixed on him, and blinked through his goggles, and -then waved his hand, and made his way to us. - -“Hulloa, doc.!” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew Susy Whincop?” - -“No need,” he answered. “Miss Whincop is the golden link between all men -of good-will.” - -Susy was pleased with that. She patted the little doctor’s hand and -said, “Bully for you, doctor! and may the Stars and Stripes wave over -the League of Nations!” - -Then she was assailed by other guests, and the doctor and I took refuge -in a corner. - -“How’s everything?” I asked. - -The doctor was profoundly dejected, and did not hide the gloom that -possessed his soul. - -“Sonny,” he answered, “we shall have to fight with our backs to the -wall, because the enemy--the old devil--is prevailing against us. I have -just come over from Paris, and I don’t mind telling you that what I saw -during the Peace Conference has made me doubt the power of goodness over -evil.” - -“Tell me,” I said. - -“Daddy” Small’s story was not pleasant to hear. It was the story of the -betrayal, one by one, of every ideal for which simple men had fought and -died, a story of broken pledges, of hero-worship dethroned, and of great -peoples condemned to lingering death. The Peace Treaty, he said, would -break the heart of the world and prepare the way for new, more dreadful, -warfare. - -“How about Wilson?” I asked. - -The little doctor raised his hands like a German crying, “_Kamerad!_” - -“Wilson was not big enough. He had the future of civilisation in his -hands, but his power was filched from him, and he never knew until -the end that he had lost it. He was like a simple Gulliver among the -Liliputians. They tied him down with innumerable threads of cotton -while he slept in self-complacency with a sense of righteousness. He was -slow-thinking among quick-witted people. He stated a general principle, -and they drafted out clauses which seemed to fulfil the principle while -violating it in every detail. They juggled with facts and figures so -that black seemed white through his moral spectacles, and he said Amen -to their villainy, believing that God had been served by righteousness. -Bit by bit they broke his pledges and made a jigsaw puzzle of them so -artfully that he believed they were uncracked. Little by little they -robbed him of his honour, and he was unaware of the theft. In preambles -and clause headings and interpretations they gave lip-service to the -fourteen points upon which the armistice was granted, and to which the -allied nations were utterly pledged, not only to the Germans and all -enemies, but to their own people. Not one of those fourteen points is -in the reality of the Treaty. There has been no self-determination of -peoples. Millions have been transferred into unnatural boundaries. There -have been no open covenants openly arrived at. The Conference was within -closed doors. The clauses of the Peace Treaty were kept secret from the -world until an American journalist got hold of a copy and sent it to -his paper. What has become of the equality of trade conditions and the -removal of economic barriers among all nations consenting to peace? -Sonny, Europe has been carved up by the spirit of vengeance, and -multitudes of men, women and children have been sentenced to death by -starvation. Another militarism is enthroned above the ruin of German -militarism. Wilson was hoodwinked into putting his signature to a peace -of injustice which will lead by desperation to world anarchy and strife. -When he understands what thing he has done he will be stricken by a -mortal blow to his conscience and his pride.” - -“Doctor,” I said, “there is still hope in the League of Nations. We must -all back that.” - -He shook his head. - -“The spirit has gone out of it. It was born without a soul. I believe -now that the future welfare of the world depends upon a change of heart -among the peoples, inspired by individuals in all nations who will work -for good and give a call to humanity, indifferent to statesmen, treaties -and Governments.” - -“The International League of Good-will?” - -He nodded and smiled. - -“Something like that.” - -I remembered a dinner-party in New York after the armistice. I had been -lecturing on the League of Nations at a time when the Peace Treaty was -still unsigned, but when already there was a growing hostility against -President Wilson, startling in its intensity. The people of the United -States were still moved by the emotion and idealism with which they had -roused great armies and sent them to the fields of France. Some of the -men were returning home again. I stood outside a club in New York when a -darkie regiment returned its colours, and I heard the roars of cheering -that followed the march of the negro troops. I saw Fifth Avenue filled -with triumphal arches, strung across with jewelled chains, festooned -with flags and trophies of the home-coming of the New York Division. The -heart of the American people was stirred by the pride of its achievement -on the way to victory and by a new sense of power over the destiny -of mankind. But already there was a sense of anxiety about the -responsibilities to which Wilson in Europe was pledging them without -their full and free consent. They were conscious that their old -isolation was being broken down, and that by ignorance or rash promise -they might be drawn into other European adventures which were no concern -of theirs. They knew how little was their knowledge of European peoples, -with their rivalries, and racial hatreds, and secret intrigues. Their -own destiny as a free people might be thwarted by being dragged into -the jungle of that unknown world. In any case Wilson was playing a lone -hand, pledging them without their advice or agreement, subordinating -them, it seemed, to the British Empire, with six votes on the Council of -the League to their poor one. What did he mean? By what right did he do -so? - -At every dinner-table these questions were asked before the soup was -drunk; at the coffee end of the meal every dinner-party was a debating -club, and the women joined with the men in hot discussion; until some -tactful soul laughed loudly, and some hostess led the way to music or a -dance. - -The ladies had just gone after one of these debates, leaving us to our -cigars and coffee, when “Daddy” Small made a proposition which startled -me at the time. - -“See here,” he said to his host and the other men. “Out of this -discussion one thing stands clear and straight. It is that in this room, -now, at this table, are men of intellect--American and English--men of -goodwill towards mankind, men of power in one way or another, who agree -that whatever happens there must be eternal friendship between England -and the United States.” - -“Sure!” said a chorus of voices. - -“In other countries there are men with the same ideals as, -ourselves--peace, justice between men and nations, a hatred of cruelty, -pity for women and children, charity and truth. Is that agreed?” - -“Sure!” said the other guests. - -They were mostly business men, well-to-do, but not of the “millionaire” - class, with here and there a writing-man, an artist and, as I remember, -a clergyman. - -“I am going to be a commercial traveller in charity,” said the little -doctor. “I am going across the frontiers to collect clients for an -international society of goodwill. I propose to establish a branch at -this table.” - -The suggestion was received with laughter by some of the men, but, as I -saw, with gravity by others. - -“What would be the responsibilities, doctor. Do you want money?” - -This was from the manager of an American railroad. - -“We shall want a bit,” said the doctor. “Not much. Enough for stamps and -occasional booklets and typewriting. The chief responsibility would -be to spot lies leading to national antagonism, and to kill them by -exposure to cold truth; also, to put in friendly words, privately and -publicly, on behalf of human kindness across the barriers of hate and -malignity. Any names for the New York branch?” - -The doctor took down twelve names, pledged solemnly to his programmes.... - -I remembered that scene in New York when I stood with the little man in -Susy Whincop’s drawing-room. - -“What about this crowd?” I asked. - -“Sonny,” he said, “this place is reeking with humanity. The real stuff. -Idealists who have seen hell pretty close, most of them. Why, in this -room there’s enough goodwill to move mountains of cruelty, if we could -get a move on all together.” - -It was then that I saw Charles Fortune, though I was looking for Brand. - -Fortune was wearing one of his special “faces.” I interpreted it as his -soulful and mystical face. It broke a little as he winked at me. - -“Remarkable gathering,” he said. “The Intellectuals come back to their -lair. Some of them like little Bo-Peep who lost her sheep and left their -tails behind them.” - -“What does that mean?” I asked. - -“Nothing,” he answered. “We used to talk like that. I’m trying to grope -back.” - -He put his hand over his forehead wearily. - -“God!” he said. “How terrible was war in a Nissen hut! I cannot even now -forget that I was every yard a soldier!” - -He began to hum his well-remembered anthem, “Blear-eyed Bill the Butcher -of the Boche,” and then checked himself. - -“Nay, let us forget that melody of blood. Let us rather sing of fragrant -things of peace.” He hummed the nursery ballad of “Twinkle, twinkle, -little star, How I wonder what you are!” - -Susy Whincop seized him by the wrist. - -“So the Fat Boy has escaped the massacre? Come and make us laugh. We are -getting too serious at the piano end of the room.” - -“Lady,” said Fortune, “tempt me not to mirth-making. My irony is -terrible when roused.” - -As he went to the piano I caught sight of Brand just making his way -through a group by the door. - -I had never seen him in civil clothes, but he looked as I had imagined -him, in an old pre-war dinner-jacket and baggy trousers, and a shirt -that bulged abominably. A tuft of hair stuck up behind--the tuft that -Eileen O’Connor, had pulled for Auld Lang Syne. But he looked fine and -distinguished, with his hard, lean face and strong jaw and melancholy -eyes. - -He caught sight of me and gripped my hand, painfully. - -“Hullo, old man! Welcome back. I have heaps to tell you.” - -“Good things?” I asked. - -He shook his head. - -“Not good.... Damned bad, alas!” - -He did not continue the conversation. He stared across my shoulder at -the door as though he saw an apparition. I turned to see the object of -his gaze. It was Eileen O’Connor, whom I had first met in Lille. - -She was in an evening frock cut low at the neck, and her arms were bare. -There was a smile in her dark Irish eyes, and about her long humorous -mouth. The girl I had seen in Lille was not so elegant as this, not so -pretty. The lifting of care, perhaps, had made the change. - -Susy Whincop gave a cry of “Is that Eileen?” and darted to her. - -“It’s myself,” said Eileen, releasing herself from an ardent embrace, -“and all the better for seeing you. Who’s who in this distinguished -crowd?” - -“Old friends,” I said, being nearest to her. “Four men who walked one -day of history up a street in Lille, and met an Irish girl who had the -worship of the crowd.” - -She took my hand and I was glad of her look of friendship. - -“Four?” she said. “That’s too good to be true. All safe and home again?” - -It was astonishing that four of us should be there in a room in London -with the girl who had been the heroine of Lille. But there was Fortune -and “Daddy” Small and Brand and myself. - -The crowd gave us elbow-room while we stood round Eileen. To each she -gave her hands--both hands--and merry words of greeting. It was only I, -and she, perhaps, who saw the gloom on Brand’s face when she greeted him -last and said: “Is it well with you, Wickham?” - -Her colour rose a little at the sight of him, and he was paler than when -I saw him first that night. - -“Pretty well,” he said. “One still needs courage--even in peace.” - -He laughed a little as he spoke, but I knew that his laughter was the -camouflage of hidden trouble, at which he had hinted in his letters to -me. - -We could not have much talk that evening. The groups shifted and -re-shifted. The best thing was when Eileen sang “The Gentle Maiden” as -on a night in Lille. Brand, standing near the door, listened, strangely -unconscious of the people about him. - -“It’s good to hear that song again,” I said. - -He started, as though suddenly awakened. - -“It stirs queer old memories.” - -It was in Eileen’s own house that Brand and I renewed a friendship which -had been made in a rescued city where we had heard the adventure of this -girl’s life. - - - - -IV - - -As Brand admitted to me, and as he had outlined the trouble in his -letters, he was having “a bad time.” Since his marriage with Elsa von -Kreuzenach he had not had much peace of mind nor any kind of luck. After -leaving Cologne the War Office, prompted by some unknown influence--he -suspected his father, who knew the Secretary for War--had sent him off -on a special mission to Italy and had delayed his demobilisation until -a month before this meeting of ours. That had prevented his plan of -bringing Elsa to England, and now, when he was free and her journey -possible, he was seriously embarrassed with regard to a home for -her. There was plenty of room in his father’s house at Cheyne Walk, -Chelsea--too big a house for his father and mother and younger sister, -now that the eldest girl had married and his younger brother lay dead on -the Somme. It had been his idea that he and Elsa would live in the upper -rooms--it made a kind of flat--while he got back to novel-writing until -he earned enough to provide a home of his own. It was still his idea, -as the only possible place for the immediate future, but the family was -dead against it and expressed the utmost aversion, amounting almost to -horror, at the idea of receiving his German wife. By violent argument, -by appeals to reason and charity, most of all by the firm conviction of -his father that he was suffering from shell-shock and would go over the -borderline of sanity if thwarted too much, a grudging consent had been -obtained from them to give Elsa house-room. Yet he dreaded the coldness -of her welcome, and the hostility not only of his own people but of any -English society in which she might find herself. - -“I shouldn’t have believed,” said Brand, “that such vindictive hatred -could have outlasted the war, in England. The people here at home, who -have never seen war closer than an air-raid, are poisoned, twisted and -envenomed with hate. And the women are worst. My own mother--so sweet -and gentle in the old days--would see every German baby starve rather -than subscribe to a single drop of milk. My own sister--twenty years of -age, add as holy as an angel--would scratch out the eyes of every German -girl. She reads the papers every day with a feverish desire for the -Kaiser’s trial. She licks her lips at the stories of starvation in -Austria. ‘They are getting punished,’ she says. ‘Who?’ I ask her. -‘Austrian babies?’ And she says, ‘The people who killed my brother -and yours.’ What’s the good of telling her that I have killed _their_ -brothers--many of them--even the brother of my wife----” - -I shook my head at that, but Brand was insistent. - -“I’m sure of it.... It is useless telling her that the innocent are -being punished for the guilty, and that all Europe was involved in the -same guilt. She says, ‘You have altered your ideas. The strain of war -has been too much for you.’ She means I’m mad or bad.... Sometimes -I think I may be, but when I think of those scenes in Cologne, the -friendly way of our fighting men with their former enemy, the charity of -our Tommies, their lack of hatred now the job is done, I look at these -people in England, the stay-at-homes, and believe it is they who are -warped.” - -The news of Brand’s marriage with a German girl had leaked out, though -his people tried to hush it up. It came to me now and then as a tit-bit -of scandal from men who had been up at Oxford with him in the old days. - -“You know that fellow Wickham Brand?” - -“Yes.” - -“Heard the rumour about him?” - -“No.” - -“They say he’s got a German wife. Married her after the armistice.” - -“Why not?” - -That question of mine made them stare as though I had uttered some -blasphemy. Generally they did not attempt to answer it, but shrugged -their shoulders with a look of unutterable disgust, or said, -“Disgraceful!” They were men, invariably, who had done _embusqué_ work -in the war, in Government offices and soft jobs. Soldiers who had fought -their way to Cologne were more lenient. One of them said, “Some of the -German girls are devilish pretty. Not my style, perhaps, but kissable.” - -I saw something of Brand’s trouble when I walked down Knightsbridge with -him one day on the way to his home in Chelsea. Horace Chipchase, the -novelist, came face to face with us and gave a whoop of pleasure when -he saw us. Then suddenly, after shaking hand? with me and greeting Brand -warmly, he remembered the rumour that had reached him. Embarrassment -overcame him, and ignoring Brand he confined his remarks to me, -awkwardly, and made an excuse for getting on. He did not look at Brand, -again. - -“Bit strained in his manner,” I remarked, glancing sideways at Wickham. - -He strode on with tightened lips. - -“Shared rooms with me once, and I helped him when he was badly in need -of it.... He’s heard about Elsa. Silly blighter!” - -But it hurt the man, who was very sensitive under his hard crust. - -It was on the way to his house that he told me he had made arrangements -at last for Elsa to join him in England. One of his friends at -headquarters in Cologne was providing her with a passport and had agreed -to let her travel with him to Paris where he was to give evidence before -a committee of the Peace Conference. Brand could fetch her from there, -in a week’s time. - -“I am going to Paris next week,” I told him, and he gave a grunt of -pleasure, and said, “Splendid! We can both meet Elsa.” - -I thought it curious then, and afterwards, that he was anxious for my -company when he met his wife and when she was with him. I think the -presence of a third person helped him to throw off a little of the -melancholy into which he relapsed when alone. - -I asked him if Elsa’s family knew of her marriage and were reconciled -to it, and he told me that they knew, but were less reconciled now than -when she had first broken the news to her father and mother on the day -of her wedding. Then there had been a family “scene.” The General had -raged and stormed, and his wife had wept, but after that outburst had -decided to forgive her, in order to avoid a family scandal. There had -been a formidable assembly of uncles, aunts and cousins of the von -Kreuzenach family to sit in judgment upon this affair which, as they -said, “touched their honour,” and Elsa’s description of it, and of -her terror and sense of guilt (it is not easy to break with racial -traditions), was very humorous, though at the same time rather pathetic. -They had graciously decided, after prolonged discussions in which they -treated Elsa exactly as though she were the prisoner at a court-martial, -to acknowledge and accept her marriage with Captain Brand. They had been -led to this decision mainly owing to the information given by Franz von -Kreuzenach that Captain Brand belonged to the English aristocracy, -his father being Sir Amyas Brand, and a member of the English House of -Parliament. They were willing to admit that, inferior as Captain Brand’s -family might be to that of von Kreuzenach--so old and honoured in German -history--it was yet respectable and not unworthy of alliance with them. -Possibly--it was an idea suggested with enormous solemnity by Onkel -von Kreuzenach--Elsa’s marriage with the son of an English Member of -Parliament might be of service to the Father-land in obtaining some -amelioration of the Peace Terms (the Treaty was not yet signed), and in -counteracting the harsh malignity of France. They must endeavour to use -this opportunity provided by Elsa in every possible way as a patriotic -duty.... So at the end of the family conclave Elsa was not only forgiven -but was, to some extent, exalted as an instrument of God for the rescue -of their beloved Germany. - -That position of hers lasted in her family until the terms of the -Peace Treaty leaked out, and then were published in full. A storm -of indignation rose in Germany, and Elsa was a private victim of its -violence in her own house. The combined clauses of the Treaty were read -as a sentence of death by the German people. Clause by clause, they -believed it fastened a doom upon them, and insured their ruin. It -condemned them to the payment of indemnities which would demand all the -produce of their industry for many and uncertain years. It reduced them -to the position of a slave state, without an army, without a fleet, -without colonies, without the right to develop industries in foreign -countries, without ships to carry their merchandise, without coal -to supply their factories or raw material for their manufactures. To -enforce the payment of these indemnities foreign commissions would seize -all German capital invested in former enemy or neutral states, and would -keep armed forces on the Rhine ready to march at any time, years after -the conclusion of peace, into the heart of Germany. The German people -might work, but not for themselves. They had freed themselves of -their own tyrants, but were to be subject to an international tyranny -depriving them of all hope of gradual recovery from the ruin of defeat. -On the West and on the East, Austria was to be hemmed in by new states -formed out of her own flesh-and-blood under the domination of hostile -races. She was to be maimed and strangled. The Fourteen Points to -which the allies had pledged themselves before the armistice had been -abandoned utterly, and Wilson’s promise of a peace which would heal -the wounds of the world had been replaced by a peace of vengeance which -would plunge Central Europe into deep gulfs of misery, despair, and -disease. That, at least, was the German point of view. - -“They’re stunned,” said Brand. “They knew they were to be punished, and -they were willing to pay a vast price of defeat. But they believed that -under a republican Government they would be left with a future hope of -progress, a decent hope of life, based upon their industry. Now they -have no hope, for we have given them a thin chance of reconstruction. -They are falling back upon the hope of vengeance and revolt. We have -prepared another inevitable war when the Germans, with the help of -Russia, will strive to break the fetters we have fastened on them. So -goes the only purpose for which most of us fought this war, and all our -pals have died in vain.” - -He stopped in the street and beat the pavement with his stick. - -“The damned stupidity of it all!” he said. “The infernal wickedness of -those old men who have arranged this thing!” - -Three small boys came galloping up Cheyne Walk with toy reins and -tinkling bells. - -“Those children,” said Brand, “will see the things that we have seen and -go into the ditches of death before their manhood has been fulfilled. We -fought to save them, and have failed.” - -He told me that even Elsa had been aghast at the Peace Terms. - -“I hoped more from the generous soul of England,” she had written to -him. - -Franz von Kreuzenach had written more bitterly than that. - -“We have been betrayed. There were millions of young men in Germany who -would have worked loyally to fulfil Wilson’s conditions of peace as -they were pledged in his Fourteen Points. They would have taken their -punishment with patience and courage, knowing the penalty of defeat. -They would have worked for the new ideals of a new age, which were to be -greater liberty and the brotherhood of man in a League of Nations. But -what is that league? It is a combination of enemies, associated for the -purpose of crushing the German people and keeping her crushed. I, who -loved England and had no emnity against her even in war, cannot forgive -her now for her share in this peace. As a German I find it unforgivable, -because it perpetuates the spirit of hatred and thrusts us back into the -darkness where evil is bred.” - -“Do you agree with that?” I asked Brand. - -“On the whole, yes,” he said, gravely. “Mind you, I’m not against -punishing Germany. She had to be punished. But we are substituting slow -torture for just retribution, and like Franz I’m thinking of the effect -on the future. By generosity we should have made the world safe. By -vengeance we have prepared new strife. Europe will be given up to -anarchy and deluged in the blood of the boys who are now babes.” - -I had dinner with Brand’s people and found them “difficult.” Sir Amyas -Brand had Wickham’s outward hardness and none of his inner sensibility. -He was a stiff, pompous man who had done extremely well out of the war, -I guessed, by the manufacture of wooden huts, to which he attached a -patriotic significance, apart from his profits. He alluded to the death -of his younger son as his “sacrifice for the Empire,” though it seemed to -me that the boy Jack had been the real victim of sacrifice.. To Wickham -he behaved with an exasperating air of forgiveness, as to one who had -sinned and was physically and morally sick. - -“How do you think Wickham is looking?” he asked me at table, and when I -said, “Very well,” he sighed and shook his head. - -“The war was a severe nervous strain upon Mm. It has changed him sadly. -We try to be patient with him, poor lad.” - -Brand overheard his speech and flushed angrily. - -“I’m sorry I try your patience so severely, sir,” he said in a bitter, -ironical way. - -“Don’t let’s argue about it, dear lad,” said Sir Amyas Brand suavely. - -“No,” said Lady Brand plaintively, “you know argument is bad for you, -Wickham. You become so violent, dear.” - -“Besides,” said Ethel Brand, the daughter, in a low and resigned voice, -“what’s done can’t be undone.” - -“Meaning Elsa?” asked Wickham savagely. I could see that but for my -restraining presence as a stranger there was all the inflammable stuff -here for a first-class domestic “flare-up.” - -“What else?” asked Ethel coldly, and meeting her brother’s challenging -eyes with a perfectly steady gaze. She was a handsome girl with regular, -classical features and tight lips, as narrow-minded, I imagined, as a -mid-Victorian spinster in a cathedral town, and as hard as granite in -principle and prejudice. - -Wickham weakened after signs of an explosion of rage. He spoke gently, -and revealed a hope to which I think he clung desperately. - -“When Elsa comes you will all fall in love with her.” - -It was the worst thing he could have said, though he was unconscious of -his “gaffe.” - -His sister Ethel reddened, and I could see her mouth harden. - -“So far I have remarkably little love for Germans, male or female.” - -“I hope we shall behave with Christian charity,” said Lady Brand. - -Sir Amyas Brand coughed uneasily, and then tried to laugh off his -embarrassment for my benefit. - -“There will be considerable scandal in my constituency!” - -“To hell with that!” said Brand, irritably. “It’s about time the British -public returned to sanity.” - -“Ah!” said Sir Amyas, “there’s a narrow border-line between sanity, and -shell-shock. Really, it is distressing what a number of men seem to -come back with disordered nerves. All these crimes, all these cases of -violence----” - -It gave him a chance of repeating a leading article which he had -read that morning in _The Times_. It provided a conversation without -controversy until the end of dinner. - -In the hall, before I left, Wickham Brand laughed, rather miserably. - -“It’s not going to be easy! Elsa will find the climate rather cold here, -eh?” - -“She will win them over,” I said hopefully, and these words cheered him. - -“Why, yes, they’re bound to like her.” - -We arranged for the Paris trip two weeks later, but before then we -were sure to meet at Eileen O’Connor’s. As a matter of fact, we dined -together with “Daddy” Small next day, and Eileen was with him. - - - - -V - - -I found Eileen O’Connor refreshing and invigorating, so that it was -good to be in her company. Most people in England at that time, at least -those I met, were “nervy,” depressed, and apprehensive of evil to come. -There was hardly a family I knew who had not one vacant chair wherein a -boy had sat when he had come home from school or office, and afterwards -on leave. Their ghosts haunted these homes and were present in any -company where people gathered for conversation or distraction. The wound -to England’s soul was unhealed, and the men who came back had received -grave hurt, many of them, to their nervous and moral health. - -This Irish girl was beautifully gay, not with that deliberate and -artificial gaiety which filled London theatres and dancing halls, but -with ah inner flame of happiness. It was difficult to account for that. -She had seen much tragedy in Lille. Death and the agony of men had been -familiar to her. She had faced death herself, very closely, escaping, -as she said, by a narrow “squeak.” She had seen the brutality of war and -its welter of misery for men and women, and now in time of peace she -was conscious of the sufferings of many people, and did not hide these -things from her mental vision or cry, “All’s right with the world!” when -all was wrong. But something in her character, something, perhaps, -in her faith, enabled her to resist the pressure of all this “morbid -emotion” and to face it squarely, with smiling eyes. Another thing that -attracted one was her fearlessness of truth. At a time when most people -shrank from truth her candour was marvellous, with the simplicity of -childhood joined to the wisdom of womanhood. - -I saw this at the dinner-party for four arranged in her honour by -“Daddy” Small. That was given, for cheapness’ sake, at a little -old restaurant in Whitehall which provided a good dinner for a few -shillings, and in an “atmosphere” of old-fashioned respectability which -appealed to the little American. - -Eileen knocked Brand edgewise at the beginning of his dinner by -remarking about his German marriage. - -“The news came to me as a shock,” she said, and when Wickham raised his -eyebrows and looked both surprised and dismayed (he had counted on her -sympathy and help), she patted his hand as it played a devil’s tattoo on -the table-cloth, and launched into a series of indiscretions that fairly -made my hair curl. - -“Theoretically,” she said, “I hadn’t the least objection to your -marrying a German girl. I have always believed that love is an instinct -which is beyond the control of diplomats who arrange frontiers and -generals who direct wars. I saw a lot of it in Lille--and there was -Franz von Kreuzenach, who fell in love with me, poor child. What really -hurt me for a while was green-eyed jealousy.” - -“Daddy” Small laughed hilariously, and filled up Eileen’s glass with -Moselle wine. - -Brand looked blank. - -“Jealousy?” - -“Why, yes,” said Eileen. “Imagine me, an Irish girl, all soppy with -emotion at the first sight of English khaki (that’s a fantastic -situation anyhow!), after four years with the grey men, and then finding -that the first khaki tunic she meets holds the body of a man she knew as -a boy, when she used to pull his hair! And such a grave heroic-looking -man, Wicky! Why, I felt like one of Tennyson’s ladies released from her -dark tower by a Knight of the Round Tower. Then you went away and -married a German Gretchen! And all my doing, because if I hadn’t given -you a letter to Franz you wouldn’t have met Elsa. So when I heard the -news, I thought, ‘There goes my romance!’” - -“Daddy” Small laughed again, joyously. - -“Say, my dear,” he said, “you’re making poor old Wickham blush like an -Englishman asked to tell the story of his V.C. in public.” - -Brand laughed, too, in his harsh, deep voice. - -“Why, Eileen, you ought to have told me before I moved out of Lille.” - -“And where would maiden modesty have been?” asked Eileen, in her -humorous way. - -“Where is it now?” asked the little doctor. - -“Besides,” said Brand, “I had that letter to Franz von Kreuzenach in my -pocket. I don’t mind telling you I detested the fellow for his infernal -impudence in making love to you.” - -“Sure now, it was a one-sided affair, entirely,” said Eileen, -exaggerating her Irish accent, “but one has to be polite to a gentleman -that saves one’s life on account of a romantic passion. Oh, Wickham, -it’s very English you are!” - -Brand could find nothing to say for himself, and it was I who came to -the rescue of his embarrassment by dragging a red herring across the -thread of Eileen’s discourse. She had a wonderful way of saying things -that on most girls’ lips would have seemed audacious, or improper, or -‘high-falutin’, but on hers were natural with a simplicity which shone -through her. - -Her sense of humour played like a light about her words, yet beneath her -wit was a tenderness and a knowledge of tragic things. I remember some -of her sayings that night at dinner, and they seemed to me very good -then, though when put down they lose the deep melody of her voice and -the smile or sadness of her dark eyes. - -“England,” she said, “fought the war for liberty and the rights of small -nations, but said to Ireland, ‘Hush, keep quiet there, damn you, or -you’ll make us look ridiculous.’” - -“Irish soldiers,” she said, “helped England to win all her wars, but -mostly in Scottish regiments. When the poor boys wanted to carry an -Irish flag, Kitchener said, ‘Go to hell,’ and some of them went to -Flanders... and recruiting stopped with a snap.” - -“Now, how do you know these things?” asked “Daddy” Small. “Did Kitchener -go to Lille to tell you?” - -“No,” said Eileen, “but I found some of the Dublin boys in the prison at -Lille, and they told the truth before they died, and perhaps it was that -which killed them. That and starvation and German brutality.” - -“I believe you’re a Sinn Feiner,” said Dr. Small. “Why don’t you go to -Ireland and show your true colours, ma’am?” - -“I’m Sinn Fein all right,” said Eileen, “but I hated the look of a white -wall in Lille, and there are so many white walls in the little green -isle. So I’m stopping in Kensington and trying to hate the English, but -can’t because I love them.” - -She turned to Wickham and said: “Will you take me for a row in -Kensington Gardens the very next day the sun shines?” - -“Rather!” said Wickham, “on one condition!’ - -“And that?” - -“That you’ll be kind to my little Elsa when she comes.” - -“I’ll be a mother to her,” said Eileen, “but she must come quick or I’ll -be gone.” - -“Gone?” - -Wickham spoke with dismay in his voice. I think he had counted on Eileen -as his stand-by when Elsa would need a friend in England. - -“Hush now!” said “Daddy” Small. “It’s my secret, you wicked lady with -black eyes and a mystical manner.” - -“Doctor,” said Eileen, “your own President rebukes you. ‘Open covenants -openly arrived at--weren’t those his words for the new diplomacy?” - -“Would to God he had kept to them,” said the little doctor, bitterly, -launching into a denunciation of the Peace Conference until I cut him -short with a question. - -“What’s this secret, Doctor?” - -He pulled out his pocket-book with an air of mystery. - -“We’re getting on with the International League of Goodwill,” he said. -“It’s making more progress than the League of Nations. There are names -here that are worth their weight in gold. There are golden promises -which by the grace of God----” - -“Daddy” Small spoke solemnly--“will be fulfilled by golden deeds. -Anyhow, we’re going to get a move on--away from hatred towards charity, -not for the making of wounds but for the healing, not punishing the -innocent for the sins of the guilty, but saving the innocent--the Holy -Innocents--for the glory of life. Miss Eileen and others are going to -be the instruments of the machinery of mercy, rather, I should say, the -spirit of humanity.” - -“With you as our gallant leader,” said Eileen, patting his hand. - -“It sounds good,” said Brand. “Let’s hear some more.” - -Dr. Small told us more in glowing language, and in Biblical utterance -mixed with American slang like Billy Sunday’s Bible. He was profoundly -moved. He was filled with hope and gladness, and with a humble pride -because his efforts had borne fruit. - -The scheme was simple. From his friends in the United States he had -promises, as good as gold, of many millions of American dollars. From -English friends he had also considerable sums. With this treasure he -was going to Central Europe to organise relief on a big scale for the -children who were starving to death. Eileen O’Connor was to be his -private secretary and assistant-organiser. She would have heaps of work -to do, and she had graduated in the prisons and slums of Lille. They -were starting in a week’s time for Warsaw, Prague, Buda-Pesth and -Vienna. - -“Then,” said Brand, “Elsa will lose a friend.” - -“Bring her, too,” said Eileen. “There’s work for all.” - -Brand was startled by this, and a sudden light leapt into his eyes. - -“By Jove!... But I’m afraid not. That’s impossible.” - -So it was only a week we had with Eileen, but in that time we had some -good meetings and merry adventures. Brand and I rowed her on the lake in -Kensington Gardens, and she told us Irish fairy-tales as she sat in the -stem with her hat in her lap, and the wind playing in her brown hair. -We took her to the Russian Ballet and she wept a little at the beauty of -it. - -“After four years of war,” she said, “beauty is like water to a parched -soul. It’s so exquisite it hurts.” - -She took us one day into the Carmelite Church at - -Kensington, and Brand and I knelt each side of her, feeling sinners with -a saint between us. And then, less like a saint, she sang ribald little -songs on the way to her mother’s house in Holland Street, and said “Drat -the thing!” when she couldn’t find her key to unlock the door. - -“Sorry, Biddy my dear,” she said to the little maidservant who opened -the door. “I shall forget my head one day.” - -“Sure, Miss Eileen,” said the girl, “but never the dear heart of you, at -all, at all.” - -Eileen’s mother was a buxom, cheery, smiling Irishwoman who did not -worry, I fancy, about anything in the world, and was sure of heaven. -Her drawing-room was littered with papers and novels, some of which she -swept off the sofa with a careless hand. - -“Won’t you take a seat then?” - -I asked her whether she had not been anxious about her daughter when -Eileen was all those years under German rule. - -“Not at all,” said the lady. “I knew our dear Lord was as near to Lille -as to London.” - -Two of her boys had been killed in the war, “fighting,” she said, “for -an ungrateful country which keeps its heel on the neck of Ireland,” - and two were in the United States, working for the honour of Ireland on -American newspapers. Eileen’s two sisters had married during the war and -between them had given birth to four Sinn Feiners. Eileen’s father had -died a year ago, and almost his last word had been her name. - -“The dear man thought all the world of Eileen,” said Mrs. O’Connor. “I -was out of it entirely when he had, her by his side.” - -“You’ll be lonely,” said Brand, “when your daughter goes abroad again.” - -Eileen answered him. - -“Oh, you can’t keep me back by insidious remarks like that! Mother -spends most of her days in church, and the rest of them reading naughty -novels which keep her from ascending straight to heaven without the -necessity of dying first. She is never lonely because her spirit is in -touch with those she loves, in this world or the other. And isn’t that -the truth I’m after talking, mother o’ mine!” - -“I never knew more than one O’Connor who told the truth yet,” said the -lady, “and that’s yourself, my dear. And it’s a frightening way you have -with it that would scare the devil out of his skin.” - -They were pleasant hours with Eileen, and when she went away from -Charing Cross one morning with Dr. Small, five hospital nurses and two -Americans of the Red Cross, I wished with all my heart that Wickham -Brand had asked her and not Elsa von Kreuzenach to be his wife. That was -an idle wish, for the next morning Brand and I crossed over to France, -and on the way to Paris my friend told me that the thought of meeting -Elsa after those months of separation excited him so that each minute -seemed an hour. And as he told me that he lit a cigarette and I saw that -his hand was trembling, because of this nervous strain. - - - - -VI - - -We met Elsa at the Gare de l’Est in Paris the evening after our -arrival. Brand’s nervous anxiety had increased as the hour drew near, -and he smoked cigarette after cigarette while he paced up and down the -_Salle d’Attente_ as far as he could for the crowds which surged there. - -Once he spoke to me about his apprehensions. - -“I hope to God this will work out all right.... I’m only thinking of her -happiness.” - -Another time he said: “This French crowd would tear her to pieces if -they knew she was German.” - -While we were waiting we met a friend of old times. I was first to -recognise Pierre Nesle, who had been attached to us as interpreter and -_liaison_ officer. He was in civil clothes and was wearing a bowler -hat and a light overcoat, so that his transformation was astonishing. I -touched him on the arm as he made his way quickly through the crowd, and -he turned sharply and stared at me as though he could not place me at -all. Then a look of recognition leapt into his eyes and he grasped both -my hands delightedly. He was still thin and pale, but some of his old -melancholy had gone out of his eyes and in its place there was an eager, -purposeful look. - -“Here’s Brand,” I said. “He’ll be glad to see you again.” - -“_Quelle chance!_” exclaimed Pierre, and he made a dash for his friend -and before Brand could remonstrate kissed him on both cheeks. They had -been good comrades and after the rescue of Marthe from the mob in Lille -it was to Brand that Pierre Nesle had opened his heart and revealed his -agony. He could not stay long with us in the station as he was going -to some political meeting, and perhaps it was well, because Brand was -naturally anxious to escape from him before Elsa came. - -“I am working hard--speaking, writing, organising--on behalf of the -_Ligue des Tranchées_,” said Pierre. “You must come and see me at -my office. It’s the headquarters of the new movement in France. -Anti-militarist, to fulfil the ideals of the men who fought to end war.” - -“You’re going to fight against heavy odds,” said Brand. “Clemenceau -won’t love you, nor those who like his peace.” - -Pierre laughed and used an old watchword of the war. - -“_Nous les aurons!_ Those old dead-heads belong to the past. Peace has -still to be made by the men who fought for a new world.” - -He gave us his address, pledged us to call on him, and slipped into the -vortex of the crowd. - -Brand and I waited another twenty minutes, and then in a tide of new -arrivals we saw Elsa. She was in the company of Major Quin, Brand’s -friend who had brought her from Cologne, a tall Irishman who stooped a -little as he gave his arm to the girl. She was dressed in a blue coat -and skirt, very neatly, and it was the glitter of her spun-gold hair -that made me catch sight of her quickly in the crowd. Her eyes had a -frightened look as she came forward, and she was white to the lips. -Thinner, too, than when I had seen her last, so that she looked older -and not, perhaps, quite so wonderfully pretty. But her face lighted up -with intense gladness when Brand stood in front of her, and then, under -an electric lamp, with a crowd surging around him, took her in his arms. - -Major Quin and I stood aloof, chatting together. - -“Good journey?” I asked. - -“Excellent, but I’m glad it’s over. That little lady is too unmistakably -German. Everybody spotted her and looked unutterable things. She was -frightened, and I don’t wonder. Most of them thought the worst of me. I -had to threaten one fellow with a damned good hiding for an impertinent -remark I overheard.” - -Brand thanked him for looking after his wife, and Elsa gave him her hand -and said, “_Danke schön_.” - -Major Quin raised his finger and said, “Hush. Don’t forget you’re in -Paris now.” - -Then he saluted with a click of spurs and took his leave. I put Brand -and his wife in a taxi and drove outside by the driver to a quiet old -hotel in the Rue St. Honoré, where we had booked rooms. - -When we registered, the manager at the desk stared at Elsa curiously. -She spoke English, but with an unmistakable accent. The man’s courtesy -to Brand, which had been perfect, fell from him abruptly and he spoke -with icy insolence when he summoned one of the boys to take up the -baggage. In the dining-room that night all eyes turned to Elsa and -Brand, with inquisitive, hostile looks. I suppose her frock, simple and -ordinary as it seemed to me, proclaimed its German fashion. Or perhaps -her face and hair were not so English as I had imagined. It was a little -while before the girl herself was aware of those unpleasant glances -about her. She was very happy sitting next to Brand, whose hand she -caressed once or twice, and into whose face she looked with adoration. -She was still very pale, and I could see that she was immensely tired -after her journey, but her eyes shone wonderfully. Sometimes she -looked about her and encountered the stares of people--elderly French -_bourgeois_ and some English nurses and a few French officers--dining -at other tables in the great room with gilt mirrors and painted ceiling. -She spoke to Brand presently in a low voice. - -“I am afraid. These people stare at me so much. They guess what I am.” - -“It’s only your fancy,” said Brand. “Besides, they would be fools not to -stare at a face like yours.” - -She smiled and coloured up at that sweet flattery. - -“I know when people like one’s looks. It is not for that reason they -stare.” - -“Ignore them,” said Brand. “Tell me about Franz and Frau von Detmold.” - -It was unwise of him to sprinkle his conversation with German names. -The waiter at our table was listening attentively. Presently I saw him -whispering behind the screen to one of his comrades and looking our way -sullenly. - -He kept us waiting an unconscionable time for coffee, and when at last -Brand gave his arm to Elsa and led her from the room, he gave a harsh -laugh as they passed, and I heard the words, “_Sale Boche!_” spoken in -a low tone of voice, yet loud enough for all the room to hear. From all -the little tables there came titters of laughter and those words, “_Sale -Boche!_” were repeated by several voices. I hoped that Elsa and Brand -had not heard, but I saw Elsa sway a little on her husband’s arm as -though struck by an invisible blow, and Brand turned with a look of -passion, as though he would hit the waiter or challenge the whole room -to warfare. But Elsa whispered to him, and he went with her up the -staircase to their rooms. - -The next morning when I met them at breakfast Elsa still looked -desperately tired, though very happy, and Brand had lost a little of -his haggard look and his nerve was steadier. But it was an uncomfortable -moment for all of us when the manager came to the table and regretted -with icy courtesy that their rooms would not be available another night -owing to a previous arrangement which he had unfortunately overlooked. - -“Nonsense!” said Brand, shortly. “I have taken these rooms for three -nights, and I intend to stay in them.” - -“It is impossible,” said the manager. “I must ask you to have your -baggage packed by twelve o’clock.” - -Brand dealt with him firmly. - -“I am an English officer. If I hear another word from you I will call on -the Provost Marshal and get him to deal with you.” - -The manager bowed. This threat cowed him, and he said no more about -a change of rooms. But Brand and his wife, and I, as their friend, -suffered from a policy of passive resistance to our presence. The -chambermaid did not answer their bell, having become strangely deaf. - -The waiter was generally engaged at other tables whenever we wanted him. -The hall porter turned his back upon us. The page-boys made grimaces -behind our backs, as I saw very well in the gilt mirror, and as Elsa -saw. - -They took to having their meals out, Brand insisting always that I -should join them, and we drove out to the Bois and had tea there in the -_Chalet des Iles_. It was a beautiful afternoon in September, and the -leaves were just turning to crinkled gold and the lake was as blue -as the cloudless sky above. Across the ferry came boatloads of young -Frenchmen with their girls, singing, laughing, on this day of peace. -Some of the men limped as they came up the steps from the landing-stage. -One walked on crutches. Another had an empty sleeve. Under the trees -they made love to their girls and fed them with rose-tinted ices. - -“These people are happy,” said Elsa. “They have forgotten already the -agony of war. Victory is healing. In Germany there is only misery.” - -A little later she talked about the peace. - -“If only the _Entente_ had been more generous in victory our despair -would not be so great. Many of us, great multitudes, believed that the -price of defeat would be worth paying because Germany would take a place -among free nations and share in the creation of a nobler world. Now we -are crushed by the militarism of nations who have used our downfall to -increase their own power. The light of a new ideal which rose above the -darkness has gone out.” - -Brand took his wife’s hand and stroked it in his big paw. - -“All this is temporary and the work of the old men steeped in the old -traditions which led to war. We must wait for them to die. Then out of -the agony of the world’s boyhood will come the new revelation.” - -Elsa clasped her hands and leaned forward, looking across the lake in -the Bois de Boulogne. - -“I would like to live long enough to be sure of that,” she said, -eagerly. “If we have children, my husband, perhaps they will listen to -our tales of the war as Franz and I read about wolves and goblins in our -fairy-tales. The fearfulness of them was not frightening, for we knew we -were safe.” - -“God grant that,” said Brand, gravely. - -“But I am afraid!” said Elsa. She looked again across the lake, so blue -under the sky, so golden in sunlight; and shivered a little. - -“You are cold!” said Brand. - -He put his arms about her as they sat side by side, and her head drooped -upon his shoulder and she closed her eyes like a tired child. - -They went to the opera that night and I refused their invitation to join -them, protesting that they would never learn to know each other if a -third person were always present. I slipped away to see Pierre Nesle, -and found him at an office in a street somewhere off the Rue du Louvre, -which was filled with young men whose faces I seemed to have seen before -under blue shrapnel helmets above blue tunics. They were typewriting as -though serving machine-guns, and folding up papers while they whistled -the tune of “_Madelon_.” Pierre was in his shirtsleeves, dictating -letters to a _poilu_ in civil clothes. - -“Considerable activity on the western front, eh?” he said when he saw -me. - -“Tell me all about it, Pierre.” - -He told me something about it in a restaurant where we dined in the -Rue du Marché St. Honoré. He was one of the organising secretaries of -a society made up exclusively of young soldiers who had fought in the -trenches. There was a sprinkling of intellectuals among them--painters, -poets, novelists, journalists--but the main body were simple soldiers -animated by one idea--to prevent another war by substituting the -common-sense and brotherhood of peoples for the old diplomacy of secret -alliances and the old tradition of powerful armies. - -“How about the Peace Treaty and the League of Nations?” I asked. - -Pierre Nesle shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. - -“The Peace Treaty belongs to the Napoleonic tradition. We’ve got beyond -that now. It is the programme that has carefully arranged another and -inevitable war. Look at the world now! Look at France, Italy, Germany, -Austria! We are all ruined together, and those most ruined will, by -their disease and death, drag down Europe into general misery. _Mon -vieux_, what has victory given to France! A great belt of devastated -country, cemeteries crowded with dead youth, bankruptcy, and everything -five times the cost of pre-war rates. Another such victory will wipe us -off the map. We have smashed Germany, it is true, for a time. We have -punished her women and children for the crimes of their war lords, but -can we keep her crushed? Are our frontiers impregnable against the time -when her people come back for revenge, smashing the fetters we have -placed on them, and rising again in strength? For ten years, for twenty -years, for thirty years perhaps, we shall be safe. And after that, if -the heart of Europe does not change, if we do not learn wisdom from the -horror that has passed, France will be ravaged again, and all that we -have seen our children will see, and their suffering will be greater -than ours, and they will not have the hope we had.” - -He stared back into the past, not a very distant past, and I fancy that -among the figures he saw was Marthe, his sister. - -“What’s the remedy?” I asked. - -“A union of democracy across the frontiers of hate,” he answered, and I -think it was a phrase that he had written and learnt by heart. - -“A fine phrase!” I said, laughing a little. - -He flared up at me. - -“It’s more than a phrase. It’s the heart-beat of millions in Europe.” - -“In France?” I asked pointedly. “In the France of Clemenceau?” - -“More than you imagine,” he answered, boldly. “Beneath our present -Chauvinism, our natural exultation in victory, our inevitable hatred of -the enemy, common-sense is at work, and an idealism higher than that. -At present its voice is not heard. The old men are having their day. -Presently the new men will arrive with the new ideas. They are here, but -do not speak yet.” - -“The old men again!” I said. “It is strange. In Germany, in France, in -England, even in America, people are talking strangely about the old men -as though they were guilty of all this agony. That is remarkable.” - -“They were guilty,” said Pierre Nesle. “It is against the old men in all -countries of Europe that youth will declare war. For it was their ideas -which brought us to our ruin.” - -He spoke so loudly that people in the restaurant turned to look at him. -He paid his bill and spoke in a lower voice. - -“It is dangerous to talk like this in public. Let us walk up the Champs -Elysées, where I am visiting some friends.” - -Suddenly a remembrance came back to him. - -“Your friends, too,” he said. - -“My friends?” - -“But yes; Madame Chéri and Hélène. After Edouard’s death they could not -bear to live in Lille.” - -“Edouard, that poor boy who came back? He is dead?” - -“He was broken by the prison life,” said Pierre. “He died within a month -of armistice, and Hélène wept her heart out. He confided a secret to me. -Hélène and he had come to love each other, and would marry when they -could get her mother’s consent--or, one day, if not.” - -“What’s her objection?” I asked. “Why, it’s splendid to think that -Hélène and you will be man and wife. The thought of it makes me feel -good.” - -He pressed my arm and said, “_Merci, mille fois, mon cher_.” - -Madame Chéri objected to his political opinions. She regarded them as -poisonous treachery. - -“And Hélène?” - -I remembered that outburst, months back, when Hélène had desired the -death of many German babies. - -“Hélène loves me,” said Pierre simply. “We do not talk politics.” - -On our way to the Avenue Victor Hugo I ventured to ask him a question -which had been a long time in my mind “Your sister, Marthe? She is -well?” - -Even in the pearly twilight of the Champs Elysées I was aware of -Pierre’s sudden change of colour. I had touched a nerve that still -jumped. - -“She is well and happy,” he answered gravely. “She is now a -_religieuse_, a nun, in the convent at Lille. They tell me she is a -saint. Her name in religion is _Sour Angélique._” - -I called on Madame Chéri and her daughter with Pierre Nesle. They seemed -delighted to see me, and Hélène greeted me like an old and trusted -friend, giving me the privilege of kissing her cheek. She had grown -taller and beautiful, and there was a softness in her eyes when she -looked at Pierre which made me sure of his splendid luck. - -Madame Chéri had aged, and some of her fire had burnt out. I guessed -that it was due to Edouard’s death. She spoke of that, and wept a -little, and deplored the mildness of the Peace Treaty which had not -punished the evil race who had killed her husband and her boy and the -flower of France. - -“There are many German dead,” said Pierre. “They have been punished.” - -“Not enough!” cried Madame Chéri. “They should all be dead.” - -Hélène kissed her hand and snuggled down to her as once I had seen in -Lille. - -“_Petite maman_,” she said, “let us talk of happy things to-night. Pierre -has brought us a good friend.” - -Later in the evening, when Pierre and Hélène had gone into another room -to find some biscuits for our wine, Madame Chéri spoke to me about their -betrothal. - -“Pierre is full of strange and terrible ideas,” she said. “They are -shared by other young men who fought bravely for France. To me they -seem wicked, and the talk of cowards, except that their medals tell of -courage. But the light in Hélène’s eyes weakens me. I’m too much of a -Frenchwoman to be stern with love.” - -By those words of hers I was able to give Pierre a message of good-cheer -when he walked back with me that night, and he went away with gladness. - -With gladness also did Elsa Brand set out next day for England where, as -a girl, she had known happy days, and where now her dream lived with the -man who stood beside her. Together we watched for the white cliffs, and -when suddenly the sun glinted on them she gave a little cry, and putting -her hand through Brand’s arm, said, “Our home!” - - - - -VII - - -I saw very little of Brand in London after Elsa’s arrival in his -parent’s house at Chelsea. I was busy, as usual, watching the way of the -world and putting my nose down to bits of blank paper which I proceeded -to spoil with futile words. Brand was doing the same thing in his study -on the top floor of the house in Cheyne Walk, while Elsa, in true German -style, was working embroidery or reading English literature to improve -her mind and her knowledge of the language. - -Brand was endeavouring strenuously to earn money enough to make him free -of his father’s house. He failed, on the whole, rather miserably. He -began a novel on the war, became excited with it for the first six -chapters, then stuck hopelessly and abandoned it. - -“I find it impossible,” he wrote to me, “to get the real thing into my -narrative. It is all wooden, unnatural, and wrong. I can’t get the right -perspective on paper, although I think I see it clear enough when I’m -not writing. The thing is too enormous, the psychology too complicated -for my power of expression. A thousand characters, four years of -experience, come crowding into my mind, and I can’t eliminate the -unessential and stick the point of my pen into the heart of truth. -Besides, the present state of the world, to say nothing of domestic -trouble, prevents anything like concentration... And my nerves have gone -to hell.” - -After the abandonment of his novel he took to writing articles for -magazines and newspapers, some of which appeared, thereby producing -some useful guineas. I read them and liked their strength of style and -intensity of emotion. But they were profoundly pessimistic, and “the -gloomy Dean,” who was prophesying woe, had an able seconder in Wickham -Brand, who foresaw the ruin of civilisation and the downfall of the -British Empire because of the stupidity of the world’s leaders and the -careless ignorance of the multitudes. He harped too much on the same -string, and I fancied that editors would soon begin to tire of his -melancholy tune. I was right. - -“I have had six articles rejected in three weeks,” wrote Brand. “People -don’t want the truth. They want cheery insincerity. Well, they won’t get -it from me, though I starve to death.... But it’s hard on Elsa. She’s -having a horrible time, and her nerve is breaking. I wish to God I could -afford to take her down to the country somewhere, away from spiteful -females and their cunning cruelty. Have you seen any Christian charity -about in this most Christian country? If so, send me word, and I’ll walk -to it on my knees, from Chelsea.” - -It was in a postscript to a letter about a short story he was writing -that he wrote an alarming sentence. - -“I think Elsa is dying. She gets weaker every day.” Those words sent -me to Chelsea in a hurry. I had been too careless of Brand’s troubles, -owing to my own pressure of work and my own fight with a nervous -depression which was a general malady, I found, with most men back from -the war. - -When I rapped the brass knocker on the house in Cheyne Walk the door -was opened by a different maid from the one I had seen on my first visit -there. The other one, as Brand told me afterwards, had given notice -because “she couldn’t abide them Huns” (meaning Elsa), and with her had -gone the cook, who had been with Wickham’s mother for twenty years. - -Brand was writing in his study upstairs when the new maid showed me in. -Or, rather, he was leaning over a writing-block, with his elbows dug -into the table and his face in his hands, while an unlighted pipe--his -old trench pipe--lay across the inkpot. - -“Thinking out a new plot, old man?” I asked cheerily. - -“It doesn’t come,” he said. “My own plot cuts across my line of -thought.” - -“How’s Elsa?” - -He pointed with the stem of his pipe to the door leading from his room. - -“Sleeping, I hope.... Sit down and let’s have a yarn.” - -We talked about things in general for a time. They were not very -cheerful, anyhow. Brand and I were both gloomy souls just then, and knew -each other too well to camouflage our views about the state of Europe -and the “unrest” (as it was called) in England. - -Then he told me about Elsa, and it was a tragic tale From the very first -his people had treated her with a studied unkindness which had broken -her nerve and spirit. She had come to England with a joyous hope of -finding happiness and friendship with her husband’s family, and glad to -escape from the sadness of Germany and the solemn disapproval of her own -people, apart from Franz, who was devoted to her. - -Her first dismay came when she kissed the hand of her mother-in-law, -who drew it away as though she had been stung by a wasp, and when her -movement to kiss her husband’s sister Ethel was repulsed by a girl who -drew back icily and said, “How do you do?” - -Even then she comforted herself a little with the thought that this -coldness was due to English reserve, and that in a little while English -kindness would be revealed. But the days passed with only unkindness. - -At first Lady Brand and her daughter maintained a chilly silence towards -Elsa, at breakfast, luncheon, and other meals, talking to each other -brightly, as though she did not exist, and referring constantly to -Wickham as “poor Wicky.” Ethel had a habit of reading out morsels from -the penny illustrated papers, and often they referred to “another trick -of the Huns” or “fresh revelations of Hun treachery.” At these times Sir -Amyas Brand said “Ah!” in a portentous voice, but, privately, with some -consciousness of decency, begged Ethel to desist from “controversial -topics.” She “desisted” in the presence of her brother, whose violence -of speech scared her into silence. - -A later phase of Ethel’s hostility to Elsa was in the style of amiable -enquiry. In a simple, childlike way, as though eager for knowledge, -she would ask Elsa such questions as “Why the Germans boiled down their -dead?” - -“Why they crucified Canadian prisoners?” - -“Was it true that German school children sang the Hymn of Hate before -morning lessons?” - -“Was it by order of the Kaiser that English prisoners were starved to -death?” - -Elsa answered all these questions by passionate denials. It was a -terrible falsehood, she said, that the Germans had boiled down bodies -for fats. On the contrary, they paid the greatest reverence to their -dead, as her brother had seen in many cemeteries on the Western front. -The story of the “crucified Canadians” had been disproved by the English -intelligence officers after a special enquiry, as Wickham had told her. -She had never heard the Hymn of Hate. Some of the English prisoners -had been harshly treated--there were brutal commandants--but not -deliberately starved. Not starved more than German soldiers, who had -very little food during the last years of the war. - -“But surely,” said Lady Brand, “you must admit, my dear, that Germany -conducted this war with the greatest possible barbarity? Otherwise, why -should the world call them Huns?” - -Elsa said it was only the English who called the Germans - -Huns, and that was for a propaganda of hatred which was very wicked. - -“Do _I_ look like a Hun?” she asked, and then burst into tears. - -Lady Brand was disconcerted by that sign of weakness. - -“You mustn’t think us unkind, Elsa, but, of course, we have to uphold -the truth.” - -Ethel was utterly unmoved by Elsa’s tears, and, indeed, found a holy -satisfaction in them. - -“When the German people confess their guilt with weeping and lamentation -the English will be first to forgive. Never till then.” - -The presence of a German girl in the house seemed to act as a blight -upon all domestic happiness. It was the cook who first “gave notice.” - Elsa had never so much as set eyes upon that cross-eyed woman -below-stairs who had prepared the family food since Wickham had sat in -a high chair with a bib round his neck. But Mary, in a private interview -with Lady Brand, stormy in its character, as Elsa could hear through the -folding doors, vowed that she would not live in the same house with “one -of those damned Germings.” - -Lady Brand’s tearful protestations that Elsa was no longer German, being -“Mr. Wickham’s wife,” and that she had repented sincerely of all the -wrong done by the country in which she had unfortunately been born, did -not weaken the resolution of Mary Grubb, whose patriotism had always -been “above suspicion,” “which,” as she said, “I hope to remain so.” She -went next morning, after a great noise of breathing and the descent of -tin boxes, while Lady Brand and Ethel looked with reproachful eyes at -Elsa as the cause of this irreparable blow. - -The parlour-maid followed in a week’s time, on the advice of her young -man, who had worked in a canteen of the Y.M.C.A. at Boulogne and knew -all about German spies. - -It was very awkward for Lady Brand, who assumed an expression of -Christian martyrdom, and told Wickham that his rash act was bearing sad -fruit, a mixed metaphor which increased his anger, as he told me, to a -ridiculous degree. - -He could see that Elsa was very miserable. Many times she wept when -alone with him, and begged him to take her away to a little home of -their own, even if it were only one room in the poorest neighbourhood. -But Wickham was almost penniless, and begged her to be patient a little -longer, until he had saved enough to fulfil their hope. There I think -he was unwise. It would have been better for him to borrow money--he had -good friends--rather than keep his wife in such a hostile atmosphere. -She was weak and ill. He was alarmed at her increasing weakness. Once -she fainted in his arms, and even to go upstairs to their rooms at the -top of the house tired her so much that afterwards she would lie back in -a chair, with her eyes closed, looking very white and worn. She tried to -hide her ill-health from her husband, and when they were alone together -she seemed gay and happy, and would have deceived him but for those fits -of weeping at the unkindness of his mother and sister, and those sudden -attacks of “tiredness” when all physical strength departed from her. - -Her love for him seemed to grow with the weakness of her body. She could -not bear him to leave her alone for any length of time, and while he -was writing, sat near him, so that she might have her head against his -shoulder or touch his hand, or kiss it. It was not conducive to easy -writing or the invention of plots. - -Something like a crisis happened after a painful scene in the -drawing-room downstairs on a day when Brand had gone out to walk off a -sense of deadly depression which prevented all literary effort. - -Several ladies had come to tea with Lady Brand and Ethel, and they gazed -at Elsa as though she were a strange and dangerous animal. - -One of them, a thin and elderly schoolmistress, cross-questioned Elsa as -to her nationality. - -“I suppose you are Swedish, my dear?” she said sweetly. - -“No,” said Elsa. - -“Danish, then, no doubt?” continued Miss Clutter. - -“I am German,” said Elsa. - -That announcement had caused consternation among Lady Brand’s guests. -Two of the ladies departed almost immediately. The others stayed to see -how Miss Clutter would deal with this amazing situation. - -She dealt with it firmly, and with the cold intelligence of a high -schoolmistress. - -“How _very_ interesting!” she said, turning to Lady Brand. “Perhaps your -daughter-in-law will enlighten us a little about German psychology which -we have found so puzzling. I should be so glad if she could explain to -us how the German people reconcile the sinking of merchant ships, the -unspeakable crime of the _Lusitania_ with any belief in God, or even -with the principles of our common humanity. It is a mystery to me how -the drowning of babies could be regarded as legitimate warfare by a -people proud of their civilisation.” - -“Perhaps it would be better to avoid controversy, dear Miss Clutter,” - said Lady Brand, alarmed at the prospect of an “unpleasant” scene which -would be described in other drawing-rooms next day. - -But Miss Clutter had adopted Ethel’s method of enquiry. She so much -wanted to know the German point of view. Certainly they must have a -point of view. - -“Yes, it would be so interesting to know!” said another lady. - -“Especially if we could believe it,” said another. - -Elsa had been twisting and re-twisting a little lace handkerchief in her -lap. She was very pale, and tried to conceal a painful agitation from -all these hostile and enquiring ladies. - -Then she spoke to them in a low, strained voice. - -“You will never understand,” she said. “You look out from England with -eyes of hate, and without pity in your hearts. The submarine warfare -was shameful. There were little children drowned on the _Lusitania_, and -women. I wept for them and prayed the dear God to stop the war. Did you -weep for our little children and our women? They, too, were killed by -sea warfare, not only a few, as on the _Lusitania_, but thousands and -tens of thousands. Your blockade closed us in with an iron ring. No -ship could bring us food. For two years we starved on short rations and -chemical foods. We were without fats and milk. Our mothers watched their -children weaken and wither and die, because of the English blockade. -Their own milk dried up within their breasts. Little coffins were -carried down our streets day after day, week after week. Fathers and -mothers were mad at the loss of their little ones. ‘We must smash -our way through the English blockade!’ they said. The U-boat warfare -gladdened them. It seemed a chance of rescue for the children of -Germany. It was wicked. But all the war was wickedness. It was wicked -of you English to keep up your blockade so long after Armistice, so that -more children died and more women were consumptive, and men fainted at -their work. Do you reconcile that with God’s good love? Oh, I find -more hatred here in England than I knew even in Germany. It is -cruel, unforgiving, unfair! You, are proud of your own virtue and -hypocritical. God will be kinder to my people than to you, because now -we cry out for His mercy, and you are still arrogant, with the name of -God on your lips but a devil of pride in your hearts. I came here -with my dear husband believing that many English would be like him, -forgiving, hating cruelty, eager to heal the world’s broken heart. You -are not like him. You are cruel and lovers of cruelty, even to one poor -German girl who came to you for shelter with her English man. I am sorry -for you. I pity you because of your narrowness. I do not want to know -you.” - -She stood up, swaying a little, with one hand on the mantelpiece, as -afterwards she told her husband. She did not believe that she could -cross the floor without falling. There was a strange dizziness in her -head, and a mist before her eyes. But she held her head high and walked -out of the drawing-room, and then upstairs. When Wickham Brand came back -she was lying on her bed very ill. He sent for a doctor who was with her -for half-an-hour. - -“She is very weak,” he said. “No pulse to speak of. You will have to be -careful of her--deuced careful.” - -He gave no name to her illness. “Just weakness,” he said. “Run down like -a worn-out clock. Nerves all wrong, and no vitality.” - -He sent round a tonic which Elsa took like a child, and for a little -while it seemed to do her good. But Brand was frightened because her -weakness had come back. - -I am glad now that I had an idea which helped Brand in this time of -trouble and gave Elsa some weeks of happiness and peace. It occurred to -me that young Harding was living alone in his big old country house near -Weybridge, and would be glad and grateful, because of his loneliness, to -give house-room to Brand and his wife. He had a great liking for Brand, -as most of us had, and his hatred of Germany had not been so violent -since his days in Cologne. His good nature, anyhow, and the fine -courtesy which was the essential quality of his character, would make -him kind to Elsa, so ill and so desperately in need of kindness. I was -not disappointed. When I spoke to him over the telephone he said, “It -will be splendid for me. This lonely house is getting on my nerves -badly. Bring them down.” - -I took them down in a car two days later. It was a fine autumn day -with a sparkle in the air and a touch of frost on the hedgerows. Elsa, -wrapped up in heavy rugs, lay back next to Brand, and a little colour -crept back into her cheeks and brought back her beauty. I think a shadow -lifted from her as she drove away from that house in Chelsea where she -had dwelt with enmity among her husband’s people. - -Harding’s house in Surrey was at the end of a fine avenue of beeches, -glorious in their autumn foliage of crinkled gold. A rabbit scuttled -across the drive as we came, and bobbed beneath the red bracken of the -undergrowth. - -“Oh,” said Elsa, like a child, “there is Peterkin! What a rogue he -looks!” - -Her eyes were bright when she caught sight of Harding’s house in the -Elizabethan style of post-and-plaster splashed with scarlet where the -Virginia creeper straggled on its walls. - -“It is wonderfully English,” she said. “How Franz would love this -place!” - -Harding came down from the steps to greet us, and I thought it noble of -him that he should kiss the girl’s hand when Brand said, “This is Elsa.” - For Harding had been a Hun-hater--you remember his much-repeated phrase, -“No good German but a dead German!”--and that little act was real -chivalry to a woman of the enemy. - -There was a great fire of logs burning in the open hearth in the hall, -flinging a ruddy glare on the panelled walls and glinting on bits of -armour and hunting trophies. Upstairs, also, Brand told me, there was a -splendid fire in Elsa’s room, which had once been the room of Harding’s -wife. It wanned Elsa not only in body but in soul. Here was an English -welcome and kindness of thought. On her dressing-table there were -flowers from Harding’s hot-houses, and she gave a little cry of pleasure -at the sight of them for there had been no flowers in Cheyne Walk, -Chelsea. That night she was strong enough to come down to dinner, -and looked very charming there at the polished board, fit only by -candlelight, whose soft rays touched the gold of her hair. - -“It is a true English home,” she said, glancing up at the panelled walls -and at portraits of Harding’s people in old-fashioned costumes which -hung there. - -“A lonely one when no friends are here,” said Harding, and that was the -only time he referred in any way to the wife who had left him. - -That dinner was the last one which Elsa had sitting at table with -us. She became very tired again. So tired that Brand had to carry her -upstairs and downstairs, which he did as though she weighed no more than -a child. During the day she lay on a sofa in the drawing-room, and Brand -did no writing now nor any kind of work, but stayed always with his -wife. For hours together he sat by her side, and she held his hand and -touched his face and hair, and was happy in her love. - -A good friend came to stay with them and brought unfailing cheerfulness. -It was Charles Fortune who had come down at Harding’s invitation. He was -as comical as ever, and made Elsa laugh with ripples of merriment while -he satirised the world as he knew it, with shrewd and penetrating wit. -He played the jester industriously to get that laughter from her, though -sometimes she had to beg of him not to make her laugh so much because -it hurt her. Then he played the piano late into the afternoon, until the -twilight in the room faded into darkness except for the ruddy glow of -the log fire, or after dinner in the evenings until Brand carried his -wife to bed. He played Chopin best, with a magic touch, but Elsa liked -him to play Bach and Schumann, and sometimes Mozart, because that -brought back her girlhood in the days before the war. - -So it was one evening when Brand sat on a low stool by the sofa on -which Elsa lay, with her fingers playing in his hair or resting on his -shoulder, while Fortune filled the room with melody. - -Once or twice Elsa spoke to Brand in a low voice. I heard some of her -words as I lay on a bearskin by the fire. - -“I am wonderfully happy, my dear,” she said once, and Brand pulled her -hand down and kissed it. - -A little later she spoke again. - -“Love is so much better than hate. Then why should people go to war?” - -“God knows, my dear,” said Brand. - -It was some time after that, when Fortune was playing softly, that I -heard Elsa give a big, tired sigh and say the word “Peace!” - -Charles Fortune played something of Beethoven’s now, with grand crashing -chords which throbbed through the room as the last glow of the sunset -flushed through the windows. - -Suddenly Brand stirred on his stool, made an abrupt movement, then rose -and gave a loud, agonising cry. Fortune stopped playing with a slur -of notes. Harding leapt up from his chair in a dark corner and said, -“Brand!... what’s the matter?” - -Brand had dropped to his knees and was weeping with, his arms about his -dead wife. - - - - -VIII - - -I was again a wanderer in the land, and going from country to country -in Europe saw the disillusionment that had followed victory, and the -despair that had followed defeat, and the ravages that were bequeathed -by war to peace, not only in devastated earth and stricken towns, but in -the souls of men and women. - -The victors had made great promises to their people, but for the most -part they were still unredeemed. They had promised them rich fruits of -victory to be paid out of the ruin of their enemies. But little fruit of -gold or treasure could be gathered from the utter bankruptcy of Germany -and Austria, whose factories stayed idle for lack of raw material and -whose money was waste paper in value of exchange. “Reconstruction” was -the watchword of statesmen, uttered as a kind of magic spell, but when -I went over the old battlefields in France I found no sign of -reconstruction, but only the vast belt of desolation which in war I had -seen swept by fire. No spell-word had built up those towns and villages -which had been blown into dust and ashes, nor had given life to riven -trees and earth choked and deadened by high explosives. Here and there -poor families had crept back to the place where their old homes had -stood, grubbing in the ruins for some relic of their former habitations -and building wooden shanties in the desert as frail shelters against the -wind and the rain. In Ypres--the city of Great Death--there were wooden -_estaminets_ for the refreshment of tourists who came from Paris to see -the graveyard of youth, and girls sold picture-postcards where boys -of ours had gone marching up the Menin Road under storms of shell-fire -which took daily toll of them. No French statesman by optimistic words -could resurrect in a little while the beauty that had been in Artois and -Picardy and the fields of Champagne. - -On days of national thanksgiving the spirit of France was exalted by the -joy of victory. In Paris it was a feverish joy, wild-eyed, with laughing -ecstasy, with troops of dancing girls and a carnival that broke all -bounds between Montmartre and Montparnasse. France had saved herself -from death. She had revenged herself for 1870 and the years just passed. -She had crushed the enemy that had always been a brutal menace across -the frontier. She had her sword deep in the heart of Germany which lay -bleeding at her feet. - -I who love France with a kind of passion, and had seen during the years -of war the agony and the heroism of her people, did not begrudge them -their ecstasy, and it touched my spirit with its fire so that in France -I could see and understand the French point of view, of ruthlessness -towards the beaten foe. But I saw also what many people of France saw -slowly, but with a sense of fear, that the treaty made by Clemenceau did -not make them safe except for a little while. This had not been, after -all, “the war to end war.” There was no guarantee of world-peace. Their -frontiers were not made impregnable against the time when the Germans -might grow strong again and come back for vengeance. They could not -stand alone, but must make new alliances, new secret treaties, new -armies, new armaments, because hate survived, and the League of Nations -was a farce, as it had come from the table at Versailles. - -They looked round and counted their cost--a million and a half dead. A -multitude of maimed and blind and nerve-shocked men. A birth-rate that -had sunk to zero. A staggering debt which they could not pay. A cost of -living which mounted higher and ever higher. A sense of revolt among the -soldiers who had come back because their reward for four years of misery -was no more than miserable. - -So it was in Italy, stricken by a more desperate poverty, disappointed -by a lack of spoil, angry with a sense of “betrayal,” afraid of -revolution, exultant when a mad poet seized the port of Fiume which had -been denied to her by President Wilson and his conscience. - -Across the glittering waters of the Adriatic I went to Trieste and found -it a dead port with Italian officers in possession of its deserted -docks and abandoned warehouses and Austrians dying of typhus in the back -streets, and starving to death in tenement houses. - -And then, across the new State of Jugo-Slavia, cut out of the body of -the old Austrian Empire now lying dismembered, I came to Vienna, which -once I had known as the gayest capital of Europe, where charming people -played the pleasant game of life with music and love and laughter. - -In Vienna there was music still, but it played a _danse macabre_, a -dance of death, which struck one with a sense of horror. The orchestras -still fiddled in the restaurants. At night the opera-house was crowded. -In _cafés_ bright with gilt and glass, in restaurants rich in marble -walls, crowds of people listened to the waltzes of Strauss, ate smuggled -food at monstrous prices, laughed, flirted, and drank. They were the -profiteers of war, spending paper money with the knowledge that it had -no value outside Vienna, no value here except in stacks to buy warmth -for their stomachs, a little warmth for their souk, while their stock -of kronen lasted. They were the vultures from Jugo-Slavia and -Czecho-Slovakia come to feed on the corpse of Austria while it still -had flesh on its bones, and while Austrian kronen still had some kind of -purchase power... And outside, two million people were starving slowly -but very surely to death. - -The children were starving quickly to death. Their coffins passed me in -the streets. Ten--twelve--fifteen--in one half-hour between San Stefan’s -Chinch and the Favoritenstrasse. Small living skeletons padded after -one with naked feet, thrusting out little claw-like hands, begging for -charity. In the great hospital of Vienna children lay in crowded wards, -with twisted limbs and bulbous heads, diseased from birth, because of -their mother’s hunger and a life without milk and any kind of fat. - -Vienna, the capital of a great empire, had been sentenced to death by -the Treaty of Peace which had so carved up her former territory that -she was cut off from all her natural resources and from all means of -industry, commerce and life. - -It was Dr. Small, dear “Daddy” Small, who gave me an intimate knowledge -of what was happening in Vienna a year after Armistice, and it was -Eileen O’Connor who still further enlightened me by taking me into the -babies’ _crèches_, the _Kinderspital_ and the working people’s homes, -where disease and death found their victims. She took me to these places -until I sickened and said, “I can bear no more.” - -Dr. Small had a small office in the Kârtnerstrasse, where Eileen worked -with him, and it was here that I found them both a day after my arrival -in Vienna. Eileen was on her knees making a wood fire and puffing it -into a blaze for the purpose of boiling a tin kettle which stood on a -trivet, and after that, as I found, for making tea. Outside there was a -raw, horrible day, with a white mist in which those coffins were going -by and with those barefoot children with pallid faces and gaunt cheeks -padding by one’s side, so that I was glad to see the flames in the -hearth and to hear the cheerful dink of tea-cups which the doctor was -getting out. Better still, was I glad to see these two good friends, so -sane, so vital, so purposeful, as I found them, in a world of gloom and -neurosis. - -The doctor told me of their work. It was life-saving and increasing -in range of action. They had organised a number of feeding centres in -Vienna, and stores from which mothers could buy condensed milk and cocoa -and margarine, at next to nothing, for their starving babes. Austrian -ladies were doing most of the actual work apart from organisation at -headquarters, and doing it devotedly. From America and from England -money was flowing in. - -“The tide of thought is turning,” said the doctor. “Every dollar we get, -and every shilling, is a proof that the call of humanity is being heard -above the old war cries.” - -“And every dollar and every shilling,” said Eileen, “is helping to save -the life of some poor woman or some little mite who had no guilt in the -war, but suffered from its cruelty.” - -“This job,” said the doctor, “suits my peculiar philosophy. I am not out -so much to save these babies’ lives----” - -Here Eileen threatened to throw the teapot at his head. - -“Because,” he added, “some of them would be better dead, and anyhow, you -can’t save a nation by charity. But what I am out to do is to educate -the heart of the world above the baseness of the passions that caused -the massacre in Europe. We’re helping to do it by saving the children -and by appealing to the chivalry of men and women across the old -frontiers. We’re killers of cruelty, Miss Eileen and I. We’re rather -puffed up with ourselves, ain’t we, my dear?” - -He grinned at Eileen in a whimsical way, and I could see that between -this little American and that Irish girl there was an understanding -comradeship. - -So he told me when she left the room a minute to get another tea-cup or -wash one up. - -“That girl!” he said. “Say, laddie, you couldn’t find a better head in -all Europe, including Hoover himself. She’s a Napoleon Bonaparte without -his blood-lust. She’s Horatio Nelson and Lord Northcliffe and Nurse -Cavell all rolled into one, to produce the organising genius of Eileen -O’Connor. Only you would have to add a few saints like Catherine of -Sienna and Joan of Arc to allow for her spirituality. She organises -feeding-centres like you would write a column article. She gets the -confidence of Austrian women so that they would kiss her feet if she’d -allow it. She has a head for figures that fairly puts me to shame, and -as for her courage--well, I don’t mind telling you that I’ve sworn to -pack her back to England if she doesn’t keep clear of typhus dens and -other fever-stricken places. We can’t afford to lose her by some dirty -bug-bite.” - -Eileen came into the room again with another tea-cup and saucer. I -counted those on the table and saw three already. - -“Who is the other cup for?” I asked. “If you are expecting visitors I’ll -go, because I’m badly in need of a wash.” - -“Don’t worry,” said Eileen. “We haven’t time to wash in Vienna, and, -anyhow, there’s no soap, for love or money. This is for Wickham, who is -no visitor but one of the staff.” - -“Wickham?” I said. “Is Brand here?” - -“Rather!” said “Daddy” Small. “He has been here a week and is doing good -work. Looks after the supplies, and puts his heart into the job.” - -As he spoke the door opened and Brand strode into the room, with rain -dripping from his waterproof coat which he took off and flung into a -corner before he turned to the table. - -“Lord! A cup of tea is what I want!” - -“And what you shall have, my dear,” said Eileen. - -“But don’t you know a friend when you see him?” - -“By Jove!” - -He held my hand in a hard grip and patted me on the shoulder. Our -friendship was beyond the need of words. - -So there we three, who had seen many strange and tragic things in those -years of history, were together again in the city of Vienna, the city of -death, where the innocent were paying for the guilty, but where also, -as “Daddy” Small said, there was going out a call to charity which -was being heard by the heart of the world above the old war-cries of -cruelty. - -I stayed with them only a week. I had been long away from England and -had other work to do. But in that time I saw how these three friends, -and others in their service, were devoting themselves to the rescue -of human life, partly, I think, for their own sake, though without -conscious selfishness, and with a passionate pity for those who -suffered. By this service they were healing their own souls, sorely -wounded in the war. That was so, certainly, with Wickham Brand, and a -little, I think, with Eileen O’Connor. - -Brand was rescued in the nick of time by the doctor’s call to him. -Elsa’s death had struck him a heavy blow when his nerves were already -in rags and tatters. Now by active service in this work of humanity and -healing he was getting back to normality, getting serene and steady. -I saw the change in him, revealed by the light in his eyes and by his -quietude of speech and the old sense of humour, which for a while he had -lost. - -“I see now,” he said one night, “that it’s no use fighting against the -injustice and brutality of life. I can’t re-make the world or change the -things that are written in history or alter in any big way the destiny -of peoples. Stupidity, ignorance, barbarity; will continue among the -multitude. All that any of us can do is to tackle some good job that -lies at hand, and keep his own soul bright and fearless if there is any -chance and use his little intellect in his little circle for kindness -instead of cruelty. I find that chance here, and I am grateful.” - -The doctor had larger and bigger hopes, though his philosophy of life -was not much different from that of Brand’s. - -“I want to fix up an intellectual company in this funny old universe,” - he said. “I want to establish an intellectual aristocracy on -international lines--the leaders of the new world. By intellectuals -I don’t mean high-brow fellows with letters after their names and -encyclopaedias in their brain-pans. I mean men and women who by moral -character, kindness of heart, freedom from narrow hatreds, tolerance of -different creeds and races, and love of humanity, will unite in a free, -unfettered way, without a label or a league, to get a move on towards a -better system of human society. No red Bolshevism, mind you, no heaven -by way of hell, but a striving for greater justice between classes and -nations, and for peace within the frontiers of Christendom, and beyond, -if possible. It’s getting back to the influence of the individual, the -leadership of multitudes by the power of the higher mind. I’m doing it -by penny postcards to all my friends. This work of ours in Vienna is a -good proof of their response. Let all the folk with good hearts behind -their brains start writing postcards to each other, with a plea for -brotherhood, charity, peace, and the new world would come... You laugh! -Yes, I talk a little nonsense. It’s not so easy as that. But see the -idea? The leaders must keep in touch, and the herds will follow.” - -I turned to Eileen who was listening with a smile about her lips while -she pasted labels on to packets of cocoa. - -“What’s your philosophy?” I asked. - -She laughed, in that deep voice of hers. - -“I’ve none; only the old faith, and a little hope, and a heart that’s -bustin’ with love.” - -Brand was adding up figures in a book of accounts, and smiled across at -the girl whom he had known since boyhood, when she had pulled his hair. - -His wounds were healing. - - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Back to Life, by Philip Gibbs - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACK TO LIFE *** - -***** This file should be named 50497-0.txt or 50497-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/0/4/9/50497/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by Google Books - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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Thus, we do not -necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper -edition. - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search -facility: www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. - diff --git a/old/50497-0.zip b/old/50497-0.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index e5983d6..0000000 --- a/old/50497-0.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/50497-8.txt b/old/50497-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index eb0d635..0000000 --- a/old/50497-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,10453 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Back to Life, by Philip Gibbs - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: Back to Life - -Author: Philip Gibbs - -Release Date: November 19, 2015 [EBook #50497] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACK TO LIFE *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by Google Books - - - - - - - - - -BACK TO LIFE - -By Philip Gibbs - -London: William Heinemann - -1920 - - - - - -BOOK I--THE END OF THE ADVENTURE - - - - -I - - -It is hard to recapture the spirit of that day we entered Lille. Other -things since have blurred its fine images. - -At the time I tried to put down in words the picture of that scene when, -after four years' slaughter of men, the city, which had seemed a world -away, was open to us a few miles beyond the trench-lines; the riven -trees, the shell-holes, and the stench of death, and we walked across -the canal, over a broken bridge, into that large town where--how -wonderful it seemed I--there were roofs on the houses and glass in the -windows, and crowds of civilian people waiting for the first glimpse of -British khaki. - -Even now remembrance brings back to me figures that I saw only for a -moment or two, but remain sharply etched in my mind, and people I met -in the streets who told me the story of four years in less than -four minutes and enough to let me know their bitterness, hatred, -humiliations, terrors, in the time of the German occupation.... I have -re-read the words I wrote, hastily, on a truculent typewriter which I -cursed for its twisted ribbon, while the vision of the day was in my -eyes. They are true to the facts and to what we felt about them. Other -men felt that sense of exaltation, a kind of mystical union with the -spirit of many people who had been delivered from evil powers. It is of -those other men that I am now writing, and especially of one who was my -friend--Wickham Brand, with the troubled soul, whom I knew in the years -of war and afterwards in the peace which was no peace to him. - -His, was one of the faces I remember that day, as I had a glimpse of it -now and then, among crowds of men and women, young girls and children, -who surged about him, kissing his hands and his face when he stooped a -little (he was taller than most of them) to meet the wet lips of some -half-starved baby held up by a pallid woman of Lille, or to receive the -kiss of some old woman who clawed his khaki tunic, or of some girl who -hung on to his belt. There was a shining wetness in his eyes, and the -hard lines of his face had softened as he laughed at all this turmoil -about him, at all these hands robbing him of shoulder-straps and badges, -and at all these people telling him a hundred things together--their -gratitude to the English, their hatred of the Germans, their abominable -memories. His field-cap was pushed back from his high, furrowed forehead -from which at the temples the hair had worn thin, owing to worry or a -steel hat. His long, lean face, deeply tanned, but powdered with white -dust, had an expression of tenderness which gave him a kind of priestly -look, though others would have said "knightly" with, perhaps, equal -truth. Anyhow, I could see that for a little while Brand was no longer -worrying about the casualty lists and the doom of youth, and was giving -himself up to an exaltation that was visible and spiritual in Lille in -the day of liberation. - -The few of us who went first into Lille while our troops were in a wide -are round the city, in touch, more or less, with the German rearguards, -were quickly separated in the swirl of the crowd that surged about us, -greeting us as conquering heroes, though none of us were actual fighting -men, being war correspondents, intelligence officers (Wickham Brand and -three other officers were there to establish an advanced headquarters), -with an American doctor--that amazing fellow "Daddy" Small--and our -French _liaison_ officer, Pierre Nesle. Now and again we met in the -streets and exchanged words. - -I remember the doctor and I drifted together at the end of the Boulevard -de la Libert. A French girl of the middle-class had tucked her hand -through his right arm and was talking to him excitedly, volubly. On his -other arm leaned an old dame in a black dress and bonnet who was -also delivering her soul of its pent-up emotion to a man who did not -understand more than a few words of her French. A small boy dressed as -a Zouave was walking backwards, waving a long tricolour flag before the -little American, and a crowd of people made a close circle about him, -keeping pace. - -"Assassins, bandits, robbers!" gobbled the old woman. "They stole all -our copper, monsieur. The very mattresses off our beds. The wine out of -our cellars. They did abominations." - -"Month after month we waited," said the girl, with her hand through the -doctor's right arm. "All that time the noise of the guns was loud in -our ears. It never ceased, monsieur, until to-day. And we used to -say: 'To-morrow the English will come!' until at last some of us lost -heart--not I, no, always I believed in victory!--and said, 'The English -will never come!' Now you are here, and our hearts are full of joy. It -is like a dream. The Germans have gone!" - -The doctor patted the girl's hand and addressed me across the tricolour -waved by the small Zouave. - -"This is the greatest day of my life! And I am perfectly ashamed -of myself. In spite of my beard and my gig-lamps and my anarchical -appearance, these dear people take me for an English officer and a -fighting hero. And I feel like one. If I saw a German now I truly -believe I should cut his throat. Me--a non-combatant and a man of peace! -I'm horrified at my own blood-thirstiness. The worst of it is I'm -enjoying it. I'm a primitive man for a time, and find it stimulating. -To-morrow I shall repent. These people have suffered hell's torments. I -can't understand a word the little old lady is telling me but I'm sure -she's been through infernal things. And this pretty girl. She's a peach, -though slightly tuberculous, poor child. My God--how they hate! There is -a stored-up hatred in this town enough to burn up Germany by mental -telepathy. It's frightening. Hatred and joy, I feel these two passions -like a flame about us. It's spiritual. It's transcendental. It's the -first time I've seen a hundred thousand people drunk with joy and hate. -I'm against hate, and yet the sufferings of these people make me see red -so that I want to cut a German throat!" - -"You'd stitch it up afterwards, doctor," I said. - -He blinked at me through his spectacles and said: "I hope so. I hope -my instinct would be as right as that. The world will never get forward -till we have killed hatred. That's my religion." - -"Bandits! Assassins!" grumbled the old lady. "Dirty people!" - -"_Vivent les Anglais!_" shouted the crowd, surging about the little man -with the beard. - -The American doctor spoke in English in a large explanatory way. - -"I'm American. Don't you go making any mistake. I'm an Uncle Sam. The -Yankee boys are further south and fighting like hell, poor lads. I don't -deserve any of this ovation, my dears." - -Then in French, with a strong American accent, he shouted: "_Vive la -France!_'Rah! 'Rah! 'Rah!" - -"_Merci, merci, mon Gnral!_" said an old woman, making a grab at the -little doctor's Sam Brown belt and kissing him on the beard. The crowd -closed round him and bore him away.... - -I met another of our crowd when I went to a priest's house in a turning -off the Rue Royale. Pierre Nesle, our _liaison_ officer--a nice simple -fellow, who had always been very civil to me--was talking to the -priest outside his door, and introduced me in a formal way to a tall, -patrician-looking old man in a long black gown. It was the Abb Bourdin, -well known in Lille as a good priest and a patriot. - -"Come indoors, gentlemen," said the old man. "I will tell you what -happened to us, though it would take four years to tell you all." - -Sitting there in the priest's room, barely furnished, with a few oak -chairs and a writing-desk littered with papers, and a table covered with -a tattered cloth of red plush, we listened to a tragic tale, told finely -and with emotion by the old man into whose soul it had burned. It was -the history of a great population caught by the tide of war before many -could escape, and placed under the military law of an enemy who tried to -break its spirit. They failed to break it in spite of an iron discipline -which denied them all liberty. For any trivial offence by individuals -against German rule the whole population was fined or shut up in their -houses at three in the afternoon. There were endless fines, unceasing -and intolerable robberies under the name of "perquisitions." That had -not broken the people's spirit. There were worse things to bear--the -removal of machinery from the factories, the taking away of the young -men and boys for forced labour, and then, the greater infancy of that -night when machine-guns were placed at the street corners and German -officers ordered each household to assemble at the front door and chose -the healthy-looking girls by the pointing of a stick and the word, -"You--you!" for slave-labour--it was that--in unknown fields far away. - -The priest's face blanched at the remembrance of that scene. His voice -quavered when he spoke of the girls' screams--one of them had gone -raving mad--and of the wailing that rose among their stricken families. -For a while he was silent, with lowered head and brooding eyes which -stared at a rent in the threadbare carpet, and I noticed the trembling -of a pulse on his right temple above the deeply-graven wrinkles of his -parchment skin. Then he raised his head and spoke harshly. - -"Not even that could break the spirit of my people. They only said, 'We -will never forget and never forgive!' They were hungry--we did not -get much food--but they said, 'Our sons who are fighting for us -are suffering worse things. It is for us to be patient.' They were -surrounded by German spies--the secret police--who listened to their -words and haled them off to prison upon any pretext. There is hardly -a man among us who has not been in prison. The women were made to do -filthy work for German soldiers, to wash their lousy clothes, to scrub -their dirty barracks, and they were insulted, humiliated, tempted, by -brutal men." - -"Was there much of that brutality?" I asked. - -The priest's eyes grew sombre. - -"Many women suffered abominable things. I thank God that so many kept -their pride and their honour. There were, no doubt, some bad men and -women in the city--disloyal, venal, weak, sinful--may God have mercy -on their souls; but I am proud of being a Frenchman when I think of how -great was the courage, how patient was the suffering of the people of -Lille." - -Pierre Nesle had listened to that monologue with a visible and painful -emotion. He became pale and flushed by turns, and when the priest spoke -about the forcible recruitment of the women a sweat broke out on his -forehead, and he wiped it away with a handkerchief. - -I see his face now in profile, sharply outlined against some yellowing -folios in a bookcase behind him, a typical Parisian face in its -sharpness of outline and pallid skin, with a little black moustache -above a thin, sensitive mouth. Before I had seen him mostly in gay -moods--though I had wondered sometimes at the sudden silences into which -he fell and at a gloom which gave him a melancholy look when he was -not talking, or singing, or reciting poetry, or railing against French -politicians, or laughing almost hysterically at the satires of -Charles Fortune--our "funny man"--when he came to our mess. Now he was -suffering, as if the priest's words had probed a wound--though not the -physical wound which had nearly killed him in Souchez Wood. - -He stood up from the wooden chair with its widely-curved arms in which -he had been sitting stiffly, and spoke to the priest. - -"It is not amusing, _mon pre_, what you tell us, and what we have all -guessed. It is one more chapter of tragedy in the history of our poor -France. Pray God the war will soon be over." - -"With victory!" said the old priest. "With an enemy beaten and bleeding -beneath our feet. The Germans must be punished for all their crimes, or -the justice of God will not be satisfied." - -There was a thrill of passion in the old man's voice and his nostrils -quivered. - -"To all Frenchmen that goes without saying," said Pierre Nesle. "The -Germans must be punished, and will be, though no vengeance will repay us -for the suffering of our _poilus_--nor for the agony of our women behind -the lines, which, perhaps, was the greatest of all." - -The Abb Bourdin put his claw-like old hands on the young man's -shoulders and drew him closer and kissed his Croix de Guerre. - -"You have helped to give victory," he said. "How many Germans have you -killed? How many, eh?" - -He spoke eagerly, chuckling with a kind of childish eagerness for good -news. - -Pierre Nesle drew back a little and a faint touch of colour crept into -his face, and then left it whiter. - -"I did not count corpses," he said. He touched his left side and laughed -awkwardly. "I remember better that they nearly made a corpse of me." - -There was a moment's silence, and then my friend spoke in a casual kind -of way. - -"I suppose, _mon pre_, you have not heard of my sister being in Lille -by any chance? Her name was Marthe. Marthe Nesle." - -The Abb Bourdin shook his head. - -"I do not know the name. There are many young women in Lille. It is a -great city." - -"That is true," said Pierre Nesle. "There are many." - -He bowed over the priest's hand, and then saluted. - -"_Bon jour, mon pre, et merci mille fois_." - -So we left, and the Abb Bourdin spoke his last words to me: "We owe -our liberation to the English. We thank you. But why did you not come -sooner? Two years sooner, three years. With your great army?" - -"Many of our men died to get here," I said. "Thousands." - -"That is true. That is true. You failed many times, I know. But you were -so close. One big push--eh? One mighty effort? No?" - -The priest spoke a thought which I had heard expressed in the crowds. -They were grateful for our coming, immensely glad, but could not -understand why we had tried their patience so many years. That had been -their greatest misery, waiting, waiting. - -I spoke to Pierre Nesle on the doorstep of the priest's house. - -"Have you an idea that your sister is in Lille?" - -"No," he said. "No. At least not more than the faintest hope. She is -behind the lines somewhere--anywhere. She went away from home before the -war--she was a singer--and was caught in the tide." - -"No news at all?" I asked. - -"Her last letter was from Lille. Or rather a postcard with the Lille -stamp. She said, I am amusing myself well, little brother.' She and I -were good comrades. I look for her face in the crowds. But she may be -anywhere--Valenciennes, Maubeuge--God knows!" - -A shout of "_Vive la France!_" rose from a crowd of people surging up -the street. Pierre Nesle was in the blue uniform of the _chasseurs -pied_, and the people in Lille guessed it was theirs because of its -contrast to our khaki, though the "_horizon bleu_" was so different from -the uniforms worn by the French army of '14. To them now, on the day of -liberation, Pierre Nesle, our little _liaison_ officer, stood for the -armies of France, the glory of France. Even the sight of our khaki did -not fill them with such wild enthusiasm. So I lost him again as I had -lost the little American doctor in the surge and whirlpool of the crowd. - - - - -II - - -I was building up in my mind the historic meaning of the day. Before -nightfall I should have to get it written--the spirit as well as the -facts, if I could--in time for the censors and the despatch-riders. The -facts? By many scraps of conversation with men and women in the streets -I could already reconstruct pretty well the life of Lille in time of -war. I found many of their complaints rather trivial. The Germans had -wanted brass and had taken it, down to the taps in the washing-places. -Well, I had seen worse horrors than that. They had wanted wool and had -taken the mattresses. They had requisitioned all the wine but had paid -for it at cheap rates. These were not atrocities. The people of Lille -had been short of food, sometimes on the verge of starvation, but not -really starved. They complained of having gone without butter, milk, -sugar; but even in England these things were hard to get. No, the -tragedy of Lille lay deeper than that. A sense of fear that was always -with them. "Every time there was a knock at the door," said one man, "we -started up in alarm. It was a knock at our hearts." At any time of -the day or night they were subject to visits from German police, to -searches, arrests, or orders to get out of their houses or rooms for -German officers or troops. They were denounced by spies, Germans or -debased people of their own city, for trying to smuggle letters to -their folk in other towns in enemy occupation, for concealing copper -in hiding-places, for words of contempt against the Kaiser or the -Kommandatur, spoken at a street corner between one friend and another. -That consciousness of being watched, overheard, reported and denounced -poisoned the very atmosphere of their lives, and the sight of the -field-grey men in the streets, the stench of them--the smell was -horrible when German troops marched back from the battlefields--produced -a soul-sickness worse than physical nausea. I could understand -the constant fret at the nerves of these people, the nagging -humiliation--they had to doff hats to every German officer who swaggered -by--and the slow-burning passion of people, proud by virtue of their -race, who found themselves controlled, ordered about, bullied, punished -for trivial infractions of military regulations, by German officials of -hard, unbending arrogance. That must have been abominable for so long -a time; but as yet I heard no charges of definite brutality, or of -atrocious actions by individual enemies. The worst I had heard was that -levy of the women for forced labour in unknown places. One could imagine -the horror of it, the cruelty of it to girls whose nerves were already -unstrung by secret fears, dark and horrible imaginings, the beast-like -look in the eyes of men who passed them in the streets. Then the -long-delayed hope of liberation--year after year--the German boasts of -victory, the strength of the German defence that never seemed to weaken, -in spite of the desperate attacks of French and British, the preliminary -success of their great offensive in March and April, when masses of -English prisoners were herded through Lille, dejected, exhausted, hardly -able to drag their feet along between their sullen guards--by heaven, -these people of Lille had needed much faith to save them from despair! -No wonder now that on the first day of liberation some, of them were -wet-eyed with joy, and others were lightheaded with liberty. - -In the Grande Place below the old balustraded Town Hall I saw young -Cyril Clatworthy, one of the Intelligence crowd, surrounded by a group -of girls who were stroking his tunic, clasping his hands, pushing each -other laughingly to get nearer to him. He was in lively conversation -with the prettiest girl, whom he kept in front of him. It was obvious -that he was enjoying himself as the central figure of this hero-worship, -and as I passed the boy (twenty-four that birthday, he had told me -a month before) I marvelled at his ceaseless capacity for amorous -adventure, with or without a moment's notice. A pretty girl, if -possible, or a plain one if not, drew him like a magnet, excited all his -boyish egotism, called to the faun-spirit that played the pipes of Pan -in his heart. It was an amusing game for him, with his curly brown hair -and Midshipman Easy type of face. For the French girls whom he had met -on his way--little Marcelle on Cassel Hill, Christine at Corbie on the -Somme, Margurite in the hat-shop at Amiens (what became of her, poor -kid?)--it was not so amusing when he "blew away," as he called it, and -had a look at life elsewhere. - -He winked at me, as I passed, over the heads of the girls. - -"The fruits of victory!" he called out. "There is a little Miss -Brown-Eyes here who is quite enchanting." - -It was rather caddish of me to say: "Have you forgotten Margurite -Aubigny?" - -He thought so, too, and reddened angrily. - -"Go to blazes!" he said. - -His greatest chum, and one of mine--Charles Fortune--was standing -outside a _caf_ in the big Place, not far from the Vieille Bourse, with -its richly-carved Renaissance front. Here there was a dense crowd, but -they kept at a respectful distance from Fortune, who, with his red -tabs and red-and-blue arm-band and row of ribbons (all gained by heroic -service over a blotting-pad in a Nissen hut) looked to them, no doubt, -like a great general. He had his "heroic" face on, rather mystical and -saintly. (He had a variety of faces for divers occasions--such as the -"sheep's face" in the presence of generals who disliked brilliant men, -the "intelligent" facer-bright and inquiring--for senior officers who -liked easy questions to which they could give portentous answers, the -"noble" face for the benefit of military chaplains, foreign visitors to -the war-zone, and batmen before they discovered his sense of humour; -and the "old-English-gentleman" face at times for young Harding, who -belonged to a county family with all its traditions, politics, and -instincts, and permitted Fortune to pull his leg, to criticise generals, -and denounce the British Empire as a licensed jester.) - -Fortune was addressing four gentlemen of the Town Council of Lille who -stood before him, holding ancient top-hats. - -"Gentlemen," said Charles Fortune in deliberate French, with an -exaggerated accent, "I appreciate very much the honour you have just -paid me by singing that heroic old song, 'It's a long, long way to -Tipperary.' I desire, however, to explain to you that it is not as yet -the National Anthem of the British people, and that, personally, I have -never been to Tipperary, that I should find some difficulty in finding -that place on the map, and that I never want to go there. This, however, -is of small importance, except to British generals, to whom all small -things are of great importance--revealing, therefore, their minute -attention to details, even when it does not matter--which, I may say, -is the true test of the military mind which is so gloriously winning -the war, after many glorious defeats (I mean victories) and----" (Here -Fortune became rather tangled in his French grammar, but rescued -himself after a still more heroic look). "And it is with the deepest -satisfaction, the most profound emotion, that I find myself in this -great city of Lille on the day of liberation, and on behalf of the -British Army, of which I am a humble representative, in spite of these -ribbons which I wear on my somewhat expansive chest, I thank you from my -heart, with the words, '_la France!_'" - -Here Fortune heaved a deep sigh, and looked like a field marshal while -he waited for the roar of cheers which greeted his words. The mystical -look on his face became intensified as he stood there, a fine heroic -figure (a trifle stout for lack of exercise), until he suddenly caught -sight of a nice-looking girl in the crowd nearest to him, and gave her -an elaborate wink, as much as to say, "You and I understand each other, -my pretty one! Beneath this heroic pose I am really human." - -The effect of that wink was instantaneous. The girl blushed vividly and -giggled, while the crowd shouted with laughter. - -"_Quel numro! Quel drle de type!_" said a man by my side. - -Only the four gentlemen of the Town Hall, who had resumed their -top-hats, looked perplexed at this grotesque contrast between the heroic -speech (it had sounded heroic) and its anti-climax. - -Fortune took me by the arm as I edged my way close to him. - -"My dear fellow, it was unbelievable when those four old birds sang -'Tipperary' with bared heads. I had to stand at the salute while they -sang three verses with tears in their eyes. They have been learning it -during four years of war. Think of that! And think of what's happening -in Ireland--in Tipperary--now! There's some paradox here which contains -all the comedy and pathos of this war. I must think it out. I can't -quite get at it yet, but I feel it from afar." - -"This is not a day for satire," I said. "This is a day for sentiment. -These people have escaped from frightful things----" - -Fortune looked at me with quizzical grey eyes out of his handsome, -mask-like face. - -"_Et tu, Brute?_ After all our midnight talks, our laughter at the -mockery of the gods, our intellectual slaughter of the staff, our -tearing down of all the pompous humbug which has bolstered up this silly -old war." - -"I know. But to-day we can enjoy the spirit of victory. It's real, here. -We have liberated all these people." - -"We? You mean the young Tommies who lie dead the other side of the -canal? We come in and get the kudos. Presently the generals will come -and say, 'We did it! Regard our glory! Fling down your flowers! Cheer -us, good people, before we go to lunch.' They will not see behind -them the legions they sent to slaughter by ghastly blunders, colossal -stupidity, invincible pomposity." - -Fortune broke into song. It was an old anthem of his: - -"_Blear-eyed Bill, the Butcher of the Boche_." - -He had composed it, after a fourth whisky, on a cottage piano in his -Nissen hut. In crashing chords he had revealed the soul of a general -preparing a plan of battle--over the telephone. It never failed to make -me laugh, except that day in Lille when it was out of tune, I thought, -with the spirit about us. - -"Let's put the bitter taste out of our mouth to-day," I said. - -Fortune made his sheep-face, saluted behind his ear, and said, "Every -inch a soldier--I don't think!" - - - - -III - - -It was then we bumped straight into Wickham Brand, who was between a -small boy and girl, holding his hands, while a tall girl of sixteen or -so, with a yellow pig-tail slung over her shoulder, walked alongside, -talking vivaciously of family experiences under German rule. Pierre -Nesle was on the other side of her. - -"In spite of all the fear we had--oh, how frightened we were -sometimes!--we used to laugh very much. _Maman_ made a joke of -everything--it was the only way. _Maman_ was wonderfully brave, except -when she thought that father might have been killed." - -"Where was your father?" asked Brand. "On the French side of the lines?" - -"Yes, of course. He was an officer in the artillery. We said good-bye -to him on August 2nd of the first year, when he went off to the dpt -at Belfort. We all cried except _maman_--father was crying, too, but -_maman_ did not wink away even the tiniest tear until father had gone. -Then she broke down, so that we all howled at the sight of her. Even -these babies joined in. They were only babies then." - -"Any news of him?" asked Brand. - -"Not a word. How could there be? Perhaps in a few days he will walk into -Lille. So _maman_ says." - -"That would be splendid!" said Brand. "What is his name?" - -"Chri, M. le Commandant Anatole Chri, 59th Brigade, _artillerie -lourde._" - -The girl spoke her father's name proudly. - -I saw a startled look come into the eyes of Pierre Nesle as he heard -the name. In English he said to Brand: "I knew him at Verdun. He was -killed." - -Wickham Brand drew a sharp breath, and his voice was husky when he -spoke, in English, too. - -"What cruelty it all is!" - -The girl with the pig-tail--a tall young creature with a delicate face -and big brown eyes--stared at Pierre Nesle and then at Wickham Brand. -She asked an abrupt question of Pierre. - -"Is my father dead?" - -Pierre Nesle stammered something. He was not sure. He had heard that the -Commandant Chri was wounded at Verdun. - -The girl understood perfectly. - -"He is dead, then? _Maman_ will be very sorry." - -She did not cry. There was not even a quiver of her lips. She shook -hands with Brand and said: "I must go and tell _maman_. Will you come -and see us one day?" - -"With pleasure," said Brand. - -"Promise?" - -The girl laughed as she raised her finger. - -"I promise," said Brand solemnly. - -The girl "collected" the small boy and girl, holding their heads close -to her waist. - -"Is father dead?" said the small boy. - -"Perhaps. I believe so," said the elder sister. - -"Then we shan't get the toys from Paris?" said the small girl. - -"I am afraid not, _coquine?_" - -"What a pity!" said the boy. - -Pierre Nesle took a step forward and saluted. - -"I will go with you, if you permit it, mademoiselle. It is perhaps in a -little way my duty, as I met your father in the war." - -"Thanks a thousand times," said the girl. "_Maman_ will be glad to know -all you can tell her." - -She waved to Brand a merry _au revoir_. - -We stood watching them cross the Grande Place, that tall girl and the -two little ones, and Pierre. - -Fortune touched Brand on the arm. - -"Plucky, that girl," he said. "Took it without a whimper. I wonder if -she cared?" - -Brand turned on him rather savagely. - -"Cared? Of course she cared. But she had expected it for four years, -grown up to the idea. These war children have no illusions about the -business. They know that the odds are in favour of death." - -He raised his hands above his head with a sudden passionate gesture. - -"Christ God!" he said. "The tragedy of those people! The monstrous -cruelty of it all!" - -Fortune took his hand and patted it in a funny affectionate way. - -"You are too sensitive, Wicky. 'A sensitive plant in a garden grew'--a -war-garden, with its walls blown down, and dead bodies among the little -daisies-o. I try to cultivate a sense of humour and a little irony. -It's a funny old war, Wicky, believe me, if you look at it in the right -light." - -Wickham groaned. - -"I see no humour in it, nor light anywhere." - -Fortune chanted again the beginning of his anthem: - -"_Blear-eyed Bill, the Butcher of the Boche_." - -As usual there was a crowd about us, smiling, waving handkerchiefs and -small flags, pressing forward to shake hands and to say "_Vivent les -Anglais!_" - -It was out of that crowd that a girl came and stood in front of us, with -a wave of her hand. - -"Good morning, British officers! I'm English--or Irish, which is good -enough. Welcome to Lille." - -Fortune shook hands with her first and said very formally, in his -mocking way: "How do you do? Are you by chance my long-lost sister? -Is there a strawberry-mark on your left arm?" She laughed with a big, -open-mouthed laugh, on a contralto note that was good to hear. - -"I'm everybody's sister who speaks the English tongue, which is fine -to the ears of me after four years in Lille. Eileen O'Connor, by your -leave, gentlemen." - -"Not Eileen O'Connor of Tipperary?" asked Fortune gravely. "You know the -Long Long Way, of course?" - -"Once of Dublin," said the girl, "and before the war, of Holland Street, -Kensington, in the village of London. Oh, to hear the roar of 'buses in -the High Street and to see the glint of sunlight on the Round Pond!" - -She was a tall girl, shabbily dressed in an old coat and skirt with a -bit of fur round her neck and hat, but with a certain look of elegance -in the thin line of her figure and the poise of her head. Real Irish, by -the look of her dark eyes and a rather irregular nose and humorous lips. -Not pretty in the English way, but spirited, and with some queer charm -in her. - -Wickham Brand was holding her hand. - -"Good Lord! Eileen O'Connor? I used to meet you, years ago, at the -Wilmots--those funny tea-parties in Chelsea." - -"With farthing buns and cigarettes, and young boys with big ideas!" - -The girl laughed with a kind of wonderment, and stood close to Wickham -Brand, holding his Sam Brown belt and staring up into his face. - -"Why, you must be--you must be---- you are--the tall boy who used to -grow out of his grey suits and wrote mystical verse and read Tolstoy, -and growled at civilisation and smoked black pipes, and fell in love -with elderly artists' models. Wickham Brand!" - -"That's right," said Brand, ignoring the laughter of Fortune and myself. -"Then I went to Germany and studied their damned philosophy, and then -I became a briefless barrister, and after that took to writing -unsuccessful novels. Here I am, after four years of war, ashamed to be -alive when all my pals are dead." - -He glanced at Fortune and me, and said, "Or most of 'em. - -"It's the same Wicky I remember," said the girl, "and at the sight of -you I feel I've gone back to myself as a tousled-haired thing in a short -frock and long black stockings. The good old days before the war. Before -other things and all kinds of things." - -"Why on earth were you in Lille when the war began?" asked Brand. - -"It just happened. I taught painting here. Then I was caught with the -others. We did not think They would come so soon." - -She used the word "They" as we all did, meaning the grey men. - -"It must have been hell," said Brand. - -"Mostly hell," said Miss O'Connor brightly. "At least, one saw into -the gulfs of hell, and devilishness was close at hand. But there were -compensations, wee bits of heaven. On the whole I enjoyed myself." - -"Enjoyed yourself?" - -Brand was startled by that phrase. - -"Oh, it was an adventure. I took risks--and came through. I lived all of -it--every minute. It was a touch-and-go game with the devil and death, -and I dodged them both. _Dieu soit merci!_" She laughed with a little -throw-back of the head, showing a white full throat above the ragged bit -of fur. A number of French women pressed about her. Some of them patted -her arms, fondled her hands. One woman bent down and kissed her shabby -jacket. - -"_Elle tait merveilleuse, la demoiselle,_" said an old Frenchman by my -side. "She was marvellous, sir. All that she did for the wounded, for -your prisoners, for many men who owe their lives to her, cannot be told -in a little while. They tried to catch her. She was nearly caught. It is -a miracle that she was not shot. A miracle, monsieur!" - -Other people in the crowd spoke to me about "_la demoiselle_." They were -mysterious. Even now they could not tell me all she had done. But she -had risked death every day for four years. Every day. Truly it was a -miracle she was not caught. - -Listening to them, I missed some of Eileen O'Connor's own words to -Brand, and saw only the wave of her hand as she disappeared into the -crowd. - -It was Brand who told me that he and I and Fortune had been invited to -spend the evening with her, or an "hour or so. I saw that Wicky, as we -called him, was startled by the meeting with her, and was glad of it. - -"I knew her when we were kids," he said. "Ten years ago--perhaps more. -She used to pull my hair! Extraordinary, coming face to face with her in -Lille, on this day of all days." - -He turned to Fortune with a look of command. - -"We ought to get busy with that advanced headquarters. There are plenty -of big houses in these streets." - -"_Ce qu'on appelle un embarras de choix_," said Fortune, with his rather -comical exaggeration of accent. "And Blear-eyed Bill wants us to go on -beating the Boche. I insist on a house with a good piano--German for -choice." - -They went off on their quest, and I to my billet, which had been found -by the major of ours, where I wrote the story of how we entered Lille on -a typewriter with a twisted ribbon, which would not write quickly enough -all I wanted to tell the world about a day of history. - - - - -IV - - -I had the luck to be billeted in Lille at the house of Madame Chri, in -the Rue Esquermoise. - -This lady was the mother of the girl with the pig-tail and the two -children with whom Wickham Brand had made friends on this morning of -liberation--the wife of that military officer whom Pierre Nesle had -known at Verdun and knew to be killed. It was my luck, because there -were children in the house--the pig-tailed girl, Hlne, was more a -woman than a child, though only sixteen--and I craved for a touch of -home life and children's company after so long an exile in the war-zone, -always among men who talked of war, thought of it, dreamed of it, year -in, year out. - -Madame Chri was, I thought, when I saw her first, a beautiful woman, -not physically--because she was too white and worn--but spiritually, in -courage of soul. Pierre Nesle, our _liaison_ officer, told me how she -had received the news of her husband's death--unflinchingly, without -a cry. She knew, she said, in her heart that he was dead. Some queer -message had reached her one night during the Verdun battles. It was no -ghost, or voice, but only a sudden cold conviction that her man had -been killed. For the children's sake she had pretended that their father -might come back. It gave them something to look forward to. The little -ones were always harping on the hope that, when peace came, this -mysterious and glorious man, whom they remembered only vaguely as one -who had played bears with them and had been the provider of all good -things, would return with rich presents from Paris--tin soldiers, -queen-dolls, mechanical toys. Hlne, the elder girl, was different. She -had looked curiously at her mother when the children prattled like that -and Madame Chri had pretended to believe in the father's homecoming. -Once or twice the girl had said, "Papa may be killed," in a -matter-of-fact way. Yet she had been his devoted comrade. They had been -such lovers, the father and daughter, that sometimes the mother had -been a little jealous, so she said, in her frank way, to Pierre Nesle, -smiling as she spoke. The war had made Hlne a realist, like most -French girls, to whom the idea of death became commonplace, almost -inevitable, as the ceaseless slaughter of men went on. The German losses -had taught them that. - -I had the colonel's dressing-room--he had attained the grade of colonel -before Verdun, so Pierre told me--and Madame Chri came in while I -was there to see that it was properly arranged for me. Over his iron -bedstead (the Germans had taken the woollen mattress, so that it had -been replaced by bags of straw) was his portrait as a lieutenant of -artillery, as he had been at the time of his marriage. He was a handsome -fellow, rather like Hlne, with her delicate profile and brown eyes, -though more like, said Madame Chri, their eldest boy, Edouard. - -"Where is he?" I asked, and that was the only time I saw Madame Chri -break down utterly. - -She began to tell me that Edouard had been taken away by the Germans, -among all the able-bodied men and boys who were sent away from Lille -for digging trenches behind the lines, in Easter of '16, and that he had -gone bravely, with his little pack of clothes over his shoulder, saying, -"It is nothing, _maman_. My father taught me the word _courage_. In a -little while we shall win, and I shall be back. _Courage, courage!_" - -Madame Chri repeated her son's words proudly, so that I seemed to see -the boy with that pack on his shoulder and a smile on his face. Then, -suddenly, she wept bitterly, wildly, her body shaken with a kind of -ague, while she sat on the iron bedstead with her face in her hands. - -I repeated the boy's words. - -"Courage, courage, madam!" - -Proudly she wailed out in broken sentences:-- - -"He was such a child!... He caught cold so easily!... He was so -delicate!... He needed mother-love so much!... For two years no word has -come from him!" In a little while she controlled herself and begged -me to excuse her. We went down together to the dining-room, where the -children were playing and Hlne was reading; and she insisted upon my -drinking a glass of wine from the store which she had kept hidden from -the Germans in a pit which Edouard had dug in the garden in the first -days of the occupation. The children were delighted with that trick, and -roared with laughter. - -Hlne, with a curl of her lip, spoke bitterly. - -"The Boche is a stupid animal. One can dupe him easily." - -"Not always easily," said Madame Chri. She opened a secret cupboard -behind a bookcase standing against the panelled wall. - -"I hid all my brass and copper here. A German police officer came, and -said, 'Have you hidden any copper, madame?' I said, 'There is nothing -hidden.' 'Do you swear it?' he asked. 'I swear it,' I answered very -haughtily. He went straight to the bookcase, pushed it on one side, -tapped the wall, and opened the secret cupboard', which was stuffed full -of brass and copper. 'You are a liar, madame,' he said, 'like all -Frenchwomen.' 'And you are an insolent pig, like all Germans,' I -remarked. That cost me a fine of ten thousand francs." - -Madame Chri saw nothing wrong in swearing falsely to a German. I think -she held that nothing was wrong to deceive or to destroy any individual -of the German race, and I could understand her point of view when Pierre -Nesle told me of one thing that had happened which she never told to me. -It was about Hlne. - -A German captain was billeted in the house. They ignored his presence, -though he tried to ingratiate himself. Hlne hated him with a cold and -deadly hatred. She trembled if he passed her on the stairs. His presence -in the house, even if she did not see him but only heard him move in -his room, made her feel ill. Yet he was very polite to her, and said, -"_Guten gnadiges Frulein_," whenever they met. To Edouard, also, he was -courteous and smiling, though Edouard was sullen. He was a stout -little man, with a round rosy face and little bright eyes behind big -black-rimmed glasses, an officer in the Kommandantur, and formerly a -schoolmaster. Madame Chri, was polite to him, but cold, cold as ice. -After some months, she found him harmless, though objectionable, because -German. It did not seem dangerous to leave him in the house one evening -when she went to visit a dying friend--Madame Vailly. She was later than -she meant to be--so late that she was liable to arrest by the military -police if they saw her flit past in the darkness of the unlit streets. -When she came home she slipped the latch-key into the door and went -quietly into the hall. The children would be in bed and asleep. At the -foot of the stairs a noise startled her. It was a curious creaking, -shaking noise, as of a door being pushed by some heavy weight, -then banged by it. It was the door at the top of the stairs, on the -left--Helne's room. - -"_Qu'est-ce que tu fais l?_" said Madame Chri. - -She was very frightened with some unknown fear, and held tight to the -banister as she went upstairs. There was a glimmer of light on the -landing. It was from a candle which had almost burnt out and was -guttering in a candlestick placed on the topmost stair. A grotesque -figure was revealed by the light--Schwarz, the German officer, in his -pyjamas, with a helmet on his head and unlaced boots on his feet. The -loose fat of the man, no longer girded by a belt, made him look like a -mass of jelly as he had his shoulder to the door, shoving and grunting -as he tried to force it open. He was swearing to himself in German, -and, now and then, called out softly in French, in a kind of drunken -German-French: "_Ouvrez, kleines Madchen, ma jolie Schatz. Ouvrez -donc._" - -Madame Chri was paralysed for a moment by a shock of horror; quite -speechless and motionless. Then suddenly she moved forward and spoke in -a fierce whisper. - -"What are you doing, beast?" - -Schwarz gave a queer snort of alarm. - -He stood swaying a little, with the helmet on the back of his head. The -candlelight gleamed on its golden eagle. His face was hotly flushed and -there was a ferocious look in his eyes. Madame Chri saw that he was -drunk. - -He spoke to her in horrible French, so Pierre Nesle told me, imitating -it savagely, as Madame Chri had done to him. The man was filthily -drunk, and declared that he loved Hlne and would kill her if she did -not let him love her. Why did she lock her door like that? He had been -kind to her. He had smiled at her. A German officer was a human being, -not a monster. Why did they treat him as a monster, draw themselves away -when he passed, become silent when he wished to speak with them, stare -at him with hate in their eyes? The French people were all devils, proud -as devils. - -Another figure stood on the landing. It was Edouard--a tall, slim -figure, with a white face and burning eyes, in which there was a look of -fury. - -"What is happening, _maman?_" he said coldly. "What does this animal -want?" - -Madame Chri trembled with a new fear. If the boy were to kill that man, -he would be shot. She had a vision of him standing against a wall.... - -"It is nothing," she said. "This gentleman is ill. Go back to bed, -Edouard. I command you." - -The German laughed stupidly. - -"To bed, _shafskopf_. I am going to open your sister's door. She loves -me. She calls to me. I hear her whisper, '_Ich liebe dich!_'" - -Edouard had a stick in his hand. It was a heavy walking-stick which had -belonged to his father. Without a word he sprang forward, raised -his weapon, and smashed it down on the German's head. It knocked -off Schwarz's helmet, which rolled from the top to the bottom of the -staircase, and hit the man a glancing blow on the temple. He fell like -a log. Edouard smiled, and said, "_Trs bien._" Then he rattled the lock -of his sister's door and called out to her: "Hlne.... Have no fear. He -is dead. I have killed him." - -It was then that Madame Chri had her greatest fear. There was no sound -from Hlne. She did not answer any of their cries. She did not open the -door to them. They tried to force the lock, as Schwarz had done, but, -though the lock gave at last, the door would not open, kept closed by -some barricade behind it. Edouard and his mother went out into the yard, -and the boy climbed up to his sister's window and broke the glass to -go through. Hlne was lying in her nightdress on the bedroom floor, -unconscious. She had moved a heavy wardrobe in front of the door, -by some supernatural strength which came from fear. Then she had -fainted.... To his deep regret, Edouard had not killed the German. - -Schwarz had crawled back to his bedroom when they went back into the -house, and next morning wept to Madame Chri and implored forgiveness. -There had been a little banquet, he said, and he had drunk too much. - -Madame Chri did not forgive. She called at the Kommandantur, where the -General saw her and listened to her gravely. He did not waste words. - -"The matter will be attended to," he said. - -Captain Schwarz departed that day from the house in the Rue Esquermoise. -He was sent to a battalion in the line and was killed somewhere near -Ypres. - - - - -V - - -Wickham Brand paid his promised visit to the Chri family, according -to his pledge to Hlne, whom he had met in the street the previous day, -and he had to drink some of the hidden wine, as I had done, and heard -the story of its concealment and of Madame's oath about the secret hoard -of copper. I think he was more disconcerted than I had been by that -avowal, and told me afterwards that he believed no Englishwoman would -have sworn to so deliberate a lie. - -"That's because the English are not so logical," I said, and he puzzled -over that. - -He was greatly taken with Hlne, as she with him, but he risked their -friendship in an awkward moment when he expressed the hope that the -German offer of peace (the one before the final surrender) would be -accepted. - -It was Madame Chri who took him up on that, sharply, and with a kind of -surprised anguish in her voice. She hoped, she said, that no peace would -be made with Germany until French and British and American troops had -smashed the German armies, crossed the German frontier, and destroyed -many German towns and villages. She would not be satisfied with any -peace that came before a full vengeance, so that German women would -taste the bitterness of war as Frenchwomen had drunk deep of it, and -until Germany was heaped with ruins as France had been. - -Wickham Brand was sitting with the small boy on his knees, and stroked -his hair before answering. - -"_Dites, donc!_" said Hlne, who was sitting on the hearthrug, looking -up at his powerful profile, which reminded me always of a Norman knight, -or, sometimes, of a young monk worried about his soul and the devil. - -He had that monkish look now when he answered. - -"I don't know," he said. "I have felt like that often. But I have come -to think that the sooner we get blood out of our eyes the better for all -the world. I have seen enough dead Germans--and dead English and dead -French--to last a lifetime. Many of the German soldiers hate the war, -as I know, and curse the men who drove them on to it. They are -trapped. They cannot escape from the thing they curse, because of their -discipline, their patriotism----" - -"Their patriotism!" said Madame Chri. - -She was really angry with Brand, and I noticed that even Hlne drew -back a little from her place on the rug and looked perplexed and -disappointed. Madame Chri ridiculed the idea of German patriotism. -They were brutes who liked war except when they feared defeat. They had -committed a thousand atrocities out of sheer joy in bestial cruelty. -Their idea of patriotism was blood-lust and the oppression of people -more civilised than themselves. They hated all people who were not -savages like themselves. - -Wickham Brand shook his head. - -"They're not all as bad as that. I knew decent people among them before -the war. For a time, of course, they went mad. They were poisoned by the -damnable philosophy of their leaders and teachers." - -"They liked the poison," said Madame Chri. "They lapped it up. It is in -their blood and spirits. They are foul through and through." - -"They are devils," said Hlne. She shuddered as though she felt very -cold. - -Even the small boy on Brand's knees said: "_Sales Boches!_" - -Brand groaned in a whimsical way. - -"I have said all those things a thousand times! They nearly drove me -mad. But now it's time to stop the river of blood--if the German army -will acknowledge defeat. I would not go on a day after that, for our own -sakes--for the sake of French boys and English. Every day more of war -means more dead of ours, more blind, more crippled, and more agony of -soul. I want some of our boyhood to be saved." - -Madame Chri answered coldly. - -"Not before the Germans have been punished. Not before that, if we all -die." - -Hlne sprang up with a passionate gesture. - -"All German babies ought to be strangled in their cradles! Before they -grow up to be fat, beastly men." - -She was thinking of Schwarz, I imagine. It was the horror of remembrance -which made her so fierce. Then she laughed, and said: "Oh, _l l_, let -us be glad because yesterday we were liberated. Do not quarrel with an -English officer, _maman_. He helped to save us." - -She put her hands on Wickham Brand's shoulders and said: "_Merci, mon -capitaine!_" - -So the conversation turned, and Wickham won them back by his courtesy, -and by a tribute to the courage of French civilians behind the lines, of -whom he told many haunting stories. - -But when I walked round with him to his mess--we were going round later -to see Eileen O'Connor--he referred back to the incident. - -"Daddy Small is right." (He referred to the little American doctor.) -"The hatred of these people is transcendental. It is like a spiritual -flame. It is above all self-interest, kindly, human instincts, life -itself. That woman would sacrifice herself, and her children, as quietly -as she heard the death of her husband, rather than grant the Germans -peace without victory and vengeance. How can there be any peace, -whatever treaty is signed? Can Europe ever get peace with all this -hatred as a heritage?" - - - - -VI - - -We walked silently towards the Boulevard de la Libert, where Brand's -little crowd had established their headquarters. - -"Perhaps they're right," he said presently. "Perhaps the hatred is -divine.... I may be weakening, because of all the horror." - -Then he was silent again, and while I walked by his side I thought back -to his career as I had known it in the war, rather well. He had always -been tortured by agonised perplexities. I had guessed that by the -look of the man and some of his odd phrases, and his restlessness and -foolhardiness. It was in the trenches by Fricourt that I had first seen -him--long before the battles of the Somme. He was sitting motionless on -a wooden box, staring through a periscope towards the mine craters and -the Bois Franais in No Man's Land. The fine hardness of his profile, -the strength of his jaw--not massive, but with one clean line from ear -to chin--and something in the utter intensity of his attitude, attracted -my attention, and I asked the colonel about him. - -"Who is that fellow--like a Norman knight?" - -The colonel of the K.R.R. laughed as we went round the next bay, ducking -our heads where the sandbags had slipped down. - -"Further back than Norman," he said. "He's the primitive man." - -He told me that Wickham Brand--a lieutenant then--was a young barrister -who had joined the battalion at the beginning of '15. He had taken up -sniping and made himself a dead shot. He had the hunter's instinct and -would wait hours behind the sandbags for the sight of a German head in -the trendies opposite. He seldom missed his man, or that part of his -body which showed for a second. Lately he had taken to the habit of -crawling out into No Man's Land and waiting in some shell-hole for the -dawn, when Germans came out to mend their wire or drag in a dead body. -He generally left another dead man as a bait for the living. Then he -would come back with a grim smile and eat his breakfast wolfishly, after -cutting a notch in one of the beams of his dug-out. - -"He's a Hun-hater, body and soul," said the colonel. "We want more of -'em. All the same, Brand makes me feel queer by his ferocity. I like a -humorous fellow who does his killing cheerfully." - -After that I met Brand and took a drink with him in his dug-out. He -answered my remarks gruffly for a time. - -"I hear you go in for sniping a good deal," I said, by way of -conversation. - -"Yes. It's murder made easy." - -"Do you get many targets?" - -"It's a waiting game. Sometimes they get careless." He puffed at a black -old pipe, quite silent for a time. Presently he told me about a "young -'un" who popped his head over the parapet twice to stare at something on -the edge of the mine crater. - -"I spared him twice. The third time I said, 'Better dead,' and let go at -him. The kid was too easy to miss." Something in the tone of his voice -told me that he hated himself for that. - -"Rather a pity," I mumbled. - -"War," he said. "Bloody war." - -There was a candle burning on the wooden bench on which he leaned his -elbow, and by the light of it I saw that his eyes were bloodshot. There -was a haggard look on his face. - -"It must need some nerve," I said awkwardly, "to go out so often in No -Man's Land. Real pluck." - -He stared at me as though surprised, and then laughed harshly. - -"Pluck? What's that? I'm scared stiff half the time. Do you think I like -it?" - -He seemed to get angry, was angry, I think. - -"Do any of us like it? These damn things that blow men to bits, make -rags of them, tear their bowels out, and their eyes? Or to live on top -of a mine crater, as we are now, never knowing when you're going up in -smoke and flame? If you like that sort of thing yourself you can take my -share. I have never met a man who did." - -Yet when Brand was taken out of the trenches--by a word spoken over the -telephone from corps headquarters--because of his knowledge of German -and his cousinship to a lady who was a friend of the corps commander's -niece, he was miserable and savage. I met him many times after that as -an intelligence officer at the corps cages, examining prisoners on days -of battle. - -"An _embusqu_ job!" he said. "I'm saving my skin while the youngsters -die." - -He stood outside his hut one day on a morning of battle in the Somme -fields--up by Pozires. No prisoners had yet come down. He forgot my -presence and stood listening to the fury of gun-fire and watching the -smoke and flame away there on the ridge. - -"Christ!" he cried. "Why am I here? Why aren't I with my pals up there, -getting blown to blood and pulp? Blood and pulp! Blood and pulp!" - -Then he remembered me, and turned in a shamefaced way and said, -"Sorry!... I feel rather hipped to-day." - -I was present sometimes at his examination of prisoners--those poor, -grey, muddy wretches who came dazed out of the slime and shambles. -Sometimes he bullied them harshly, in fluent German, and they trembled -at his ferocity of speech, even whimpered now and then. But once or -twice he was in quite a different mood with them and spoke gently, -assenting when they cursed the war and its misery and said that all they -wanted was peace and home again. - -"Aren't you fellows going to revolt?" he asked one man--a _Feldwebel._ -"Aren't you going to tell your war lords to go to hell and stop all this -silly massacre before Germany is _kaput?_" - -The German shrugged his shoulders. - -"We would if we could. It is impossible. Discipline is too strong for -us. It has enslaved us." - -"That's true," said Brand. "You are slaves of a system." - -He spoke a strange sentence in English as he glanced over to me. - -"I am beginning to think we are all slaves of a system. None of us can -break the chains." - -It was after that day that Brand took a fancy to me, for some reason, -inviting me to his mess, where I met Charles Fortune and others, and it -was there that I heard amazing discussions about the philosophy of war, -German psychology, the object of life, the relation of Christianity -to war, and the decadence of Europe. Brand himself sometimes led these -discussions, with a savage humour which delighted Charles Fortune, who -egged him on. He was always pessimistic, sceptical, challenging, -bitter, and now and then so violent in his criticisms of England, the -Government, the Army Council, the Staff, and above all, the Press, that -most of his fellow officers--apart from Fortune--thought he went "a bit -too far." - -Dear old Harding, who was Tory to the backbone, with a deep respect for -all in authority, accused him of being a "damned revolutionary," and -for a moment it looked as though there would be hot words, until Brand -laughed in a good-natured way and said, "My dear fellow, I'm only -talking academic rot. I haven't a conviction. Ever since the war began -I have been trying to make head or tail of things in a sea-fog of doubt. -All I know is that I want the bloody orgy to end, somehow and anyhow." - -"With victory," said Harding solemnly. - -"With the destruction of Prussian philosophy everywhere," said Brand. - -They agreed on that, but I could see that Brand was on shifting ground -and I knew, as our friendship deepened; that he was getting beyond a -religion of mere hate, and was looking for some other kind of faith. -Occasionally he harked back, as on the day in Lille when I walked by his -side. - - - - -VII - - -I dined with him in his mess that evening, before going on with him -to spend an hour or two with Eileen O'Connor, who had a room in some -convent on the outskirts of Lille. The advanced headquarters of this -little group of officers had been established in one of those big -private houses which belong to the rich manufacturers and business -people of Lille (rich before the war, but with desolate factories -stripped of all machinery during the German occupation and afterwards), -with large, heavily-furnished rooms built round a courtyard and barred -off from the street by the big front door. There was a motor lorry -inside the door, which was wide open, and some orderlies were unloading -camp-beds, boxes of maps, officers' kit, a mahogany gramophone, and -other paraphernalia, under the direction of a young cockney sergeant, -who wanted to know why the blazes they didn't look slippy. - -"Don't you know there's a war on?" he asked a stolid old soldier--one of -the heroes of Mons--who was sitting on a case of whisky, with a wistful -look, as though reflecting on the unfair privileges of officers with so -much wealth of drink. - -"War's all right if you're not too close to it," said the Mons hero. -"I've seen enough. I've done my bleeding bit for King and country. South -Africa, Egypt----" - -"Shut your jaw," said the sergeant. "And down that blarsted gramophone." - -"Ah!" said the Mons hero. "We didn't 'ave no blarsted gramophones in -South Africa. This is a different kind of war. More comfort about it, if -you're not in the trenches." - -Wickham Brand took me through the courtyard and mentioned that the -colonel had come up from St. Omer. - -"Now we're sure to beat the Boche," he said. "Listen!" - -From a room to the left of the courtyard came the sound of a flute -playing one of Bach's minuets, very sweetly, with an old-fashioned -grace. - -"A wonderful army of ours!" said Brand. "I can't imagine a German -colonel of the Staff playing seventeenth century music on a bit of ivory -while the enemy is fighting like a tiger at bay." - -"Perhaps that's our strength," I answered. "Our amateurs refuse to take -the war too seriously. I know a young gunner major who travels a banjo -in his limber, and at Cambrai I saw fellows playing chuck-penny within -ten yards of their pals' dead bodies--a pile of them." - -The colonel saw us through his window and waved his flute at us. When -I went into the room, after a salute at the doorway, I saw that he had -already littered it with artistic untidiness--sheets of torn music, -water-colour sketches, books of poetry, and an array of splendid shining -boots, of which a pair stood on the mahogany sideboard. - -"A beautiful little passage this," said Colonel Lavington, smiling at me -over the flute, which he put to his lips again. He played a bar or two -of old-world melody, and said, "Isn't that perfect? Can't you see the -little ladies in their ^puffed brocades and high-heeled shoes!" - -He had his faun-like look, his clean-shaven face with long nose and -thin, humorous mouth, lighted up by his dark smiling eyes. - -"Not a bad headquarters," he said, putting down the flute again. "If we -can only stay here a little while, instead of having to jog on -again. There's an excellent piano in the dining-room, German, thank -goodness--and Charles Fortune and I can really get down to some serious -music." - -"How's the war?" I asked. - -"War?" he said absent-mindedly. "Oh, yes, the war! That's going on all -right. They'd be out of Tournai in a few days. Perhaps out of Maubeuge -and Mons. Oh, the game's up! Very soon the intellectuals will be looking -round for a living in dear old London. My goodness, some of us will find -peace a difficult job! I can see Boredom approaching with its colossal -shadow.... After all, it has been a great game, on the whole." - -I laughed, but something stuck in my throat. Colonel Lavington -played the flute, but he knew his job, and was in touch with General -Headquarters and all its secret information. It was obvious that he -believed the war was going to end--soon. Soon, O Lord, after all the -years of massacre. - -I blurted out a straight question. - -"Do you think there's a real chance of peace?" - -The colonel was reading a piece of music, humming it with a la, la, la. - -"Another month and our job's done," he said. "Have you heard that bit of -Gluck? It's delicious." - -I stayed with him a little while and did not follow a note of his music. -I was excited by the supreme hope he had given me. So there was to be an -end of massacre, and my own hopes had not been false. - -At the mess table that night Charles Fortune was in good form. We sat in -a room which was rather handsomely furnished, in a heavy way, with big -bronzes on the mantelpiece (ticketed for exemption from requisition -as family heirlooms), and some rather good portraits of a French -family--from the eighteenth century onwards--on the panelled walls. -The _concierge_ had told us that it had been the mess of a German -headquarters and this gave Fortune his cue, and he entertained us with -some caricatures of German generals and officers, amazingly comic. He -drank his soup in the style of a German general and ate his potato -pie as a German intelligence officer, who had once been a professor of -psychology at Heidelberg. - -The little American doctor, "Daddy" Small, as we called him, had been -made an honorary member of the mess, and he smiled at Fortune through -his spectacles, with an air of delighted surprise that such things -should be. - -"You English," he said in his solemn way, "are the most baffling people -in the world. I have been studying you since I came to France, and all -my preconceived ideas have been knocked on the head. We Americans think -you are a hard, arrogant, selfish people, without humour or sympathy, -made in set moulds, turned out as types from your university and public -schools. That is all wrong. I am beginning to see that you are more -human, more various, more whimsical than any race in the world. You -decline to take life seriously. You won't take even death seriously. -This war--you make a joke of it. The Germans--you kill them in great -numbers, but you have a secret liking for them. Fortune's caricatures -are very comical--but not unkind. I believe Fortune is a pro-German. -You cannot laugh at the people you hate. I believe England will forgive -Germany quicker than any other nation--far quicker than the Americans. -France, of course, will never forgive." - -"No," said Pierre Nesle, who was at the end of the table. "France will -never forgive." - -"We are an illogical people," said the colonel. "It is only logical -people who can go on hating. Besides, German music is so-good! So good!" - -Harding, who read no paper but the _Morning Post_, said that as far as -he was concerned he would never speak to a German again in his life. He -would like to see the whole race exterminated. But he was afraid of the -Socialists with their pestilential doctrine of "brotherhood of man." -Lloyd George also filled him with the gravest misgivings. - -Dr. Small's eyes twinkled at him: "There is the old caste that speaks. -Tradition against the new world of ideas. Of course there will always -be _that_ conflict.... That is a wonderful phrase, 'the pestilential -doctrine of the brotherhood of man.' I must make a note of it." - -"Shame oh you, doctor," said Fortune. "You are always jotting down notes -about us. I shall find myself docketed as 'English gentleman, grade 3; -full-blooded, inclined to obesity, humorous, strain of insanity due to -in-breeding, rare.'" - -Dr. Small laughed in a high treble, and then was serious. - -"I'm noting down everything. My own psychology, which alarms me; facts, -anecdotes, scenes, words. I want to find a law somewhere, the essential -thing in human nature. After the war--if there is any afterwards--I want -to search for a way out of the jungle. This jungle civilisation. There -must be daylight somewhere for the human race." - -"If you find it," said Brand earnestly, "tell me, doctor." - -"I will," said Dr. Small, and I remembered that pledge afterwards, when -he and Brand were together in a doomed city, trying to avert the doom, -because of that impulse which urged them to find a little daylight -beyond the darkness. - -Young Clatworthy jerked his chair on the polished boards and looked -anxiously at the Colonel, who was discoursing on the origins of art, -religion, sex, the perception of form. - -Colonel Lavington grinned at him. - -"All right, Cyril. I know you have got a rendezvous with some girl. -Don't let us keep you from your career of infamy." - -"As a matter of fact, sir, I met a sweet little thing yesterday----" -Clatworthy knew that his reputation as an amorist did not displease the -colonel, who was a romantic and loved youth. - -In a gust of laughter the mess broke up. Charles Fortune and the colonel -prepared for an orgy of Bach over the piano in the drawing-room of -that house in Lille. Those who cared to listen might--or not, as they -pleased. Brand and I went out into the streets, pitch-dark now, unlit -by any glimmer of gas, and made our way to the convent where the girl -Eileen O'Connor lodged. We passed a number of British soldiers in the -Boulevard de la Libert, wearing their steel hats and carrying their -packs. - -A group of them stopped under a doorway to light cigarettes. One of them -spoke to his pals. - -"They tell me there's some bonny wenches in this town." - -"Ay," said another, "an' I could do wi' some hugging in a cosy billet." - -"Cosy billet!" said the third, with a cockney voice. "Town or trenches, -the poor bloody soldier gets it in the neck. Curse this pack! I'm fed up -with the whole damn show. I want peace." - -A hoarse laugh answered him. - -"Peace! You don't believe that fool's talk in the papers, chum? It's a -hell of a long way to the Rhine, and you and I'll be dead before we get -there." - -They slouched off into the darkness, three points of light where their -cigarettes glowed. - -"Poor lads!" said Brand. - - - - -VIII - - -We fumbled our way to a street on the edge of the canal, according to -Brand's uncanny sense of direction and his remembrance of what the -Irish girl had told him. There we found the convent, a square box-like -building behind big gates. We pulled a bell which jangled loudly, -and presently the gate opened an inch, letting through the light of a -lantern which revealed the black-and-white coif of a nun. - -"_Qui va l?_" - -Brand told her that we had come to see Miss O'Connor, and the gate was -opened wider and we went into the courtyard, where a young nun stood -smiling. She spoke in English. - -"We were always frightened when the bell rang during the German -occupation. One never knew what might happen. And we were afraid for -Miss O'Connor's sake." - -"Why?" asked Brand. - -The little nun laughed. - -"She did dangerous work. They suspected her. She came here after her -arrest. Before then she had rooms of her own. Oh, _messieurs_, her -courage, her devotion! Truly, she was heroic!" - -She led us into a long corridor with doors on each side, and out of one -door came a little group of nuns with Eileen O'Connor. - -The Irish girl came towards us with outstretched hands which she gave -first to Brand. She seemed excited at our coming and explained that the -Reverend Mother and all the nuns wanted to see us to thank England by -means of us, to hear something about the war and the chance of victory -from the first English officers they had seen. - -Brand was presented to the Reverend Mother, a massive old lady with a -slight moustache on the upper lip and dark luminous eyes, reminding me -of the portrait of Savonarola at Florence. The other nuns crowded round -us, eager to ask questions, still more eager to talk. Some of them were -quite young and pretty, though all rather white and fragile, and they -had a vivacious gaiety so that the building resounded with laughter. It -was Eileen O'Connor who made them laugh by her reminiscences of girlhood -when she and Brand were "_enfants terribles_," when she used to pull -Brand's hair and hide the pipe he smoked too soon. She asked him to take -off his field-cap so that she might see whether the same old unruly tuft -still stuck up at the back of his head, and she and all the nuns clapped -hands when she found it was so, in spite of war-worry and steel hats. -All this had to be translated into French for the benefit of those who -could not understand such rapid English. - -"I believe you would like to give it a tug now," said Brand, bending his -head down, and Eileen O'Connor agreed. - -"And indeed I would, but for scandalising a whole community of nuns, to -say nothing of Reverend Mother." - -The Reverend Mother laughed in a curiously deep voice, and a crowd of -little wrinkles puckered at her eyes. She told Miss O'Connor that even -her Irish audacity would not go as far as that, which was a challenge -accepted on the instant. - -"One little tug, for old times' sake," said the girl, and Brand yelped -with pretended pain at the vigour of her pull, while all the nuns -screamed with delight. - -Then a clock struck and the Reverend Mother touched Eileen (as -afterwards I called her) on the arm and said she would leave her with -her friends. One by one the nuns bowed to us, all smiling under their -white _bandeaux,_ and then went down the corridor through an open door -which led into a chapel, as we could see by twinkling candlelight. -Presently the music of an organ and of women's voices came through the -closed doors. - -Eileen O'Connor took us into a little parlour where there were just four -rush chairs and a table, and on the clean whitewashed walls a crucifix. - -Brand took a chair by the table, rather awkwardly, I thought. - -"How gay they are!" he said. "They do not seem to have been touched by -the horrors of war." - -"It is the gaiety of faith," said Eileen. "How else could they have -survived the work they have done, the things they have seen? This -convent was a shambles for more than three years. These rooms were -filled with wounded, German wounded, and often English wounded, who were -prisoners. They were the worst cases for amputation and butcher's work, -and the nuns did all the nursing. They know all there is to know of -suffering and death." - -"Yet they have not forgotten how to laugh!" said Brand. "That is -wonderful. It is a mystery to me." - -"You must have seen bad things," said Eileen. "Have you lost the gift of -laughter?" - -"Almost," said Brand, "and once for a long time." - -Eileen put her hands to her breast. - -"Oh, learn it again," she said. "If we cannot laugh we cannot work. Why, -I owe my life to a sense of humour." - -She spoke the last words with more than a trivial meaning. They seemed -to tell of some singular episode, and Brand asked her to explain. - -She did not explain then. She only said some vague things about laughing -herself out of prison and stopping a German bullet with a smile. - -"Why did the devils put you in prison?" asked Brand. - -She shrugged her shoulders. - -"In Lille it was bad form if one had not been arrested once at least. I -was three weeks in a cell half the size of this, and twenty women were -with me there. There was very little elbow-room!" - -She proved her sense of humour then by that deep-throated laugh of hers, -but I noticed that just for a second behind the smile in her eyes -there crept a shadow as at the remembrance of some horror, and that she -shivered a little, as though some coldness had touched her. - -"It must have been like the Black Hole of Calcutta," said Brand, -measuring the space with his eyes. "Twenty women herded in a room like -that!" - -"With me for twenty-one," said Eileen. "We had no means of washing." - -She used an awful phrase. - -"We were a living stench." - -"Good God!" said Brand. - -Eileen O'Connor waved back the remembrance. "Tell me of England and of -Ireland. How's the little Green Isle? Has it done well in the war?" - -"The Irish troops fought like heroes," said Brand. - -"But there were not enough of them. Recruiting was slow, and there -was--some trouble." - -He did not speak about the Irish Rebellion. - -"I heard about it vaguely, from prisoners," said the girl. "It was -England's fault, I expect. Dear old blundering, muddle-headed England, -who is a tyrant through fear, and twists Irish loyalty into treason by -ropes of red tape in which the Irish mind gets strangled and awry. -Well, there's another subject to avoid. I want to hear only good things -to-night. Tell me of London, of Kensington Gardens, of the way from -Strand to Temple Bar, of the lights that gleam along the Embankment when -lovers go hand-in-hand and see stars in the old black river. Are they -all there?" - -"They are all changed," said Brand. "It is a place of gloom. There are -no lights along the embankment. They have dowsed their glims for fear of -air-raids. There are few lovers hand-in-hand. Some of the boys lie dead -round Ypres, or somewhere on the Somme, or weep out of blind eyes, or -gibber in shell-shock homes, or try to hop on one leg--while waiting for -artificial limbs--or trudge on, to-night, towards Maubeuge, where German -machine-guns wait for them behind the ditches. Along the Strand goes -the painted flapper, luring men to hell. In Kensington Gardens there are -training camps for more boys ear-marked for the shambles, and here and -there among the trees young mothers who are widows before they knew -their wifehood. There is vice, the gaiety of madness, the unspeakable -callousness of people who get rich on war, or earn fat wages, and in -small stricken homes a world of secret grief. That is London in time of -war. I hate it." - -Brand spoke with bitterness and a melancholy that startled the girl who -sat with folded hands below the crucifix on the whitewashed wall behind -her. - -"Dear God! Is it like that?" - -She stared at the wall opposite as though it were a window through which -she saw London. - -"Yes, of course it is like that. Here in Lille we thought we were -suffering more than anybody in the world. That was our egotism. We did -not realise--not in our souls--that everywhere in the world of war there -was equal suffering, the same cruelty, perhaps the same temptation to -despair." - -Brand repented, I think, of having led the conversation into such -abysmal gloom. He switched off to more cheerful things and gave some -elaborate sketches of soldiers he knew, to which Eileen played up -with anecdotes of rare comedy about the nuns--the fat nun who under the -rigour of war rations became as slim as a willow and was vain of her new -grace; the little French mm who had no fear of German officers and dared -their fury by prophecies of defeat--but was terrified of a mouse in -the refectory; the Reverend Mother, who borrowed a safety-razor from an -English Tommy--he had hidden it in his shirt--to shave her upper lip, -lest the Germans should think her a French _poilu_ in disguise. - -More interesting to me than anything that was said were the things -unspoken by Eileen and Brand. In spite of the girl's easy way of -laughter, her quick wit, her avoidance, if possible, of any reference -to her own suffering, I seemed to see in her eyes and in her face the -strain of a long ordeal, some frightful adventure of life in which she -had taken great hazards--the people had told me she had risked her life -often--and a woman's courage which had been tested by that experience -and had not failed, though perhaps at breaking-point in the worst hours. -I supposed her age was twenty-six or so (I guessed it right this side -of a year), but there was already a streak of grey in her dark hair, -and her eyes, so smiling as a rule, looked as if they had often wept. -I think the presence of Brand was a great pleasure to her--bringing to -Lille a link with her childhood--and I saw that she was studying the -personality of this newly-found friend of hers, and the strong -character of his face, not unscathed by the touch of war, with curious, -penetrating interest. I felt in the way, and left them together with a -fair excuse--I had always work to do--and I was pleased that I did -so, they were so obviously glad to have a more intimate talk about old -friends and old times. - - - - -IX - - -I gained by my unselfishness (I did not want to go), for the Reverend -Mother met me in the corridor and stood talking, to me about Eileen -O'Connor, and told me part of the girl's story, which I found strange -in its drama, though she left out the scene of greatest interest, as I -heard later from Eileen herself. - -The girl had come to Lille just before the war, as an art mistress in -an "_Ecole de Jeunes Filles_" (her parents in Kensington had too big a -family to keep them all), with lessons twice a week at the convent, and -private pupils in her own rooms. She learned to speak French quickly and -charmingly, and her gift of humour, her Irish frankness and comradeship -made her popular among her pupils, so that she had many invitations to -their homes and became well known in the best houses of Lille--mostly -belonging to rich manufacturers. A commonplace story till then. But -when the Germans occupied Lille this Irish girl became one of the chief -characters in a drama that was exciting and fantastic to the point of -melodrama. It was she who organised the Lille branch of a secret society -of women, with a network all over northern France and Belgium--the world -remembers Nurse Cavell at Brussels--for the escape of young civilians -of military age and prisoners of war, combining that work (frightfully -perilous) with espionage on German movements of troops and other facts -that might be of value to the Belgian Army, and through them to England -and France. It was out of an old book of Jules Verne called "The -Cryptogram" that she copied the cypher in which she wrote her messages -(in invisible ink on linen handkerchiefs and rags), and she had an -audacity of invention in numberless small tricks and plots which -constantly broke through the meshes of the German network of military -police. - -"She had a contempt for their stupidity," said the Reverend Mother. -"Called them dunderheads, and one strange word of which I do not know -the meaning--'yobs'--and I trembled at the risks she took." - -She lived with one maid in two rooms on the ground floor of a house near -the Jardin d'Et, the rest of the house being used as the headquarters -of the German Intelligence Section of the Northern District. All day -long officers went in and out, and by day and night there were always -sentries at the door. Yet it was there that was established also the -headquarters of the Rescue Committee. It was on account of her Irish -name and parentage that Eileen O'Connor was permitted to remain in the -two rooms to the left of the courtyard, entered by a separate door. The -German Kommandant was a man who firmly believed that the Irish nation -was ready to break out into revolt against the English, and that all -Irish--men and women--hated the British Empire as much as any Prussian. -Eileen O'Connor played up to this _ide fixe_, saw the value of it as -a wonderful means of camouflage, lent the Kommandant books on Irish -history dealing with the injustice of England to Ireland (in which -she firmly believed as a staunch Nationalist), and educated him so -completely to the belief that she was anti-English (as she was in -politics, though not in war) that he had no doubt of her. - -Here the Reverend Mother made a remark which seemed to illuminate Eileen -O'Connor's story, as well as her own knowledge of human nature. - -"The child has beautiful eyes and a most sweet grace. Irish history may -not account for all." - -"This German Kommandant," I asked, "what sort of a man was he?" - -"For a German not altogether bad," said the Reverend Mother. "Severe -and ruthless like them all, but polite when there was no occasion to -be violent. He was of good family, as far as there are such things in -Germany. A man of sixty." - -Eileen O'Connor, with German permission, continued her work as art -mistress at the _Ecole de Jeunes Filles_. After six months she was -permitted to receive private pupils in her two rooms on the ground floor -of the Intelligence Headquarters, in the same courtyard, though not in -the same building. Her pupils came with drawing-boards and paint-boxes. -They were all girls with pigtails and short frocks--not so young as -they looked, because three or four at least, including the Baronne de -Villers-Auxicourt, were older than schoolgirls. They played the part -perfectly, and the sentries smiled at them and said, "_Guten Tag, -schnes Fraulein_," as each one passed. They were the committee of the -Rescue Society: Julienne de Quesnoy, Marcelle Barbier, Yvonne Marigny, -Margurite Clry, and Alice de Taffin, de Villers-Auxicourt. - -Eileen O'Connor was the director and leading spirit. It seems to me -astonishing that they should have arranged the cypher, practised it, -written down military information gathered from German conversations -and reported to them by servants and agents under the very noses of the -German intelligence officers, who could see into the sitting-room as -they passed through French windows and saluted Eileen O'Connor and her -young ladies if they happened to meet their eyes. It is more astonishing -that, at different times, and one at a time, many fugitives (including -five British soldiers who had escaped from the Citadel) slept in the -cellar beneath that room, changed into German uniforms belonging to men -who had died at the convent hospital--the Reverend Mother did that part -of the plot--and walked quietly out in the morning by an underground -passage leading to the Jardin d'Et. The passage had been anciently -built but was blocked up at one end by Eileen O'Connor's cellar, and -she and the other women broke the wall, one brick at a time, until -after three months the hole was made. Their finger-nails suffered in the -process, and they were afraid that the roughness of their hands might -be noticed by the officers, but in spite of German spectacles they saw -nothing of that. Eileen O'Connor and her friends were in constant touch -with the prisoners of the Citadel and smuggled food to them. That -was easy. It was done by bribing the German sentries with tobacco and -meat-pies. They were also in communication with other branches of the -work in Belgium, so that fugitives were passed on from town to town, and -house to house. Their success made them confident, after many horrible -fears, and for a time they were lulled into a sense of security. -That was rudely crashed when Eileen O'Connor, the young Baronne de -Villers-Auxicourt, and Marcelle Barbier were arrested one morning in -September of '17 on a charge of espionage. They were put into separate -cells of the civil prison, crowded with the vilest women of the slums -and stews, and suffered something like torture because of the foul -atmosphere, the lack of sanitation and unspeakable abomination. - -"Only the spirit of Christian martyrdom could remain cheerful in such -terrible conditions," said the Reverend Mother. "Our dear Eileen was -sustained by a great faith and wonderful gaiety. Her laughter, her -jokes, her patience, her courage, were an inspiration even to the poor -degraded women who were prisoners with her. They worshipped her. We, -her friends, gave her up for lost, though we prayed unceasingly that she -might escape death. Then she was brought to trial." - -She stood alone in the court. The young Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt had -died in prison owing to the shock of her arrest and a weak heart. A -weak heart, though so brave. Eileen was not allowed to see her on her -deathbed, but she sent a message almost with her last breath. It was the -one word "courage!" Mlle. Marcelle Barbier was released before the trial -for lack of direct evidence. - -Eileen's trial was famous in Lille. The court was crowded and the German -military tribunal could not suppress the loud expressions of sympathy -and admiration which greeted her, nor the angry murmurs which -interrupted the prosecuting officer. She stood there, wonderfully calm, -between two soldiers with fixed bayonets. She looked very young and -innocent between her guards, and it is evident that her appearance made -a favourable impression on the court. The President, after peering at -her through his horn spectacles, was not so ferocious in his manner as -usual when he bade her be seated. - -The evidence seemed very strong against her. "She is lost" was the -belief of all her friends in court. One of the sentries at the Citadel, -jealously savage because another man had received more tobacco than -himself--on such a trivial thing did this girl's life hang--betrayed -the system by which the women's committee sent food to the French -and English prisoners. He gave the names of three of the ladies and -described Eileen O'Connor as the ringleader. The secret police watched -her, and searched her rooms at night. They discovered the cypher and -the key, a list of men who had escaped, and three German uniforms in a -secret cupboard. They had been aided in their search by Lieutenant Franz -von Kreuzenach, of the Intelligence Bureau, who was the chief witness -for the prosecution, and whose name was recommended to the court for -the vigilance and zeal he had shown in the detection of the conspiracy -against the Army and the Fatherland. It was he who had found the secret -cupboard and had solved the key to the cypher. - -"We will take the lieutenant's evidence in due course," said the -President. "Does that complete the indictment against this prisoner?" - -Apart from a savage elaboration of evidence based upon the facts -presented and a demand that the woman's guilt, if the court were -satisfied thereof, should be punished by death, the preliminary -indictment by the prosecution ended. - -It was a terrible case, and during its revelations the people in court -were stricken with dread and pity for the girl who was now sitting -between the two soldiers. They were all staring at her, and some at -least--the Reverend Mother among them--noticed with surprise that when -the officer for the prosecution ended his speech she drew a deep breath, -raised her head, as though some weight of fear had been lifted from her, -and--laughed. - -It was quite a merry laugh, with that full blackbird note of hers, and -the sound of it caused a strange sensation in the court. The President -blinked repeatedly, like an owl blinded by a ray of sunlight. He -addressed the prisoner in heavy, barbarous French. - -"You are charged with conspiracy against our German martial law. The -punishment is death. It is no laughing matter, Fraulein." - -They were stem words, but there was a touch of pity in that last -sentence. - -"_Ce riest pas une affaire pour rire, Frulein._" - -Eileen O'Connor, said the Reverend Mother, who was to be called as a -witness on her behalf, bowed in a gracious way to the President, -but with a look of amusement that was amazing to the German officers -assembled for her trial. Some of them scowled, but there were others, -the younger men, who whispered, and smiled also with no attempt to -disguise their admiration of such courage. - -"Perhaps it was only I," said the Reverend Mother, "who understood the -child's joyous relief which gave her this courage. I had waited with -terrible dread for the announcement of the discovery of the secret -passage. That it had been discovered I knew, for the German Lieutenant, -Franz von Kreuzenach, had come round to me and very sternly questioned -me about a case of medicine which he had found there, stamped with the -name of our convent." - -"Then," I said, "this Franz von Kreuzenach must have suppressed some of -the evidence. By what motive----" - -The Reverend Mother interrupted me, putting her hand on my sleeve with a -touch of protest. - -"The good God works through strange instruments, and may touch the -hardest heart with His grace. It was indeed a miracle." - -I would give much to have been in that Court at Lille when Eileen -O'Connor was permitted to question the German lieutenant, who was the -chief witness against her. - -From what I have heard, not only from the Reverend Mother, but from -other people of Lille who were present at the trial, she played with -this German officer, making him look very foolish, ridiculing him in a -merry, contemptuous way before the court. Indeed, he seemed strangely -abashed before her. - -"The cypher!... Have you ever been a schoolboy, or were you born a -lieutenant in the German Army?" - -Franz von Kreuzenach admitted that he had once been a boy--to the -amusement of his brother officers. - -Had he ever read stories of adventure, fairy tales, romances, or did -he spend his childhood in the study of Nietzsche, Haegel, Schopenhauer, -Kant, Goethe, von Bemhardi, Karl Marx------- - -When she strung off these names--so incongruous in association--even the -President permitted a slight smile to twist his thin hard mouth. - -Franz von Kreuzenach said that he had read some fairy tales and stories -of adventure. Might he ask the _gnadiges Fraulein_---- - -"Yes," said the President, "what has this to do with your case, -Frulein? I desire to give you full liberty in your defence, but this is -entirely irrelevant to the evidence." - -"It is my case!" cried Miss O'Connor. "Listen to the next question, Herr -President. It is the key of my defence." - -Her next question caused laughter in court. - -"I ask the Herr Lieutenant whether, as a boy, or a young man, he has -read the romances of the French writer, Jules Verne?" - -Franz von Kreuzenach looked abashed, and blushed like a schoolboy. His -eyes fell before the challenging look of the Irish girl. - -"I have read some novels by Jules Verne, in German translations." - -"Oh, in German translations--of course!" said Miss O'Connor. "German -boys do not learn French very well." - -"Keep to the case," said the President. "In heaven's name, Fraulein, -what has this to do with your defence?" - -She raised her hand, for patience, and said, "Herr President, my -innocence will soon be clear." - -She demanded of the witness for the prosecution whether he had ever read -the novel by Jules Verne called "The Cryptogram." He said that he had -read it only a few days ago. He had discovered it in her room. - -Eileen O'Connor turned round eagerly to the President. - -"I demand the production of that book." - -An orderly was sent to the lieutenant's rooms to fetch it. It was clear -that the President of the Court made a black mark against Franz von -Kreuzenach for not having mentioned its discovery to the Court. As yet, -however, he could not see the bearing of it on the case. - -Then, with the book in her hand, Eileen O'Connor turned to the famous -cryptogram, showed how it corresponded exactly with her own cypher, -proved that the pieces of paper found in her rooms were copies of the -Jules Verne cypher in the handwriting of her pupils. - -"You see, Herr President!" she cried eagerly. - -The President admitted that this was proved, but, as he asked, leaning -forward in his chair, for what purpose had they copied out that cypher? -Cyphers were dangerous things to write in time of war. Deadly things. -Why did these ladies want to learn the cypher? - -It was then that Eileen O'Connor was most brilliant. She described in -a simple and girlish way how she and her pupils worked in their little -room. While they copied freehand models, one of them read out to the -others, books of romance, love, adventure, to forget the gloom of -life and the tragedy of war. One of those books was Jules Verne's -"Cryptogram." It had fascinated them. It had made them forget the -misery of war. They were romantic girls, imaginative girls. Out of sheer -merriment, to pass the hours, they had tried to work out the cypher. -They had written love-letters to imaginary young men in those secret -numbers. Here Eileen, smiling ironically, read out specimens of the -letters that had been found. - -"Come to the corner of the Rue Esquermoise at 9.45. You will know me -because I shall be wearing a blue bow in a black hat." - -That was the romantic imagination of the Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt. - -"When you see a lady standing outside the Jardin d'Et, with a little -brown dog, speak to her in French and say, '_Comme il fait froid -aujourd'hui, mademoiselle_.' If she answers, '_Je ne vous comprends -pas, monsieur_,' you will understand that she is to be trusted, and you -must follow her." - -That was a romantic idea to which Eileen herself pleaded guilty. - -"Herr President," said Eileen, "you cannot put old heads on young -shoulders, even in time of war. A party of girls will let their foolish -little minds run upon ideas of love, even when the sound of guns is not -far away. You, Herr President, will understand that perfectly." - -Perhaps there was something in the character of the President that made -this a chance hit. All the German officers laughed, and the President -shifted in his seat and flushed to the top of his bald, vulture-like -head. - -The possession of those German uniforms was also explained in the -prettiest way by Eileen O'Connor. They were uniforms belonging to three -handsome young German soldiers who had died in hospital. They had kept -them to return to their mothers after the war, those poor German mothers -who were weeping for their sons. This part of her defence touched the -German officers deeply. One of them had tears in his eyes. - -The list of escaped fugitives was harder to explain, but again an Irish -imagination succeeded in giving it an innocent significance. It had been -compiled by a prisoner in the Citadel and given to Eileen as a proof -that his own hope of escape was not in vain, though she had warned him -of the fearful risk. "The poor man gave me the list in sheer simplicity, -and in innocence I kept it." - -Simply and touchingly she admitted her guilt in smuggling food to French -and British prisoners, and to German sentries, and claimed that her -fault was only against military regulations, but in humanity was -justified. - -"I am Irish," she said. "I have in my heart the remembrance of English -crimes to Ireland--old, unforgettable crimes that still cry out for the -justice and the liberty which are denied my country." - -Some of the younger German officers shook their heads approvingly. -They liked this Irish hatred of England. It was according to their -text-books. - -"But," said the Irish girl, "the sufferings of English prisoners--you -know here of their misery, their hunger, their weakness in that Citadel -where many have died and are dying--stirred my compassion as a woman -to whom all cruelty is tragic, and all suffering of men a call to that -mother-love which is in the spirit of all their womanhood, as you know -by your German women--as I hope you know. Because they were starved -I tried to get them food, as I would to starving dogs or any poor -creatures caught in the trap of war or of men's sport. To that I confess -guilty, with gladness in my guilt." - -The Reverend Mother, standing there in the whitewashed corridor of the -convent, in the flickering light of an oil lantern, which gleamed on the -white ruff round her neck and the silver cross on her breast, though her -face was shadowed in the cavern of her black headdress, repeated this -speech of Eileen O'Connor as though in hearing it first she had learnt -it by heart. - -"The child was divinely inspired, monsieur. Our Lady stood by her side, -prompting her. I am sure of that." - -The trial lengthened out, until it was late in the evening when the -judge summed up. He spoke again of the gravity of the accusation, the -dread punishment that must befall the prisoner if her guilt were proved, -the weight of evidence against her. For a time he seemed to press her -guilt heavily, and the court was gloomy. The German officers looked -grave. One thing happened in the course of his speech which affected the -audience profoundly. It was when he spoke of the romantic explanation -that had been offered by the prisoner regarding the secret cypher. - -"This lady," he said, "asks me to believe that she and her companions -were playing a simple girlish game of make-believe. Writing imaginary -letters to mythical persons. Were these young ladies--nay, is she, -herself--so lacking in woman's charm that she has no living man to love -her, and needs must write fictitious notes to nonexistent men?" - -The President said these words with portentous solemnity. Perhaps only -a German could have spoken them. He paused and blinked at the German -officers below him. Suddenly into the silence of the court came a ripple -of laughter, clear and full of most mirthful significance. - -Eileen O'Connor's laugh bewitched the crowded court, and there was a -roar of laughter, in which all the officers joined. By that laugh more -even than by her general gaiety, her courage and eloquence, she won her -life. - -"I said a decade of the rosary to our Blessed Lady," said the Reverend -Mother, "and thanked God that this dear child's life would not be taken. -I was certain that those men would not condemn her to death. She was -acquitted on the charge of espionage, and sentenced to two weeks' -imprisonment for smuggling food to prisoners, by a verdict of seven -against three. Only when she left the court did she fall into so deep a -swoon that for a little while we thought her dead." - -The Reverend Mother had told her story well. She held me in a deep -strained interest. It was rather to myself than to her that I spoke the -words which were my comment at the end of this narrative. - -"How splendid!... But I am puzzled about that German lieutenant, Franz -von Kreuzenach. He kept the real evidence back." - -"That," said the Reverend Mother solemnly, "was a great mystery, and a -miracle." - -Wickham Brand joined us in the passage, with Eileen O'Connor by his -side. - -"Not gone yet?" said Wickham. - -"I have been listening to the tale of a woman's courage," I said, and -when Eileen gave me her hand, I raised it to my lips, in the French -style, though not in gallantry. - -"Reverend Mother," she said, "has been exalting me to the seventh heaven -of her dear heart." - -On my way back to Brand's mess I told him all I had heard about Eileen's -trial, and I remember his enthusiasm. - -"Fine! Thank heaven there are women like that in this blood-soaked -world. It saves one from absolute despair." - -He made no comment about the suppression of evidence, which was a puzzle -to me. - -We parted with a "So long, old man," outside his headquarters, and I did -not see him until a few days later. - - - - -X - - -It was Frederick E. Small, the American doctor attached to Brand's -crowd, who was with me on a night in Lille, before the armistice, when -by news from the colonel we were stirred by the tremendous hope--almost -a certainty--that the end of the war was near. I had been into Courtrai, -which the enemy had first evacuated and then was shelling. It was not a -joyous entry like that into Lille. Most of the people were still down -in their cellars, where for several days they had been herded together -until the air became foul. On the outskirts I had passed many groups -of peasants with their babies and old people, trudging past our guns, -trekking from one village to another in search of greater safety, or -standing in the fields where our artillery was getting into action, and -where new shell craters should have warned them away, if they had had -more knowledge of war. For more than four years I had seen, at different -periods, crowds like that, after the first flight of fugitives in -August of '14, when the world seemed to have been tilted up and great -populations in France and Belgium were in panic-stricken retreat from -the advancing edge of war. I knew the types, the attitudes, the very -shape of the bundles, in these refugee processions, the haggard look of -the mothers pushing their perambulators, the bewildered look of old men -and women, the tired sleepy look of small boys and girls, the stumbling -dead-beat look of old farm horses dragging carts piled high with -cottage furniture. As it was at the beginning so it was at the end--for -civilians caught in the fires of war. With two other men I went into the -heart of Courtrai and found it desolate, and knew the reason why, when, -at the corner of the Grande Place, a heavy shell came howling and burst -inside a house with frightful explosive noise, followed by a crash of -masonry. The people were wise to keep to their cellars. Two girls, -not so wise, made a dash from one house to another, and were caught by -chunks of steel and killed close to the church of St. Martin, where they -lay all crumpled up in a clotted pool of blood. A man came up to me, -utterly careless of such risks, and I hated to stand talking to him with -the shells coming every half-minute overhead. - -There was a fire of passion in his eyes, and at every sentence he spoke -to me his voice rose and thrilled as he denounced the German race for -all they had done in Courtrai, for their robberies, their imprisonments, -their destruction of machinery, their brutality. The last Kommandant of -Courtrai was von Richthofen, father of the German aviator, and he was a -hard, ruthless man, and kept the city under an iron rule. - -"All that, thank God, is finished now," said the man. "The English have -delivered us from the beast!" As he spoke, another monstrous shell came -overhead, but he took no notice of it, and said, "We are safe now from -the enemy's evil power!" It seemed to me a comparative kind of safety. -I had no confidence in it when I sat in the parlour of an old lady who, -like Eileen O'Connor, in Lille, had been an Irish governess in Courtrai, -and who now, living in miserable poverty, sat in a bed-sitting-room -whose windows and woodwork had been broken by shell-splinters. "Do you -mind shutting the door, my dear?" she said. "I can't bear those nasty -bombs." I realised with a large, experienced knowledge that we might be -torn to fragments of flesh at any moment by one of those nasty "bombs," -which were really eight-inch shells; but the old lady did not worry, and -felt safe when the door was shut. - -Outside Courtrai, when I left, lay some khaki figures in a mush of -blood. They were lads whom I had seen unloading ammunition that morning -on the bank of the canal. One had asked me for a light, and said, -"What's all this peace talk?... Any chance?" A big chance, I had told -him. Home for Christmas, certain sure this time. The boy's eyes had -lighted up for a moment, quicker than the match which he held in the cup -of his hands. - -"Jesus! Back for good, eh?" - -Then the light went out of his eyes as the match flared up. - -"We've heard that tale a score of times. 'The Germans are weakening. The -Huns 'ave 'ad enough!...' Newspaper talk. A man would be a mug----" - -Now the boy lay in the mud, with half his body blown away.... I was glad -to get back to Lille for a spell, where there were no dead bodies in the -roads. And the colonel's news, straight from G.H.Q.--which, surely, were -not playing up the old false optimism again!--helped one to hope that, -perhaps, in a week or two the last boys of our race, the lucky ones, -would be reprieved from that kind of bloody death which I had seen so -often, so long, so heaped up, in many fields of France and Flanders, -where the flower of our youth was killed. - -Dr. Small was excited by the hope brought back by Colonel Lavington. He -sought me out in my billet, _Madame Chri_, and begged me to take a walk -with him. (It was a moonlight night, but no double throb of a German -air-engine came booming over Lille.) He walked at a hard pace, with -the collar of his "British warm" tucked up to his ears, and talked in a -queer disjointed monologue, emotionally, whimsically. I remember some -of his words, more or less--anyhow, the gist of his thoughts, "I'm not -worrying any more about how the war will end. We've won! Remarkable, -that, when one thinks back to the time, less than a year ago, when the -best thing seemed a draw. I'm thinking about the future. What's the -world going to be afterwards? That's my American mind--the next job, so -to speak." - -He thought hard while we paced round our side of the Jardin d'Et, where -the moonlight made the bushes glamorous and streaked the tree trunks -with a silver line. - -"This war is going to have prodigious effects on nations; on -individuals, too. I'm scared. We've all been screwed up to an intense -pitch--every nerve in us is beyond the normal stretch of nature. After -the war there will be a sudden relaxing. We shall be like bits of chewed -elastic. Rather like people who have drugged themselves to get through -some big ordeal. After the ordeal their nerves are all ragged. They -crave the old stimulus, though they dread it. They're depressed--don't -know what's the matter--get into sudden rages--hysterical--can't settle -to work--go out for gaiety and get bored. I've seen it many times in -bad cases. Europe--yes, and America, too--is going to be a bad case. A -neurotic world--Lord, it'll take some healing!" - -For a time his thoughts wandered round the possible terms of peace and -the abasement of Germany. He prophesied the break-up of Germany, the -downfall of the Emperor and of other thrones. - -"Crowns will be as cheap as twenty cents," he said. He hoped for the -complete overthrow of Junkerdom--"all the dirty dogs," as he called the -Prussian war lords and politicians. But he hoped the Allies would be -generous with the enemy peoples--"magnanimous" was the word he used. - -"We must help the spirit of democracy to rise among them," he said. "We -must make it easy for them to exorcise the devil. If we press them too -hard, put the screw on to the torture of their souls (defeat will be -torture to a proud people), they will nourish a hope of vengeance and go -back to their devil for hope." - -I asked him whether he thought his President would lead the world to a -nobler stage of history. - -He hesitated at that, groped a little, I thought, among old memories and -prejudices. - -"Why," he said, "Wilson has the biggest chance that ever came to a human -being--the biggest chance and the biggest duty. We are rich (too darned -rich) and enormously powerful when most other peoples are poor and -weak--drained of wealth and blood. That's our luck, and a little bit, -perhaps, our shame, though our boys have done their bit all right -and are ready to do more; and it's not their fault they weren't here -before--but we're hardly touched by this war as a people, except -spiritually. There we've been touched by the finger of Fate. (God, if -you like that better!) So, with that strength behind him, the President -is in a big way of business. He can make his voice heard, stand for a -big idea. God, sonny, I hope he'll do it! For the world's sake, for the -sake of all these suffering people, here in this city of Lille, and in a -million little towns where people have been bashed by war." - -I asked him if he doubted Wilson's greatness, and the question -embarrassed him. - -"I'm loyal to the man," he said. "I'll back him if he plays straight and -big. Bigness, that's what we want. Bigness of heart as well as bigness -of brain. Oh, he's clever, though not wise in making so many enemies. -He has fine ideas and can write real words. Things which speak. True -things. I'd like to be sure of his character--its breadth and strength, -I mean. The world wants a nobleman, bigger than the little gentlemen of -politics; a leader calling to the great human heart of our tribes and -lifting them, with one grand gesture, out of the mire of old passions -and vendettas and jealousies to a higher plane of--common sense. Out of -the jungle to the daylight of fellowship. Out of the jungle." - -He repeated those words twice, with a reverent solemnity. He believed -that so much emotion had been created in the heart of the world that, -when the war ended, anything might happen if a leader came--a new -religion of civilisation, any kind of spiritual and social revolution. - -"We might kill cruelty," he said. "My word, what a victory that would -be!" - - - - -XI - - -Our conversation was interrupted by a figure that slipped out of the -darkness of some doorway, hesitated before us, and then spoke in French. - -"You are English officers? May I speak with you?" - -It was a girl, whom I could see only vaguely in the darkness--she stood -in the shadow of a doorway beyond the moonlight--and I answered her that -I was English and my friend American. - -"Is there any way," she asked, "of travelling from Lille, perhaps to -Paris? In a motor car, for example? To-night?" - -I laughed at this startling request, put so abruptly. It was already -nine o'clock at night! - -"Not the smallest chance in the world, mademoiselle! Paris is far from -Lille." - -"I was stupid," said the girl. "Not all the way to Paris, but to some -town outside Lille. Any town. There are motor cars always passing -through the streets. I thought if I could get a little place in one----" - -"It is difficult," I said. "As a matter of fact, it is forbidden for -officers to take civilians except in case of saving them from danger--in -shelled places." - -She came suddenly out of the shadow into the moonlight, and I saw that -she was a girl with red hair and a face strangely white. I knew by the -way she spoke--the accent--as well as by the neatness of her dress, that -she was not a working-girl. She was trembling painfully, and took hold -of my arm with both her hands. - -"Monsieur, I beg of you to help me. I beseech you to think of some way -in which I may get away from Lille to-night. It is a matter of extreme -importance to me." - -A group of young men and women came up the street arm-in-arm, shouting, -laughing, singing the "Marseillaise." They were civilians, with two of -our soldiers among them, wearing women's hats. - -Before I could answer the girl's last words, she made a sudden retreat -into the dark doorway, and I could see dimly that she was cowering back. - -Dr. Small spoke to me. "That girl is scared of something. The poor child -has got the jim-jams." - -I went closer to her and heard her breathing. It was quite loud. It was -as though she were panting after hard running. - -"Are you ill?" I asked. - -She did not answer until the group of civilians had passed. They did not -pass at once, but stood for a moment looking up at a light burning in -an upper window. One of the men shouted something in a loud voice--some -word in _argot_--which I did not understand, and the women screeched -with laughter. Then they went on, dancing with linked arms, and our two -soldiers in the women's hats lurched along with them. - -"I am afraid!" said the girl. - -"Afraid of what?" I asked. - -I repeated the question--"Why are you afraid, mademoiselle?"--and she -answered by words which I had heard a million times since the war began -as an explanation of all trouble, tears, ruin, misery. - -"_C'est la guerre!_" - -"Look out!" said the little doctor. "She's fainting." - -She had risen from her cowering position and stood upright for a moment, -with her hand against the doorpost. Then she swayed, and would have -fallen if the doctor had not caught her. Even then she fell, -indeed, though without hurt, because he could not support her sudden -weight--though she was of slight build--and they sank together in a kind -of huddle on the doorstep. - -"For the love of Mike!" said Dr. Small. He was on his knees before her -now, chafing her cold hands. She came to in about a minute, and I leaned -over her and asked her where she lived, and made out from her faint -whisper that she lived in the house to which this doorway belonged, in -the upper room where the light was burning. With numbed fingers--"cold -as a toad," said "Daddy" Small--she fumbled at her bodice and drew out a -latchkey. - -"We had better carry her up," I said, and the doctor nodded. - -The front door opened into a dimly-lit passage, uncarpeted, and with -leprous-looking walls. At one end was a staircase with heavy banisters. -The doctor and I supported the girl, who was able to walk a little now, -and managed to get her to the first landing. - -"Where?" I asked, and she said, "Opposite." - -It was the front room looking on to the street. A lamp was burning on -the round table in the centre of the room, and I saw by the light of it -the poverty of the furniture and its untidiness. At one end of the room -was a big iron bedstead with curtains of torn lace, and on the wooden -chairs hung some soiled petticoats and blouses. There was a small -cooking-stove in a corner, but no charcoal burned in it, and I remember -an ebony-framed mirror over the mantelpiece. I remember that mirror -vividly. I remember, for instance, that a bit of the ebony had broken -off, showing the white plaster underneath, and a crack in the right-hand -corner of the looking-glass. - -Probably my eyes were attracted to it because of a number of photographs -stuck into the framework. They were photographs of a girl in a variety -of stage costumes; and glancing at the girl, whom the doctor had put -into a low arm-chair, I saw that they were of her. But with all the -tragic difference between happiness and misery; worse than that--between -unscathed girlhood and haggard womanhood. This girl with red hair and -a white waxen face was pretty still. There was something more than -prettiness in the broadness of her brow and the long tawny lashes that -were now veiling her closed eyes as she sat with her head back against -the chair, showing a long white throat. But her face was lined with an -imprint of pain, and her mouth, rather long and bow-like, was drawn with -a look of misery. - -The doctor spoke to me--in English, of course. - -"Half-starved, I should say. Or starved." - -He sniffed at the stove and the room generally. - -"No sign of recent cooking." - -He opened a cupboard and looked in. - -"Nothing in the pantry, sonny. I guess the girl would do with a meal." - -I did not answer him. I was staring at the photographs stuck into -the mirror, and saw one that was not a girl's portrait. It was the -photograph of a young French lieutenant. I crossed the room and looked -at it closer, and then spoke to the little doctor in a curiously -unexcited voice, as one does in moments of living drama. - -"This girl is Pierre Nesle's sister." - -"For the love of Mike!" said the little doctor, for the second time that -night. - -The girl heard the name of Pierre Nesle and opened her eyes wide, with a -wondering look. - -"Pierre Nesle? That is my brother. Do you know him?" - -I told her that I knew him well and had seen him in Lille, where he was -looking for her, two days ago. He was now in the direction of Courtrai. - -The girl was painfully agitated and uttered pitiful words. - -"Oh, my little brother!" she murmured. "My dear little comrade!" She -rose from her chair, steadying herself with one hand on the back of it, -and with feverish anxiety said that she must go at once. She must leave -Lille. - -"Why?" I asked. "Why do you want to leave Lille?" - -"I am afraid!" she answered again, and burst into tears. - -I turned to the doctor and translated her words. - -"I can't understand this fear of hers--this desire to leave Lille." - -Dr. Small had taken something off the mantelpiece--a glass tube with -some tablets--which he put in his pocket. - -"Hysteria," he said. "Starvation, war-strain, and--drugs. There's a -jolly combination for a young lady's nerves! She's afraid of herself, -old ghosts, the horrors. Wants to run away from it all, forgetting that -she carries her poor body and brain with her. I know the symptoms--even -in little old New York in time of peace." - -He had his professional manner. I saw the doctor through his soldier's -uniform. He spoke with the authority of the medical man in a patient's -bedroom. He ordered me to go round to my mess and bring back some -food, while he boiled up a kettle and got busy. When I returned, after -half-an-hour, the girl was more cheerful. Some of the horrors had passed -from her in the doctor's company. She ate some of the food I had brought -in a famished way, but after a few mouthfuls sickened at it and would -eat no more. But a faint colour had come into her cheeks and gave -her face a touch of real beauty. She must have been extraordinarily -attractive before the war--as those photographs showed. She spoke of -Pierre with adoration. He had been all that was good to her before she -left home (she hated her mother!) to sing in cabarets and caf concerts. - -"I cannot imagine Pierre as a lieutenant!" she remarked, with a queer -little laugh. - -Dr. Small said he would get some women in the house to look after her in -the night, but she seemed hostile to that idea. - -"The people here are unkind. They are bad women here. If I died they -would not care." - -She promised to stay in the house until we could arrange for Pierre to -meet her and take her away to Paris. But I felt the greatest pity for -the girl when we left her alone in her miserable room. The scared look -had come back to her face. I could see that she was in terror of being -alone again. - -When we walked back to our billets the doctor spoke of the extraordinary -chance of meeting the girl like that--the sister of our _liaison_ -officer. The odds were a million to one against such a thing. - -"I always feel there's a direction in these cases," said Daddy Small. -"Some Hand that guides. Maybe you and I were being led to-night. I'd -like to save that girl, Marthe." - -"Is that her name?" - -"Marthe de Mricourt, she calls herself, as a singing-girl. I guess -that's why Pierre could not hear of her in this town." - -Later on the doctor spoke again. - -"That girl is as much a war victim as if she had been shell-shocked -on the field of battle. The casualty lists don't say anything about -civilians, not a darned thing about broken hearts, stricken women, -diseased babies, infant mortality--all the hell of suffering behind the -lines. May God curse all war devils!" - -He put his hand on my shoulder and said in a very solemn way: "After -this thing is finished--this grisly business--you and I, and all men of -goodwill, must put our heads together to prevent it happening again. I -dedicate whatever life I have to that." - -He seemed to have a vision of hope. - -"There are lots of good fellows in the world. Wickham Brand is one -of 'em. Charles Fortune is another. One finds them everywhere on your -side and mine. Surely we can get together when peace comes and make a -better System somehow!" - -"Not easy, doctor." - -He laughed at me. - -"I hate your pessimism!... We must get a message to Pierre Nesle.... -Good-night, sonny!" - -On the way back to my billet I passed young Clatworthy. - -He was too engrossed to see me, having his arm round a girl who was -standing with him under an unlighted lamp-post. She was looking up into -his face on which the moonlight shone--a pretty creature, I thought. - -"_Je t'adore!_" she murmured, as I passed quite close; and Clatworthy -kissed her. - -I knew the boy's mother and sisters, and wondered what they would think -of him if they saw him now with this little street-walker. To them -Cyril was a white knight _sans peur et sans reproche_. The war had not -improved him. He was no longer the healthy lad who had been captain -of his school, with all his ambition in sport, as I had known him five -years before. Sometimes, in spite of his swagger and gallantry, I saw -something sinister in his face, the look of a soiled soul. Poor kid! He, -too, would have his excuse for all things: - -"_C'est la guerre!_" - - - - -XII - - -It was five o'clock on the following evening that I saw the girl Marthe -again. The doctor and I had arranged to go round to her lodging after -dinner, by which time we hoped to have a letter for her from Pierre, by -despatch-rider. But Brand was with me in the afternoon, having looked -into my billet with an English conversation-book for Hlne, who was -anxious to study our way of speech. Madame Chri insisted upon giving -him a glass of wine, and we stood talking in her drawing-room a while -about the certain hope of victory, and then trivial things. Hlne was -delighted with her book and Brand had a merry five minutes with her, -teaching her to pronounce the words. - -"_C'est effroyable!_" cried Hlne. "'Through'... 'Tough' 'Cough '... -_Mon Dieu, comme c'est difficile!_ There is no rule in your tongue." - -Madame Chri spoke of Edouard, her eldest boy, who had disappeared into -the great silence, and gave me a photograph of him, in case I should -meet him in our advance towards the Rhine. She kissed the photograph -before giving it to me, and said a few words which revealed her strong -character, her passionate patriotism. - -"If he had been four years older he would have been a soldier of France. -I should have been happy if he could have fought for his country, and -died for it, like my husband." - -Brand and I left the house and went up towards the Grande Place. I was -telling him about Pierre Nesle's sister and our strange meeting with her -the night before. - -"I'm precious glad," said Brand, "that no sister of mine was behind -German lines. God knows how much they had to endure. Imagine their -risks! It was a lucky escape for that girl Hlne. Supposing she had -failed to barricade her door?" - -When we came into the Grande Place we saw that something was happening. -It was almost dark after a shadowy twilight, but we could see a crowd of -people surging round some central point of interest. Many of them were -laughing loudly. There was some joke in progress. The women's tongues -sounded most loud and shrill. - -"They're getting back to gaiety," said Brand. "What's the jest, I -wonder?" - -A gust of laughter came across the square. Above it was another sound, -not so pleasant. It was a woman's shrieks--shriek after shriek, most -blood-curdling, and then becoming faint. - -"What the devil----!" said Brand. - -We were on the edge of the crowd and I spoke to a man there. - -"What's happening?" - -He laughed in a grim way. - -"It's the _coiffure_ of a lady.. They are cutting her hair." - -I was mystified. - -"Cutting her hair?" - -A woman spoke to me, by way of explanation, laughing like the man. - -"Shaving her head, monsieur. She was one of those who were too -complaisant with German officers. You understand? There were many of -them. They ought to have their heads cut off as well as their hair." - -Another man spoke gruffly. - -"There would be a good many headless corpses if that were so. To their -shame be it said. It was abominable. No pride. No decency." - -"But the worst will escape," said another. "In private houses. The -well-dressed demoiselles!" - -"_Tuez-les!_" cried a woman. "_Tuez-les!_" - -It was a cry for killing, such as women had screamed when pretty -aristocrats were caught by the mobs of the French Revolution. - -"My God!" said Brand. - -He shouldered his way through the crowd, and I followed him. The people -made a gap for us, seeing our uniforms, and desired us to enjoy the -joke. What I saw when I came closer was a group of young men holding a -limp figure. One of them was brandishing a large pair of scissors, as -large as shears. Another held up a tangled mass of red hair. - -"_Regardez!_" he shouted to the crowd, and they cheered and laughed. - -I had seen the hair before, as I knew when I saw a girl's face, -dead-white, lifeless, as it seemed, and limp against a man's shoulder. - -"It is Marthe!" I said to Brand. "Pierre Nesle's sister." - -A curious sense of faintness overcame me, and I felt sick. - -Brand did not answer me, but I saw his face pale under its tan. He -pushed forward through the crowd and I lost sight of him for a few -moments. After that I saw him carrying the girl; above the heads of the -people, I saw her head flopping from side to side horribly, a head with -close-cropped hair. They had torn her clothes off her shoulders, which -were bleeding. - -"Help me," said Brand. - -I am not quite clear what happened. I have only a vague remembrance of -the crowd making way for us, with murmurs of surprise and some hostile -cries of women. I remember helping Brand to carry the girl--enormously -heavy she seemed with her dead weight--but how we managed to get her -into Dr. Small's car is to this day a blank in my mind. We must have -seen and hailed him at the corner of the Grande Place as he was going -back to his billet. I have a distinct recollection of taking off my -Burberry and laying it over the girl, who was huddled in the back of -the car, and of Brand saying, "Where can we take her?" I also remember -trying to light a cigarette and using many matches which went out in the -wind. It was Brand's idea that we should go to Madame Chri's house for -sanctuary, and by the time we had driven to that place we had left the -crowd behind and were not followed. - -"You go in and explain things," said Brand. "Ask Madame to give the girl -a refuge." - -I think Madame Chri was startled by the sight of the car, and perhaps -by some queer look I had. I told her what had happened. This girl was -the sister of Pierre Nesle, whom Madame Chri had met. The crowd, for -some reason, had cut off her hair. Would Madame save the poor child, who -was unconscious? - -I shall never forget the face or speech of that lady, whom I had found -so kind. She drew herself up very stiffly and a relentless expression -hardened her face. - -"If you were not English I should say you desired to insult me, sir. -The people have cut off the creature's hair. 'For some reason,' you say. -There is only one reason. Because she was faithless to her country and -to her sex, and was familiar with men who were the enemies of France, -the murderers of our men, robbers and assassins. She has been well -punished. I would rather burn down my house than give her shelter. If -they gave her to the dogs to tear in pieces I would not lift my little -finger to save her." - -Hlne came in, and was surprised at the emotion of her mother's voice. - -"What is it, little _maman?_" - -Madame Chri regained control of herself, which for a moment she had -lost in a passion that shook her. - -"It is a little matter. This officer and I have been talking about vile -people who sold themselves to our enemy. He understands perfectly." - -"I understand," I said gravely. "There is a great deal of cruelty in the -world, madame, and less charity than I had hoped." - -"There is, praise be to God, a little justice," said Madame Chri very -calmly. - -"_Au revoir, madame!_" - -"_Au revoir, monsieur!_" - -"_Au revoir, mademoiselle!_" - -I was shocked then at the callousness of the lady. It seemed to me -incredible. Now I am no longer shocked, but understand the horror that -was hers, the loathing for a daughter of France who had--if the mob -were not mistaken--violated the code of honour which enabled the French -people to resist German brutality, even German kindness, which they -hated worse, with a most proud disdain. That girl outside, bleeding and -senseless in the car, had been friendly with German officers, notorious -in her company with them. Otherwise she would not have been seized by -the crowd and branded for shame. There was a fierce protective instinct -which hardened Madame Chri against charity. Only those who have -seen what war means to women close to it, in enemy hands, may truly -understand, and, understanding, curse war again for all its destruction -of souls and bodies. - - - - -XIII - - -Brand and Dr. Small were both astonished and indignant. - -"Do you mean to say she shuts her door against this poor bleeding girl?" -said Brand. - -The American doctor did not waste words. He only used words when there -was no action on hand. - -"The next place?" he said. "A hospital?" - -I had the idea of the convent where Eileen O'Connor lodged. There was -a sanctuary. Those nuns were vowed to Christian charity. They would -understand and have pity. - -"Yes," said Brand, and he called to the driver. - -We drove hard to the convent, and Brand was out of the car before it -stopped, and rang the bell with such a tug that we heard it jangling -loudly in the courtyard. - -It seemed long before the little wicket opened and a woman's voice said, -"_Qui est la?_" - -Brand gave his name and said, "Open quickly, _ma sour_. We have a woman -here who is ill." - -The gate was opened, and Brand and I lifted out the girl, who was still -unconscious, but moaning slightly, and carried her into the courtyard, -and thence inside the convent to the whitewashed passage where I had -listened so long to the Reverend Mother telling me of the trial scene. - -It was the Reverend Mother who came now, with two of her nuns, while the -little portress stood by, clasping her hands. - -"An accident?" said the Reverend Mother. "How was the poor child hurt?" - -She bent over the girl, Marthe--Pierre Nesle's sister, as I remembered -with an added pity--pulled my Burberry from her face and shoulders and -glanced at the bedraggled figure there. - -"Her hair has been cut off," said the old nun. "That is strange! There -are the marks of finger-nails on her shoulder. What violence was it, -then?" - -Brand described the rescue of the girl from the mob, who would have -torn her to pieces, and as he spoke I saw a terrible look come into the -Reverend Mother's face. - -"I remember--1870," she said harshly. "They cut the hair of women who -had disgraced themselves--and France--by their behaviour with German -soldiers. We thought then that it was a light punishment... we think so -now, monsieur!" - -One of the nuns, a young woman who had been touching the girl's head, -smoothing back her tousled, close-cropped hair, sprang up as though she -had touched an evil thing and shrank back. - -Another nun spoke to the Reverend Mother. - -"This house would be defiled if we took in a creature like that. God -forbid, Reverend Mother----" - -The old Superior turned to Brand, and I saw how her breast was heaving -with emotion. - -"It would have been better, sir, if you had left this wretched woman to -the people. The voice of the people is sometimes the voice of God. If -they knew her guilt their punishment was just. Reflect what it means to -us--to all our womanhood. Husbands, fathers, brothers were being killed -by these Germans. Our dear France was bleeding to death. Was there any -greater crime than that a Frenchwoman should show any weakness, any -favour, to one of those men who were helping to cause the agony of -France, the martyrdom of our youth?" - -Brand stammered out a few words. I remember only two: "Christian -charity!" - -The American doctor and I stood by silently. Dr. Small was listening -with the deepest attention, as though some new truth about human nature -were being revealed to him. - -It was then that a new voice was raised in that whitewashed corridor. -It was Eileen O'Connor's Irish contralto, and it vibrated with -extraordinary passion as she spoke in French. - -"Reverend Mother!... I am dismayed by the words you have spoken. I do -not believe, though my ears have heard them. No, they are unbelievable! -I have seen your holiness, your charity, every day for four years, -nursing German prisoners, and English, with equal tenderness, with a -great pity. Not shrinking from any horror or the daily sight of -death, but offering it all as a sacrifice to God. And now, after our -liberation, when we ought to be uplifted by the Divine favour that has -come to us, you would turn away that poor child who lies bleeding at our -feet, another victim of war's cruelty. Was it not war that struck her -down? This war which has been declared against souls as well as bodies! -This war on women, as well as on fighting-men who had less need of -courage than some of us! What did our Lord say to a woman who was taken -by the mob? 'He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first -stone!' It was Mary Magdalen who kissed His feet, and wiped them with -her hair. This girl has lost her hair, but perhaps Christ has taken it -as a precious napkin for His wounds. We who have been lucky in escape -from evil--shall we cast her out of the house which has a cross above -its roof? I have been lucky above most women in Lille. If all things -were known, I might be lying there in that girl's place, bleeding and -senseless, without this hair of mine. Reverend Mother--_remember Franz -von Kreuzenach!_" - -We--Dr. Small, Brand, and I--were dumbfounded by Eileen O'Connor's -passionate outcry. She was utterly unconscious of us and looked only at -the Reverend Mother, with a light in her eyes that was more intensely -spiritual than I had seen before in any woman's face. - -The old nun seemed stricken by Eileen's words. Into her rugged old face, -all wrinkled about the eyes, crept an expression of remorse and shame. -Once she raised her hands, slowly, as though beseeching the girl to -spare her. Then her hands came down again and clasped each other at her -breast, and her head bowed so that her chin was dug into her white bib. -Tears came into her eyes and fell unheeded down her withered cheeks. -I can see now the picture of us all standing there in the whitewashed -corridor of the convent, in the dim light of a hanging lantern--we three -officers standing together, the huddled figure of Marthe Nesle lying -at our feet, half covered with my trench-coat, but with her face lying -sideways, white as death under her cropped red hair, and her bare -shoulders stained with a streak of blood; opposite, the old Mother, with -bowed head and clasped hands; the two young nuns, rigid, motionless, -silent; and Eileen O'Connor, with that queer light on her face and her -hands stretched out with a gesture of passionate appeal. - -The Reverend Mother raised her head and spoke--after what seemed like a -long silence, but was only a second or two, I suppose. - -"My child, I am an old woman, and have said many prayers. But you have -taught me the lesson, which I thought I knew, that the devil does not -depart from us until our souls have found eternal peace. I am a wicked -old woman, and until you opened my eyes I was forgetful of charity and -of our Lord's most sweet commands." - -She turned to us now with an air of wonderful dignity and graciousness. - -"Gentlemen, I pray you to carry this wounded girl to my own cell. -To-night I will sleep on bare boards." - -One of the young nuns was weeping bitterly. - -So we lifted up Marthe Nesle, and, following the Reverend Mother, -carried her to a little white room and laid her on an iron bedstead -under a picture of the Madonna below which burned an oil lamp on a -wooden table. The American doctor asked Eileen O'Connor to bring him -some hot water. - -Brand and I went back in the car, and I dined at his mess again. - - - - -XIV - - -Colonel Lavington was discussing the art of the sonnet and the -influence of Italian culture in Elizabethan England. From that subject -he travelled to the psychology of courage, which in his opinion, for the -moment, was founded on vanity. - -"Courage," he said, with that gallant look of his which I had seen with -admiration when he walked up the old duckboards beyond Ypres, with -a whimsical smile at "crumps" bursting abominably near--he had done -bravely in the old days as a battalion commander. "Courage is merely a -pose before the mirror of one's own soul and one's neighbours. We are -all horribly afraid in moments of danger, but some of us have the -gift of pretending that we don't mind. That is vanity. We like to look -heroes, even to ourselves. It is good to die with a _beau geste_, though -death is damnably unpleasant." - -"I agree, colonel," said Charles Fortune. "Always the right face for the -proper occasion. But it wants a lot of practice." - -He put on his gallant, devil-may-care face, and there was appreciative -laughter from his fellow officers. - -Harding, the young landowner, was of opinion that courage depended -entirely on the liver. - -"It is a matter of physical health," he said. "If I am out-of-sorts, -my _moral_ goes down to zero. Not that I'm ever really brave. Anyhow, I -hate things that go off. Those loud noises of bursting shells are very -objectionable. I shall protest against Christmas crackers after the -war." - -Young Clatworthy was in the sulks, and sat very silent during all this -badinage. - -"What's the matter?" I asked, and he confided to me his conviction, -while he passed the salt, that "life was a rummy game." - -"Hipped?" I said, and his answer was, "Fed up to the back teeth!" - -That seemed to me curious, after the glimpse I had had of him with a -little lady of Lille. The boy explained himself somewhat under cover of -the colonel's conversation, which was holding the interest of the mess. - -"We're living unnaturally," he said. "It's all an abnormal show, and we -pretend to be natural and normal when everything that happens round us -is fantastic and disorderly." - -"What's your idea?" I enquired. It was the first time I had heard the -boy talk seriously, or with any touch of gravity. - -"Hard to explain," he said. "But, take my case to-day. This morning I -went up the line to interrogate the latest batch of P.O.W.'s." (He meant -prisoners of war.) "A five-point-nine burst within ten yards of my car, -the other side of Courtrai, killed my driver and missed me by a couple -of inches. I felt as sick as a dog when I saw Saunders crumpled over his -steering-wheel with blood pouring down his neck. Not that it's the first -time I've seen blood!" - -He laughed as he gave a glance at his wound-stripe, and I remembered -the way in which he had gained his M.C. at Gommecourt--one of three left -alive in his company. - -"We had been talking, three minutes before, about his next leave. He had -been married in '16, after the Somme, and hadn't seen his wife since. -Said her letters made him 'uneasy.' Thought she was drinking because of -the loneliness. Well, there he was--finished--and a nasty sight. I went -off to the P.O.W. cage and examined the beggars--one of them, as -usual, had been a waiter at the 'Cecil,' and said, 'How's dear old -London?'--and passed the time of day with Bob Mellett--you know, the -one-armed lad. He laughed no end when he heard of my narrow squeak. So -did I--though it's hard to see the joke. He lent me his car on the way -back, and somewhere outside Courtrai we bumped over a dead body with a -queer soft squelch. It was a German--a young 'un--and Bob Mellett said, -'_He_ won't be home for Christmas!' Do you know Bob?--he used to cry at -school when a rat was caught. Queer, isn't it? Now here I am, sitting at -a white table-cloth, listening to the colonel's talk, and pretending -to be interested. I'm not a bit, really. I'm wondering why that bit of -shell hit Saunders and not me. Or why I'm not lying in a muddy road as a -bit of soft squelch for staff cars to bump over. And on top of that I'm -wondering how it will feel to hang up a bowler hat again in a house -at Wimbledon, and say, 'Cheerio, mother!' to the mater (who will be -knitting in the same armchair--chintz-covered--by the piano) and read -the evening paper until dinner's ready, take Ethel to a local dance, and -get back into the old rut of home life in a nice family, don't you know? -With all my memories! With the ghosts of _this_ life crowding up! Ugly -ghosts, some of 'em! Dirty ghosts!... It's inconceivable that we can -ever go back to the funny old humdrum! I'm not sure that I want to." - -"You're hipped," I told him. "You'll be glad to get back all right. -Wimbledon will be Paradise after what you've been through." - -"Oh, Lord, _I've_ done nothing," said the boy. "Fact is, I've been -talking tripe. Forget it." - -But I did not forget, and remembered every word later, when I heard his -laughter on Armistice night. - -A despatch-rider stood outside the door in his muddy overalls and Brand -went to get his message. It was from Pierre Nesle. - -"I am mad with joy that you have found Marthe! Alas! I cannot get back -for a week. Tell her that I am still her devoted comrade and loving -brother.--Pierre." Brand handed me the slip and said, "Poor devil!" I -went back to my billet in Madame Chri's house, and she made no allusion -to our conversation in the afternoon, but was anxious, I thought, to -assure me of her friendship by special little courtesies, as when she -lighted my candle and carried it upstairs before saying good-night. -Hlne was learning English fast and furiously, and with her arm round -her mother's waist said, "Sleep well, sir, and very good dreams to you!" -which I imagine was a sentence out of her text-book. - - - - -XV - - -They were great days--in the last two weeks before the Armistice! For -me, and for many men, they were days of exultation, wild adventure, -pity, immense hope, tremendous scenes uplifted by a sense of victory; -though for others, the soldiers who did the dirty work, brought up lorry -columns through the mud of the old battlefields far behind our new front -line, carried on still with the hard old drudgery of war, they were days -not marked out by any special jubilation, or variety, or hope, but -just like all the others that had gone before since first they came to -France. - -I remember little scenes and pictures of those last two weeks as they -pass through my mind like a him drama; episodes of tragedy or triumph -which startled my imagination, a pageantry of men who had victory -in their eyes, single figures who spoke to me, told me unforgettable -things, and the last dead bodies who fell at the very gate of peace. - -One of the last dead bodies I saw in the war was in the city of -Valenciennes, which we entered on the morning of November 3rd. Our guns -had spared the city which was full of people, but the railway station -was an elaborate ruin of twisted iron and broken glass. Rails were torn -up and sleepers burnt. Our airmen, flying low day after day during the -German retreat, had flung down bombs, which had torn the fronts off the -booking-offices and made match-wood of the signal-boxes and sheds. For -German soldiers detraining here it had been a hellish place, and the -fire of our flying-men had been deadly accurate. I walked through the -ruin out into the station square. It was empty of all life, but one -human figure was there all alone. It was the dead body of a young German -soldier, lying with outstretched arms, on his back, in a pool of blood. -His figure formed a cross there on the cobblestones, and seemed to me -a symbol of all that youth which had been sacrificed by powers of -monstrous evil. His face was still handsome in death, the square, -rough-hewn face of a young peasant. - -There was the tap-tap-tap of a German machine-gun somewhere on the -right of the square. As I walked forward all my senses were alert to the -menace of death. It would be foolish, I thought, to be killed at the end -of the war--for surely the end was very near? And then I had a sudden -sharp thought that perhaps it would be well if this happened. Why should -I live when so many had died? The awful job was done, and my small part -in it. I had seen it through from start to finish, for it was finished -but for a few days of waiting. It might be better to end with it, for -all that came afterwards would be anticlimax. I remember raising my -head and looking squarely round at that staccato hammering of the German -machine-gun, with an intense desire that a bullet might come my way. But -I went on untouched into the town.... As in Courtrai, a fury of gun-fire -overhead kept the people in their houses. Our field batteries were -firing over the city and the enemy was answering. Here and there I saw -a face peering out of a broken window, and then a door opened, and a man -and woman appeared behind it with two thin children. The woman thrust -out a skinny hand and grasped mine, and began to weep. She talked -passionately, with a strange mingling of rage and grief. - -"Oh, my God!" she said, "those devils have gone at last! What have they -not made us suffer! My husband and I had four little houses--we were -innkeepers--and last night they sent us to this part of the town and -burnt all of them." She used a queer word in French. "Last night," she -said, "they made a devil's _charivari_ and set many houses on fire." - -Her husband spoke to me over his wife's shoulder. - -"Sir, they have stolen everything, broken everything, ground us down for -four years. They are bandits and robbers." - -"We are hungry," said the thin girl. - -By her side the boy, with a white pinched face, echoed her plaint. - -"We have eaten our bread and I am hungry." - -They had some coffee left, and asked me to go inside and drink it with -them, but I could not wait. - -The woman held my wrist tight in her skinny hands. - -"You will come back?" she asked. - -"I will try," I said. - -Then she wept again and said: "We are grateful to the English soldiers. -It is they who saved us." - -That is one out of a hundred little scenes that I remember in those last -two weeks when, not without hard fighting, for the German machine-gun -rearguards fought bravely to the end, our troops entered many towns and -villages, and liberated many thousands of poor people. I remember the -girls of a little town called Bohain who put on their best frocks and -clean pinafores to welcome us. It was not until a little while that we -found they were starving and had not even a crust of bread in all -the town. Then the enemy started shelling, and some of the girls were -killed, and many were suffocated by gas shells. That was worse in St. -Amand, by Valenciennes, where all the women and children took refuge in -the cellars. The German batteries opened fire with yellow cross shell as -our guns passed through. Some of our men, and many of their horses, lay -dead in the streets as I passed through; but worse things happened in -the cellars below the houses. The heavy gas of the yellow cross shells -filtered down to where the women and their babies cowered on their -mattresses. They began to choke and gasp, and babies died in the arms of -dying mothers.... Dr. Small, our American, went with a body of English -doctors and nurses to the rescue of St. Amand. "I've seen bad things," -he told me. "I am not weak in the stomach--but I saw things in those -cellars which nearly made me vomit." - -He put a hand on my shoulder and blinked at me through his glasses. - -"It's no good cursing the Germans. As soon as your troops entered the -village they had a right to shell. That's war. We should do the same. -War's war. I've been cursing the Germans in elaborate and eccentric -language. It did me good. I feel all the better for it. But all the same -I was wrong. It's war we ought to curse. War which makes these things -possible among civilised peoples. It's just devilry. Civilised people -must give up the habit. They must get cured of it. You have heard of -typhoid-carriers? They are people infected with the typhoid microbe who -spread the disease. When peace comes we must hunt down the war-carriers, -isolate them, and, if necessary, kill them." - -He waved his hand to me and went off in an ambulance filled with -suffocated women. - -I met Brand in Valenciennes five days after our liberation of the city, -when our troops were making their formal entry with band and banners. -He came up to me and said, "Have you heard the news?" I saw by his face -that it was good news, and I felt my heart give a lurch when I answered -him. - -"Tell me the best." - -"Germany is sending plenipotentiaries, under a white flag, to Foch. They -know it is unconditional surrender.... And the Kaiser has abdicated." - -I drew a deep breath. Something seemed to lift from my soul. The sky -seemed to become brighter, as though a shadow had passed from the face -of the sun. - -"Then it's the end?... The last battle has been fought!" - -Brand was staring at a column of troops--all young fellows of the 4th -Division. His eyes were glistening, with moisture in them. - -"Reprieved!" he said. "The last of our youth is saved!" - -He turned to me suddenly, and spoke in the deepest melancholy. - -"You and I ought to be dead. So many kids were killed. We've no right to -be alive." - -"Perhaps there is other work to do," I answered him, weakly, because I -had the same thought. - -He did not seem sure of that. - -"I wonder!... If we could help to save the next generation." - -In the Place d'Armes of Valenciennes there was a great crowd, and many -of our generals and staff officers on the steps and below the steps of -the Htel de Ville. Brand and I caught a glimpse of Colonel Lavington, -looking very gallant and debonair, as usual. Beside him was Charles -Fortune, with his air of a staff officer dreadfully overworked in the -arrangement of victory, modest in spite of his great achievements, -deprecating any public homage that might be paid him. This careful mask -of his was slightly disarranged for a moment when he winked at me under -the very nose of the great general whom he had set to music--"Blear-eyed -Bill, the Butcher of the Boche," who stood magnificent with his great -chest emblazoned with ribbons. The Prince of Wales was there, shifting -from one leg to another, chatting gaily with a group of staff officers. -A bevy of French girls advanced with enormous bouquets and presented -them to the Prince and his fellow officers. The Prince laughed and -blushed like a schoolboy, sniffed at the flowers, did not know what -to do with them. The other officers held the bouquets with equal -embarrassment, with that strange English shyness which not even war -could cure. - -Some officers close to me were talking of the German plea for armistice. - -"It's abject surrender!" said one of them. - -"The end!" said another, very solemnly. "Thank God!" - -"The end of a dirty business!" said a young machine-gun officer. I -noticed that he had three wound-stripes. - -One of them, holding a big bouquet, began to dance, pointing his toes, -cutting abbreviated capers in a small space among his comrades. - -"Not too quick for me, old dears! Back to peace again!... Back to life! -Hooray!" - -The colours of many flags fluttered upon the gables of the Place -d'Armes, and the balconies were draped with the Tricolour, the Union -Jack, and the Stars and Stripes. Old citizens wore tall hats saved up -for this day, and girls had taken their lace from hiding-places where -the Germans had not found it, and wore it round their necks and wrists -for the honour of this day. Old women in black bonnets sat in the centre -of window-places and clapped their hands--their wrinkled, hard-working -old hands--to every British soldier who passed, and thousands were -passing. Nobody heard a word of the speeches spoken from the Town Hall -steps, the tribute of the councillors of Valenciennes to the glory of -the troops who had rescued their people from servitude under a ruthless -enemy, nor the answer of Sir Henry Home, the Army Commander, expressing -the pride of his soldiers in the rescue of that fair old city, and their -admiration for the courage of its people. Every word was overwhelmed by -cheering. Then the pipers of a Highland Division, whose fighting I had -recorded through their years of heroic endurance, played a march tune, -and the music of those pipes was loud in the square of Valenciennes and -in the hearts of its people. The troops marched past, and thousands of -bayonets shone above their steel helmets.... - - - - -XVI - - -I was in Mons on the day of Armistice, and on the roads outside when -I heard the news that the Germans had surrendered to all our terms, -and that the "Cease fire" would sound at eleven o'clock. It was a misty -morning, with sunlight glinting through the mist and sparkling in -the coppery leaves of autumn trees. There was no heavy bombardment in -progress round Mons--only now and then the sullen bark of a gun. The -roads were crowded with the usual transport of war--endless columns of -motor-lorries and horse-wagons, and mule-teams, crawling slowly forward, -and infantry battalions trudging alongside with their heavy packs. I -stared into the faces of the marching men, expecting to see joy in their -eyes, wondering why they were not singing--because to-day the guns would -be silent and the fighting finished. Their packs weighed heavy. The mud -from passing lorries splashed them with great gobs of filth. Under their -steel hats the sweat ran down. They looked dead-beat, and marched in -a grim fine of tired men. But I noticed that the transport wagons were -decorated with small flags, and these bits of fluttering colour were -stuck into the harness of gun horses and mules. From the other way came -another tide of traffic--crowds of civilians, who were middle-aged men -and boys, and here and there women pushing hand-carts, and straining -forward with an eager, homing look. The men and boys were carrying -bundles, too heavy for many of them, so that they were bent under their -burdens. But each one had added the last straw but one to his weight by -fastening a flag to his bundle or his cap. I spoke to some of them, and -they told me that they were the civilians from Lille, Valenciennes, and -other towns, who had been taken away by the Germans for forced labour -behind the lines. Two days ago the Germans had said, "We've no more use -for you. Get back to your own people. The war is over." - -They looked worn and haggard, like men who had been shipwrecked. Some of -the boys were weak and sat down on the roadside with their bundles and -could go no farther. Others trudged on gamely, with crooks which -they had cut from the hedges, and only stopped to cry, "_Vivent les -Anglais!_" as our soldiers passed. I looked into many of their faces, -remembering the photograph of Edouard Chri which had been given to -me by his mother. Perhaps he was Somewhere in those troops of homing -exiles. But he might have been any one of those lanky boys in ragged -jackets and broken boots, and cloth caps pulled down over the ears. - -Just outside Mons, at one minute to eleven o'clock, there was a little -desultory firing. Then a bugle blew, somewhere in a distant field, one -long note. It was the "Cease fire"! A cheer coming faintly over the -fields followed the bugle-call. Then there was no other sound where I -stood but the scrunching of wheels of gun limbers and transport wagons, -the squelch of mud in which horses and mules trudged, and the hard -breathing of tired men marching by under their packs. So, with a curious -lack of drama, the Great Adventure ended! That bugle had blown the -"Cease fire" of a strife which had filled the world with agony and -massacre; destroyed millions of men; broken millions of lives; ruined -many great cities and thousands of hamlets, and left a long wide belt of -country across Europe where no tree remained alive and all the earth was -ravaged; crowded the world with maimed men, blind men, mad men, diseased -men; flung Empires into anarchy, where hunger killed the children and -women had no milk to feed their babies; and bequeathed to all fighting -nations a heritage of debt beneath which many would stagger and fall. -It was the "Cease fire" of all that reign of death, but sounded very -faintly across the fields of France. - -In Mons Canadian soldiers were being kissed by French girls. Women were -giving them wine in the doorways, and these hard-bitten fellows, tough -as leather, reckless of all risk, plastered with mud which had worn into -their skins and souls, drank the wine and kissed the women, and lurched -laughing down the streets. There would be no strict discipline in Mons -that night. They had had enough of discipline in the dirty days. Let it -go on the night of Armistice! Already at mid-day some of these soldiers -were unable to walk except with an arm round a comrade's neck, or round -the neck of strong peasant girls who screeched with laughter when they -side-slipped or staggered. They had been through hell, those men. They -had lain in ditches, under frightful fire, among dead men and bleeding -men. Who would grudge them their bit of fun on Armistice night? Who -would expect saintship of men who had been taught in the school of war, -taught to kill quick lest they be killed, to see the worst horrors of -the battlefield without going weak, to educate themselves out of the -refinements of peaceful life where Christian virtues are easy and not -meant for war? - - -"Come here, lassie. None of your French tricks for me. I'm -Canadian-born. It's a kiss or a clout from me." - -The man grabbed the girl by the arm and drew her into a barn. - -On the night of Armistice in Mons, where, at the beginning of the war, -the Old Contemptibles had first withstood the shock of German arms (I -saw their ghosts there in the market place), there would be the devil -to pay--the devil of war, who plays on the passions of men, and sets his -trap for women's souls. But I went away from Mons before nightfall, and -travelled back to Lille, in the little old car which had gone to many -strange places with me. - -How quiet it was in the open countryside when darkness fell! The guns -were quiet at last, after four years and more of labour. There were -no fires in the sky, no ruddy glow of death. I listened to the silence -which followed the going down of the sun, and heard the rustling of the -russet leaves and the little sounds of night in peace, and it seemed as -though God gave a benediction to the wounded soul of the world. 'Other -sounds rose from the towns and fields in the deepening shadow-world of -the day of Armistice. They were sounds of human joy. Men were singing -somewhere on the roads, and their voices rang out gladly. Bugles were -playing. In villages from which the enemy had gone out that morning -round about Mons crowds of figures surged in the narrow streets, and -English laughter rose above the chatter of women and children. - - - - -XVII - - -When I came into Lille rockets were rising above the city. English -soldiers were firing off Verey lights. Above the houses of the city in -darkness rose also gusts of cheering. It is strange that when I heard -them I felt like weeping. They sounded rather ghostly, like the voices -of all the dead who had fallen before this night of Armistice. - -I went to my billet at Madame Chri's house, from which I had been -absent some days. I had the key of the front door now and let myself -into the hall. The diningroom door was open, and I heard the voices -of the little French family, laughing, crying, hysterical. Surely -hysterical! - -"_O mon Dieu! O mon petit Toto! Comme tu es grandi! Comme tu es -maigre!_" - -I stood outside the door, understanding the thing that had happened. - -In the centre of the room stood a tall, gaunt boy in ragged clothes, in -the embrace of Madame Chri, and with one hand clutched by Hlne and -the other by the little Madeleine, her sister. It was Edouard who had -come back. - -He had unloosed a pack from his shoulder, and it lay on the carpet -beside him, with a little flag on a broken stick. He was haggard, with -high cheek-bones prominent through his white, tightly-drawn skin, and -his eyes were sunk in deep sockets. His hair was in a wild mop of black, -disordered locks. He stood there, with tears streaming from his eyes, -and the only words he said were: - -"_Maman! O maman! maman!_" - -I went quietly upstairs and changed my clothes, which were all -muddy. Presently there was a tap at my door and Hlne stood there, -transfigured with joy. She spoke in French. - -"Edouard has come back--my brother! He travelled on an English lorry." - -"Thank God for that," I said. "What gladness for you all!" - -"He has grown tall," said Hlne. She mopped her eyes and laughed and -cried at the same time. "Tall as a giant, but oh! so thin! They starved -him all the time. He fed only on cabbages. They put him to work digging -trenches behind the line--under fire. The brutes! The devils!" - -Her eyes were lit up by passion at the thought of this cruelty and her -brother's suffering. Then her expression changed to a look of pride. - -"He says he is glad to have been under fire--like father. He hated it, -though, at the time, and said he was frightened! I can't believe that. -Edouard was always brave." - -"There's no courage that takes away the fear of shellfire--as far as I'm -concerned," I told her, but she only laughed and said, "You men make a -pose of being afraid." - -She spoke of Edouard again, hugging the "thought of his return. - -"If only he were not so thin and so tired! I find him changed. The poor -boy cries at the sight of _maman_--like a baby." - -"I don't wonder," I said. "I should feel like that if I had been a -prisoner of war and was now home again." - -Madame Chri's voice called from downstairs: "Hlne! _O es-tu? Edouard -veut te voir!_" - -"Edouard wants me," said Hlne. - -She seemed rejoiced at the thought that Edouard had missed her, even -for this minute. She took my hand and kissed it, as though wishing me to -share her joy and to be part of it, and then ran downstairs. - - - - -XVIII - - -I went out to the officers' club which had been established in Lille, -and found Brand there, and Fortune, and young Clatworthy, who made a -place for me at their table. - -Two large rooms which had been the dining and drawingrooms of a private -mansion were crowded with officers, mostly English, but with here and -there a few Americans and French, seated at small tables, waited on by -the girls we called Waacs (of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps). Two -old-fashioned candelabra of cut-glass gave light to each room, and I -remember that the walls were panelled with wood painted a greyish-white -below a moulding of fruit and flowers. Above the table where my friends -sat was the portrait of a French lady of the eighteenth century, in an -oval frame of tarnished gilt. - -I was late for the meal on Armistice night, and many bottles of -champagne had already been opened and drunk. The atmosphere reeked with -the smell of food, the fumes of wine and cigarette smoke, and there was -the noise of many men talking and laughing. I looked about the tables -and saw familiar faces. There were a good many cavalry officers in the -room where I sat, and among them officers of the Guards and the Tank -Corps, aviators, machine-gunners, staff officers of infantry divisions, -French interpreters, American _liaison_ officers, A.P.M.'s, town -majors, and others. The lid was off at last. All these men were -intoxicated with the thought of the victory we had won--complete, -annihilating--and of this Armistice which had ended the war and made -them sure of life. Some of them were a little drunk with wine, but not -enough at this hour to spoil their sense of joy. - -Officers rose at various tables to make speeches, cheered by their own -groups, who laughed and shouted and did not listen. - -"The good old British Army has done the trick at last----" - -"The old Hun is down and out." - -"Gentlemen, it has been a damned tough job----" - -Another group had burst into song: - -"_Here's to good old beer, put it down, put it down!_" - -"The cavalry came into its own in the last lap. We've fought mounted and -fought dismounted. We've rounded up innumerable Huns. We've ridden down -machine-guns----" - -Another group was singing independently: - - "There's a long, long trail a-winding, - - To the land of my dreams." - -A toast was being pledged at the next table by a Tank officer, who -stood on a chair with a glass of champagne-raised high above his head: -"Gentlemen, I give you the toast of the Tank Corps. This war was won by -the Tanks----" - -"Pull him down!" shouted two lads at the same table. "Tanks be damned! -It was the poor old bloody infantry all the time." - -One of them pulled down the little Tank officer with a crash and stood -on his own chair. - -"Here's to the foot-sloggers--the infantry battalions, Tommy Atkins and -his company officer, who did all the dirty work and got none of the -reward, and did most of the dying." - -A cavalry officer with a monocle immovably screwed in his right eye -demanded the attention of the company, and failed to get it. - -"We all know what we have done ourselves, and what we failed to do. I -give you the toast of our noble Allies, without whom there would be no -Armistice to-night. I drink to the glory of France----" - -The words were heard at several tables, and for once there was a general -acknowledgment of the toast. - -"_Vive la France!_" - -The shout thundered out from all the tables, so that the candelabra -rattled. Five French interpreters in various parts of the room rose to -respond. - -There were shouts of "The Stars and Stripes--Good old Yanks--Well done, -the U.S.A.!" and I was sorry Dr. Small was still at Valenciennes. I -should like him to have heard those shouts. An American staff officer -was on his feet, raising his glass to "England." - -Charles Fortune stood up at my table. He reminded me exceedingly at -that moment of old prints portraying George IV. in his youth--"the First -Gentleman of Europe"--slightly flushed, with an air of noble dignity and -a roguish eye. - -"Go to it, Fortune," said Brand. "Nobody's listening, so you can say -what you like." - -"Gentlemen," said Fortune, "I venture to propose the health of our late -enemy, the Germans." - -Young Clatworthy gave an hysterical guffaw. - -"We owe them a very great debt," said Fortune. - -"But for their simplicity of nature and amiability of character the -British Empire--that glorious conglomeration of races upon which the sun -utterly declines to set--would have fallen into decay and debility as -a second-class Power. Before the war the German Empire was gaining our -trade, capturing all the markets of the world, waiting at table in all -the best hotels, and providing all the music in the _cafs-chantants_ -of the universe.... With that immense unselfishness so characteristic -of their race, the Germans threw away these advantages and sacrificed -themselves for the benefit of the British. By declaring war they enabled -all the ancient virtues of our race to be revived. Generals sprang up -in every direction--especially in Whitehall, Boulogne and Rouen. Staff -officers multiplied exceedingly. British indigestion--the curse of our -race--became subject to a Sam Brown belt. Business men, mostly bankrupt, -were enriched enormously. Clergymen thundered joyfully from their -pulpits and went back to the Old Testament for that fine old law, -'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' Elderly virgins married the -youngest subalterns. The youngest flapper caught the eldest and wiliest -of bachelors. Our people were revivified, gentlemen--revivified-" - -"Go easy," growled Brand. "This is not a night for irony." - -"Even I," said Charles Fortune, with a sob of pride in his voice, -"even I, a simple piano-tuner, a man of music, a child of peace and -melody--Shut up, Brand!--became every inch a soldier!" - -He drew himself up in a heroic pose and, raising his glass, cried out: -"Here's to our late enemy--poor old Fritz!" - -A number of glasses were raised amidst a roar of laughter. - -"Here's to Fritz--and may the Kaiser roast at Christmas!" - -"And they say we haven't a sense of humour," said Charles Fortune -modestly, and opened a new bottle of champagne. - -Brand had a sense of humour, and had laughed dining Fortune's oration, -knowing that beneath its mockery there was no malice. But I noticed that -he had no spontaneous gaiety on this night of Armistice and sat rather -silent, with a far-away look in his eyes and that hag-ridden melancholy -of his. - -Young Clatworthy was between me and Brand, drinking too heavily, I -thought. Brand thought so too, and gave him a word of caution. - -"That champagne is pretty bad. I'd 'ware headaches, if I were you, -young'un." - -"It's good enough," said Clatworthy. "Anything to put me in the right -spirit." - -There was an unnatural glitter in his eyes, and he laughed too easily -at any joke of Fortune's. Presently he turned his attention to me, and -began talking excitedly in a low monologue. - -"Funny to think it's the last night! Can you believe it? It seems a -lifetime since I came out in '14. I remember the first night, when I -was sent up to Ypres to take the place of a subaltern who'd been knocked -out. It was Christmas Eve, and my battalion was up in the line round -Hooge. I detrained at Vlamertinghe. 'Can any one tell me the way to -Hooge?' I asked one of the traffic men, just like a country cousin at -Piccadilly Circus. He looked at me in a queer way, and said, 'It's the -same way to hell, sir. Straight on until you get to Ypres, then out of -the Menin Gate and along the road to Hell-fire Corner. After that you -trust to luck. Some young gentlemen never get no further.' I damned -his impertinence and went on, till I came to the Grande Place in Ypres, -where I just missed an eight-inch shell. It knocked out a gun-team. -Shocking mess it made. 'The same way to hell,' I kept saying, until I -fell into a shell-hole along the Menin Road. But, d'you know, the fellow -was wrong, after all." - -"How?" I asked. - -Young Clatworthy drank up his wine and laughed, as though very much -amused. - -"Why, _that_ wasn't the way to hell. It was the other way." - -I was puzzled at his meaning and wondered if he were really drunk. - -"What other way?" - -"Behind the lines--in the back areas. I should have been all right if I -had stuck in the trenches. It was in places like Amiens that I went to -the devil." - -"Not as bad as that," I said. - -"Mind you," he continued, lighting a cigarette and smiling at the -flame, "I've had pleasant times in this war, between the bad ones, and, -afterwards, in this cushy job. Extraordinarily amusing and agreeable -along the way to hell. There was little Maigurite in Amiens--such a -kid! Funny as a kitten! She loved me not wisely, but too well. I had -just come down from the Somme battles then. That little idyll with -Margurite was like a dream. We two were Babes in the Wood. We plucked -the flowers of life and didn't listen to the howling of the wolves -beyond the forest." - -He jerked his head up and listened, and repeated the words: - -"The howling of the wolves!" - -Somebody was singing "John Peel": - - "D'ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay. - - D'ye ken John Peel at the break of day, - - D'ye ken John Peel when he's far, far away. - - With, his horn, and his hounds in. the morning?" - -Cyril Clatworthy was on his feet, joining in the chorus with a loud -joyous voice. - - "We'll follow John Peel through fair and through foul. - - If we want a good hunt in the morning!'' - -"Bravo! Bravo!" - -He laughed as he sat down. - -"I used to sing that when I was captain of the school," he said. "A long -time ago, eh? How many centuries?... I was as clean a fellow as you'd -meet in those days. Keen as mustard on cricket. Some bat, too! That was -before the dirty war, and the stinking trenches, and fever, and lice, -and dead bodies, and all that. But I was telling you about Yvonne, -wasn't I?" - -"Margurite," I reminded him. - -"No. Yvonne. I met her at Cassel. A brown-eyed thing. Demure. You know -the type?... One of the worst little sluts I ever met. Oh, a wicked -little witch... Well, I paid for that affair. That policeman was wrong." - -"What policeman?" I asked. - -"The traffic man at Vlamertinghe. 'It's the same way to hell,' he said, -meaning Hooge. It was the other way, really. All the same, I've had some -good hours. And now it's Armistice night.... Those fellows are getting -rather blue, aren't they? It's the blinking cavalry who used to get in -the way of the infantry, blocking up the roads with their ridiculous -horses and their preposterous, lances. Look here, old man, there's one -thing I want to know. Tell me, as a wise owl." - -"What is that?" I asked, laughing at his deference to my wisdom. - -"How are we going to get clean enough for peace?" - -"Clean enough?" - -I could not follow the drift of his question, and he tried to explain -himself. - -"Oh, I don't mean the soap and water business. But morally, spiritually, -intellectually, and all that? Some of us will want a lot of scrubbing -before we sit down in our nice little Christian families, somewhere at -Wimbledon or Ealing. Somehow I funk peace. It means getting back again -to where one started, and I don't see how it's possible.... Good Lord, -what tripe I've been talking!" - -He pulled the bow of one of the "Waacs" and undid her apron. - -"_Encore une bouteille de champagne, mademoiselle!_" he said in his best -French, and started singing "La Marseillaise." Some of the officers were -dancing the fox trot and the bunny hug. - -Brand rose with a smile and a sigh. - -"Armistice night!" he said. "Thank God there's a crowd of fellows left -to do the dancing.... I can't help thinking of the others." - -He touched a glass with his lips to a silent toast, and I saw that -he drank to ghosts. Then he put the glass down and laid his hand on -Clatworthy's shoulder. - -"Care for a stroll?" he said. "This room is too fuggy." - -"Not I, old lad," said the boy. "This is Armistice night--and the end of -the adventure. See it through!" - -Brand shook his head and said he must breathe fresh air. Fortune -was playing a Brahms concerto in the style of a German master on the -table-cloth. - -I followed Brand, and we strolled through the dark streets of Lille and -did not talk. In each of our minds was the stupendous thought that -it was the last night of the war--the end of the adventure, as young -Clatworthy had said. God! It had been a frightful adventure from first -to last--a fiery furnace in which youth had been burnt up like grass. -How much heroism we had seen, how much human agony, ruin, hate, cruelty, -love! There had been comradeship and laughter in queer places and -perilous hours. Comradeship, perhaps that was the best of all: the -unselfish comradeship of men. But what a waste of life! What a lowering -of civilisation! Our heritage--what was it, after victory? Who would -heal the wounds of the world? - -Brand suddenly spoke, after our long tramp in the darkness, past windows -from which came music, and singing, and shouts of laughter. He uttered -only one word, but all his soul was in it. - -"Peace!" - -That night we went to see Eileen O'Connor and to enquire after the girl -Marthe. Next day Pierre Nesle was coming to find his sister. - - - - -XIX - - -Eileen O'Connor had gone back from the convent to the rooms she had -before her trial and imprisonment. I was glad to see her in a setting -less austere than the whitewashed parlour in which she had first -received us. There was something of her character in the sitting-room -where she had lived so long during the war, and where with her girl -friends she had done more dangerous work than studying the elements of -drawing and painting. In that setting, too, she looked at home--"The -Portrait of a Lady," by Lavery, as I saw her in my mind's eye, when -she sat in a low armchair by the side of a charcoal stove, with the -lamplight on her face and hair and her dress shadowy. She wore a black -dress of some kind, with a tiny edge of lace about the neck and a string -of coloured beads so long that she twisted it about her fingers in her -lap. The room was small, but cosy in the light of a tall lamp on an iron -stand shaded with red silk. Like all the rooms I had seen in Lille--not -many--this was panelled, with a polished floor, bare except for one -rug. On the walls were a few etchings framed in black--London views -mostly--and some water-colour drawings of girls' heads, charmingly done, -I thought. They were her own studies of some of her pupils and friends, -and one face especially attracted me because of its delicate and -spiritual beauty. - -"That was my fellow prisoner," said Eileen O'Connor. "Alice de -Villers-Auxicourt. She died before the trial--happily, because she had -no fear." - -I noticed one other thing in the room which was pleasant to see--an -upright piano, and upon a stool by its side a pile of old songs which I -turned over one by one as we sat talking. They were English and Irish, -mostly from the seventeenth century onwards, but among them I found -some German songs, and on each cover was written the name of Franz -von Kreuzenach. At the sight of that name I had a foolish sense of -embarrassment and dismay, as though I had discovered a skeleton in the -cupboard, and I slipped them hurriedly between other sheets. - -Eileen was talking to Wickham Brand. She did not notice my confusion. -She was telling him that Marthe, Pierre's sister, was seriously ill -with something like brain-fever. The girl had regained consciousness at -times, but was delirious, and kept crying out for her mother and Pierre -to save her from some horror that frightened her. The nuns had made -enquiries about her through civilians in Lille. Some of them had heard -of the girl under her stage name--"Marthe de Mricourt." She had sung -in the _cabarets_ before the war. After the German occupation she had -disappeared for a time. Somebody said she had been half-starved and -was in a desperate state. What could a singing-girl do in an "occupied" -town? She reappeared in a restaurant frequented by German officers and -kept up by a woman of bad character. She sang and danced there for a -miserable wage, and part of her duty was to induce German officers -to drink champagne--the worst brand for the highest price. A horrible -degradation for a decent girl! But starvation, so Eileen said, has -fierce claws. Imagine what agony, what terror, what despair must have -gone before that surrender! To sing and dance before the enemies of your -country! - -"Frightful!" said Brand. "A girl should prefer death." - -Eileen O'Connor was twisting the coloured beads between her fingers. She -looked up at Wickham Brand with a deep thoughtfulness in her dark eyes. - -"Most men would say that. And all women beyond the war zone, safe and -shielded. But death does not come quickly from half-starvation in a -garret without fire, in clothes that are worn threadbare. It is not the -quick death of the battlefield. It is just a long-drawn misery.... Then -there is loneliness. The loneliness of a woman's soul. Do you understand -that?" - -Brand nodded gravely. "I understand the loneliness of a man's soul. I've -lived with it." - -"Worse for a woman," said Eileen. "That singing-girl was lonely in -Lille. Her family--with that boy Pierre--were on the other side of the -lines. She had no friends here before the Germans came." - -"You mean that afterwards----" - -Brand checked the end of his sentence and the line of his mouth -hardened. - -"Some of the Germans were kind," said Eileen. "Oh, let us tell the truth -about that! They were not all devils." - -"They were our enemies," said Brand. - -Eileen was silent for another moment, staring down at those queer beads -of hers in her lap, and before she spoke again I think her mind was -going back over many episodes and scenes during the German occupation of -Lille. - -"It was a long time--four years. A tremendous time for hatred to hold -out against civility, kindness, and--human nature.... Human nature is -strong; stronger than frontiers, nations, even patriotism." - -Eileen O'Connor flung her beads back, rose from the low chair and turned -back her hair with both hands with a kind of impatience. - -"I've seen the truth of things, pretty close--almost as close as death." - -"Yes," said Brand in a low voice. "You were pretty close to all that." - -The girl seemed to be anxious to plunge deep into the truth of the -things she had seen. - -"The Germans--here in Lille--were of all kinds. Everything there was in -the war, for them, their emotion, their pride in the first victories, -their doubts, fears, boredom, anguish, brutality, sentiment, found a -dwelling-place in this city behind the battle-front. Some of them--in -the administration--stayed here all the time, billeted in French -families. Others came back from the battlefields, horror-stricken, -trying to get a little brief happiness--forgetfulness. There were lots -of them who pitied the French people and had an immense sympathy with -them. They tried to be friends. Tried hard, by every sort of small -kindness in their billets." - -"Like Schwarz in Madame Chri's house," said Brand bitterly. It seemed -to me curious that he was adopting a mental attitude of unrelenting -hatred to the Germans, when, as I knew, and as I have told, he had been -of late on the side of toleration. That was how his moods swung when as -yet he had no fixed point of view. - -"Oh, yes, there were many beasts," said Eileen quickly. - -"But others were different. Beasts or not, they were human. They had -eyes to see and to smile, lips to talk and tempt. It was their human -nature which broke some of our hatred. There were young men among them, -and in Lille girls who could be angry for a time, disdainful longer, -and then friendly. I mean lonely, half-starved girls, weak, miserable -girls--and others not starved enough to lose their passion and need of -love. German boys and French girls--entangled in the net of fate.... God -pity them!" - -Brand said, "I pity them, too." - -He walked over to the piano and made an abrupt request, as though to -change the subject of conversation. - -"Sing something... something English!" - -Eileen O'Connor sang something Irish first, and I liked her deep voice, -so low and sweet. - - "There's one that is pure as an angel - - And fair as the flowers of May, - - They call her the gentle maiden - - Wherever she takes her way. - - - Her eyes have the glance of sunlight - - As it brightens the blue sea-wave, - - And more than the deep-sea treasure - - The love of her heart I crave. - - - "Though parted afar from my darling, - - I dream of her everywhere; - - The sound of her voice is about me, - - The spell of her presence there. - - - And whether my prayer be granted, - - Or whether she pass me by, - - The face of that gentle maiden - - Will follow me till I die." - -Brand was standing by the piano, with the light of the tall lamp on his -face, and I saw that there was a wetness in his eyes before the song was -ended. - -"It is queer to hear that in Lille," he said. "It's so long since I -heard a woman sing, and it's like water to a parched soul." - -Eileen O'Connor played the last bars again and, as she played, talked -softly. - -"To me, the face of that gentle maiden is a friend's face. Alice de -Villers-Auxicourt, who died in prison." - - "And whether my prayer be granted, - - Or whether she pass me by, - - The face of that gentle maiden - - Will follow me till I die." - -Brand turned over the songs, and suddenly I saw his face flush, and I -knew the reason. He had come to the German songs on which was written -the name of Franz von Kreuzenach. - -He turned them over quickly, but Eileen pulled one out--it was a -Schubert song--and opened its leaves. - -"That was the man who saved my life." - -She spoke without embarrassment, simply. - -"Yes," said Brand. "He suppressed the evidence." - -"Oh, you know?" - -I told her that we had heard part of the tale from the Reverend Mother, -but not all of it. Not the motive, nor what had really happened. - -"But you guessed?" - -"No," I answered sturdily. - -She laughed, but in a serious way. - -"It is not a hard guess, unless I am older than I feel, and uglier than -the mirror tells me. He was in love with me." - -Brand and I looked absurdly embarrassed. Of course we _had_ guessed, but -this open confession was startling, and there was something repulsive in -the idea to both of us who had come through the war-zone into Lille, and -had seen the hatred of the people for the German race, and the fate of -Pierre Nesle's sister. - -Eileen O'Connor told us that part of her story which the Reverend Mother -had left out. It explained the "miracle" that had saved this girl's -life, though, as the Reverend Mother said, perhaps the grace of God was -in it as well. Who knows? - -Franz von Kreuzenach was one of the intelligence officers whose -headquarters were in that courtyard. After service in the trenches with -an infantry battalion he had been stationed since 1915 at Lille until -almost the end. He had a lieutenant's rank, but was Baron in private -life, belonging to an old family in Bonn. Not a Prussian, therefore, but -a Rhinelander, and without the Prussian arrogance of manner. Just before -the war he had been at Oxford--Brasenose College--and spoke English -perfectly, and loved England with a strange, deep, unconcealed -sentiment. - -"Loved England?----" exclaimed Brand at this part of Eileen's tale. - -"Why not?" asked Eileen. "I'm Irish, but I love England, in spite of all -her faults and all my grievances! Who can help loving England that has -lived with her people?" - -This Lieutenant von Kreuzenach was two months in Lille before he spoke -a word with Eileen. She passed him often in the courtyard and always -he saluted her with great deference. She fancied she noticed a kind of -wistfulness in his eyes, as though he would have liked to talk to her. -He had blue eyes, sad sometimes, she noticed, and a clean-cut face, -rather delicate and pale. - -One day she dropped a pile of books in the yard all of a heap as he was -passing, and he said, "Allow me," and helped to pick them up. One of the -books was "Puck of Pook's Hill," by Kipling, and he smiled as he turned -over a page or two. - -"I love that book," he said in perfect English. "There's so much of the -spirit of old England in it. History, too. That's fine about the Roman -wall, where the officers go pig-sticking." - -Eileen O'Connor asked him if he were half English--perhaps he had -an English mother?--but he shook his head and said he was wholly -German--_echt Deutsch_. - -He hesitated for a moment as though he wanted to continue the -conversation, but then saluted and passed on. - -It was a week or so later when they met again, and it was Eileen -O'Connor who said "Good-morning" and made a remark about the weather. - -He stopped, and answered with a look of pleasure and boyish surprise. - -"It's jolly to hear you say 'Good-morning' in English. Takes me straight -back to Oxford before this atrocious war. Besides----" - -Here he stopped and blushed. - -"Besides what?" asked Eileen. - -"Besides, it's a long time since I talked to a lady. Among officers one -hears nothing but war-talk--the last battle, the next battle, technical -jargon, 'shop,' as the English say. It would be nice to talk about -something else--art, music, poetry, ideas." - -She chaffed him a little, irresistibly. - -"Oh, but you Germans have the monopoly of all that! Art, music, poetry, -they are all absorbed into your _Kultur_--properly Germanised. As for -ideas--what is not in German philosophy is not an idea." - -He looked profoundly hurt, said Eileen, "Some Germans are very narrow, -very stupid, like some English perhaps. Not all of us believe that -German _Kultur_ is the only knowledge in the world." - -"Anyhow," said Eileen O'Connor, "I'm Irish, so we needn't argue about -the difference between German and English philosophy." He spoke as if -quoting from a text-book. - -"The Irish are a very romantic race." - -That, of course, had to be denied by Eileen, who knew her Bernard Shaw. - -"Don't you believe it," she said. "We're a hard, logical, relentless -people, like all peasant folk of Celtic stock. It's the English who are -romantic and sentimental, like the Germans." - -He was amazed at those words (so Eileen told us) and then laughed -heartily in his very boyish way. - -"You are pleased to make fun of me. You are pulling my leg, as we said -at Oxford." - -So they took to talking for a few minutes in the courtyard when they -met, and Eileen noticed that they met more often than before. She -suspected him of arranging that, and it amused her. By that time she had -a staunch friend in the old Kommandant who believed her to be an enemy -of England and an Irish patriot. She was already playing the dangerous -game under his very nose, or at least within fifty yards of the -blotting-pad over which his nose used to be for many hours of the day in -his office. - -It was utterly necessary to keep him free from any suspicion. His -confidence was her greatest safeguard. It was therefore unwise to refuse -him (an honest, stupid old gentleman) when he asked whether now and -again he might bring one of his officers and enjoy an hour's music -in her rooms after dinner. He had heard her singing, and it had gone -straight to his heart. There was one of his officers, Lieutenant Baron -Franz von Kreuzenach, who had a charming voice. They might have a little -musical recreation which would be most pleasant and refreshing. - -"Bring your Baron," said Eileen. "I shall not scandalise my neighbours -when the courtyard is closed." - -Her girl-friends were scandalised when they heard of these musical -evenings--two or three times a month--until she convinced them that -it was a service to France, and a life insurance for herself and them. -There were times when she had scruples. She was tricking both those -men who sat in her room for an hour or two now and then, so polite, so -stiffly courteous, so moved with sentiment when she sang old Irish songs -and Franz von Kreuzenach sang his German songs. She was a spy, in plain -and terrible language, and they were utterly duped. On more than one -night while they were there an escaped prisoner was in the cellar below, -with a German uniform and cypher message, and all directions for escape -across the lines. Though they seldom talked about the war, yet now and -again by casual remarks they revealed the intentions of the German army -and its _moral_, or lack of _moral_. With the old Kommandant she did not -feel so conscience-stricken. To her he was gentle and charming, but to -others a bully, and there was in his character the ruthlessness of -the Prussian officer on all matters of "duty," and he hated England -ferociously. - -With Franz von Kreuzenach it was different. He was a humanitarian, and -sensitive to all cruelty in life. He hated, not the English, but the war -with real anguish, as she could see by many words he let fall from time -to time. - -He was, she said, a poet, and could see across the frontiers of hatred -to all suffering humanity, and so revolted against the endless, futile -massacre and the spiritual degradation of civilised peoples. It was -only in a veiled way he could say these things in the presence of his -superior officer, but she understood. She understood another thing as -time went on--nearly eighteen months all told. She saw quite clearly, -as all women must see in such a case, that this young German was in love -with her. - -"He did not speak any word in that way," said Eileen when she told us -this, frankly, in her straight manner of speech, "but in his eyes, in -the touch of his hand, in the tones of his voice, I knew that he loved -me, and I was very sorry." - -"It was a bit awkward," said Brand, speaking with a strained attempt at -being casual. I could see that he was very much moved by that part of -the story, and that there was a conflict in his mind. - -"It made me uneasy and embarrassed," said Eileen. "I don't like to be -the cause of any man's suffering, and he was certainly suffering because -of me. It was a tragic thing for both of us when I was found out at -last." - -"What happened?" asked Brand. - -The thing that happened was simple--and horrible. When Eileen and her -companions were denounced by the sentry at the Citadel the case was -reported to the Kommandant of the Intelligence Office, who was in charge -of all anti-espionage business in Lille. He was enormously disturbed by -the suspicion directed against Eileen. It seemed to him incredible, at -first, that he could have been duped by her. After that, his anger was -so violent that he became incapable of any personal action. He ordered -Franz von Kreuzenach to arrest Eileen and search her rooms. "If she -resist, shoot her at once," he thundered out. - -It was at seven o'clock in the evening when Baron Franz von Kreuzenach -appeared at Eileen's door with two soldiers. He was extremely pale and -agitated. - -Eileen rose from her little table, where she was having an evening meal -of. soup and bread. She knew the moment had come which in imagination -she had seen a thousand times. - -"Come in, Baron!" - -She spoke with an attempt at cheerfulness, but had to hold to the back -of her chair to save herself from falling, and she felt her face become -white. - -He stood for a moment in the room, silently, with the two soldiers -behind him, and when he spoke, it was in a low voice, in English. "It is -my painful duty to arrest you, Miss O'Connor." - -She pretended to be amazed, incredulous, but it was, as she knew, a -feeble mimicry. - -"Arrest me? Why, that is--ridiculous! On what charge?" - -Franz von Kreuzenach looked at her in a pitiful way. - -"A terrible charge: Espionage and conspiracy against German martial -law... I would rather have died than do this--duty." - -Eileen told us that he spoke that word "duty" as only a German could--as -that law which for a German officer is above all human things, all -kindly relationships, all escape. She pitied him then more, she said, -than she was afraid for herself, and told him that she was sorry the -duty had fallen to him. He made only one other remark before he took her -away from her rooms. - -"I pray God the evidence will be insufficient." - -There was a military car waiting outside the courtyard, and he opened -the door for her to get in and sat opposite to her. The two soldiers -sat together next to the driver, squeezed close--they were both stout -men--with their rifles between their knees. It was dark in the streets -of Lille and in the car. Eileen could only see the officer's face -vaguely and white. He spoke again as they were driven quickly. - -"I have to search your rooms to-night. Have you destroyed your papers?" - -He seemed to have no doubt about her guilt, but she would not admit it. - -"I have no papers of which I am afraid." - -"That is well," said Franz von Kreuzenach. - -He told her that the Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt and Marcelle Barbier -had been arrested also, and that news was like a death-blow to the girl. -It showed that their conspiracy had been revealed, and she was stricken -at the thought of the fate awaiting her friends, those young delicate -girls, who had been so brave in taking risks. - -Towards the end of the journey, which was not far, Franz von Kreuzenach -began speaking in a low, emotional voice. - -Whatever happened, he said, he prayed that she might think of him with -friendship, not blaming him for that arrest, which was in obedience to -orders. He would ever be grateful to her for her kindness, and the songs -she had sung. They had been happy evenings to him when he could see -her and listen to her voice. He looked forward to them in a hungry way, -because of his loneliness. - -"He said--other things," added Eileen, and she did not tell us, though -dimly we guessed at the words of that German officer who loved her. At -the gate of the prison he delivered her to a group of military police, -and then saluted as he swung round on his heel. - -The next time she saw him was at her trial. Once only their eyes -met, and he became deadly pale and bent his head. During her -cross-examination of him he did not look at her, and his embarrassment, -his agony--she could see that he was suffering--made an unfavourable -impression on the court, who thought he was not sure of his evidence and -was making blundering answers when she challenged him. She held him up -to ridicule, but all the time was sorry for him, and grateful to him, -because she knew how much evidence against her he had concealed. - -"He behaved strangely about that evidence," said Eileen. "What puzzles -me still is why he produced so much and yet kept back the rest. You see, -he put in the papers he had found in the secret passage, and they were -enough to have me shot, yet he hushed up the fact about the passage, -which, of course, was utterly damning. It looked as though he wanted to -give me a sporting chance. But that was not his character, because he -was a simple young man. He could have destroyed the papers as easily -as he kept back the fact about the underground passage, but he produced -them, and I escaped only by the skin of my teeth. Read me that riddle, -Wickham Brand!" - -"It's easy," said Brand. "The fellow was pulled two ways. By duty -and--sentiment." - -"Love," said Eileen in her candid way. - -"Love, if you like... It was a conflict. Probably his sense of duty (I -know these German officers!) was strong enough to make him hand up -the papers to his superior officers. He couldn't bring himself to burn -them--the fool! Then the other emotion in him----" - -"Give it a name," said Eileen, smiling in her whimsical way. - -"That damned love of his," said Brand, "tugged at him intolerably, -and jabbed at his conscience. So he hid the news about the passage and -thought what a fine fellow he was. Mr. Facing-Both-Ways. Duty and love, -both sacrificed!... He'd have looked pretty sick if you'd been shot, and -it wasn't to his credit that you weren't." - -Eileen O'Connor was amused with Brand's refusal to credit Franz von -Kreuzenach with any kindness. - -"Admit," she said, "that his suppression of evidence gave me my chance. -If all were told, I was lost." - -Brand admitted that. - -"Admit also," said Eileen, "that he behaved like a gentleman." - -Brand admitted it grudgingly. - -"A German gentleman." - -Then he realised his meanness, and made amends. - -"That's unfair! He behaved like a good fellow. Probably took big risks. -Every one who knows what happened must be grateful to him. If I meet him -I'll thank him." - -Eileen O'Connor held Brand to that promise, and asked him for a favour -which made him hesitate. - -"When you go on to the Rhine will you take him a letter from me?" - -"It's against the rules," said Brand rather stiffly. - -Eileen pooh-poohed those rules, and said Franz von Kreuzenach had broken -his for her sake. - -"I'll take it," said Brand. - -That night when we left Eileen O'Connor's rooms the Armistice was still -being celebrated by British soldiers. Verey lights were rising above -the houses, fired off by young officers as symbols of their own soaring -spirits. Shadows lurched against us in the dark streets as officers and -men went singing to their billets. Some girls of Lille had linked arms -with British Tommies and were dancing in the darkness with screams of -mirth. In one of the doorways a soldier with his steel hat at the back -of his head and his rifle lying at his feet kept shouting one word in a -drunken way: "Peace!... Peace!" - -Brand had his arm through mine, and when we came to his headquarters he -would not let me go. - -"Armistice night!" he said. "Don't let's sleep just yet. Let's hug the -thought over a glass of whisky. The war is over!... No more blood!... No -more of its tragedy!" - -Yet we had got no farther than the hall before we knew that tragedy had -not ended with the Armistice. - -Colonel Lavington met us and spoke to Brand. - -"A bad thing has happened. Young Clatworthy has shot himself... upstairs -in his room." - -"No!" - -Brand started back as if he had been hit. He had been fond of -Clatworthy, as he was of all boys, and they had been together for many -months. It was to Brand that Clatworthy wrote his last strange note, and -the colonel gave it to him then in the hall. - -I saw it afterwards, written in a big scrawl--a few lines which now I -copy out:-- - -"_Dear old Brand,--It's the end of the adventure. Somehow I funk Peace. -I don't see how I can go back to Wimbledon as if nothing had happened -to me. None of us are the same as when we left, and I'm quite different. -I'm going over to the pals on the other side. They will understand. -Cheerio!_ - -"_Cyril Clatworthy_." - -"I was playing my flute when I heard the shot," said the colonel. - -Brand put the letter in his pocket and made only one comment. - -"Another victim of the war-devil.... Poor kid!" - -Presently he went up to young Clatworthy's room, and stayed there a long -time. - -A few days later we began to move on towards the Rhine by slow stages, -giving the German Army time to get back. In Brand's pocket-book was the -letter to Franz von Kreuzenach from Eileen O'Connor. - - -END OF BOOK I. - - - - - -BOOK II--THROUGH HOSTILE GATES - - - - -I - - -The advance of the Allied Armies towards the Rhine was by definite, -slow stages, enabling the German Army to withdraw in advance of us with -as much material of war as was left to them by the conditions of the -Armistice. On that retreat of theirs they abandoned so much that it was -clearly impossible for them to resist our demands by fighting again, -however hard might be the peace terms. Their acceptance of the Armistice -drawn up by Marshal Foch with a relentless severity in every clause, so -that the whole document was a sentence of death to the German military -system, proved that they had no more "fight" in them. It was the most -abject and humiliating surrender ever made by a great nation in the -hour of defeat, and an acknowledgment before the whole world that their -armies had broken to bits, in organisation and in spirit. - -On the roads for hundreds of kilometres out from Mons and Le Cateau, -past Brussels and Lige and Namur, was the visible proof of the -disintegration and downfall of what had been the greatest military -machine in the world. Mile after mile and score after score of miles, on -each side of the long straight roads, down which, four years before, the -first German Armies had marched in endless columns after the first brief -check at Lige, with absolute faith in victory, there lay now abandoned -guns, trench mortars, aeroplanes, motor lorries, motor cars and -transport wagons. Those monstrous guns which had pounded so much of our -young flesh to pulp, year after year, were now tossed into the ditches, -or overturned in the wayside fields, with broken breech-blocks or -without their sights. - -It was good to see them there. Field-guns, upturned, thrust their -muzzles into the mud, and Belgian peasant-, boys made cock-shies of -them. I liked to see them at that game. Here also was the spectacle of -a war machine which had worn out until, like the "one-hoss shay," it had -fallen to pieces. Those motor lorries, motor cars, and transport wagons -were in the last stage of decrepitude, their axles and spokes all rusty, -their woodwork cracked, their wheels tied round with bits of iron in -the place of tyres. Everywhere were dead horses worn to skin and bones -before they had fallen. For lack of food and fats and rubber and labour -the German material of war was in a sorry state before the failure of -their man-power in the fighting fields after those years of massacre -brought home to them the awful fact that they had no more strength to -resist our onslaughts. - -One of those who pointed the moral of all this was the little American -doctor, Edward Small, and he found an immense satisfaction in the sight -of those derelict wrecks of the German war-devils. He and I travelled -together for some time, meeting Brand, Harding, and other friends, in -towns like Lige and Namur. I remember him now, standing by a German -howitzer--a colossus--sprawling out of a ditch. He chuckled in a goblin -way, with his little grey beard thrust up by a muffler which he had tied -over his field-cap and under his chin. (It was cold, with a white mist -which clung damply to our faces.) He went so far in his pleasure as -to pick up a big stone (like those Belgian boys) and heave it at the -monster. - -"Fine!" he said. "That devil will never again vomit out death upon men -crouching low in ditches--fifteen miles away. Never again will it smash -through the roofs of farmhouses where people desired to live in peace, -or bash big holes in little old churches where folk worshipped through -the centuries--a loving God!... Sonny, this damned thing is symbolical. -Its overthrow means the downfall of all the machinery of slaughter which -has been accumulated by civilised peoples afraid of each other. In -a little while, if there's any sense in humanity after this fearful -lesson, we shall put all our guns on to the scrap-heap and start a new -era of reasonable intercourse between the peoples of the world." - -"Doctor," I answered, "there's a mighty big 'If' in that long sentence -of yours." - -He blinked at me with beads of mist on his lashes. - -"Don't you go wet-blanketing my faith in a step-up for the human race! -During the next few months we're going to re-arrange life. We are going -to give Fear the knock-out blow.... It was Fear that was the cause of -all this horrible insanity and all this need of sacrifice. Germany was -afraid of being 'hemmed in' by England, France and Russia. Fear, more -than the lust of power, was at the back of her big armies. France was -afraid of Germany trampling over her frontiers again. Russian Czardom -was afraid of revolution within her own borders and looked to war as -a safety-valve. England was afraid of the German Navy and afraid of -Germans at Calais and Dunkirk. All the little Powers were afraid of the -big Powers and made their beastly little alliances as a life insurance -against the time when they would be dragged into the dog-fight. -Now, with the German bogey killed--the most formidable and frightful -bogey--Austria disintegrated, Russia groping her way with bloodshot -eyes to a new democracy, a complete set of fears has been removed. The -spirits of the peoples will be uplifted, the darkness of fear having -passed from them. We are coming out into the broad sunlight of sanity, -and mankind will march to better conquests than those of conscript -armies. Thank God, the United States of America (and don't you forget -it!) will play a part in this advance to another New World." - -It was absurd to argue with the little man in a sodden field on the road -to Lige. Besides, though I saw weak links in his chain of reasoning, I -did not want to argue. - -I wanted to believe also that our victory would not be a mere vulgar -triumph of the old kind, one military power rising upon the ruins of its -rival, one great yell (or many) of "Yah--we told you so!" but that it -would be a victory for all humanity, shamed by the degradation of its -orgy of blood, in spite of all pride in long-enduring manhood, and that -the peoples of the world, with one common, enormous, generous instinct, -would cry out, "The horror has passed! Never again shall it come upon -us.... Let us pay back to the dead by contriving a better way of life -for those who follow!" The chance of that lay with living youth, if they -would not allow themselves to be betrayed by their old men. That also -was a mighty "If," but I clung to the hope with as passionate a faith as -that of the little American doctor.... - -The way to the Rhine lay through many cities liberated from hostile -rule, through many wonderful scenes in which, emotion surged like a -white flame above great crowds. There was a pageantry of life which I -had never before seen in war or in peace, and those of us who went that -way became dazed by the endless riot of colour, and our ears were tired -by a tumult of joyous sound. In Brussels, Bruges, Ghent, Lige, Namur, -Venders, banners waved above every house. Flags--flags--flags of many -nations and designs, decorated the house-fronts, were draped on the -balconies, were entwined in the windows, came like flames above the -heads of marching crowds. Everywhere there was the sound of singing -by multitudes, and through those weeks one song was always in the air, -triumphant, exultant, intoxicating, almost maddening in its effect -upon crowds and individuals--the old song of liberty and revolt: "La -Marseillaise." With it, not so universal, but haunting in constant -refrain between the outbursts of that other tune, they sang "La -Brabanonne" of Belgium and quaint old folk-songs that came to life -again with the spirit of the people. Bells pealed from churches in which -the Germans had left them by special favour. The belfry of Bruges had -not lost its carillon. In Ghent, when the King of the Belgians rode -in along flower-strewn ways, under banners that made one great canopy, -while cheers swept up and around him to his grave, tanned, melancholy -face, unchanged by victory--so I had seen him in his ruined towns among -his dead--I heard the great boom of the cathedral bell. In Brussels, -when he rode in later, there were many bells ringing and clashing, and -wild cheering, which to me, lying in an upper room after a smash on -the Field of Waterloo, seemed uncanny and inhuman, like the murmur of -innumerable ghost-voices. Into these towns, and along the roads through -Belgium to the Meuse, bands were playing and soldiers singing, and -on each man's rifle was a flag or a flower. In every city there was -carnival. It was the carnival of human joy after long fasting from the -pleasure of life. Soldiers and civilians, men and women, sang together, -linked arms, danced together through many streets, in many towns. In -the darkness of those nights of Armistice one saw the eyes of people -sparkling, laughing, burning; the eyes of girls lit up by inner fires, -eager, roving, alluring, untamed; and the eyes of soldiers, surprised, -amused, adventurous, drunken, ready for any kind of fun; and sometimes -in those crowds, dead eyes, or tortured eyes, staring inwards and not -outwards, because of some remembrance which came like a ghost between -them and carnival. - -In Ghent there were other sounds besides music and laughter, and -illuminations too fierce and ruddy in their glow to give me pleasure. At -night I heard the screams of women. I had no need to ask the meaning of -them. I had heard such screams before, when Pierre Nesle's sister Marthe -was in the hands of the mob. But one man told me, as though I did not -know. - -"They are cutting off some ladies' hair. Six of them--the hussies! They -were too friendly with the Germans, you understand? Now they are being -stripped, for shame. There are others, monsieur. Many, many, if one only -knew. Hark at their howling!" - -He laughed heartily, without any touch of pity. I tried to push my way -nearer to try by some word of protest to stop that merry sport with -hunted women. The crowds were too dense, the women too far away. In any -case no word of mine would have had effect. I went into a restaurant and -ordered dinner, though not hungry. Brand was there, sitting alone till -I joined him. The place was filled with French and Belgian officers and -womenfolk. The swing-door opened and another woman came in and sat a few -tables away from ours. She was a tall girl, rather handsome, and better -dressed than the ordinary _bourgeoisie_ of Ghent. At least, so it seemed -to me when she hung up some heavy furs on the peg above her chair. - -A waiter advanced towards her, and then, standing stock-still, began to -shout, with a thrill of fury in his voice. He shouted frightful words in -French, and one sentence which I remember now. - -"A week ago you sat here with a German officer!" - -The Belgian officers were listening gravely. One of them half-rose from -his chair with a flushed, wolfish face. I was staring at the girl. She -was white to the lips, and held on to a brass rail as though about to -faint. Then, controlling herself instantly, she fumbled at the peg, -pulled down her furs and fled through the swing-door... She was another -Marthe. - -Somebody laughed in the restaurant, but only one voice. For a moment -there was silence, then conversation was resumed, as though no figure -of tragedy had passed. The waiter who had denounced the woman swept some -crumbs off a table and went to fetch some soup. - -Brand did not touch his food. - -"I feel sick," he said. - -He pushed his plate away and paid the bill. - -"Let's go." - -He forgot to ask whether I wanted to eat--he was absent-minded in that -way--but I felt like him, and avoiding the Grande Place we walked by -hazard to a part of the city where some fires were burning. The sky was -reddened and we smelt smoke, and presently felt the heat of flames. - -"What new devilry?" asked Brand. "Can't these people enjoy peace? Hasn't -there been enough violence?" - -"Possibly a bonfire," I said, "symbolical of joy and warmth after cold -years!" - -Coming closer, I saw that Brand was right. Black figures like dancing -devils were in the ruddy glare of a savage fire up a side street of -Ghent. In other streets were other fires. Close to where we stood was -an old inn, called the Hotel de la Demie-Lune--the Hotel of the -Half-Moon--and its windows had been heaved out, and inside the rooms -Belgian soldiers and citizens were flinging out tables and chairs and -planks and wainscoting to feed the bonfire below, and every time the -flames licked up to the new fuel there were shouts of joy from the -crowd. - -"What does it mean?" asked Brand, and a man in the crowd told us that -the house had been used as the headquarters of a German organisation for -"Flemish Activists"--or Flamagands, as they were called--whose object -was to divide the Walloons, or French-speaking Belgians, from the -Flemings, in the interests of Germany. - -"It is the people's revenge for those who have tried to sow seeds of -hatred among-them," said the man. - -Other people standing by spoke disapprovingly of the scene. - -"The Germans have made too many fires in this war," said an elderly -man in a black hat with a high crown and broad brim, like a portrait by -Franz Hals. "We don't want to destroy our own houses now the enemy has -gone. That is madness." - -"It seems unnecessary!" said Brand. - -As we made our way back we saw the light of other fires, and heard -the noise of smashing glass and a splintering of woodwork. The mob was -sacking shops which had traded notoriously with the Germans. Out of -one alley a man came running like a hunted animal. We heard his breath -panting as he passed. A shout of "Flamagand! Flamagand!" followed him, -and in another second a mob had caught him. We heard his death-cry -before they killed him like a rat. - -Never before in the history of the world had such crowds gathered -together as now in Brussels, Ghent or Lige. French and English soldiers -walked the same streets, khaki and sky-blue mingling. These two races -had met before, not as friends, in some of these towns--five centuries -and more before in history. But here also were men from Canada, -Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the new world which had come -to the old world on this adventure, paying back something to the old -blood and the old ghosts because of their heritage, yet strangely aloof -on the whole from these continental peoples, not understanding them, -despising them. - -The English soldier took it all as it came, with that queer adaptability -of his to any environment or any adventure, with his simple human touch. - -"Better than the old Ypres salient," said one of them, grinning at me -after a game of kiss-in-the-ring at Venders. He wiped the sweat from his -face and neck, and as he raised his arm I saw by his gold stripes that -he had been three times wounded. Yes, that was better than the old hell. -He roared with laughter when one of his comrades went into the ring with -a buxom girl while the crowd danced round him, holding hands, singing, -laughing, pulling him this side and that. - -The man who had just left the ring spoke to me again in a confidential -way. - -"My wife wouldn't like it if she'd seen me just then. I shan't tell 'er. -She wouldn't understand. Nobody can understand the things we've done, -the things we've thought, nor the things we've seen, unless they've been -through with us... and we don't understand, neither!" - -"Who does?" I asked, to express agreement with him, but he took my words -as a question to be answered. - -"P'raps Gord knows. If so, 'E's a clever One, 'E is!... I wish I 'ad -'alf 'Is sense." - -He drifted away from me with a gurgle of laughter at a girl who pushed -his cap on one side. - -Along the kerbstone of the market-place some transport wagons were -halted, and the drivers were cooking their evening meal over a charcoal -stove, as though on one of the roads of war, while a crowd of Belgians -roared with laughter at their by-play with clasp-knives, leaden spoons, -and dixies. One of them was a cockney humorist--his type was always -to be found in any group of English soldiers--and was performing a -pantomime for the edification of the onlookers and his own pleasure. - -A woman standing on the edge of this scene touched me on the sleeve. - -"Are you going forward to the Rhine, _mon lieutenant?_" - -I told her "yes," and that I should soon be among the Germans. - -She gave a little tug to my sleeve, and spoke in a kind of coaxing -whisper. - -"Be cruel to them, _mon lieutenant!_ Be hard and ruthless. Make them -suffer as we have suffered. Tread on their necks so that they squeal. -_Soyez cruel._" - -Her face and part of her figure were in the glow from the charcoal fire -of the transport men, and I saw that she was a little woman, neatly -dressed, with a thin, gentle, rather worn-looking face. Those words, -"_Soyez cruel!_" gave me a moment's shock, especially because of the -soft, wheedling tone of her voice. - -"What would you do," I asked in a laughing way, "if you were in my -place?" - -"I dream at nights of what I would like to do. There are so many things -I would like to do for vengeance. I think all German women should be -killed to stop them breeding. That is one thing." - -"And the next?" I asked. - -"It would be well to kill all German babies. Perhaps the good God will -do it in His infinite wisdom." - -"You are religious, madame?" - -"We had only our prayers," she said, with piety. - -A band of dancing people bore down upon us and swept us apart. From -a high balcony an Italian who had been a prisoner of war sang "La -Marseillaise," and though these people's ears had been dinned with it -all day, though their throats were hoarse with singing it, they listened -to it now, again, as though it were a new revelation. The man sang with -passion in his voice, as powerful as a trumpet, more thrilling than -that. The passion of four years' agony in some foul prison-camp inspired -him now, as he sang that song of liberty and triumph. - - "Allons, Enfants de la patrie! - - Le jour de gloire est arriv!" - -The crowd took up the song again, and it roared across the square -of Venders until another kind of music met and clashed with it, and -overwhelmed it with brazen notes. It was the town band of Venders, -composed of twenty-five citizens, mostly middle-aged and portly--some -old and scraggy, in long frock-coats and tall pot-hats. Solemnly, with -puffed cheeks, they marched along, parting the waves of people as they -went, as it seemed, by the power of their blasts. They were playing an -old tune called "Madelon"--its refrain comes back to me now with the -picture of that carnival in Venders, with all those faces, all that -human pressure and emotion--and behind them, as though following the -Pied Piper (twenty-five pied pipers!) came dancing at least a thousand -people, eight abreast, with linked arms or linked hands. They were young -Belgian boys and girls, old Belgian men and women, children, British -soldiers, American soldiers, English, Scottish, Irish, Canadian, -Australian, Russian, and Italian ex-prisoners of war just liberated from -their prison-camps, new to liberty. They were all singing that old song -of "Madelon," and all dancing in a kind of jig. Other crowds, dancing -and singing, came out of side-streets into the wide Grande Place, -mingled, like human waves meeting, swirled in wild, laughing eddies. -Carnival after the long fasting. - -Brand clutched me by the arm and laughed in his deep, hollow voice. - -"Look at that old satyr!... I believe Daddy Small is Pan himself!" - -It was the little American doctor. He was in the centre of a row of -eight in the vanguard of a dancing column. A girl of the _midinette_ -type--pretty, impudent, wild-eyed, with a strand of fair hair blowing -loose from her little fur cap--was clinging to his arm on one side, -while on the other was a stout, middle-aged woman with a cheerful -Flemish face and mirth-filled eyes. Linked up with the others they -jigged behind the town band. Dr. Small's little grey beard had a -raffish look. His field cap was tilted back from his bony forehead. His -spectacles were askew. He had the happy look of careless boyhood. He -did not see us then, but later in the evening detached himself from the -stout Flemish lady, who kissed him on both cheeks, and made his way to -where Brand and I stood under the portico of a hotel. - -"Fie, doctor!" said Brand. "What would your old patients in New York say -to this Bacchanalian orgy?" - -"Sonny," said the doctor, "they wouldn't believe it. It's incredible!" - -He wiped the perspiration from his brow, threaded his fingers through -his grey beard, and laughed in that shrill way which was his habit when -excited. - -"My word, it was good fun! I became part of a people's joy. I had their -sense of escape from frightful things. Youth came back to me. Their -songs danced in my blood. In spite of my goggles and my grey beard that -buxom lady adored me as though I were the young Adonis. The little girl -clasped my hand as though I were her younger brother. Time rolled back -from the world. Old age was touched with the divine elixir. In that -crowd there is the springtime of life, when Pan played on his pipes -through pagan woods. I wouldn't have missed it for a million dollars!" - -That night Brand and I and some others (Charles Fortune among them) were -billeted in a small hotel which had been a German headquarters a few -days before. There was a piano in the billiard room, and Fortune touched -its keys. Several notes were broken but he skipped them deftly and -improvised a musical caricature of "Daddy" Small dancing in the -carnival. He, too, had seen that astonishing vision, and it inspired him -to grotesque fantasies. In his imagination he brought a great general -to Venders--"Blear-eyed Bill, the Butcher of the Boche"--and gave him -a _pas seul_ in the Grande Place, like an elephant gambolling in green -fields and trumpeting his joy. - -Young Harding was moody, and confided to me that he did not like the -idea of crossing the German frontier and going to Cologne. - -"There will be dirty work," he said, "as sure as fate. The Huns will -begin sniping and then we shall have to start reprisals. Well, if they -ask for it I hope we shall give it them. Without mercy, after all they -have done. At the first sign of treachery I hope the machine-guns will -begin to play. Every time I see a Hun I shall feel like slitting his -throat." - -"Well, you'll get into a murderous state of mind," I answered him. -"We shall see plenty, and live among them. I expect they will be tame -enough." - -"Some poor devils of ours will be murdered in their beds," said Harding. -"It makes my blood boil to think of it. I only hope we shan't stand any -nonsense. I'd like to see Cologne Cathedral go up in flames. That would -be a consolation." - -Charles Fortune broke away from his musical fantasy of "Blear-eyed -Bill" and played a bar or two of the "Marseillaise" in ragtime. It was -a greeting to Pierre Nesle, who came into the room quietly in his _kpi_ -and heavy motor-coat, with a salute to the company. - -"_Bon soir, petit Pierre!_" said Fortune, "_qu'il y a, -done--quoi?--avec ta figure si sombre, si mlancolique, d'une tristesse -pitoyable_----" - -Pierre Nesle inspired him to sing a little old French _chanson_ of -Pierrot disconsolate. - -Pierre had just motored down from Lille--a long journey--and was blue -with cold, as he said, warming his hands at the charcoal stove. -He laughed at Fortune's jesting, begged a cigarette from Harding, -apologised for keeping on his "stink-coat" for a while until he had -thawed out--and I admired the boy's pluck and self-control. It was the -first time I had seen him since he had gone to Lille to see his sister. -I knew by the new lines about his eyes and mouth, by a haggard, older -look he had that he had seen that sister of his--Marthe--and knew her -tragedy. - -It was to Brand's room that he went after midnight, and from Brand, a -day later, I heard what had happened. He had begun by thanking Brand -for that rescue of his sister in Lille, in a most composed and courteous -way. Then suddenly that mask fell from him and he sat down heavily in -a chair, put his head down on his arms upon the table and wept like a -child in uncontrollable grief. Brand was immensely distressed and -could not think of any word to comfort him. He kept saying, "Courage! -Courage!" as I had said to Madame Chri when she broke down about her -boy Edouard, as the young Baronne had sent word to Eileen from her -prison death-bed, and as so many men and women had said to others who -had been stricken by the cruelties of war. - -"The boy was down and out," said Brand. "What could I say? It is one of -those miseries for which there is no cure. He began to talk about his -sister when they had been together at home, in Paris before the war. She -had been so gay, so comradely, so full of adventure. Then he began to -curse God for having allowed so much cruelty and men for being such -devils. He cursed the Germans, but then, in most frightful language, -most bitterly of all he cursed the people of Lille for having tortured -a woman who had been starved into weakness, and had sinned to save her -life. He contradicted himself then, violently, and said, 'It was no sin. -My sister was a loyal girl to France. In her soul she was loyal. So she -swore to me on her crucifix. I would have killed her if she had been -disloyal.'... So there you are! Pierre Nesle is broken on the wheel of -war, like so many others. What's the cure?" - -"None," I said, "for his generation. One can't undo the things that are -done." - -Brand was pacing up and down his bedroom, where he had been telling me -these things, and now, at my words, he stopped and stared at me before -answering. - -"No. I think you're right. This generation has been hard hit, and we -shall go about with unhealed wounds. But the next generation?... -Let's try to save it from all this horror! If the world will only -understand----" - -The next day we left Venders and crossed the German frontier on the way -to the Rhine. - - - - -II - - -Brand and I, who were inseparable now, and young Harding, who had -joined us, crossed the Belgian frontier with our leading troop of -cavalry--the Dragoon Guards--and entered Germany on the morning of -December 4th. For three days our advanced cavalry outposts had been -halted on the frontier line beyond Venders and Spa. The scenery had -become German already--hill-country, with roads winding through fir -forests above deep ravines, where red undergrowth glowed like fire -through the rich green of fir-trees, and where, on the hillsides and in -the valleys, were wooden _chlets_ and villas with pointed turrets like -those in the Black Forest. - -We halted this side of a little stone bridge over the stream which -divides the two countries. A picket of Dragoons was holding the bridge -with double sentries, under orders to let no man pass until the signal -was given to advance. - -"What's the name of this place?" asked Brand of a young cavalry officer -smoking a cigarette and clapping his hands to keep warm. - -"Rothwasser, sir," said that child, removing the cigarette from his -lips. He pointed to a small house on rising ground beyond, a white -building with a slate roof, and said: "That's the first house in -Germany. I don't suppose they'll invite us to breakfast." - -Brand and I leaned over the stone bridge, watching and listening to the -swirl of tawny water over big grey stones. - -"The Red Water," said Brand. "Not a bad name when one thinks of the -rivers of blood that have flowed between our armies and this place. It's -been a long journey to this little bridge." - -We stared across the brook and were enormously stirred (I was, at least) -by the historic meaning of this scene. Over there, a few yards away, -was Germany, the fringe of what had been until some weeks ago the mighty -German Empire. Not a human being appeared on that side of the stone -bridge. There was no German sentry facing ours. The gate into Germany -was open and unguarded. A deep silence was over there by the pine-woods -where the undergrowth was red. I wondered what would happen when we -rode through that silence and that loneliness into the first German -town--Malmdy--and afterwards through many German towns and villages on -the way to the Rhine.... - -Looking back on that adventure, I remember our psychological sensations, -our surprise at the things which happened and failed to happen, the -change of mind which gradually dawned upon some of our officers, the -incredulity, resentment, suspicion, amazement, which overcame many of -them because of the attitude of the German people whom they met for the -first time face to face without arms in their hands. I have already said -that many of our officers had a secret dread of this advance into German -territory, not because they were afraid of danger to their own skins, -but because they had a greater fear of being called upon to do -"dirty work" in the event of civilians sniping and any sign of the -_franc-tireur_. They had been warned by the High Command that that might -happen, and that there must be a ruthless punishment of any such crimes. - -"Our turn for atrocities!" whispered young cavalry officers, remembering -Louvain and Alost, and they hated the idea. We were in the state of -mind which led to some of the black business in Belgium when the Germans -first advanced--nervous, ready to believe any rumour of treacherous -attack, more afraid of civilian hostility than of armed troops. A single -shot fired by some drunken fool in a German village, a single man of -ours killed in a brawl, or murdered by a German out for vengeance, might -lead to most bloody tragedy. Rumour was already whispering of ghastly -things. - -I remember on the first day of our advance meeting a young officer -of ours in charge of an armoured car which had broken down across the -frontier, outside a village. - -"I'd give a million pounds to get out of this job," he said gloomily. - -"What's the matter?" I asked. - -He told me that the game was already beginning, and swore frightful -oaths. - -"What game?" - -"Murder," he answered sharply. "Don't you get the news? Two of our -fellows have been killed in that village. Sniped from the windows. -Presently I shall be told to sweep the streets with machine-guns. Jolly -work, what?" - -He was utterly wrong, though where he heard the lie which made him -miserable I never knew. I walked into the village and found it peaceful. -No men of ours had been killed there. No men of ours had yet entered it. - -The boy who was to go forward with the leading cavalry patrol across the -Rothwasser that morning had "the needle" to the same degree. He leaned -sideways in his saddle and confided his fears to me with laughter which -did not conceal his apprehensions. - -"Hope there's no trouble.... Haven't the ghost of an idea what to do -if the Hun turns nasty. I don't know a word of their beastly language -either! If I'm the boy who takes the wrong turning, don't be too hard -on me!" - -It was a Sunday morning, with a cold white fog on the hill-tops, -and white frost on fir-trees and red bracken. Our cavalry and horse -artillery, with their transport drawn up on the Belgian side of the -frontier before the bugle sounded for the forward march, were standing -by their horses, clapping hands, beating chests, stamping feet. The men -wore their steel hats as though for an advance in the usual conditions -of warfare, and the troopers of the leading patrol rode forward with -drawn swords. They rode at the trot through pine forests along the edge -of deep ravines in which innumerable "Christmas-trees" were powdered -with glistening frost. There was the beat of horses' hoofs on frozen -roads, but the countryside was intensely silent. The farmhouses we -passed and cottages under the shelter of the woods seemed abandoned. -No flags hung out from them like those millions of flags which had -fluttered along all the miles of our way through Belgium. Now and again, -looking back at a farmhouse window, I saw a face there, staring out, but -it was quickly withdrawn. A dog came out and barked at us savagely. - -"First sign of hostility!" said the cavalry lieutenant, turning round in -his saddle and laughing boyishly. The troopers behind him grinned under -their steel hats and then looked stem again, glancing sideways into the -glades of those silent fir-woods. - -"It would be easy to snipe us from those woods," said Harding. "Too -damned easy!" - -"And quite senseless," said Brand. "What good would it do them?" - -Harding was prepared to answer the question. He had been thinking it -out. - -"The Hun never did have any sense. He's not likely to get it now. -Nothing will ever change him. He is a bad, treacherous, evil swine. We -must be prepared for the worst, and if it comes----" - -"What?" asked Brand. - -Harding had a grim look, and his mouth was hard. - -"We must act without mercy, as they did in Louvain." - -"Wholesale murder, you mean?" said Brand harshly. - -"A free hand for machine-guns," said Harding, "if they ask for it." - -Brand gave his usual groan. - -"Oh, Lord!... Haven't we finished with blood?" - -We dipped down towards Malmdy. There was a hairpin turn in the road and -we could see the town below us in the valley--a German town. - -"Pretty good map-reading!" shouted the cavalry kid. He was pleased with -himself for having led his troop on the right road, but I guessed that -he would be glad to halt this side of the mystery that lay in that town -where Sunday bells were ringing. - -A queer thing happened then. Up a steep bank was a party of girls. -German girls, of course, and the first civilians we had seen. A flutter -of white handkerchiefs came from them. They were waving to us. - -"Well, I'm damned!" said Harding. - -"Not yet," answered Brand ironically, but he was as much astonished as -all of us. - -When we came into Malmdy the cavalry patrol halted in the market square -and dismounted. It was about midday and the German people were coming -out of church. Numbers of them surrounded us, staring at the horses, -whose sleek look seemed to amaze them, and at the men who lit up -cigarettes and loosened the straps of their steel hats. Some girls -patted the necks of the horses and said: "_Wundershon!_" - -A young man in the crowd in black civilian clothes with a bowler hat -spoke in perfect English to the sergeant-major: "Your horses are looking -fine! Ours are skin and bones. When will the infantry be here?" - -"Haven't an idea," said the sergeant-major gruffly. - -Another young man addressed himself to me in French, which he spoke as -though it were his native tongue. - -"Is this the first time you have been in Germany, monsieur?" - -I told him I had visited Germany before the war. - -"You will find us changed," he said. "We have suffered very much, and -the spirit of the people is broken. You see, they have been hungry so -long." - -I looked round at the crowd and saw some bonny-faced girls among them -and children who looked well-fed. It was only the younger men who had a -pinched look. - -"The people here do not seem hungry," I said. - -He explained that the state of Malmdy was not so bad. It was only a -big-sized village and they could get produce from the farms about. All -the same, they were on short commons and were underfed. Never any meat. -No fats. "_Ersatz_" coffee. In the bigger towns there was real hunger, -or, at least, an _unternahrung_ or malnutrition, which was causing -disease in all classes, and great mortality among the children. - -"You speak French well," I told him, and he said that many people in -Malmdy spoke French and German in a bi-lingual way. It was so close to -the Belgian frontier. - -"That is why the people here had no heart in the war, even in the -beginning. My wife was a Belgian girl. When I was mobilised she said, -'You are going to kill my brothers,' and wept very much. I think that -killed her. She died in '16." - -The young man spoke gravely but without any show of emotion. He narrated -his personal history in the war. He had been in the first and second -battles of Ypres, then badly wounded and put down at the base as a clerk -for nearly two years. After that, when German man-power was running -short, he had been pushed into the ranks again and had fought in -Flanders, Cambrai, and Valenciennes. Now he had demobilised himself. - -"I am very glad the war is over, monsieur. It was a great stupidity from -the beginning. Now Germany is ruined." - -He spoke in a simple, matter-of-fact way, as though describing natural -disturbances of life, regrettable, but inevitable. - -I asked him whether the people farther from the frontier would be -hostile to the English, troops, and he seemed surprised at my question. - -"Hostile! Why, sir?.... The war is over, and we can now be friends -again. Besides, the respectable people and the middle classes"--he used -the French word _bourgeoisie_--"will be glad of your coming. It is a -protection against the evil elements who are destroying property -and behaving in a criminal way--the sailors of the fleet and the low -ruffians." - -_The war is over, and we can be friends again!_ That sentence in the -young man's speech astonished me by its directness and simplicity. -Was that the mental attitude of the German people? Did they think that -England would forget and shake hands? Did they not realise the passion -of hatred that had been aroused in England by the invasion of Belgium, -the early atrocities, the submarine war, the sinking of the _Lusitania_, -the execution of Nurse avell, the air-raids over London--all the range -and sweep of German frightfulness? - -Then I looked at our troopers. Some of them were chatting with the -Germans in a friendly way. One of them close to me gave a cigarette to -a boy in a college cap who was talking to him in schoolboy English. -Another was in conversation with two German girls who were patting his -horse. We had been in the German village ten minutes. There was no sign -of hatred here, on one side or the other. Already something had happened -which in England, if they knew, would seem monstrous and incredible. A -spell had been broken, the spell which for four years had dominated the -souls of men and women. At least, it seemed to have been broken in the -village where for the first time English soldiers met the people of the -nation they had fought and beaten. These men of the first cavalry patrol -did not seem to be nourishing thoughts of hatred and vengeance. -They were not, it seemed, remembering atrocities. They were meeting -fellow-mortals with human friendliness, and seemed inclined to talk to -them and pass the time of day. Astounding! - -I saw Wickham Brand talking to a group of German children--boys in -sailor caps with the words _Hindenburg, Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, -Unterseeboot_, printed in gold letters on the cap-bands, and girls with -yellow pigtails and coloured frocks. He pulled out a packet of chocolate -from a deep pocket of his British warm and broke it into small pieces. - -"Who would like a bit?" he asked in German, and there was a chorus of -"_Bitte!... Bitte schn!_" He held out a piece to the prettiest child, a -tiny fairy-like thing with gold-spun hair, and she blushed very vividly -and curtseyed when she took the chocolate, and then kissed Brand's long -lean hand. Young Harding was standing near. He had an utterly bewildered -expression, as a man who sees the groundwork of his faith slipping -beneath him. He turned to me as I strolled his way and looked at me with -wide astonished eyes. - -"I don't understand!" he stammered. "Haven't these people any pride? -This show of friendliness--what does it mean? I'd rather they scowled -and showed their hatred than stand round fawning on us.... And our men! -They don't seem to bear any malice. Look at that fellow gossiping with -those two girls! It's shameful.... What have we been fighting for if it -ends in this sort of thing? It makes it all a farce!" - -He was so disturbed, so unnerved, by the shock of his surprise that -there were tears of vexation in his eyes. - -I could not argue with him or explain things to him. - -I was astonished myself, quite baffled by a German friendliness that was -certainly sincere and not a mask hiding either hatred or humiliation. -Those people of Malmdy were pleased to see us. As yet I could not -get the drift of their psychology, in spite of what the young -French-speaking German had told me. I gave Harding the benefit of that -talk. - -"This is a frontier town," I said. "These people are not real Germans in -their sympathies and ideas." - -That seemed to comfort Harding a little. He clung on to the thought -that when we had got beyond the frontier we should meet the hatred he -expected to see. He wanted to meet it. He wanted to see scowling looks, -deep humiliation, a shameful recognition of defeat, the evil nature of -the people we had been fighting. Otherwise, to him, the war was all a -lie. For four years he had been inspired, strengthened, and upheld by -hatred of the Germans. He believed not only in every atrocity story that -appeared in English newspapers, but also, in accordance with all else -he read, that every German was essentially and unutterably vile, brutal, -treacherous, and evil. The German people were to him a race apart--the -Huns. They had nothing in common with ordinary human nature, with its -kindliness and weakness. They were physically, mentally, and morally -debased. They were a race of devils, and they could not be allowed to -live. Civilisation could only be saved by their extermination, or -if that were impossible, by their utter subjection. All the piled-up -slaughter of British youth and French youth was to him justified by the -conviction that the last man of ours must die if need be in order to -crush Germany and kill Germans. It is true that he had not died, nor -even had been wounded, but that was his ill-luck. He had been in the -cavalry, and had not been given many chances of fighting. Before -the last phase, when the cavalry came into their own, he had been -transferred to the Intelligence (though he did not speak a word of -German) in order to organise their dispatch-rider service. He knew -nothing about dispatch-riding, but his cousin was the brother-in-law -of a general's nephew, and he had been highly recommended for this -appointment, which had surprised and annoyed him. Still, as a young -man who believed in obedience to authority and in all old traditional -systems such as patronage and privilege, he had accepted the post -without protest. It had made no difference to his consuming hatred of -the Hun. When all his companions were pessimistic about final victory -he had remained an optimist, because of his faith that the Huns must be -destroyed or God would be betrayed. When some of his colleagues who -had lived in Germany before the war praised the German as a soldier and -exonerated the German people from part at least of the guilt of their -war lords, he tried to conceal his contempt for this folly (due to the -mistaken generosity of the English character) and repeated his own creed -of abhorrence for their race and character. "The only good German is -a dead German," he said, a thousand times, to one's arguments pleading -extenuating circumstances for German peasants, German women, German -children.... But now in this village of Malmdy on our first morning -across the frontier, within three minutes of our coming, English -troopers were chatting with Germans as though nothing had happened to -create ill-feeling on either side. Brand was giving chocolate to German -children, and German girls were patting the necks of English horses. - -"Yes," he said, after my attempted explanation. "We're too close to the -frontier. These people are different. Wait till we get on a bit. I'm -convinced we shall have trouble, and at the slightest sign of it we -shall sweep the streets with machine-gun fire. I've got my own revolver -handy, and I mean to use it without mercy if there's any treachery." - - - - -III - - -Harding had no need to use his revolver on the way to the Rhine or -in Cologne, where he stayed for some months after Armistice. We went on -with the cavalry into many villages and small towns, by slow stages, -the infantry following behind in strength, with guns and transport. The -girls outside Malmdy were not the only ones who waved handkerchiefs at -us. Now and then, it is true, there were scowling looks from men who -had obviously been German officers until a few weeks ago. Sometimes in -village inns the German inn-keeper would be sullen and silent, leaving -his wife or his maidservant to wait upon us. But even that was rare. -More often there was frank curiosity in the eyes of the people who -stared at us, and often unconcealed admiration at the smart appearance -of our troops. Often German inn-keepers welcomed our officers with bows -and smiles and prepared meat meals for us (in the country districts), -while explaining that meat was scarce and hardly tasted by ordinary -folk. Their wives and their maidservants praised God that the war was -over. - -"It lasted too long!" they said. "Oh, the misery of it! It was madness -to slaughter each other like that!" - -Brand and I went into a little shop to buy a toothbrush. - -The woman behind the counter talked about the war. - -"It was due to the wickedness of great people," she said. "There are -many people who grew rich out of the war. They wanted it to go on and on -so that they could get more rich. They gorged themselves while the poor -starved. It was the poor who were robbed of their life-blood." - -She did not speak passionately, but with a dull kind of anger. - -"My own life-blood was taken,", she said presently, after wrapping up -the tooth-brush. "First they took Hans, my eldest. He was killed almost -at once--at Lige. Then they took my second-born, Friedrich. He was -killed at Ypres. Next, Wilhelm died--in hospital at Brussels. He had -both his legs blown off. Last they took little Karl, my youngest. He was -killed by an air-bomb, far behind the lines, near Valenciennes." - -A tear splashed on the bit of paper in which she had wrapped the -tooth-brush. She wiped it away with her apron. - -"My man and I are now alone," she said, handing us the packet. "We are -too old to have more children. We sit and talk of our sons who are dead, -and wonder why God did not stop the war." - -"It is sad," said Brand. He could find nothing else to say. Not with -this woman could he argue about German guilt. - -"_Ja, es ist traurig_." - -She took the money with a "_Danke schn_." - -In the town of Mrren I spent some time with Brand and others in. the -barracks where a number of trench-mortars and machine-guns were being -handed over by German officers according to the terms of the Armistice. -The officers were mostly young men, extremely polite, anxious to save -us any kind of trouble, marvellous in their concealment of any kind of -humiliation they may have felt--_must_ have felt--in this delivery of -arms. They were confused only for one moment, and that was when a boy -with a wheelbarrow trundled by with a load of German swords--elaborate -parade swords with gold hilts. - -One of them laughed and passed it off with a few words in English. - -"There goes the old pomp and glory---to the rubbish-heap!" - -Brand made things easier by a tactful sentence. - -"The world will be happier when we are all disarmed." - -A non-commissioned officer talked to me. He had been a hairdresser in -Bayswater and a machine-gunner in Flanders. He was a little fellow with -a queer cockney accent. - -"Germany is _kaput_. We shall have a bad time in front of us. No money. -No trade. All the same, it will be better in the long run. No more -conscription; no more filthy war. We're all looking to President Wilson -and his 'Fourteen Points.' There is the hope of the world. We can hope -for a good peace--fair all round. Of course we'll have to pay, but we -shall get liberty, like in England." - -Was the man sincere? Were any of these people sincere? Or were they -crawling, fawning, hiding their hatred, ready for any treachery? I could -not make up my mind.... - -We went into Cologne some days before our programme at the urgent -request of the _Burgermeister_. We were invited in! The German seamen -of the Grand Fleet had played the devil, as in all the towns they had -passed through. They had established a Soldiers' and Workmen's Council -on the Russian system, raised the Red Flag, liberated the criminals from -the prisons. Shops had been sacked, houses looted. The _Burgermeister_ -desired British troops to ensure law and order. - -There was no disorder visible when we entered Cologne. The -revolutionaries had disappeared. The streets were thronged with -middle-class folk, among whom were thousands of men who had taken -off their uniforms a few days before our coming, or had "civilised" -themselves by tearing off their shoulder-straps and badges. As our -first squadron rode into the great cathedral square on the way to the -Hohenzollem Bridge many people in the crowds turned their heads away and -did not glance at the British cavalry. We were deliberately ignored, -and I thought that for the Germans it was the best attitude, with most -dignity. Others stared gravely at the passing cavalcade, showing no -excitement, no hostility, no friendliness, no emotion of any kind. Here -and there I met eyes which were regarding me with a dark, brooding look, -and others in which there was profound melancholy. That night, when I -wandered out alone and lost my way, and asked for direction, two young -men, obviously officers until a few days back, walked part of the way to -put me right and said "_Bitte schn! Bitte!_" when I thanked them, and -saluted with the utmost courtesy.... I wondered what would have happened -in London if we had been defeated and if German officers had walked -out alone at night and lost themselves in by-streets and asked the way. -Imagination fails before such a thought. Certainly our civility would -not have been so easy. We could not have hidden our hatred like that, if -these were hiding hatred. - -Somehow, I could not find even the smouldering fires of hate in any -German with whom I spoke that day. I could find only a kind of dazed and -stupor-like recognition of defeat, a deep sadness among humble people, -a profound anxiety as to the future fate of a ruined Germany, and a hope -in the justice of England and America. - -A score of us had luncheon at the Domhof Hotel, opposite the cathedral -which Harding had hoped to see in flames. The manager bowed us in as -if we had been distinguished visitors in time of peace. The head-waiter -handed us the menu and regretted that there was not much choice of food, -though they had scoured the country to provide for us. He and six other -waiters spoke good English, learnt in London, and seemed to have had no -interruption in their way of life, in spite of war. They were not rusty -in their art, but masters of its service according to tradition. Yet -they had all been in the fighting-ranks until the day of Armistice, and -the head-waiter, a man of forty, with hair growing grey and the look of -one who had spent years in a study rather than in front-line trenches -after table management, told me that he had been three times wounded -in Flanders, and in the last phase had been a machine-gunner in the -rearguard actions round Grevilliers and Bapaume. He revealed his mind to -me between the soup and the stew--strange talk from a German waiter. - -"I used to ask myself a hundred thousand times, 'Why am I here--in this -mud--fighting against the English whom I know and like? What devil's -meaning is there in all this? What are the evil powers that have forced -us to this insane massacre?' I thought I should go mad, and I desired -death." - -I did not argue with him, for the same reason that Brand and I did not -argue with the woman behind the counter who had lost four sons. I did -not say, "Your war lords were guilty of this war. The evil passion -and philosophy of you German people brought this upon the world--your -frightfulness." I listened to a man who had been stricken by tragedy, -who had passed through its horrors and was now immensely sad. - -At a small table next to us were the boy who had led the first cavalry -patrol and two fellow-officers. They were not eating their soup. They -were talking to the waiter, a young fellow who was making a map with -knives and spoons. - -"This is the village of Fontaine Notre Dame," he said. "I was just here -with my machine-gun when you attacked." - -"Extraordinary!" said one of the young cavalry officers. "I was here, -at the corner of this spoon, lying on my belly with my nose in the -mud--scared stiff." - -The German waiter and the three officers laughed together. Something had -happened which had taken away from them the desire to kill each other. -Our officers did not suspect there might be poison in their soup. The -young waiter was not nervous lest one of the knives he laid should be -thrust into his heart.... - -Some nights later I met Wickham Brand in the Hohestrasse. He took me by -the arm and laughed in a strange, ironical way. - -"What do you think of it all?" he asked. - -I told him that if old men from St. James's Street clubs in London, and -young women in the suburbs clamouring for the Kaiser's head, could be -transported straight to Cologne without previous warning of the things -they would see, they would go raving mad. - -Brand agreed. - -"It knocks one edgewise--even those of us who understand." - -We stood on one side, by a shop window filled with beautiful -porcelain-ware, and watched the passing crowd. It was a crowd of German -middle-class, well dressed, apparently well fed. The girls wore heavy -furs. The men were in black coats and bowler hats, or in military -overcoats and felt hats. Among them, not aloof, but mingling with them, -laughing with them, were English and Canadian soldiers. Many of them -were arm-in-arm with German girls. Others were surrounded by groups of -young Germans who had been, unmistakably, soldiers until a few weeks -earlier. English-speaking Germans were acting as interpreters in the -exchange of experiences, gossip, opinions. The German girls needed no -interpreters. Their eyes spoke, and their laughter. - -Brand and I went into an immense _caf_ called the "Germania," so -densely crowded that we had to wander round to find a place, foggy with -tobacco-smoke through which electric light blazed, noisy with the -music of a loud, unceasing orchestra, which, as we entered, was playing -selections from "Patience." Here also were many English and Canadian -officers and men, sitting at the same tables with Germans, who laughed -and nodded at them, clinked their mugs or wine-glasses with them, and -raised bowler hats to British Tommies when they left the tables -with friendly greetings on both sides. There was no orgy here, no -impropriety. Some of the soldiers were becoming slightly fuddled with -Rhine wine, but not noisily. "Glad eyes" were passing between them -and German girls, or conversations made up by winks and signs and -oft-repeated words, but all quietly and respectfully in outward -behaviour. - -Brand and I were wedged close to a table at which sat one of our -sergeant-majors, a corporal, a middle-aged German woman, and two -German girls. One of the girls spoke English remarkably well, and the -conversation of our two men was directed to her, and through her to the -others. Brand and I were eavesdroppers. - -"Tell your ma," said the sergeant-major, "that I shouldn't have been -so keen to fight Germans if I had known they were such pleasant, decent -people, as far as I find 'em at present, and I take people as I find -'em." - -The girl translated to her mother and sister and then answered: "My -mother says the war was prepared by the rich people in Europe, who made -the people mad by lies." - -"Ah," said the sergeant-major, "I shouldn't wonder! I know some of them -swine. All the same, of course, you began it, you know." - -There was another translation, and the girl answered again: "My mother -says the Germans didn't begin it. The Russians began it by moving their -armies. The Russians hated us and wanted war." - -The sergeant-major gave a snort of laughter. - -"The Russians?... They soon tired of it, anyhow. Let us all down, eh?" - -"What about atrocities?'' said the corporal, who was a cockney. - -"Atrocities?" said the English-speaking girl. "Oh, yes, there were many. -The Russians were very cruel." - -"Come oft it," said the corporal. "I mean German atrocities." - -"German?" said the girl. "No, our soldiers were well behaved--always! -There were many lies told in the English papers." * - -"That's true enough," said the sergeant-major. "Lies? Why, they fed us -up with lies. 'The Germans are starving. The Germans are on their last -legs.' 'The great victory at Neuve Chapelle.' God! I was in that great -victory. The whole battalion cut to pieces and not an officer left. A -bloody shambles--and no sense in it.... Another drop of wine, my dear?" - -"Seems to me," said the cockney corporal, "that there was a deal of -dirty work on both sides. I'm not going to say there wasn't no German -atrocities--lies or no lies--becos saw a few of 'em myself, an' no -mistake. But what I says now is what I says when I lay in the lousy -trenches with five-point-nines busting down the parapets. -The old devil 'as got us all by the legs!' I said, and 'ad a -fellow-feelin' for the poor blighters on the other side of the barbed -wire lying in the same old mud. Now I'm beginning to think the Germans -are the same as us, no better nor no worse, I reckon. Any 'ow, you -can tell your sister, miss, that I like the way she does 'er 'air. It -reminds me of my Liz." - -The English-speaking German girl did not understand this speech. She -appealed to the sergeant-major. - -"What does your friend say?" - -The sergeant-major roared with laughter.. - -"My chum says that a pretty face cures a lot of ill-feeling. -Your sister is a sweet little thing, he says. _Comprenney?_ Perhaps -you had better not translate that part to your ma. Have another drop of -wine, my dear." - -Presently the party rose from the table and went out, the sergeant-major -paying for the drinks in a lordly way and saying, "After you, ma'am," to -the mother of the two girls. - -"All this," said Brand when they had gone, "is very instructive.... And -I've been making discoveries." - -"What kind?" - -Brand looked away into the vista of the room, and his eyes roved about -the tables where other soldiers of ours sat with other Germans. - -"I've found out," he said, "that the British hatred of a nation breaks -down in the presence of its individuals. I've discovered that it is not -in the character of English fighting-men--Canadian, too, by the look of -it--to demand vengeance from the innocent for the sins of the guilty. -I'm seeing that human nature, ours anyhow, swings back to the normal as -soon as an abnormal strain is released. It is normal in human nature -to be friendly towards its kind, in spite of five years' education in -savagery." - -I doubted that, and told him so, remembering scenes in Ghent and Lille, -and that girl Marthe, and the woman of Venders. That shook Brand a -little from his new point of view, and he shifted his ground with the -words: "Perhaps I'm wrong there." - -'He told me of other "discoveries" of his, after conversation with many -German people, explaining perhaps the lack of hostility and humiliation -which had surprised us all. They were glad to see the English because -they were afraid of the French and Belgians, with their desire for -vengeance. They believed in English fair-play in spite of all the wild -propaganda of the war. Now that the Kaiser had fled and Germany was a -Republic, they believed that, in spite of defeat and great ruin, there -would be a peace which would give them a chance of recovery, and a new -era of liberty, according to the pledges of President Wilson and the -terms of the "Fourteen Points." They believed they had been beaten by -the hunger blockade, and not by the failure of the German Armies in the -field, and they would not admit that as a people they were more guilty -in the war than any others of the fighting nations. - -"It is a sense of guilt," said Brand, "that must be brought home to -them. They must be convinced of that before they can get clean again and -gain the world's forgiveness." - -He leaned over the table with his square face in the palms of his hands. - -"God knows," he said, "that there was evil on both sides. We have our -Junkerdom, too. The philosophy of our old men was not shining in its -Christian charity. We share the guilt of the war. Still, the Germans the -aggressors. They must acknowledge that." - -"The German war lords and militarists," I suggested. "Not that woman who -lost her four sons, nor peasants dragged from their ploughs, ignorant of -_Welt-politik_." - -"It's all a muddle," said Brand. "I can't sort it out. I'm full of -bewilderment and contradictions. Sometimes when I look at these Germans -in the streets, some of them so smug, I shudder and say, 'These are the -people who killed my pals,' and I'm filled with cold rage. But when they -tell me all they suffered, and their loathing of the war, I pity them -and say, 'They were trapped, like we were, by false ideas, and false -systems, and the foul lies of politicians, and the dirtiness of old -diplomacy, and the philosophy of Europe leading up to that." - -Then he told me something which interested me more at the time than his -groping to find truth, because a touch of personal drama is always more -striking to the mind than general aspects and ideas. - -"I'm billeted at the house of Franz von Kreuzenach. You -remember?--Eileen's friend." - -I was astounded at that. - -"What an amazing coincidence!" - -"It was no coincidence," he said. "I arranged it. I had that letter to -deliver, and I wanted to meet the fellow. As yet, however, I have only -seen his mother and sister. They are very civil." - -So did Wickham Brand "ask for trouble," as soldiers say, and certainly -he found it before long. - - - - -IV - - -The first meeting between Wickham Brand and young Franz von Kreuzenach -had been rather dramatic, according to my friend's account of it, and he -did not dramatise his stories much, in spite of being (before the war) -an unsuccessful novelist. It had happened on the third night after -his presentation of the billeting-paper which by military right of -occupation ordered the owners of the house to provide a bedroom and -sitting-room for an officer. There had been no trouble about that. The -_Madchen_ who had answered the door of the big white house in a side -street off the Kaiserring had dropped a curtsey, and in answer to -Brand's fluent and polite German said at once, "_Kommmen Sie herein, -bitte_," and took him into a drawing-room to the right of the hall, -leaving him there while she went to fetch "_die gnadige Baronin_," that -is to say, the Baroness von Kreuzenach. Brand remained standing, and -studied the German drawing-room to read its character as a key to that -of the family under whose roof he was coming by right of conquest, for -that, in plain words, was the meaning of his presence. - -It was a large square room, handsomely and heavily furnished in an -old-fashioned style, belonging perhaps to the Germany of Bismarck, but -with here and there in its adornment a lighter and more modern touch. -On one wall, in a gilt frame to which fat gilt cupids clung, was a -large portrait of William I. of Prussia, and on the wall opposite, in a -similar frame, a portrait of the ex-Kaiser William II. Brand saw also, -with an instant thrill of remembrance, two large steel engravings from -Winterhalter's portraits of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He had -seen them, as a child, in his grandfather's house at Kew, and in -the houses of schoolfellows' grandfathers, who cherished these -representations of Victoria and Albert with almost religious loyalty. -The large square of Turkey carpet on polished boards, a mahogany -sideboard, and some stiff big armchairs of clumsily carved oak, -were reminiscent of German furniture and taste in the period of the -mid-nineteenth century, when ours was equally atrocious. The later -period had obtruded itself into that background. There was a piano in -white wood at one end of the room, and here and there light chairs -in the "New Art" style of Germany, with thin legs and straight -uncomfortable backs. The most pleasing things in the room were some -porcelain figures of Saxon and Hanover ware, little German ladies with -pleated gowns and low-necked bodices, and, on the walls, a number of -water-colour drawings, mostly of English scenes, delicately done, with -vision and a nice sense of atmosphere. - -"The younger generation thrusting out the old," thought Brand, "and the -spirit of both of them destroyed by what has happened in five years." - -The door opened, he told me, when he had taken stock of his -surroundings, and there came in two women, one middle-aged the other -young. He guessed that he was in the presence of Frau von Kreuzenach and -her daughter, and made his bow, with an apology for intruding upon them. -He hoped that they would not be in the least degree disturbed by his -billeting-order. He would need only a bedroom and his breakfast. - -The Baroness was courteous but rather cold in her dignity. She was a -handsome woman of about forty-eight, with very fair hair streaked with -grey, and a thin, aristocratic type of face, with thin lips. She wore a -black silk dress with some fur round her shoulders. - -"It will be no inconvenience to us, sir," she answered in good English, -a little hard and over-emphasised. "Although the English people are -pleased to call us Huns"--here she laughed good-humouredly--"I trust -that you will not be too uncomfortable in a German house, in spite -of the privations due to our misfortunes and the severity of your -blockade." - -In that short speech there was a hint of hostility--masked under a -graciousness of manner--which Wickham Brand did not fail to perceive. - -"As long as it is not inconvenient----" he said awkwardly. - -It was the daughter who now spoke, and Brand was grateful for her -friendly words and impressed by her undeniable and exceptional good -looks. That she was the daughter of the older woman was clear at a -glance. She had the same thin face and fair hair, but youth was on her -side, and her finely-chiselled features had no hardness of line that -comes from age or bitterness. Her hair was like spun gold, as one -sees it in Prussia more, I fancy, than in southern Germany, and her -complexion was that perfect rose-red and lily-white which often belongs -to German girls, and is doll-like if they are soft and plump, as many -are. This girl's fault was thinness, but to Brand, not a sentimentalist -nor quickly touched by feminine influence (I have written that, but on -second thoughts believe that under Brand's ruggedness there was a deep -strain of sentiment, approaching weakness), she seemed flower-like and -spiritual. So he told me after his early acquaintance with her. - -Her first words to him were charming. - -"We have suffered very much from the war, sir, but we welcome you to our -house, not as an enemy, because the war finished with the Armistice, but -as an Englishman who may come to be our friend." - -"Thanks," said Brand. - -He could find nothing else to say at the moment, but spoke that one word -gratefully. - -The mother added something to her daughter's speech. - -"We believed the English were our friends before they declared war upon -us. We were deeply saddened by our mistake." - -"It was inevitable," said Brand, "after what had happened." - -The daughter--her name was Elsa--put her hand on her mother's arm with a -quick gesture of protest against any other words about the war. - -"I will show Captain Brand to his rooms." - -Brand wondered at her quickness in knowing his name after one glance -at his billeting-paper, and said, "Please do not trouble, _gndiges -Fraulein_," when he saw a look of disapproval, almost of alarm, on the -mother's face. - -"It will be better for Truda to show the gentleman to his rooms. I will -ring for her." - -Elsa von Kreuzenach challenged her mother's authority by a smile of -amusement, and there was a slight deepening of that delicate colour -in her face. "Truda is boiling the usual cabbage for the usual -_Mittagessen._ I will go, mother." - -She turned to Brand with a smile and bowed to him. - -"I will act as your guide upstairs, Captain Brand. After that you may -find your own way. It is not difficult." - -Brand, who described the scene to me, told me that the girl went very -quickly up a wide flight of stairs so that in his big riding boots he -found it difficult to keep pace with her. She went down a long corridor -lined with etchings on the walls, and opened a white door leading into -a big room furnished as a library. There was a wood fire burning there, -and at a glance Brand noticed one or two decorations on the walls--a -pair of foils with a fencing-mask and gauntlets, some charcoal -drawings--one of a girl's head, which was this girl's when that gold -hair of hers hung in two Gretchen pig-tails--and some antlers. - -"Here you can sit and smoke your pipe," said Elsa von Kreuzenach. "Also, -if you are bored, you can read those books. You see we have many English -authors--Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, G. K. Chesterton, Kipling--heaps. My -brother and I used to read all we could get of English books." - -Brand remembered that Franz von Kreuzenach had read Kipling. He had -quoted "Puck of Pook's Hill" to Eileen O'Connor. - -"Now and then," he said, "I may read a little German." - -"Pooh!" said the girl. "It is so dull, most of it. Not exciting, like -yours." - -She opened another door. - -"Here is your bedroom. It used to belong to my brother Heinrich." - -"Won't he want it?" asked Brand. - -He could have bitten his tongue out for that question when the girl -answered it. - -"He was killed in Flanders." - -A sudden sadness took possession of her eyes and Brand said, "I'm -sorry." - -"Yes. I was sorry, too, and wept for weeks. He was a nice boy, so jolly, -as you say. He would have been an artist if he had lived. All those -charcoal sketches are by him." - -She pointed to the drawing of a young man's head over the -dressing-table. - -"That is my brother Franz. He is home again, _Gott sei dank!_ Heinrich -worshipped him." - -Brand looked at the portrait of the man who had saved Eileen O'Connor. -He had Eileen's letter to him in his pocket. It was a good-looking head, -clean-cut, with frank eyes, rather noble. - -"I hope we shall meet one day," said Brand. - -Elsa von Kreuzenach seemed pleased with those words. - -"He will like to meet you--ever so much. You see, he was educated at -Oxford, and does not forget his love for England." - -"In spite of the war?" asked Brand. - -The girl put both her hands to her breast. - -"The war!" she said. "Let us forget the years when we all went mad. It -was a madness of hate and of lies and of ignorance--on both sides. The -poor people in all countries suffered for the sins of the wicked men -who made this war against our will and called out our evil passions. -The wicked men in England were as bad as those in Germany. Now it is for -good people to build up a new world out of the ruins that war made, the -ruin of hearts." - -She asked a direct question of Brand, earnestly. - -"Are you one of those who will go on hating?" - -Brand hesitated. He could not forget many things. He knew, so he told -me, that he had not yet killed the old hatred that had made him a sniper -in No Man's Land. Many times it surged up again. He could not forgive -the Germans for many cruelties. To this girl, then, he hedged a little. - -"The future must wipe out the past. The peace must not be for -vengeance." - -At those last words the blue eyes of Elsa von Kreuzenach lighted up -gladly. - -"That is the old English spirit! I have said to my mother and father a -thousand times, 'England is generous at heart. She loves fair play. Now -that victory is hers she will put away base passions and make a noble -peace that will help us out of our agony and ruin. All our hope is with -England, and with the American President, who is the noblest man on -earth.'" - -"And your father and mother?" asked Brand. "What do they say?" - -The girl smiled rather miserably. - -"They belong to the old school. Franz and I are of the younger -generation... My father denounces England as the demon behind all the -war-devils, and little mother finds it hard to forgive England for -joining the war against us, and because the English Army killed -Heinrich. You must be patient with them." - -She spoke as though Brand belonged already to their family life and -would need great tact. - -She moved towards the door, and stood framed there in its white -woodwork, a pretty figure. - -"We have two maidservants for this great house," she said. "The war -has made us poor. Truda and Gretchen they are called. They are -both quarrelling for the pleasure of waiting on you. They are both -frightfully excited to have an English officer in the house." - -"Queer!" said Brand, laughing. - -"Why queer?" asked Elsa von Kreuzenach. "I am a little excited, too." - -She made a half-curtsey, like an early Victorian girl; and then closed -his door, and Brand was sorry, as he told me quite frankly, that he was -left alone. - -"The girl's a pretty piece of Dresden china," he said. - -When I chaffed him with a "Take care, old lad!" he only growled and -muttered, "Oh, to hell with that! I suppose I can admire a pretty thing, -even if it's made in Germany?" - -Brand told me that he met Elsa's father and brother on the third evening -that he slept in the Kreuzenachs' house. When he arrived that evening at -about five o'clock, the maid-servant, Truda, who "did" his bedroom and -dusted his sitting-room with a German passion for cleanliness and with -many conversational advances, informed him with a look of mysterious -importance that the "Old Man" wanted to see him in the drawing-room. - -"What old man?" asked Brand, at which Truda giggled and said, "The old -Herr Baron." - -"He hates the English like ten thousand devils," added Truda -confidentially. - -"Perhaps I had better not go then," was Brand's answer. - -Truda told him that he would have to go. When the old Herr Baron asked -for a thing it had to be given him. The only person who dared to disobey -him was Frulein Elsa, who was very brave and a "_hubsches Madchen._" - -Brand braced himself for the interview, but felt extremely nervous -when Truda rapped at the drawingroom door, opened it, and announced in -German: "The English officer!" - -The family von Kreuzenach was in full strength, obviously waiting for -his arrival. The Baroness was in an evening gown, of black silk showing -her bare neck and arms. She was sitting stiffly in a high-backed chair -by the piano, and was very handsome in her cold way. - -Her husband, General von Kreuzenach, was pretending to read a book by -the fireside. He was a tall, bald-headed, heavy-jowled man with a short -white moustache. The ribbon of the Iron Cross was fastened to the top -buttonhole of his frock-coat. - -Elsa was sitting on a stool by his side, and on a low seat, with his -back to the fire, was a tall young man with his left arm in a sling, -whom Brand knew at once to be Franz von Kreuzenach, Eileen O'Connor's -friend. - -When Brand came into the room everybody rose in a formal, frightening -way, and Elsa's mother rose very graciously and spoke to her husband. - -"This, Baron, is Captain Brand, the English officer who is billeted in -our house." - -The Baron bowed stiffly to Brand. - -"I hope, sir, that my servants are attending to your needs in every way. -I beg of you to believe that as an old soldier I wish to fulfil my duty -as an officer and a gentleman, however painful the circumstances in -which you find us." - -Brand replied with equal gravity, regretting his intrusion, and -expressing his gratitude for the great courtesy that had been shown to -him. Curiously, he told me, he had a strong temptation to laugh. The -enormous formality of the reception touched some sense of absurdity -so that he wanted to laugh loudly and wildly. Probably that was sheer -nervousness. - -"Permit me to present my son," said the lady. "Lieutenant Franz von -Kreuzenach." - -The young man came forward and clicked heels in the German fashion, but -his way of shaking hands and his easy "How do you do?" were perfectly -English. For a moment Brand met his eyes, and found them frank and -friendly. He had a vision of this man sitting in Eileen O'Connor's -room, gazing at her with love in his eyes, and, afterwards, embarrassed, -shameful, and immensely sad in that trial scene. - -Elsa also shook hands with him and helped to break the hard ice of -ceremony. - -"My brother is very glad to meet you. He was at Oxford, you know. Come -and sit here. You will take tea, I am sure." - -They had prepared tea for him specially, and Elsa served it like an -English girl, charmingly. - -Brand was not an easy conversationalist. His drawingroom manners were -_gauche_ always, and that evening in the German drawing-room he felt, he -told me, "a perfect fool," and could think of no small talk. Franz von -Kreuzenach helped him out by talking about Oxford, and Brand felt more -at ease when he found that the young German officer knew some of his -old college friends and described a "rag" in his own third year. The -old Baron sat stiffly, listening with mask-like gravity to this -conversation. Elsa laughed without embarrassment at her brother's -description of "debagging" incident, when the trousers of a proctor -had been removed in "the High," and the Frau von Kreuzenach permitted -herself a wintry smile. - -"Before the war," she said, "we wished our children to get an English -education. Elsa went to a school at Brighton. We were very fond of -England." - -The general joined in the conversation for the first time. - -"It was a weakness. Without offence, sir, I think that our German youth -would have been better employed at German universities, where education -is more seriously regarded, and where the national spirit is fostered -and strengthened." - -Brand announced that he had been to Heidelberg University, and agreed -that German students take their studies more seriously than English. - -"We go to our universities for character more than for knowledge." - -"Yes," said the elder von Kreuzenach. "It is there the English learn -their Imperialism and political ambitions. From their point of view they -are right. English pride--so arrogant--is a great strength." - -Franz von Kreuzenach toned down his father's remark. - -"My father uses the word pride in its best sense--pride of race and -tradition. Personally, what struck me most at Oxford was the absence of -all deliberate philosophical influence. The men were very free in their -opinions. Most of those in my set were anti-imperialists and advanced -Liberals, in a light-hearted way. But I fancy most of them did not worry -very much about political ideas. They were up for 'a good time,' -and made the most of youth, in sport and companionship. They laughed -enormously. I think the Germans laugh too little. We are lacking in a -national sense of humour, except of a coarse and rustic type." - -"I entirely disagree with you, Franz," said the elder man sternly. "I -find my own sense of humour sufficiently developed. You are biassed by -your pro-English sympathy, which I find extraordinary and regrettable -after what has happened." - -He turned to Brand and said that as a soldier he would understand that -courtesy to individuals did not abolish the sacred duty of hating a -country which was essentially hostile to his own in spirit and in act. - -"England," he added, "has behaved in an unforgivable way. For many years -before the war she plotted the ruin of Germany in alliance with Russia -and France. She challenged Germany's trade interests and national -development in every part of the globe, and built a great fleet for the -sole purpose of preventing Germany's colonial expansion. England has -always been our enemy since she became aware of our increasing strength, -for she will brook no rival. I do not blame her, for that is the right -of her national egotism. But as a true German I have always recognised -the inevitability of our conflict." - -Brand had no need to answer this denunciation, for Elsa von Kreuzenach -broke into her father's speech impatiently. - -"You are too bad, father! Captain Brand does not wish to spend the -evening in political argument. You know what Franz and I think. We -believe that all the evil of the war was caused by silly old hatred and -greedy rivalries. Isn't the world big enough for the free development -of all its peoples? If not, then life is not worth living, and the human -race must go on killing each other until the world is a wilderness." - -"I agree," said Brand, looking at Elsa. "The peoples of Europe must -resist all further incitements to make war on each other. Surely the -American President has given us all a new philosophy by his call for a -League of Nations, and his promise of peace without vengeance, with the -self-determination of peoples." - -"That is true," said Franz von Kreuzenach. "The Allies are bound by -Wilson's 'Fourteen Points.' We agreed to the Armistice on that basis, -and it is because of the promise that lies in those clauses--the charter -of a New World--that the German people, and the Austrians, accept their -defeat with resignation, and look forward with hope--in spite of our -present ruin--to a greater liberty and to a more beautiful democracy." - -"Yes," said Elsa, "what my brother says, Captain Brand, explains the -spirit with which your English soldiers have been received on the Rhine. -Perhaps you expected hostility, hatred, black looks? No, the German -people welcome you, and your American comrades, because the bitterness -of defeat is softened by the knowledge that there is to be no more -bloodshed--alas, we are drained of blood!--and that the peace will begin -a nobler age in history for all of us." - -The general shifted in his chair so that it scraped the polished boards. -A deep wave of colour swept up to his bald head. - -"Defeat?" he said. "My son and daughter talk of defeat!... There was no -defeat. The German Armies were invincible to the last. They never lost a -battle. They fell back, not because of their own failure but because the -heart of the German people was sapped by the weakness of hunger, caused -by the infamous English blockade, which starved our women and children. -_Ja_, even our manhood was weakened by starvation. Still more, our -civilians were poisoned by a pestilential heresy learnt in Russia, a -most damnable pacifism, which destroyed their will to win. Our glorious -armies were stabbed in the back by anarchy and treachery." - -"It is defeat, sir, all the same," said Franz von Kreuze-nach, with grim -deference, to his father. "Let us face the tragedy of the facts. As an -officer of the rearguard defence, I have to admit, too, that the German -Armies were beaten in the field. Our war machine was worn out and -disintegrated by the repeated blows that struck us. Our man-power was -exhausted, and we could no longer resist the weight of the Allied -Armies. The Americans had immense reserves of men to throw in against -us. We could only save ourselves by retreat. Field Marshal von -Hindenburg himself has admitted that." - -The general's face was no longer flushed with angry colour. He was very -white, with a kind of dead look, except for the smouldering fire of his -eyes. He spoke in a low, choking voice, in German. - -"If I had known that a son of mine, bearing the name of Franz von -Kreuzenach, would have admitted the defeat of the German Army before an -officer of an enemy power I would have strangled him at birth." - -He grasped the arms of his chair and made one or two efforts to rise, -but could not do so. - -"Anna!" he commanded harshly, to his wife, "give me your arm. This -officer will excuse me, I trust. I feel unwell." - -Franz von Kreuzenach went quickly over to his father, before his mother -could rise. - -"Father, I deeply regret having pained you. The truth is tragic -enough----" - -The old man answered him ferociously. - -"You have not spoken truth, but lies. You are a disgrace to the rank of -a German officer and to my name. You have been infected by the poison of -socialism and anarchy. Anna--your arm!" - -Elsa's mother stooped over her husband and lifted his hand to her lips. - -"_Mein lieber Mann_," she said very softly. - -The old man rose stiffly, leaning on his wife's arm, and bowed to Brand. - -"I beg you to excuse me, sir. As a German soldier I do not admit the -words 'defeat' or 'retreat,' even when spoken within my own household. -The ever-glorious German Army has never been defeated, and has never -retreated--except according to plan. I wish you goodnight." - -Brand was standing, and bowed to the general in silence. - -It was a silence which lasted after the husband and wife had left the -room. The girl Elsa was mopping her eyes. Franz von Kreuzenach stood, -very pale, by the empty chair in which his father had sat. He was the -first to speak. - -"I'm awfully sorry. I ought not to have spoken like that before my -father. He belongs to the old school." - -Brand told me that he felt abominably uncomfortable, and wished with all -his heart that he had not been billeted in this German house. - -Elsa rose quickly and put her hand on her brother's arm. - -"I am glad you spoke as you did, Franz. It is hateful to hurt our dear -father, but it is necessary to tell the truth now, or we cannot save -ourselves, and there will be no new era in the world. It is the younger -generation that must re-shape the world, and that cannot be done if we -yield to old falsehoods and go the way of old traditions." - -Franz raised his sister's hand to his lips, and Brand told me that his -heart softened at the sight of that caress, as it had when Elsa's mother -kissed the hand of her old husband. It seemed to him symbolical of the -two generations, standing together, the old against the young, the young -against the old. - -"In England, also," he said, "we have those who stand by hate, and those -who would break with the old traditions and forget, as soon as possible, -old enmities." - -"It is the new conflict," said Franz von Kreuzenach solemnly. "It will -divide the world and many houses, as Christ's gospel divided father from -son and blood-brothers. It is the new agony." - -"The new hope," said Elsa passionately. - -Brand made an early excuse to retire to his room, and Franz von -Kreuzenach conducted him upstairs and carried his candlestick. - -"Thanks," said Brand, in the doorway of his room. Then suddenly -he remembered Eileen O'Connor's letter, and put his hand into his -breast-pocket for his case. - -"I have a letter for you," he said. - -"So?" The young German was surprised. - -"From a lady in Lille," said Brand. "Miss Eileen O'Connor." - -Franz von Kreuzenach started violently, and for a moment or two he -was incapable of speech. When he took the letter from Brand his hand -trembled. - -"You know her?" he said at last. - -"I knew her in old days and met her in Lille," answered - -Brand. "She told me of your kindness to her. I promised to thank you -when I met you. I do so now." - -He held out his hand and Franz von Kreuzenach grasped it in a hard grip. - -"She is well?" he asked, with deep emotion. - -"Well and happy," said Brand. - -"That is good." - -The young German was immensely embarrassed, absurdly self-conscious and -shy. - -"In Lille," he said, "I had the honour of her friendship." - -"She told me," answered Brand. "I saw some of your songs in her room." - -"Yes, I sang to her." - -Franz von Kreuzenach laughed awkwardly. Then suddenly a look of -something like fear--certainly alarm--changed his expression. - -"I must beg of you to keep secret any knowledge of my--my -friendship--with that lady. She acted--rashly. If it were known, even -by my father, that I did--what I did--my honour, perhaps even my life, -would be unsafe. You understand, I am sure." - -"Perfectly," said Brand. - -"As a German officer," said Franz von Kreuzenach, "I took great risk." - -He emphasised his words. - -"As a German officer I took liberties with my duty--because of a higher -law." - -"A higher law than discipline," said Brand. "Perhaps a nobler duty than -the code of a German officer." - -He spoke with a touch of irony, but Franz von Kreuzenach was unconscious -of that. - -"Our duty to God," he said gravely. "Human pity. Love." - -An expression of immense sentiment filled his eyes An Englishman would -have masked it more guardedly. - -"Good-night," said Brand, "and thanks again." - -The young German clicked his heels and bowed. - -"Good-night, sir." - -Brand went to bed in a leisurely way, and before sleeping heard a violin -being played in the room above his own. By the tune he remembered the -words of an old song, as Eileen O'Connor had sung it in Lille, and as he -had learnt it in his own home before the war. - - "There's one that is pure as an angel, - - And fair as the flowers of May, - - They call her the gentle maiden - - Wherever she takes her way." - -Franz von Kreuzenach was having an orgy of sentiment, and Brand, -somehow, envied him. - - - - -V - - -Our entry into Cologne and life among the people whom we had -been fighting for four years and more was an amazing psychological -experience, and not one of us there on the Rhine could escape its subtle -influence upon our opinions and subconscious state of mind. Some of our -officers, I am sure, were utterly unaware of the change being wrought -in them by daily association with German civilians. They did not realise -how, day by day, their old beliefs on the subject of "the Hun" were -being broken down by contact with people who behaved with dignity for -the most part, and according to the ordinary rules of human nature. -Charles Fortune, our humorist, delighted to observe these things, and -his irony found ready targets in Cologne, both among British officers -and German civilians, neither of whom he spared. I remember that I -was walking one day down Hohestrasse with young Harding, after the -proclamation had been issued (and enforced with numerous arrests and -fines by the A.P.M. and the military police) that all German civilians -were to salute British officers by doffing their hats in the streets. -The absurdity of it was so great that in a crowded street..like the -Hohestrasse the civilian people would have had to remain bareheaded, -owing to the constant passing of our officers. - -Fortune saluted Harding and myself not only with one hand but with two. -He wore his "heroic" face, wonderfully noble and mystical. - -"How great and glorious is the British Army!" he said. "How immense are -the power and majesty of the temporary lieutenant! For four years and -a half have we fought to crush militarism. Nine hundred thousand men of -ours have died explosive deaths in order to abolish the philosophy -of Zabernism--you remember!--the claim of the military caste to the -servility of civilian salutes. Two million men of ours are blind, -crippled, shell-shocked, as martyrs for democracy made free of Junkerdom -by the crushing of the Hun. Now, by a slight error in logic (the -beautiful inconsistency of our English character), we arrest, fine, or -imprison any German man or child who does not bare his head before a -little English subaltern from Peckham Rye or Tooting in a 'Gor'blimy' -cap! How great and good we are! How free from hypocrisy! How splendid -our victory for the little peoples of the earth!" - -Young Harding, who had been returning salutes solemnly and mechanically -to great numbers of Germans, flushed a little. - -"I suppose it's necessary to enforce respect. All the same, it's a -horrid bore." - -Fortune wagged his hand behind his ear to an elderly German who took off -his bowler hat. The man stared at him in a frightened way, as though the -English officer had suddenly gone mad and might bite him. - -"Strange!" said Fortune. "Not yet have they been taught the beauty of -the Guards' salute. That man ought to be put into a dark cell, with -bread and water, and torture from 9 a.m. till mid-day on Wednesdays and -Fridays." - -Fortune was vastly entertained by the sight of British soldiers walking -about with German families in whose houses they were billeted. Some of -them were arm-inarm with German girls, a sergeant-major was carrying -a small flaxen-haired boy on whose sailor's cap was the word -"_Vaterland_." - -"Disgraceful!" said Fortune, looking sternly at Harding. "In spite of -all our atrocity tales, our propaganda of righteous hate, our training -of the young idea that a Hun must be killed at sight--'the only good -German is a dead German,' as you remember, Harding--these soldiers -of ours are fraternising with the enemy and flirting with the enemy's -fair-haired daughters, and carrying infant Huns shoulder-high. Look at -that sergeant-major forgetting all my propaganda. Surely he ought to cut -the throat of that baby Hindenburg! My heart aches for Blear-eyed Bill, -the Butcher of the Boche. All his work undone. All his fury fizzled. -Sad! sad!" Harding looked profoundly uncomfortable at this sarcasm. He -was billeted with a German family who treated him as an honoured friend. -The mother, a dear old soul, as he reluctantly admitted, brought him an -early cup of tea in the morning, with his shaving-water. Three times he -had refused it, remembering his oath never to accept a favour from male -or female Hun. On the fourth time his will-power weakened under the old -lady's anxious solicitations and his desire for the luxury of tea before -dressing. He said "_Danke schn_," and afterwards reproached himself -bitterly for his feeble resistance. He was alarmed at his own change -of heart towards these people. It was impossible for him to draw -back solemnly or with pompous and aloof dignity when the old lady's -grandchild, a little girl of six, waylaid him in the hall dropped a -curtsey in the pretty German style, and then ran forward to kiss his -hand and say, "_Guten Tag, Herr Offizier!_" - -He bought a box of chocolate for her in the Hohestrasse and then walked -with it irresolutely, tempted to throw it into the Rhine, or to give -it to a passing Tommy. Half-an-hour later he presented it to little -Elizabeth, who received it with a cry of delight, and, jumping on to -his knee, kissed him effusively on both cheeks. Young Harding adored -children, but felt as guilty at these German kisses as though he had -betrayed his country and his faith. - -One thing which acted in favour of the Germans was the lack of manners -displayed by some young English officers in the hotels, restaurants, -and shops. In all armies there are cads, and ours was not without them, -though they were rare. The conditions of our military occupation -with absolute authority over the civilian people provided a unique -opportunity for the caddish instincts of "half-baked" youth. They came -swaggering into Cologne determined to "put it across the Hun" and "to -stand no nonsense." So they bullied frightened waiters, rapped their -sticks on shop-counters, insulted German shop-girls, and talked loudly -about "Hunnish behaviour" in restaurants where many Germans could hear -and understand. - -Harding, Fortune and I were in the Domhof Hotel when one such scene -occurred. A group of noisy subalterns were disputing the cost of their -meal and refusing to pay for the wine. - -"You stole all the wine in Lille," shouted one lieutenant of ours. "I'm -damned if I'll pay for wine in Cologne." - -"I stole no wine in Lille, sir," said the waiter politely. "I was never -there." - -"Don't you insult English officers," said one of the other subalterns. -"We are here to tread on your necks." - -Fortune looked at me and raised his eye-brows. - -"It isn't a good imitation," he said. "If they want to play the game of -frightfulness, they really ought to do better than that. They don't even -make the right kind of face." - -Harding spoke bitterly. - -"Cads!... Cads!... Somebody ought to put them under arrest." - -"It doesn't really impress the Germans," said Fortune. "They know it's -only make-believe. You see, the foolish boys are paying their bill. -Now, if I, or Blear-eyed Bill, were to do the Junker stunt, we should at -least look the real ogres." - -He frowned horribly, puffed out his cheeks, and growled and grumbled -with an air of senile ferocity--to the great delight of a young German -waiter watching him from a corner of the room, and already aware that -Fortune was a humorist. - -The few cads among us caused a reaction in the minds of all men of -good manners, so that they took the part of the Germans. Even various -regulations and restrictions ordered by the military governor during -the first few months of our occupation were resented more by British -officers and men than by the Germans themselves. The opera was closed, -and British officers said, "What preposterous nonsense! How are the -poor devils going to earn their living, and how are we going to amuse -ourselves?" - -The wine-concerts and restaurants were ordered to shut down at ten -o'clock, and again the British Army of Occupation "groused" exceedingly -and said, "We thought this war had been fought for liberty. Why all this -petty tyranny?" Presently these places were allowed to stay open till -eleven, and all the way down the Hohestrasse, as eleven o'clock struck, -one saw groups of British officers and men, and French and American -officers, pouring out of a _Wein-stube, Kunstler Conzert or Bier-halle_, -with farewell greetings or promises of further rendezvous with laughing -German girls, who seemed to learn English by magic. - -"Disgraceful!" said young Harding, who was a married man with a pretty -wife in England for whom he yearned with a home-sickness which he -revealed to me boyishly when we became closer friends in this German -city. - -"Not disgraceful," said the little American doctor, who had joined us -in Cologne, "but only the fulfilment of nature's law, which makes man -desire woman. Allah is great!... But juxtaposition is greater." - -Dr. Small was friends with all of us, and there was not one among our -crowd who had not an affection and admiration for this little man whose -honesty was transparent, and whose vital nervous energy was like a fresh -wind to any company in which he found himself. It was Wickham Brand, -however, who had captured the doctor's heart most of all, and I think I -was his "second best." Anyhow, it was to me that he revealed his opinion -of Brand, and some of his most intimate thoughts. - -"Wickham has the quality of greatness," he said. "I don't mean to say -he's great now. Not at all. I think he's fumbling and groping, not sure -of himself, afraid of his best instincts, thinking his worst may be -right. But one day he will straighten all that out and have a call as -loud as a trumpet. What I like is his moodiness and bad temper." - -"Queer taste, doctor!" I remarked. "When old Brand is in the sulks -there's nothing doing with him. He's like a bear with a sore ear." - -"Sure!" said Dr. Small. "That's exactly it. He is biting his own sore -ear. I guess with him, though, it's a sore heart. He keeps moping and -fretting and won't let his wounds heal. That's what makes him different -from most others, especially you English. You go through frightful -experiences and then forget them and say, 'Funny old world, young -fellah! Come and have a drink.' You see civilisation rocking like a boat -in a storm, but you say, in your English way, 'Why worry?'... Wickham -worries. He wants to put things right, and make the world safer for the -next crowd. He thinks of the boys who will have to fight in the next -war--wants to save them from his agonies." - -"Yes, he's frightfully sensitive underneath his mask of ruggedness," I -said. - -"And romantic," said the doctor. - -"Romantic?" - -"Why, yes. That girl, Eileen O'Connor, churned up his heart all right. -Didn't you see the worship in his eyes? It made me feel good." - -I laughed at the little doctor, and accused him of romanticism. - -"Anyhow," I said, more seriously. "Eileen O'Connor is not without -romance herself, and I don't know what she wrote in that letter to Franz -von Kreuzenach, but I suspect she re-opened an episode which had best -be closed.... As for Brand, I think he's asking for trouble of the same -kind. If he sees much of that girl Elsa I won't answer for him. She's -amazingly pretty, and full of charm from what Brand tells me." - -"I guess he'll be a darned fool if he fixes up with that girl," growled -the doctor. - -"You're inconsistent," I said. "Are you shocked that Wickham Brand -should fall in love with a German girl?" - -"Not at all, sonny," said Dr. Small. "As a biologist I know you can't -interfere with natural selection, and a pretty girl is an alluring -creature, whether she speaks German or Icelandic. But this girl, Elsa -von Kreuzenach, is not up to a high standard of eugenics." - -I was amused by the doctor's scientific disapproval. - -"What's wrong with her?" I asked. "And when did you meet her?" - -"Sonny," said the doctor, "what do you think I've been doing all these -weeks in Cologne? Drinking coffee at the Domhof Hotel with the A.P.M. -and his soldier-policemen? Watching the dancing-girls every evening in -wine-rooms like this?" - -We sat in a _Wein-stube_ as we talked, for the sake of light and a -little music. It was typical of a score of others in Cologne, with -settees of oak divided from each other in "cosy corners" hung with -draperies of green and red silk; and little tables to which waiters -brought relays of Rhine wines in tall thin bottles for the thirstiness -of German civilians and British officers. At one end of the room was -a small stage, and an orchestra composed of a pianist who seemed to be -suffering from a mild form of shell-shock (judging from a convulsive -twitch), a young German-Jew, who played the fiddle squeakily, and a -thin, sad-faced girl behind a 'cello. Every now and then a bald-headed -man in evening clothes mounted the stage and begged the attention of the -company for a dance by the well-known artist Fraulein So-and-so. From -behind a curtain near the wine-bar came a dancing-girl, in the usual -ballet dress and the usual fixed and senseless smile, who proceeded to -perform Pavlova effects on a stage two yards square, while the young Jew -fiddler flattened himself against the side curtain with a restricted use -of his bow, and the pianist with the shell-shock lurched sideways as he -played to avoid her floppy skirts, and the girl behind the 'cello drew -deep chords with a look of misery. - -"These are pretty dull spots," I said to the little doctor, "but -where have you been spending your time? And when did you meet Elsa von -Kreuzenach?" - -Dr. Small told me that he had been seeking knowledge in the only place -where he could study social health and social disease--hospitals, -work-shops, babies' _crches_, slum tenements. He was scornful of -English officers and correspondents who summed up the social state of -Germany after a stroll down the Hohestrasse, a gorge of _ersatz_ pastry -("Filth" he said) in the tea-shops, and a dinner of four courses in a -big hotel on smuggled food at fantastic prices. - -"You might as well judge Germany by the guzzling swine in this place as -England by a party of profiteers at Brighton. The poor middle-classes -and the labourers stay indoors after their day's job and do not exhibit -their misery in the public ways." - -"Real misery?" I asked. "Hunger?" - -Dr. Small glowered at me through his goggles. - -"Come and see. Come and see the mothers who have no milk for their -babes, and the babes who are bulbousheaded, with rickets. Come and see -the tenement lodgings where working families sit round cabbage soup as -their chief meal, with bread that ties their entrails into knots but -gives 'em a sense of fulness not enjoyed by those who have no bread. -Man, it's awful. It tears at one's heart. But you needn't go into the -slums to find hunger--four years of under-nourishment which has weakened -growing girls so that they swoon at their work or fall asleep through -weakness in the tram cars. In many of the big houses where life looks so -comfortable, from which women come out in furs, looking so rich, these -German people have not enough to eat, and what they eat is manufactured -in the chemist's shop and the _ersatz_ factories. I found that out from -that girl, Elsa von Kreuzenach." - -"How?" I asked. - -"She is a nurse in a babies' _crche_, poor child. Showed me round -with a mother-look in her eyes, while all the scrofulous kiddies cried, -'_Guten Tag! Guten Tag!_' like the quacking of ducks. 'After to-morrow,' -she said, 'there will be no more milk for them. What can we do for them -then, doctor? They will wither and die.' Those were her words, and I saw -her sadness. I saw something else presently. I saw her sway a little, -and she fell like that girl Marthe on the doorstep at Lille. 'For the -love of Mike!' I said, and when she pulled round bullied her. - -"'What did you have for breakfast?' I asked. - -"'_Ersatz_ coffee,' she said, laughing, 'and a bit of bread. A good -_fruhstuck_, doctor.' - -"'Good be hanged!' I said. 'What did you have for lunch?' - -"'Cabbage soup and _ein kleines brodchen_,' she says. 'After four years -one gets used to it.' - -"'What will you have for dinner?' said I, not liking the look of things. - -"She laughed, as though she saw a funny joke. - -"'Cabbage soup and turnips,' she said, 'and a regular feast.' - -"'I thought your father was a Baron,' I remarked in my sarcastic way. - -"'That's true,' she says, 'and an honest man he is, and therefore poor. -It is only the profiteers who feed well in Germany. All through the war -they waxed fat on the flesh-and-blood of the men who fought and died. -Now they steal the food of the poor by bribing the peasants to sell -their produce at any price.' _Schleichandlung_ is the word she used. -That means 'smuggling.' It also means hell's torture, I hope, for -those who do it.... So there you are. If Wickham Brand marries Elsa von -Kreuze-nach, he marries a girl whose health has been undermined by -four years' semi-starvation. What do you think their children will be? -Rickety, tuberculous, undersized, weak-framed. Wickham Brand deserves -better luck than that, sonny." - -I roared with laughter at the little doctor, and told him he was looking -too far ahead, as far as Brand and the German girl were concerned. This -made him angry, in his humorous way, and he told me that those who don't -look ahead fail to see the trouble under their nose until they fall over -it. - -We left the _Wein-stube_ through a fog of smoke. Another dancing girl -was on the tiny stage, waving her arms and legs. An English officer, -slightly fuddled, was writing a cheque for his bill and persuading the -German manager to accept it. Two young French officers were staring at -the dancing-girl with hostile eyes. Five young Germans were noisy round -six tall bottles of _Liebfraumilch_. The doctor and I walked down to -the bank of the Rhine below the Hohenzollern bridge. Our sentries were -there, guarding heavy guns which thrust their snouts up from tarpaulin -covers. - -Two German women passed, with dragging footsteps, and one said wearily, -"_Ach, lieber Gott!_" - -The doctor was silent for some time after his long monologue. He stared -across the Rhine, on whose black surface lights glimmered with a milky -radiance. Presently he spoke again, and I remember his words, which -were, in a way, prophetic. - -"These German people are broken. They _had_ to be broken. They are -punished. They _had_ to be punished. Because they obeyed the call of -their leaders, which was to evil, their power has been overthrown and -their race made weak. You and I, an Englishman, an American, stand here, -by right of victory, overlooking this river which has flowed through -two thousand years of German history. It has seen the building-up of the -German people, their industry, their genius, their racial consciousness. -It has been in the rhythm of their poetry and has made the melody of -their songs. On its banks lived the little people of German fairy-tales, -and the heroes of their legends. Now there are English guns ready to -fire across the water and English, French and American soldiers pacing -this road along the Rhine, as victors and guards of victory. What hurt -to the pride of this people! What a downfall! We must be glad of that -because the German challenge to the world was not to be endured by free -peoples. That is true, and nothing can ever alter its truth or make it -seem false. I stand firm by that faith. But I see also, what before -I did not see, that many of these Germans were but slaves of a system -which they could not change, and spellbound by old traditions, old -watch-words, belonging to the soul of their race, so that when they were -spoken they had to offer their lives in sacrifice. High powers above -them arranged their destiny, and the manner and measure of their -sacrifice, and they had no voice, or strength, or knowledge, to -protest--these German peasants, these boys who fought, these women and -children who suffered and starved. Now it is they, the ignorant and -the innocent, who must go on suffering, paying in peace for what their -rulers did in war. Men will say that is the Justice of God. I can see -no loving God's work in the starvation of babes, nor in the weakening of -women so that mothers have no milk. I see only the cruelty of men. It is -certain now that, having won the war, we must be merciful in peace. We -must relieve the blockade, which is still starving these people. We must -not go out for vengeance but rather to rescue. For this war has involved -the civilian populations of Europe and is not limited to armies. A -treaty of peace will be with Famine and Plague rather than with defeated -generals and humiliated diplomats. If we make a military peace, without -regard to the agonies of peoples, there will be a tragic price to pay -by victors as well as by vanquished. For the victors are weak too. Their -strength was nearly spent. They--except my people--were panting to -the last gasp when their enemy fell at last. They need a peace of -reconciliation for their own sakes, because no new frontiers may save -them from sharing the ruin of those they destroy, nor the disease of -those they starve. America alone comes out of the war strong and rich. -For that reason we have the power to shape the destiny of the human -race, and to heal, as far as may be, the wounds of the world. It is our -chance in history. The most supreme chance that any race has had since -the beginning of the world. All nations are looking to President Wilson -to help them out of the abyss and to make a peace which shall lead the -people out of the dark jungle of Europe. My God!... If Wilson will be -noble and wise and strong, he may alter the face of the world, and win -such victory as no mortal leader ever gained. If not--if not--there will -be anguish unspeakable, and a worse darkness, and a welter of anarchy -out of whose madness new wars will be bred, until civilisation drops -back to savagery, or disappears. _I am afraid!_" - -He spoke those last words with a terrible thrill in his rather high, -harsh voice, and I, too, standing there in the darkness, by the Rhine, -had a sense of mighty powers at work with the destiny of many peoples, -and of risks and chances and hatreds and stupidities thwarting the -purpose of noble minds and humble hearts after this four years' -massacre.... And I was afraid. - - - - -VI - - -Symptoms of restless impatience which had appeared almost as soon as -the signing of the Armistice began to grow with intensity among all -soldiers who had been long in the zone of war. Their patience, so -enduring through the bad years, broke at last. They wanted to go home, -desperately. They wanted to get back to civil life, in civil clothes. -With the Armistice all meaning had gone out of their khaki uniform, -out of military discipline, out of distinctions of rank, and out of the -whole system of their soldiers' life. They had done the dirty job, they -had faced all its risks, and they had gained what glory there might be -in human courage. Now they desired to get back to their own people, and -their own places, and the old ways of life and liberty. - -They remembered the terms of their service--these amateurs who had -answered the call in early days. "For the duration of the war." Well, -the war was finished. There was to be no more fighting--and the wife -wanted her man, and the mother her son. "Demobilisation" became the word -of hope, and many men were sullen at the delays which kept them in -exile and in servitude. The men sent deputations to their officers. The -officers pulled wires for themselves which tinkled little bells as far -away as the War Office, Whitehall, if they had a strong enough pull. -One by one, friends of mine slipped away after a word of farewell and a -cheerful grin. - -"Demobbed!... Back to civvies!... Home!" - -Harding was one of those who agonised for civil liberty and release from -military restraint, and the reason of it lay in his pocket-book, where -there was the photograph of a pretty girl--his wife. - -We had become good friends, and he confided to me many things about his -state of mind with a simplicity and a sincerity which made me like -him. I never met a man more English in all his characteristics, or more -typical of the quality which belongs to our strength and our weakness. -As a Harrow boy his manners were perfect, according to the English -code--quiet, unemotional, easy, unobtrusively thoughtful of other -people's comfort in little things. According to the French code, -he would have been considered cold, arrogant, conceited and stupid. -Certainly he had that touch of arrogance which is in all Englishmen of -the old tradition. All his education and environment had taught him to -believe that English civilisation--especially in the hunting set--was -perfect and supreme. He had a pity rather than contempt for those -unlucky enough to be born Frenchmen, Italians, or of any other race. -He was not stupid by nature--on the contrary, he had sound judgment on -matters within his range of knowledge and a rapid grasp of detail, -but his vision was shut in by those frontiers of thought which limit -public-school life in England and certain sets at Oxford who do not -break free, and do not wish to break free, from the conventional formula -of "good form," which regulates every movement of their brain as well as -every action of their lives. It is in its way a noble formula, and makes -for aristocracy. My country, right or wrong; loyalty to King and State; -the divine right of the British race to rule uncivilised peoples for -their own good; the undoubted fact that an English gentleman is the -noblest work of God; the duties of "_noblesse oblige_," in courage, in -sacrifice, in good maimers, and in playing the game, whatever the game -may be, in a sporting spirit. - -When I was in Harding's company I knew that it was ridiculous to discuss -any subject which lay beyond that formula. It was impossible to suggest -that England had ever been guilty of the slightest injustice, a touch of -greed, or a tinge of hypocrisy, or something less than wisdom. - -To him that was just traitor's talk. A plea for the better understanding -of Ireland, for a generous measure of "self-determination" would -have roused him to a hot outburst of anger. The Irish to him were all -treacherous, disloyal blackguards, and the only remedy of the Irish -problem was, he thought, martial law and machine-gun demonstrations, -stern and, if need be, terrible. I did not argue with him, or chaff him -as some of his comrades did, and keeping within the prescribed limits of -conversation set by his code, we got on together admirably. Once only -in those days on the Rhine did Harding show an emotion which would have -been condemned by his code. It was due, no doubt, to that nervous -fever which made some wag change the word "demobilisation" into -"demoralisation." - -He had a room in the Domhof Hotel, and invited me to drink a whiskey -with him there one evening. When I sat on the edge of the bed while he -dispensed the drink, I noticed on his dressing-table a large photograph -of a girl in evening dress--a wonderfully pretty girl, I thought. - -He caught my glance, and after a moment's hesitation and a visible -blush, said: "My wife.... We were married before I came out, two years -ago exactly." - -He put his hand into the breast-pocket of his tunic and pulling out a -pocket-book, opened it with a snap, and showed me another photograph. - -"That's a better one of her." - -I congratulated him, but without listening to my words he asked me -rather awkwardly whether I could pull any strings for him to get -"demobbed." - -"It's all a question of 'pull,'" he said, "and I'm not good at that kind -of thing. But I want to get home." - -"Everybody does," I said. - -"Yes, I know, and of course I want to play the game, and all that. But -the fact is, my wife--she's only a kid, you know--is rather hipped with -my long absence. She's been trying to keep herself merry and bright, and -all that, with the usual kind of war-work. You know--charity bazaars, -fancy-dress balls for the wounded, Red Cross work, and all that. Very -plucky, too. But the fact is, some of her letters lately have been -rather--well--rather below par--you know--rather chippy and all that. -The fact is, old man, she's been too much alone, and anything you can do -in the way of a pull at the War Office----" - -I told him bluntly that I had as much influence at the War Office as the -charwoman in Room M.I. 8, or any other old room--not so much--and he was -damped, and apologised for troubling me. However, I promised to write -to the one High Bird with whom I had a slight acquaintance, and this -cheered him up considerably. - -I stayed chatting for some time--the usual small-talk--and it was only -when I said good-night that he broached another subject which interested -me a good deal. - -"I'm getting a bit worried about Wickham Brand," he remarked in a casual -kind of way. - -"How's that?" - -I gathered from Harding's vague, disjointed sentences that Brand was -falling into the clutches of a German hussy. He had seen them together -at the Opera--they had met as if by accident--and one evening he had -seen them together down by the Rhine outside Cologne. He was bound to -admit the girl was remarkably good-looking, and that made her all -the more dangerous. He hated to mention this, as it seemed like -scandal-mongering about "one of the best," but he was frightfully -disturbed by the thought that Brand, of all men, should fall a victim -to the wiles of a "lady Hun." He knew Brand's people at home--Sir Amyas -Brand, the Member of Parliament, and his mother, who was a daughter of -the Harringtons. - -They would be enormously "hipped" if Wickham were to do anything -foolish. It was only because he knew that I was Wickham's best chum that -he told me these things, in the strictest confidence. A word of warning -from me might save old Brand from getting into a horrible mess--"and all -that." - -I pooh-poohed Harding's fears, but when I left him to go to my own -billet I pondered over his words, and knew that there was truth in them. - -There was no doubt to my mind that Brand was in love with Elsa von -Kreuzenach. At least, he was going through some queer emotional phase -connected with her entry into his life, and he was not happy about it, -though it excited him. The very day after Harding spoke to me on the -subject I was, involuntarily, a spy upon Brand and Fralein Elsa on a -journey when we were fellow-travellers, though they were utterly unaware -of my presence. It was in one of the long electric trams which go -without a stop from Cologne to Bonn. I did not see Brand until I had -taken my seat in the small first-class smoking car. Several middle-class -Germans were there, and I was wedged between two of them in a corner. -Brand and a girl, whom I guessed to be Elsa von Kreuzenach, were on -the opposite seat, but farthest away from me and screened a little by -a German lady with a large feathered hat. If Brand had looked round the -compartment he would have seen me at once, and I waited to nod to -him, but never once did he glance my way, but turned slightly sideways -towards the girl, so that I only saw his profile. Her face was, in -the same way, turned a little to him, and I could see every shade of -expression which revealed her moods as she talked, and the varying -light in her eyes. She was certainly a pretty thing, exquisite, even, in -delicacy of colour and fineness of feature, with that "spun-gold" hair -of hers; though I thought (remembering Dr. Small's words) that she had a -worn and fragile look which robbed her of the final touch of beauty. For -some time they exchanged only a few words now and then, which I could -not hear, and I was reading a book when I heard Brand say in his clear, -rather harsh voice: "Will your people be anxious about you?" - -The girl answered in a low voice. I glanced up and saw that she was -smiling, not at Brand, but at the countryside which seemed to travel -past us as the tram went on its way. It was the smile of a girl to whom -life meant something good just then. - -Brand spoke again. - -"I should hate to let your mother think that I have been disloyal to her -confidence. Don't let this friendship of ours be spoilt by secrecy. I am -not afraid of it!" - -He laughed in a way that was strange to me. There was a note of joy in -it. It was a boy's laugh, and Brand had gone beyond boyhood in the war. -I saw one or two of the Germans look up at him curiously, and then stare -at the girl, not in a friendly way. She was unconscious of their gaze, -though a wave of colour swept her face. For a second she laid her hand -on Brand's brown fist, and it was a quick caress. - -"Our friendship is good!" she said. - -She spoke these words very softly, in almost a whisper, but I heard them -in spite of the rattle of the tram-car and the gutteral argument of two -Germans next to me. Those were the only words I heard her say on that -journey to Bonn, and after that Brand talked very little, and then only -commonplace remarks about the time and the scenery. But what I had heard -was revealing, and I was disturbed, for Brand's sake. - -His eyes met mine as I passed out of the car, but they were unseeing -eyes. He stared straight through me to some vision beyond. He gave his -hand to Elsa von Kreuzenach, and they walked slowly up from the station -and then went inside the cathedral. I had business in Bonn with officers -at our headquarters in the hotel "Der Goldene Stern." Afterwards I had -lunch with them, and then, with one, went to Beethoven's house--a little -shrine in which the spirit of the master still lives, with his old -instruments, his manuscript sheets of music, and many relics of his life -and work. - -It was at about four o'clock in the afternoon that I saw Brand and the -German girl again. There was a beautiful dusk in the gardens beyond the -University, with a ruddy glow through the trees when the sun went down, -and then a purple twilight. Some German boys were playing leapfrog -there, watched by British soldiers, and townsfolk passed on their way -home. I strolled the length of the gardens, and at the end which is -near the old front of the University buildings I saw Brand and Elsa von -Kreuzenach together on a wooden seat. It was almost dark where they sat -under the trees, but I knew Brand by his figure and by the tilt of -his field-cap, and the girl by the white fur round her neck. They were -holding hands like lovers in a London park, and when I passed them I -heard Brand speak. - -"I suppose this was meant to be. Fate leads us..." - -When I went back to Cologne by tram that evening I wondered whether -Brand would confide his secret to me. We had been so much together -during the last phase of the war and had talked so much in intimate -friendship that I guessed he would come one day and let me know this new -adventure of his soul. - -Several weeks passed and he said no word of this,-although we went for -walks together and sat smoking sometimes in _cafs_ after dinner. It had -always been his habit to drop into deep silences, and now they lasted -longer than before. Now and then, however, he would be talkative, -argumentative, and passionate. At times there was a new light in -his eyes, as though lit by some inward fire. And he would smile -unconsciously as he blew out clouds of smoke, but more often he looked -worried, nervous, and irritable, as though passing through some new -mental crisis. - -He spoke a good deal about German psychology and the German point of -view, illustrating his remarks sometimes by references to conversations -with Franz von Kreuzenach, with whom he often talked. He had come to -the conclusion that it was quite hopeless to convince even the -broadest-minded Germans that they were guilty of the war. They -admitted freely enough that their military party had used the Serbian -assassination and Austrian fury as the fuel for starting the blaze -in Europe. Even then they believed that the Chancellor and the civil -Ministry of State had struggled for peace until the Russian movements of -troops put the military party into the saddle so that they might ride to -hell. But in any case it was, Brand said, an unalterable conviction of -most Germans that sooner or later the war had been bound to come, as -they were surrounded by a ring of enemies conspiring to thwart their -free development and to overthrow their power. They attacked first as -a means of self-defence. It was an article of faith with them that they -had fought a defensive warfare from the start. - -"That is sheer lunacy!" I said. Brand laughed, and agreed. - -"Idiotic in the face of plain facts, but that only shows how strong is -the belief of people in their own righteousness. I suppose even now most -English people think the Boer War was just and holy. Certainly at the -time we stoned all who thought otherwise. Yet the verdict of the whole -world was against us. They regarded that war as the brutal aggression of -a great power upon a small and heroic people." - -"But surely," I said, "a man like Franz von Kreu-zenach admits -the brutality of Germany in Belgium--the shooting of. priests and -civilians--the forced labour of girls--the smashing of machinery--and -all the rest of it?" - -Brand said that Franz von Kreuzenach deplored the "severity" of German -acts, but blamed the code of war which justified such acts. It was not -his view that Germans had behaved with exceptional brutality, but that -war itself is a brutal way of argument. "We must abolish war," he says, -"not pretend to make it kind." As far as that goes, I agree with him. - -"How about poison gas, the _Lusitania_, the sinking of hospital ships, -submarine warfare?" - -Brand shrugged his shoulders. - -"The German answer is always the same. War is war, and they were hard -pressed by our superiority in material, man-power and sea-power. We were -starving them to death with our blockade. They saw their children dying -and diseased, their old people carried to the grave, their men weakened. -They had to break through somehow, anyhow, to save their race. I don't -think we should have stopped at much if England had been ringed round -with enemy ships and the kids were starving in Mayfair and Maida Vale, -and every town and hamlet." - -He laughed, with a shrug of his shoulders, as he lit his pipe for about -the fifteenth time. - -"Argument is no good," he said. "I've argued into the early hours of the -morning with that fellow Franz von Kreuzenach, who is a fine fellow and -the whitest man I've met in Germany. Nothing will convince him that his -people were, more guilty than ourselves. Perhaps he's right. History -will decide. Now we must start afresh--wipe out the black past, confess -that though the Germans started the war we were all possessed by the -devil--and exorcise ourselves. I believe the German people are ready -to turn over a new leaf and start a fresh chapter of history if we will -help them and give them a chance. They have an immense hope that England -and America will not push them over into the bottomless abyss, now that -they have fulfilled Wilson's demand to get rid of their old rulers and -fall into line with the world's democracy. If that hope fails them they -will fall back to the old philosophy of hatred, with vengeance as its -goal--and the damned thing will happen again in fifteen--twenty--thirty -years." - -Brand made one remark that evening which referred, I fancy, to his love -affair with Elsa von Kreuzenach. - -"There is so much folly in the crowd that one despairs of reaching a -higher stage of civilisation. I am falling back on individualism. The -individual must follow his own ideals, strive for his own happiness, -find friendship and a little love where he can, and stand apart from -world problems, racial rivalries, international prejudices, as far as -he may without being drawn into the vortex. Nothing that he can do -will alter human destiny, or the forces of evolution, or the cycles of -history, which make all striving futile. Let him get out of the rain and -comfort himself with any human warmth he can find. Two souls in contact -are company enough." - -"Sometimes," I said, "mob passion tears them asunder and protests -against their union with stones or outlaw judgment. Taboo will exist for -ever in human society, and it is devilish unpleasant for individuals who -violate the rules." - -"It needs courage," said my friend. "The risk is sometimes worth -taking." - - - - -VII - - -Brand decided to take the risk, and though he asked my advice -beforehand, as a matter of friendship, I knew my warnings were useless. -It was about a month after that train journey to Bonn that he came into -my room at the Domhof, looking rather pale but with a kind of glitter in -his eyes. - -"I may as well tell you," he said abruptly, "that I am going to marry a -German girl." - -"Elsa von Kreuzenach?" - -"Yes. How did you know?" - -"Just a guess." - -"It's against her parents' wish," he said, "to say nothing of my -parents, who think I have gone mad. Elsa and I will have to play a lone -hand." - -"'Lone' is not the word," I suggested. "You are breaking that taboo -we talked of. You will be shunned by every friend you have in the -world--except one or two queer people like myself"--(here he said, -"Thanks," and grinned rather gratefully)--"and both you and she will be -pariahs in England, Germany, and anywhere on the wide earth where there -are English, Germans, French, Americans and others who fought the war. I -suppose you know that?" - -"Perfectly," he answered gravely. - -I told him that I was amazed that he of all men should fall in love with -a German girl--he who had seen all the abomination of the war, and had -come out to it with a flaming idealism. To that he answered savagely: -"Flaming idealism be blowed! I came out with blood-lust in my heart, and -having killed until I was sick of killing--German boys who popped their -heads over the parapet--I saw that the whole scheme of things was wrong, -and that the grey men had no more power of escape than the brown men. We -had to go on killing each other because we were both under the same -law, thrust upon us by those directing the infernal machinery of -world-politics. But that's not the point, and it's old and stale, -anyhow." - -"The point is," I said, "that you will be looked upon as a traitor by -many of your best pals, that you will smash your father and mother, and -that this girl Elsa and you will be profoundly miserable." - -"We shall be enormously and immensely happy," he answered, "and that -outweighs everything." - -He told me that he needed happiness. For more than four years he had -suffered agony of mind in the filth and mud of war. He craved for -beauty, and Elsa fulfilled his ideal. He had been a lonely devil, -and Elsa had offered him the only cure for the worst disease in life, -intimate and eternal love. - -Something prompted me to say words which I deeply regretted as soon as -they were spoken. It was the utterance of a subconscious thought. - -"There is a girl, not German, who might have cured your loneliness. You -and Eileen O'Connor would have made good mates." - -For some reason he was hit rather hard by that remark. He became -exceedingly pale, and for a moment or two did not answer me. I thought -he would blurt out some angry reply, damning my impudence, but when he -spoke it was in a grave, gentle way which seemed to me more puzzling. - -"Eileen would make a fine wife for any man she liked. But she's above -most of us." - -We stayed up talking nearly all that night, and Wickham Brand -described one scene within his recent experiences which must have been -sensational. It was when he announced to the family von Kreuzenach that -he loved Elsa and desired her hand in marriage. - -Brand's sense of humour came back to him when he told me of this -episode, and he laughed now at the frightfulness of his ordeal. It was -he who had insisted upon announcing the news to Elsa's parents, to avoid -any charge of dishonesty. Elsa herself was in favour of hiding their -love until peace was declared, when, perhaps, the passionate hostility -of her parents to England might be abated. For Brand's sake, also, she -thought it would be better. But she yielded to his argument that secrecy -might spoil the beauty of their friendship, and give it an ugly taint. - -"We'll go through with it straight from the start," he had cried. - -Elsa's answer was quick and glad. - -"I have no fear now of anything in the world except the loss of you!" - -Franz von Kreuzenach was the first to know, and Elsa told him. He seemed -stunned with surprise, and then immensely glad, as he took his sister in -his arms and kissed her. - -"Your marriage with an English officer," he said, "will be the symbol of -reconciliation between England and Germany." - -After that he remembered his father and mother, and was a coward at -the thought of their hostility. The idea of telling his father, as Elsa -asked him to do, put him into what Brand called "the bluest of blue -funk." He had the German reverence for parental authority, and though he -went as far as the door-handle of his father's study he retreated, and -said in a boyish way, speaking in English, as usual, with Brand and his -sister: "I haven't the pluck! I would rather face shell-fire than my -father's wrath." - -It was Brand who "went over the top." - -He made his announcement formally, in the drawingroom after dinner, in -the curiously casual way which proved him a true Englishman. He cleared -his throat (he told me, grinning at his own mannerism), and during a -gap in the conversation said to the General: "By the way, sir, I have -something rather special to mention to-night." - -"_Bitte?_" said the old General, with his hard, deliberate courtesy. - -"Your daughter and I," said Brand, "wish to be married as soon as -possible. I have the honour to ask your consent." - -Brand told me of the awful silence which followed his statement. It -seemed interminable. Franz von Kreuze-nach, who was present, was as -white as though he had been condemned to death by court-martial. Elsa -was speechless, but came over to Brand's side and held his hand. Her -mother had the appearance of a lady startled by the sudden appearance of -a poisonous snake. The General sat back in his chair, grasping its arms -and gasping for breath as though Brand had hit him in the stomach. - -It was the mother who spoke first, and ignoring Brand completely, she -addressed her daughter harshly. - -"You are mad, Elsa!" - -"Yes, mother," said the girl. "I am mad with joy." - -"This English officer insults us intolerably," said the mother, still -ignoring Brand by any glance. "We were forced to receive him into our -house. At least he might have behaved with decency and respect." - -"Mother," said Elsa, "this gentleman has given me the great honour of -his love." - -"To accept it," said the lady, "would be a dishonour so dreadful for a -good German girl that I refuse to believe it possible." - -"It is true, mother, and I am wonderfully happy." - -Elsa went over to her mother, sinking down on her knees, and kissing -the lady's hand. But Frau von Kreu-zenach withdrew her hand quickly, and -then rose from her chair and stood behind her husband, with one hand on -his shoulder. - -The old man had found his means of speech at last. - -He spoke in a low, stern voice to his daughter. Brand was ignored by him -as by the mother. They did not recognise his presence. - -"My daughter," he said (if Brand remembered his words) "the German -people have been brought to ruin and humiliated by one nation in Europe -who was jealous of our power and genius. That nation was England, our -treacherous, hypocritical enemy. Without England, France would have been -smashed. Without England, our Emperor would have prevailed over all his -enemies. Without the English blockade we should not have been weakened -by hunger, deprived of the raw material necessary to victory, starved so -that our children died and our will to win was sapped. They were English -soldiers who killed my dear son Heinrich, and your brother. The flower -of German manhood was slain by the English in Flanders and on the -Somme." - -The General spoke very quietly, with an intensity of effort to be calm. -But suddenly his voice rose, said Brand, to a kind of harsh shout. - -"Any German girl who permits herself to love an Englishman is a -traitorous hussy. I would have her stripped and flogged. The curse of -our old German God shall follow her." - -Another silence, in which there was no sound except the noisy breathing -of the old man, was broken by the hard voice of Frau von Kreuzenach. - -"Your father has spoken, Elsa. There is no more to say." - -Elsa had become very pale, but she was smiling at Brand, he told me, and -still held his hand in a tight grip. - -"There is something more to say, my dear father and mother," she -answered. "It is that I love Captain Brand, and that I will follow him -anywhere in the world if he will take me. For love is stronger than -hate, and above all nationality." - -It was Franz von Kreuzenach who spoke now. He was standing at the table, -facing his father, and it was to his father that he talked. He said that -Elsa was right about love. In spite of the war, the souls of men and -women were not separated by racial boundaries. When two souls touched -and mingled, no hatred of peoples, no patriotic passion, could -intervene. Elsa's love for an English gentleman was but a symbol of the -peace that was coming, when all countries would be united in a Society -of Nations with equal rights and equal duties, and a common brotherhood. -They saw in the streets of Cologne that there was no natural, inevitable -hatred between English and Germans. The Army of Occupation had proved -itself to be an instrument of goodwill between those who had tried -to kill each other during four years of slaughter. Captain Brand had -behaved with the most charming courtesy and chivalry, according to the -traditions of an English gentleman, and he, Franz von Kreuzenach, was -glad and honoured because this officer desired to take Elsa for his -wife. Their marriage would be a consecration of the new peace. - -The father listened to him silently, except for that hard noise of -breathing. When his son uttered those last words, the old man leaned -forward in his chair, and his eyes glittered. - -"Get out of my house, _Schweinhund!_ Do not come near me again, or I -will denounce you as a traitor and shoot you like a dog." - -He turned to Elsa with outstretched hand. - -"Go up to bed, girl. If you were younger I would flog you with my -hunting-whip." - -For the first time he spoke to Brand, controlling his rage with a -convulsive effort. - -"I have not the power to evict you from the house. For the time being -the German people of the Rhineland are under hostile orders. Perhaps you -will find another billet more to your convenience, and more agreeable to -myself." - -"To-night, sir," said Brand, and he told me that he admired the old -man's self-control and his studied dignity. - -Elsa still clasped his hand, and before her family he kissed her. - -"With your leave, or without leave," he said, "your daughter and I will -be man and wife, for you have no right to stand between our love." - -He bowed and left the room, and, in an hour, the house. - -Franz von Kreuzenach came into his room before he left, and wrung his -hand. - -"I must go, too," he said. "My father is very much enraged with me. It -is the break between the young and the old--the new conflict, as we were -saying one day." - -He was near weeping, and Brand apologised for being the cause of so much -trouble. - -In the hall Elsa came to Brand as the orderly carried out his bags. - -"To-morrow," she said, "we will meet at Elizabeth von Detmold's--my true -friend." - -Her eyes were wet with tears, but she was smiling, and there was, said -Brand, a fine courage shining in her face. - -She put her hands on Brand's shoulders and kissed him, to the deep -astonishment and embarrassment of the orderly, who stood by. It was from -this man, Brock, that the news of Brand's "entanglement" spread, -through other orderlies, to officers of his mess, as he knew by the cold -shoulder that some of them turned to him. - - - - -VIII. - - -I met Elsa and Franz von Kreuzenach at the house of Elizabeth von -Detmold in the Hohenzollernring, which became a meeting-place for Brand -and the girl to whom he was now betrothed. Dr. Small and I went round -there to tea at Brand's invitation, and I spent several evenings there -owing to the friendship of Elizabeth von Detmold, who seemed to like my -company. That lady was in many ways remarkable, and I am bound to say -that in spite of my repugnance to many qualities of the German character -I found her charming. The tragedy of the war had hit her with an -almost particular malignancy. Married in 1914 to a young officer of the -Prussian Guard, she was widowed at the first battle of Ypres. Her three -brothers had been killed in 1915, '16 and '17. Both her parents had died -during the war, owing to its accumulating horror. At twenty-six years of -age she was left alone in her big house with hardly enough money for its -upkeep, and not enough to supplement the rigid war rations which were -barely sufficient for life. I suppose there were thousands of young -women in Germany--hundreds of thousands--who had the same cause for -sorrow (we do not realise how German families were massacred in that -blood-bath of war, so that even French and British losses pale in -tragedy before their piled dead), but there were few, I am sure, who -faced their grief with such high courage and such unembittered charity. -Like Elsa von Kreuzenach, she devoted her days to suffering childhood in -the _crches_ and feeding-centres which she had helped to organise, and -she spent many of her evenings in working-women's clubs, and sometimes -in working-men's clubs, where she read and lectured to them on social -problems. The war had made her an ardent pacifist, and, to some -extent, a revolutionary of the Liebknecht school. She saw no hope for -civilisation so long as the junker caste remained in Europe, and the -philosophy of militarism, which she believed stood fast not only -in Germany but in France and England, and other nations. She had a -passionate belief, like many other German people at that time, in -President Wilson and his League of Nations, and put all her hopes in the -United States as the one power in the world who could make a peace of -reconciliation and establish a new brotherhood of peoples. After that -she looked to a social revolution throughout the world by which the -working classes should obtain full control of their own destiny and -labour. - -I found it strange to hear that patrician girl, for she was one of -the aristocratic caste, with an elegance that came from long breeding, -adopting the extreme views of revolutionary socialism, not as a pretty -intellectual theory, but with a pasisonate courage that might lead her -to prison or to death in the conflict between the old powers and the -new. - -To Elsa von Kreuzenach she behaved in a protective and mothering way, -and it seemed to me that "Brand's girl," as Dr. Small called her, was -the spiritual child of this stronger and more vital character. Elsa, -was, I fancy, timid of those political and pacifist ideas which -Elizabeth von Detmold stated with such frank audacity. She cherished -the spirit of the human charity which gave them their motive power, -but shrank from the thought of the social strife and change which must -precede them. Yet there was nothing doll-like in her character. There -were moments when I saw her face illumined by a kind of mediaeval -mysticism which was the light of a spirit revealed perhaps by the -physical casket which held it, insecurely. Truly she was as pretty and -delicate as a piece of Dresden china, but for Brand's sake I did not -like the fragile look which hinted at a quick fading of her flower-like -beauty. Her adoration for Brand was, in my opinion, rather pitiful. It -was very German, too, in its meek reverence, as of a mediaeval maid -to knighthood. I prefer the way of French womanhood, convinced of -intellectual equality with men, and with their abiding sense of humour; -or the arrogance of the English girl, who makes her lover prove his -mettle by quiet obedience. Elsa followed Brand with her eyes wherever -he moved, touched his hard, tanned hand with little secret caresses, -and whenever he spoke her eyes shone with gladness at the sound of his -voice. I liked her better when she was talking to our little doctor or -to myself, and, therefore, not absorbed in sentiment. At these times she -was frank and vivacious, and, indeed, had an English way with her which -no doubt she had learnt in her Brighton school. - -Brand interested me intensely at these times. Sometimes I found myself -doubting whether he was really so much in love with his German girl as -he imagined himself to be. I noticed that he was embarrassed by Elsa's -public demonstrations of love--that way she had of touching his hand, -and another trick of leaning her head against his shoulder. As a typical -Englishman, in some parts of his brain at least, he shrank from exposing -his affection. It seemed to me also that he was more interested in -political and psychological problems than in the by-play of love's -glances and revealings. He argued long and deeply with Elizabeth von -Detmold on the philosophy of Karl Marx, the anarchist movement in -Berlin, and on the possibility of a Rhineland republic, which was then -being advocated by a party in Cologne and Mainz whose watchword was -"_Los von Berlin!_" and freedom from Prussian domination for the Rhine -provinces. Even with Elsa he led the conversation to discussions about -German mentality, the system of German education, and the possible -terms of peace. Twice at least, when I was present, he differed with -her rather bluntly--a little brutally, I thought--about the German -administration of Belgium. - -"Our people did no more than was allowed by the necessities of war," -said Elsa. "It was stern and tragic, but not more barbarous than what -other nations would have done." - -"It was horrible, bloody, and unjustified," said Brand. - -"All war," said Elizabeth von Detmold, "is bloody and unjustified. -Directly war is declared the moral law is abrogated. It is simply the -reign of devildom. Why pretend otherwise--or weaken the devilish logic -by a few inconsistencies of sentiment?" - -Brand's answer to Elsa was not exactly lover-like. I saw the colour fade -from her face at the harshness of his answer, but she leaned her head -against his body (she was sitting by his side on a low stool), and was -silent until her friend Elizabeth had spoken. Then she laughed, bravely, -I thought. - -"We differ in expression, but we all agree. What Wickham thinks is my -thought. I hate to remember how Belgium suffered." - -Brand was utterly unconscious of his harsh way of speech and of his -unconcealed acknowledgment of Elizabeth von Detmold's intellectual -superiority in her own drawing-room, so that when she spoke his interest -was directed from Elsa to this lady. - -"Daddy" Small was also immensely impressed by Frau von Detmold's -character, and he confessed to me that he made notes of her conversation -every time he left her house. - -"That woman," he said, "will probably be a martyr for civilisation. I -find myself so cussedly in agreement with her that when I go back to New -York I shall probably hang a red flag out of my window and lose all my -respectable patients. She has the vision of the future." - -"What about Brand and Elsa?" I asked, dragging him down to -personalities. - -He put his arm through mine as we walked down the Hohestrasse. - -"Brand," he said, in his shrewd way, "is combining martyrdom with -romance--an unsafe combination. The pretty Elsa has lighted up his -romantic heart because of her adoration and her feminine sentiment. -I don't blame him. At his age--after four years of war and exile--her -gold-spun hair would have woven a web round my heart. Youth is youth, -and don't you forget it, my lad!" - -"Where does the martyrdom come in?" I asked. - -The little doctor blinked through his horn spectacles. - -"Don't you see it? Brand has been working out new ideals of life. After -killing a good many German boys, as sniper and chief assassin of the XI. -Corps, he wants to marry a German girl as a proclamation to the -world that he--Wickham Brand--has done with hatred and is out for the -brotherhood of man and the breaking down of the old frontiers. For -that ideal he is going to sacrifice his reputation and make a martyr of -himself--not forgetting that romance is pleasant and Elsa von Kreuzenach -as pretty as a peach! Bless his heart, I admire his courage and his -boyishness." - -Any doubt I had about the reality of Brand's passion for Elsa was at -least partly dispelled when he told me, a few nights later, of a tragic -thing that had happened to both of them. - -He came into my room at the "Domhof" as though he had just seen a ghost. -And, indeed, it was a ghost that had frightened him and put a cold hand -between him and Elsa. - -"My dear old man!" I cried at the sight of him. - -"What on earth has happened?" - -"A damnable and inconceivable thing!" - -I poured him out some brandy, and he drank it in gulps. Then he did a -strange and startling thing. Fumbling in his breast-pocket, he pulled -out a silver cigarette-case, and going over to the fireplace, dropped it -into the blaze of the wood logs which I had had lighted because of the -dampness of the room. - -"Why do you do that?" I asked. - -He watched the metal box blacken and then begin to melt. Several times -he poked it so as to get it deeper into the red embers. - -"My poor little Elsa!" he said in a pitiful way. "_Mein hussches -Madel!_" - -The story he told me later was astounding. Even now to people who were -not in the war, who do not know how many strange, fantastic things -happened in that wild nightmare, it will seem improbable and untrue. -Indeed, I think the central fact was untrue, except as a subjective -reality in the minds of Brand and Elsa. - -It happened when they were sitting alone in Elizabeth von Detmold's -drawing-room. I fancy they must have been embracing each other, -though Brand did not tell me that. Anyhow, Elsa put her hand into his -breast-pocket and in a playful way pulled out his cigarette-case. - -"May I open it?" she asked. - -But she did not open it. She stared at a little monogram on its cover, -and then began to tremble so that Brand was scared. - -"What is the matter?" he said. - -Elsa let the cigarette-case drop on to the carpet. - -"That box!" she said, in an agonised voice. "Where did you find it?" - -Brand remembered where he had found it, though he had not given a -thought to it for more than two years. He had found it on a night in No -Man's Land out by the Bois Franais, near Fricourt. He had been lying -out there on the lip of a mine crater below a hummock of white chalk. -Just before dawn a German patrol had crept out, and he had shot at them. -One man dropped quite close to where Brand lay. After an hour, when dawn -came with a thick white mist rising from the moist earth, Brand crawled -over to the body and cut off its shoulder-straps for identification. It -was the body of a young man, almost a boy, and Brand saw, with a thrill -of satisfaction (it was his "tiger" time), that he had shot him clean -through the heart. A good shot in the twilight of the dawn! He thrust -his hands into the man's pockets for papers, and found his pay-book and -some letters, and a cigarette-case. With these he crawled back into his -own trench. He remembered reading the letters. One was from the boy's -sister, lamenting the length of the war, describing the growing hunger -of civilians in Germany, and saying how she prayed every night for her -brother's safety, and for peace. He had read thousands of German letters -as an intelligence officer afterwards, but he remembered those because -of the night's adventure. He had handed them over to the adjutant, for -headquarters, and had kept the cigarette-case, having lost his own. It -had the monogram of "H. v. K." He had never thought about it from that -time to this. Now he thought about it with an intensity of remembrance. - -Brand told Elsa von Kreuzenach that he had found the box in No Man's -Land. - -"It is my brother Heinrich's," she cried. "I gave it to him." - -She drew back, shivering, from the cigarette-case--or was it from Brand? -When she spoke next it was in a whisper: "Did you kill him?" - -Brand lied to her, and she knew he was lying. She wept bitterly, and -when Brand kissed her she was cold, and fainted in his arms. - -That was Brand's story, and it was incredible. Even now I cannot help -thinking that such a coincidence could not have happened. There is -plenty of room for doubt about that cigarette-case. It was of a usual -pattern, plain, with a wreath engraved round a monogram. That monogram -"H. v. K." was astonishing in relation to Elsa von Kreuzenach, but there -are thousands of Germans, I imagine, with the same initials. I know two, -Hermann von Kranitz and Hans von Kurtheim. In a German directory I have -found many other names with those initials. I refuse to believe that -Brand should have gone straight to the house of that boy whom he had -killed in No Man's Land. - -He believed it, and Elsa was sure of it. That was the tragedy, and the -ghost of the girl's dead brother stood between them now. - -For an hour or more he paced up and down my room in an agony of mind, -and none of my arguments would convince him or comfort him. - -Several times he spoke one sentence which puzzled me. - -"It makes no difference," he said. "It makes no difference." - -I think he meant that it made no difference to his love or purpose. When -one thinks over this incident one is inclined to agree with that view. -He was no more guilty in killing Elsa's brother, if he did, than in -killing any other German. If their love were strong enough to cross over -fields of dead, the fact that Elsa's brother lay there, shot by Brand's -bullet, made, as he said, "no difference." It only brought home more -closely to two poor individuals the meaning of that world-tragedy. - -Elsa, after her first shock of horror, argued that too, and at the -beginning of March Brand and she stood at the altar together in a church -at the end of the Hohenzollem Ring, and were made man and wife. - -At the ceremony there were present Elizabeth von Detmold, Franz von -Kreuzenach, Dr. Small, and myself, as Brand's best man. There was, I -think, another presence there, visible only to the minds of Brand and -Elsa, and, strangely enough, to mine. As the bride and bridegroom stood -together before the priest I had a most uncomfortable vision of the dead -body of a German boy lying on the altar beyond them, huddled up as I -had seen many grey figures in the mud of Flanders and Picardy. This idea -was, of course, due to that war-neurosis which, as Dr. Small said, was -the malady of the world. I think at one moment of the service Elsa and -Brand felt some cold touch upon them, for they both looked round in a -startled way. It may have been a draught stealing through the aisle. - -We had tea at Elizabeth von Detmold's house, and Brand and his wife were -wonderfully self-controlled. They could not be happy beyond the sense of -a spiritual union because Brand had been ordered by telegram to report -at the War Office in London, and was leaving Cologne at four o'clock -that afternoon, while Elsa was going home to her parents, who were -ignorant of her marriage. Brand's recall, I am convinced, had been -engineered by his father, who was determined to take any step to prevent -his son's marriage with a German girl. - -Young Harding was going with him, having been given his demobilisation -papers, and being desperately anxious, as I have told, to get home. It -was curious that Brand should be his fellow-traveller that night, and I -thought of the contrast of their journey, one man going to his wife -with eager gladness, the other man leaving his wife after a few hours of -marriage. - -At the end poor Elsa clung to her husband with most passionate grief -and, without any self-consciousness now, because of the depth of his -emotion, Brand, with tears in his eyes, tenderly embraced her. She -walked back bravely with her brother to her mother's house, while Brand -and I raced to the station where his orderly was waiting with his kit. - -"See you again soon," said Brand, gripping my hand. - -"Where?" I asked, and he answered gloomily: "God knows." - -It was not on the Rhine. There was a general exodus of all officers -who could get "demobbed" on any claim or pretext, the small Army of -Occupation settled down to a routine life without adventure, and the -world's interest shifted to Paris, where the fate of Europe was being -settled by a company of men with the greatest chance in history. I -became a wanderer in a sick world. - -END OF BOOK II. - - - - - -BOOK III--BUILDERS OF PEACE - - - - -I - - -Those of us who had been in exile during the years of war and now -returned to peace found that England had changed in our absence. We -did not know this new England. We did not understand its spirit or its -people. Nor did they understand the men who came back from the many -fronts of war, by hundreds of thousands, now that demobilisation had -become a spate after murmurings that were loud with the menace of revolt -from men who had been long patient. - -These "_revenants,_" the men who came back out of the terror, were -so many Rip van Winkles (of a youthful kind), looking round for the -companions of their boyhood, going to old places, touching old stones, -sitting by the same fireside, but with a sense of ghostliness. A new -generation had arrived since 1914. The children had become boys and -girls; the girls had grown into womanhood precociously. There were -legions of "flappers" in London and other big cities, earning good wages -in Government offices and factories, spending most of their money on the -adornment of their prettiness, self-reliant, audacious, out for the fun -of life, and finding it. The tragedy of the war had not touched them. It -had been a great "lark" to them. They accepted the slaughter of their -brothers or their fathers light-heartedly, after a few bursts of tears -and a period of sentiment in which pride was strongest. They had grown -up to the belief that a soldier is generally killed or wounded, and that -he is glad to take the risk, or, if not, ought to be, as part of the -most exciting and enjoyable game of war. Women had filled many of the -jobs which formerly were the exclusive possession of men, and the men -coming back looked at these legions of women clerks, tram conductors, -ticket collectors, munition workers, plough-girls, and motor drivers -with the brooding thought that they, the men, had been ousted from their -places. A new class had arisen out of the whirlpool of social upheaval. -The profiteers, in a large way of business, had prospered exceedingly -out of the supply and demand of massacre. The profiteer's wife clothed -herself in furs and jewels. The profiteer's daughters were dancing by -night and sleeping by day. The farmers and the shopkeepers had made a -good thing out of war. They liked war so long as they were untouched by -air-raids or not afflicted by boys who came back blind or crippled. They -had always been optimists. They were optimists now, and claimed a share -in the merit of the victory that had been won by the glorious watchword -of "business as usual." They hoped the terms of peace would be merciless -upon the enemy, and they demanded the Kaiser's head as a pleasant -sacrifice adding spice to the great banquet of victory celebrations. - -Outwardly, England was gay and prosperous and light-spirited. It was -only by getting away from the seething crowds in the streets, from the -dancing crowds, and the theatre crowds, and the shopping crowds, that -men came face to face with private and hidden tragedy. In small houses -or big, there were women who had lost their men and were listless -and joyless, the mothers of only sons who did not come back with the -demobilised tide, and the sweethearts of boys who would never fulfil the -promise that had given hope in life to lonely girlhood. There was a new -rich, but there was also a new poor, and people on small fixed incomes -or with little nest-eggs of capital on which they scraped out life found -themselves reduced to desperate straits by the soaring of prices and the -burden of taxation. Underneath the surface joy of a victorious people -there was bitterness to which victory was a mockery and a haggard grief -at the cost of war in precious blood. But the bitterness smouldered -without any flame of passion, and grief nagged at people's hearts -silently. - -Many of the men who came back were in a strange mood--restless, morbid, -neurotic. Their own people did not understand them. They could not -understand themselves. They had hated war, most of them, but this peace -seemed flat and unprofitable to their souls. All purpose and meaning -seemed suddenly to have gone out of life. Perhaps it was the narrowness -of English home-life. Men who had travelled to far places of the world, -who had seen the ways of foreign people, and had been part of a great -drama, found themselves back again in a little house, closed in and -isolated by the traditions of English individualism, so that often the -next-door neighbour is a stranger. They had a sense of being suffocated. -They could not stay indoors with the old pleasure in a pipe or a book by -the fireside or a chat with mother or wife. Often they would wander out -on the chance of meeting some of the "old pals," or, after a heavy sigh, -say, "Oh, God!... let's go to a theatre or a 'movie' show!" The -theatres were crammed with men seeking distraction, yet bored with -their pleasures and relapsing into a deeper moodiness afterwards. Wives -complained that their husbands had "changed." Their characters had -hardened and their tempers were frayed, so that they were strangely -irritable and given to storms of rage about nothing at all. It was -frightening.... There was an epidemic of violence and of horrible -sensual crimes with women victims, ending often in suicide. There were -mob riots by demobilised soldiers or soldiers still waiting in camps for -demobilisation. Police stations were stormed and wrecked and policemen -killed by bodies of men who had been heroes in the war and now fought -like savages against their fellow-citizens. Some of them pleaded guilty -in court and made queer statements about an utter ignorance of their -own actions after the disorder had begun. It seemed as though they had -returned to the psychology of that war when men, doped with rum, or -drunk with excitement, had leapt over the parapet and remembered nothing -more of a battle until they found themselves panting in an enemy trench -or lying wounded on a stretcher. It was a dangerous kind of psychology -in civil life. - -Labourers back at work in factories or mines or railway stations or -dockyards, after months or years of the soldier-life, did not return to -their old conditions or their old pay with diligence and thankfulness. -They demanded higher wages to meet the higher cost of life and after -that a margin for pleasure, and after that shorter hours for higher pay -and less work in shorter hours. If their demands were not granted they -downed tools and said: "What about it?" Strikes became frequent and -general, and at a time when the cost of war was being added up to -frightful totals of debt which could only be reduced by immense -production the worker slacked off, or suspended his labours, and said: -"Who gets the profits of my sweat?... I want a larger share." He was -not frightened of a spectre that was scaring all people of property -and morality in the Western world. The spectre of Bolshevism, red-eyed, -dripping with blood, proclaiming anarchy as the new gospel, did not -cause a shiver to the English working man. He said, "What has Russia to -do with me? I'm English. I have fought this war to save England, I have -done the job; now then, where's my reward?" - -Men who looked round for a living while they lived on an unemployment -dole that was not good enough for their new desires became sullen when -they returned home night after night with the same old story of "Nothing -doing." The women were still clinging to their jobs. They had earned -their independence by good work in war-time. They hated the thought -of going back to little homes to be household drudges, dependent for -pocket-money on father and brothers. They had not only tasted liberty; -they had made themselves free of the large world. They had proved their -quality and strength. They were as good as men, and mostly better. Why -should they slink back to the little narrow rut of life? But the men -said, "Get out. Give us back our jobs." - -It was hard on the officer boys--hardest of all on them. They had gone -straight from school to the war, and had commanded men twice as old as -themselves and drawn good pay for pocket-money as first lieutenants, -captains, even majors of air squadrons and tank battalions. They had -gained immense experience in the arts and crafts of war, and that -experience was utterly useless in peace. - -"My dear young man," said the heads of prosperous businesses who had -been out to "beat the Boche," even though they sacrificed their only -sons or all their sons (with heroic courage!), "you have been wasting -your time. You have no qualifications whatever for a junior clerkship -in this office. On the contrary, you have probably contracted habits of -idleness and inaccuracy which would cause a lot of trouble. This vacancy -is being filled by a lad who has not been vitiated by military life, and -has nothing to unlearn. Good-morning!" - -And the young officers, after a statement like that, went home with -swear-words learnt in Flanders, and said: "That's the reward of -patriotism, eh? Well, we seem to have been fooled pretty badly. Next -time we shan't be so keen to strew the fields of death with our fresh -little corpses." - -These words, all this murmur from below, did not reach those who sat in -high places. They were wonderfully complacent, except when outbreaks of -violence or the cessation of labour shocked them with a sense of danger. -They arranged peace celebrations before the peace, victory marches when -the fruits of victory were as bitter as Dead Sea fruit in the mouths of -those who saw the ruin of the world; and round a council table in Paris -statesmen of Europe abandoned all the ideals for which the war had been -fought by humble men and killed the hopes of all those who had looked to -them as the founders of a new era of humanity and common sense. - - - - -II - - -It was when the Peace Treaty had been signed, but not ratified by the -representatives of Germany and Austria, that I met some of the friends -with whom I had travelled along many roads of war or had met in scenes -which already seemed far back in history. In London, after a journey to -America, I came again in touch with young Harding, whom I had seen last -on his way home to his pretty wife, who had fretted at his long absence, -and Charles Fortune, whose sense of humour had made me laugh so often -in the time of tragedy. Those were chance meetings in the eddies of -the great whirlpool of London life, as I saw other faces, strange for -a moment or two, until the difference between a field-cap and a bowler -hat, a uniform and civil clothes, was wiped out by a look of recognition -and the sound of a remembered voice. - -Not by chance but by a friendship which had followed me across the world -with written words, I found myself once more in the company of Wickham -Brand, and with him went again to spend some evenings with Eileen -O'Connor, who was now home in Kensington, after that grim drama which -she had played so long in Lille. - -With "Daddy" Small I had been linked up by a lucky chain of coincidences -which had taken us both to New York at the same time and brought us back -to Europe on the same boat, which was the White Star liner _Lapland_. - -My chance meeting with Harding led to a renewal of friendship which was -more of his seeking than mine, though I liked him a good deal. But he -seemed to need me, craving sympathy, which I gave with sincerity, and -companionship, which I could not give so easily, being a busy man. - -It was on the night when London went mad because of peace, though not so -mad, I was told, as on the night of armistice. It all seemed mad to me -when I was carried like a straw in a raging torrent of life which poured -down the Strand, swirled round Trafalgar Square, and choked all channels -westwards and eastwards of Piccadilly Circus. The spirit of London had -broken bounds. It came wildly from mean streets in the slum quarters to -the heart of the West End. The worst elements had surged up and mingled -with the middle-class folk and those who claim exclusiveness by the -power of wealth. In ignorance that all barriers of caste were to be -broken that night, "society" women, as they are called, rather insolent -in their public display of white shoulders and diamonds and furs, set -out in motor cars for hotels and restaurants which had arranged peace -dinners and peace dances. Some of them, I saw, were unaccompanied by -their own men, whom they were to meet later, but the vacant seats in -their open cars were quickly filled by soldiers, seamen, or merry devils -in civil clothes who climbed over the backs of the cars when they were -brought to a standstill in the crush of vast crowds. Those uninvited -guests, some of them wearing women's bonnets, most of them fluttering -with flags pinned to their coats, all of them provided with noisemaking -instruments, behaved with ironical humour to the pretty ladies, touched -their coiled hair with "ticklers," blew loud blasts on their toy -trumpets, delivered cockney orations to them for the enjoyment of the -crowds below. Some of the pretty ladies accepted the situation with -courage and good humour, laughing with shrill mirth at their grotesque -companions. Others were frightened and angry. I saw one girl try to beat -off the hands of men clambering about her car. They swarmed into it and -paid no heed to her cries of protest.... - -All the flappers were out in the Strand and in Trafalgar Square and many -streets. They were factory girls, shop girls, office girls, and their -eyes were alight with adventure and a pagan ecstasy. Men teased them -as they passed with the long "ticklers," and they, armed with the same -weapon, fought duels with these aggressors, and then fled, and were -pursued into the darkness of side-streets, where they were caught and -kissed. Soldiers in uniform, English, Scots, Canadians, Australians, -came lurching along in gangs, arm in arm, then mingled with the girls, -changed headgear with them, struggled and danced and stampeded with -them. Seamen, three sheets in the wind, steered an uneven course through -this turbulent sea of life, roaring out choruses, until each man had -found a maid for the dance of joy. - -London was a dark forest with nymphs and satyrs at play in the glades -and Pan stamping his hoofs like a giddy goat. All the passions let loose -by war, the breaking down of old restraints, the gladness of youth at -escape from death, provided the motive-power, unconscious and primitive, -behind this carnival of the London crowds. From some church a procession -came into Trafalgar Square, trying to make a pathway through the -multitude. A golden cross was raised high, and clergymen in surplices, -with acolytes and faithful women, came chanting solemn words. The crowd -closed about them. A mirthful sailor teased the singing women with his -"tickler." Loud guffaws, shrill laughter, were in the wake of the -procession, though some men stood to attention as the cross passed, and -others bared their heads, and something hushed the pagan riot a moment. - -At the windows in Pall Mall men in evening clothes who had been officers -in the world-war sat by the pretty women who had driven through the -crowds, looking out on the noisy pageant of the street. A piano-organ -was playing, and two young soldiers danced with ridiculous grace, -imitating the elegance and languorous ecstasy of society dancers. One of -them wore a woman's hat and skirt, and was wonderfully comic. - -I stood watching them, a little stupefied by all the noise and tumult -of this "Peace" night, and with a sense of tragic irony, remembering -millions of boys who lay dead in quiet fields and the agony of many -peoples in Europe. It was then that I saw young Harding. He was sitting -in his club window just above the dancing soldiers and looking out with -a grave and rather woe-begone face, remarkable in contrast with the -laughing faces of fellow-clubmen and their women. I recognised him after -a moment's query in my mind, and said: "Hulloa, Harding!" - -He stared at me, and I saw the sudden dawning of remembrance. - -"Come in," he answered. "I had no idea you were back again!" - -So I went into his club and sat by his side at the open window, glad of -this retreat from the pressure and tumult of the mob below. - -He talked conventionally for a little while, and asked me whether I had -had "a good time" in the States, and whether I was busy, and why the -Americans seemed so hostile to President Wilson. I understood from -him that he approved of the Peace Treaty and was glad that Germany and -Austria had been "wiped off the map" as far as it was humanly possible. - -We chatted like that for what I suppose was something more than half -an hour, while we looked out upon the seething multitude in the street -below, when suddenly the boy's mask fell from him, so abruptly and -with such a naked revelation of a soul in anguish that concealment was -impossible. - -I saw him lean forward with his elbows on the windowsill and his hands -clenching an iron bar. His face had become like his shirt front, almost -as white as that. A kind of groan came from him, like that of a man -badly wounded. The people on either side of him turned to look at him, -but he was unconscious of them, as he stared at something in the street. -I followed the direction of his eyes and guessed that he was looking at -a motor-car which had been stopped by the crowd, who were surging about -it. It was an open car, and inside were a young man and woman in fancy -dress as Pierrot and Columbine. They were standing up and pelting the -crowd with long coloured streamers, which the mob caught and tossed -back again with shouts of laughter. The girl was very pretty, with an -audacious little face beneath the white sugar-loaf cap, and her eyes -were on fire. Her companion was a merry-eyed fellow, dean-shaven and -ruddy-faced (for he had not chalked it to Pierrot's whiteness), and -looked to me typical of a naval officer or one of our young airmen. I -could see nothing to groan about in such a sight. - -"What's wrong, Harding?" - -I touched him on the elbow, for I did not like him to give himself away -before the other company in the window-seat. - -He rose at once, and walked in a stumbling way across the room, while I -followed. The room was empty where we stood. - -"Aren't you well?" I asked. - -He laughed in a most tragic way. - -"Did you see those two in the car, Pierrot and Columbine?" - -I nodded. - -"Columbine was my wife. Pierrot is now her husband. Funny, isn't it?" - -My memory went back to that night in Cologne, less than six months -before, when Harding had asked me to use my influence to get him -demobilised, and as an explanation of his motive opened his pocket-book -and showed me the photograph of a pretty girl, and said, "That's -my wife;... she is hipped because I have been away so long." I felt -enormously sorry for him. - -"Come and have a whisky in the smoke-room," said Harding. "I'd like a -yarn, and we shall be alone." - -I did not want him to tell me his tale. I was tired of tragic history. -But I could not refuse. The boy wanted to unburden himself. I could see -that, though for quite a time after we had sat on each side of the wood -fire he hesitated in getting to the point and indulged in small talk -about his favourite brand of cigars and my evil habit of smoking the -worst kind of cigarettes. - -Suddenly we plunged into what were the icy waters of his real thoughts. - -"About my wife... I'd like you to know. Others will tell you, and you'd -have heard already if you hadn't been away so long. But I think you -would get a wrong notion from others. The fact is, I don't blame Evelyn. -I would like you to understand that. I blame the Germans for everything." - -"The Germans?" - -That was a strange statement, and I could not see the drift of it until -he explained his meaning. - -"The Germans made the war, and the war took me away from Evelyn just -after our marriage.... Imagine the situation, a kid of a girl, wanting -to be merry and bright, eager for the fun of life, and all that, left -alone in a big old house in the country, or when she got fed up with -that in a big gloomy house in town. She got fed up with both pretty -quick. I used to get letters from her--every day for a while--and she -used to say in every one of them, 'I'm fed up like Billy-O.' That was -her way of putting it, don't you know, and I got scared. But what -could I do out there except write and tell her to try and get busy with -something? Well, she got busy all right!" - -Harding laughed again in his woeful way, which was not good to hear. -Then he became angry and passionate, and told me it was all the fault of -"those damned women." - -I asked him what "damned women," and he launched into a wild -denunciation of a certain set of women--most of the names he mentioned -were familiar to me from full-length portraits in the _Sketch_ and -_Tatler_--who had spent the years of war in organising fancy bazaars, -charity matines, private theatricals for Red Cross funds, "and all -that," as Harding remarked in his familiar phrase. He said they were -rotten all through, utterly immoral, perfectly callous of all the death -and tragedy about them, except in a false, hysterical way at times. - -"They were ghouls," he said. - -Many of them had married twice, three times, even more than that, before -the boys who were killed were cold in their graves. Yet those were -the best, with a certain respect for convention. Others had just let -themselves go. They had played the devil with any fellow who came within -their circle of enticement, if he had a bit of money, or could dance -well, or oiled his hair in the right way. - -"They corrupted English society," said Harding, "while they smiled and -danced, and dressed in fancy clothes, and posed for their photos in the -papers. It was they who corrupted Evelyn when the poor kid was fighting -up against her loneliness and very hipped, and all that." - -"Who was the man?" I asked, and Harding hesitated before he told me. -It was with frightful irony that he answered: "The usual man in most of -these cases, the man who is often one's best pal. Damn him!" - -Harding, seemed to repent of that curse; at least, his next words were -strangely inconsistent. - -"Mind you, I don't blame him, either. It was I who sent him to Evelyn. -He was in the Dragoons with me, and when he went home on leave I said, -'Go and cheer up my little wife, old man. Take her to a theatre or two, -and all that. She's devilishly lonely.' Needless to say, he fell in love -with her. I might have known it. As for Evelyn, she was immensely taken -with young Dick. He was a bit of a humorist and made her laugh. Laughter -was a devilish good thing in war-time. That was where Dick had his pull. -I might have known _that!_ I was a chuckle-headed idiot." - -The end of the story was abrupt, and at the time I found it hard to find -extenuating circumstances in the guilt of the girl who had smashed -this boy Harding. She lied to him up to the very moment of his -demobilisation; at least, she gave him no clue to her purpose until -she hit him, as it were, full in the face with a mortal blow to his -happiness. - -He had sent her a wire with the one word "Demobilised," and then had -taken the next train back and a cab from Charing Cross to that house of -his at Rutland Gate. - -"Is the mistress well?" he had asked one of the maids when his kit was -handled in the hall. - -"The mistress is out, sir," said the maid, and he remembered afterwards -that she looked queerly at him, with a kind of pity. - -There was the usual note waiting for him. Evelyn was "very sorry." She -hated causing her husband the grief she knew he would feel, but she and -Dick could not do without each other. The war had altered everything, -and many wives to many husbands. She hoped Harding would be happy after -a bit.... - -Harding was not happy. When he read that note he went a little mad, and -roamed round London with an automatic pistol, determined to kill his -former friend if he could set eyes on him. Fortunately, he did not find -him. Evelyn and Dick had gone off to a village in Devonshire, and after -three days with murder in his heart Harding had been very ill and had -gone into a nursing-home. There, in his weakness, he had, he told me, -"thought things out." The result of his meditations amounted to no -more than the watchword of many people in years of misery: "_C'est la -guerre!_" - -It was the war which had caused his tragedy. It had put too great a -strain on human nature, or at least on human nerves and morals. It -had broken down the conventions and traditions of civilised life. The -Germans had not only destroyed many towns and villages, but many homes -and hearts far from the firing-line. They had let the devil loose. - -"Quite a number of my pals," said Harding, "are in the same boat with -me. They either couldn't stick their wives, or their wives couldn't -stick them. It gives one a sense of companionship!" - -He smiled in a melancholy way, but then confessed to loneliness--so many -of his real pals had gone west--and asked whether he could call on me -now and then. It was for that reason that he came to my house fairly -often, and sometimes Fortune, who came too at times, made him laugh, as -in the old days. - - - - -III - - -Fortune and I met also in a crowd, but indoors. Brand and Eileen -O'Connor were both to be at one of the evening parties which assembled -every now and then in a flat at Chelsea belonging to Susy Whincop, -designer of stained glass, driver of ambulances for the Scottish Women's -Convoy, and sympathetic friend before the war of any ardent soul who -grew long hair if a man, short hair if a woman, and had some special -scheme, philosophy, or inspiration for the welfare of humanity. - -I had known Susy and her set in the old days. They were the minor -intellectuals of London, and I had portrayed some of them in a novel -called "Intellectual Mansions," which they did not like, though I loved -them all. They wrote little poems, painted little pictures, produced -little plays, and talked about all subjects under heaven with -light-hearted humour, an arrogance towards popular ideas, and a quick -acceptance of the new, the unusual and the revolutionary in art and -thought. Into their way of life war crashed suddenly with its thunder -notes of terror. All that they had lived for seemed to be destroyed, -and all their ideals overthrown. They had believed in beauty, and it was -flung into the mud, and bespattered with blood, and buried beneath the -ugly monsters of war's idolatry. - -They had been devotees of liberty, and were made slaves of the drill -sergeant and other instruments of martial law. They had been enemies -of brutality, cruelty, violence, but all human effort now was for the -slaughter of men, and the hero was he who killed most with bayonet or -bomb. Their pretty verses were made of no account. Their impressionistic -paintings were not so useful as the camouflage of tin huts. Their little -plays were but feeble drama to that which now was played out on the -world's stage to the roar of guns and the march of armies. They went -into the tumult and fury of it all, and were lost. I met some of them, -like Fortune and Brand, in odd places. Many of them died in the dirty -ditches. Some of them wrote poems before they died, stronger than -their work before the war, with a noble despair or the exaltation of -sacrifice. Others gave no sign of their previous life, and were just -absorbed into the ranks--ants in these legions of soldier-ants. Now -those who had escaped with life were coming back to their old haunts, -trying to pick up old threads, getting back, if they could, to the old -ways of work, hoping for a new inspiration out of immense experience, -but not yet finding it. - -In Susy Whincop's flat some of them had gathered when I went there, and -when I looked round upon them, seeing here and there vaguely-remembered -faces, I was conscious of a change that had overtaken them, and, with a -shock, wondered whether I too had altered so much in those five years. -I recognised Peter Hallam, whom I had known as a boy just down from -Oxford, with a genius (in a small way) for satirical verse and a talent -for passionate lyrics of a morbid and erotic type. Yes, it was certainly -Peter, though his face had hardened and he had cropped his hair short -and walked with one leg stiff. - -He was talking to a girl with bobbed hair. It was Jennie Southcombe, -who had been one of the heroines of the Serbian retreat, according to -accounts of newspaper correspondents. - -"My battery," said Peter, "plugged into old Fritz with open sights for -four horns. We just mowed 'em down." - -Another face rang a little bell in my memory. Surely that was Alfred -Lyon, the Futurist painter? No, it could not be, for Lyon had dressed -like an Apache, and this man was in conventional evening clothes and -looked like a Brigadier in mufti. Alfred Lyon?... Yes, there he was, -though he had lost his pose--cribbed from Murger's _Vie de Bohme_--and -his half-starved look, and the wildness in his eyes. As he passed Susy -Whincop he spoke a few words, which I overheard. - -"I've abandoned Futurism. The present knocked that silly. Our little -violence, which shocked Suburbia, was made ridiculous by the enormous -thing that smashed every convention into a cocked hat.' I'm just going -to put down some war scenes--I made notes in the trenches--with that -simplicity of the primitive soul to which we went back in that way of -life. The soldier's point of view, his vision, is what I shall try for." - -"Splendid!" said Susy. "Only, don't shrink from the abomination. We've -got to make the world understand--and remember." - -I felt a touch on my sleeve, and a voice said, "Hulloa!... Back again?" - -I turned and saw an oldish-young man, with white hair above a lean, -clean-shaven face and sombre eyes. I stared, but could not fix him. - -"Don't you remember?" he said. "Wetherall, of the Stage Society!" - -"Oh, Lord, yes!" - -I grasped his hand, and tried to keep the startled look out of my eyes. -But he saw it, and smiled. - -"Four years as a prisoner of the Turk have altered me a bit. This white -hair, eh? And I feel like Rip van Winkle." - -He put into words something which I had been thinking since my arrival -in Susy's rooms. - -"We are the _revenants_, the ghosts who have come back to their old -haunts. We are pretending that everything is the same as before, and -that we are the same. But it's all different, and we have changed most -of all. Five years of war have dug their hoofs into the faces of most -people in this crowd. Some of them look fifteen, twenty, years older, -and I expect they've been through a century of experience and emotion." - -"What's coming out of it?" I asked. "Anything big?" - -"Not from us," said Wetherall. "Most of us are finished. Our nerves have -gone to pieces, and our vitality has been sapped. We shall put down a -few notes of things seen and understood. But it's the next generation -that will get the big vision, or the one after next." - -Then I was able to shake hands with Susy Whincop, and, as I have said, -she left me in no doubt about the change that four years of war had made -to me. - -She held me at arm's length, studying my face. - -"Soul alive!" she said. "You've been through it all right! Hell's -branding-irons have been busy with a fair-faced man." - -"As bad as that?" I asked, and she answered very gravely, "As bad as -that." - -She had hardly changed, except for a few streaks of grey in her brown -hair. Her low, broad forehead was as smooth as before; her brown eyes -shone with their old steady light. She had not lost her sense of humour, -though she had seen a good deal of blood and agony and death. - -"How's humanity?" I asked, and she laughed and Shrugged her shoulders. - -"What can one do with it? I thought we were going to catch the old devil -by the tail and hold him fast, but he's broken loose again. This peace! -Dear God!... And all the cruelty and hatred that have survived the -massacre! But I don't despair even now. In this room there is enough -good-will and human kindness to create a new world. We're going to have -a good try to make things better by-and-by." - -"Who's your star to-night?" I asked. "Who is the particular -Hot-Gospeller with a mission to convert mankind?" - -"I've several," said Susy. - -She glanced round the room, and her eyes rested on a little man with -goggles and a goatee beard, none other than my good friend Dr. Small, -with whom I had travelled down many roads. I had no notion that he knew -Susy or was to be here to-night. - -"There's one great soul--a little American doctor whose heart is as -big as humanity itself, and whose head is filled with the wisdom of the -wise." - -"I know him," I said, "and I agree with you." - -He caught our eyes fixed on him, and blinked through his goggles, and -then waved his hand, and made his way to us. - -"Hulloa, doc.!" I said. "Why didn't you tell me you knew Susy Whincop?" - -"No need," he answered. "Miss Whincop is the golden link between all men -of good-will." - -Susy was pleased with that. She patted the little doctor's hand and -said, "Bully for you, doctor! and may the Stars and Stripes wave over -the League of Nations!" - -Then she was assailed by other guests, and the doctor and I took refuge -in a corner. - -"How's everything?" I asked. - -The doctor was profoundly dejected, and did not hide the gloom that -possessed his soul. - -"Sonny," he answered, "we shall have to fight with our backs to the -wall, because the enemy--the old devil--is prevailing against us. I have -just come over from Paris, and I don't mind telling you that what I saw -during the Peace Conference has made me doubt the power of goodness over -evil." - -"Tell me," I said. - -"Daddy" Small's story was not pleasant to hear. It was the story of the -betrayal, one by one, of every ideal for which simple men had fought and -died, a story of broken pledges, of hero-worship dethroned, and of great -peoples condemned to lingering death. The Peace Treaty, he said, would -break the heart of the world and prepare the way for new, more dreadful, -warfare. - -"How about Wilson?" I asked. - -The little doctor raised his hands like a German crying, "_Kamerad!_" - -"Wilson was not big enough. He had the future of civilisation in his -hands, but his power was filched from him, and he never knew until -the end that he had lost it. He was like a simple Gulliver among the -Liliputians. They tied him down with innumerable threads of cotton -while he slept in self-complacency with a sense of righteousness. He was -slow-thinking among quick-witted people. He stated a general principle, -and they drafted out clauses which seemed to fulfil the principle while -violating it in every detail. They juggled with facts and figures so -that black seemed white through his moral spectacles, and he said Amen -to their villainy, believing that God had been served by righteousness. -Bit by bit they broke his pledges and made a jigsaw puzzle of them so -artfully that he believed they were uncracked. Little by little they -robbed him of his honour, and he was unaware of the theft. In preambles -and clause headings and interpretations they gave lip-service to the -fourteen points upon which the armistice was granted, and to which the -allied nations were utterly pledged, not only to the Germans and all -enemies, but to their own people. Not one of those fourteen points is -in the reality of the Treaty. There has been no self-determination of -peoples. Millions have been transferred into unnatural boundaries. There -have been no open covenants openly arrived at. The Conference was within -closed doors. The clauses of the Peace Treaty were kept secret from the -world until an American journalist got hold of a copy and sent it to -his paper. What has become of the equality of trade conditions and the -removal of economic barriers among all nations consenting to peace? -Sonny, Europe has been carved up by the spirit of vengeance, and -multitudes of men, women and children have been sentenced to death by -starvation. Another militarism is enthroned above the ruin of German -militarism. Wilson was hoodwinked into putting his signature to a peace -of injustice which will lead by desperation to world anarchy and strife. -When he understands what thing he has done he will be stricken by a -mortal blow to his conscience and his pride." - -"Doctor," I said, "there is still hope in the League of Nations. We must -all back that." - -He shook his head. - -"The spirit has gone out of it. It was born without a soul. I believe -now that the future welfare of the world depends upon a change of heart -among the peoples, inspired by individuals in all nations who will work -for good and give a call to humanity, indifferent to statesmen, treaties -and Governments." - -"The International League of Good-will?" - -He nodded and smiled. - -"Something like that." - -I remembered a dinner-party in New York after the armistice. I had been -lecturing on the League of Nations at a time when the Peace Treaty was -still unsigned, but when already there was a growing hostility against -President Wilson, startling in its intensity. The people of the United -States were still moved by the emotion and idealism with which they had -roused great armies and sent them to the fields of France. Some of the -men were returning home again. I stood outside a club in New York when a -darkie regiment returned its colours, and I heard the roars of cheering -that followed the march of the negro troops. I saw Fifth Avenue filled -with triumphal arches, strung across with jewelled chains, festooned -with flags and trophies of the home-coming of the New York Division. The -heart of the American people was stirred by the pride of its achievement -on the way to victory and by a new sense of power over the destiny -of mankind. But already there was a sense of anxiety about the -responsibilities to which Wilson in Europe was pledging them without -their full and free consent. They were conscious that their old -isolation was being broken down, and that by ignorance or rash promise -they might be drawn into other European adventures which were no concern -of theirs. They knew how little was their knowledge of European peoples, -with their rivalries, and racial hatreds, and secret intrigues. Their -own destiny as a free people might be thwarted by being dragged into -the jungle of that unknown world. In any case Wilson was playing a lone -hand, pledging them without their advice or agreement, subordinating -them, it seemed, to the British Empire, with six votes on the Council of -the League to their poor one. What did he mean? By what right did he do -so? - -At every dinner-table these questions were asked before the soup was -drunk; at the coffee end of the meal every dinner-party was a debating -club, and the women joined with the men in hot discussion; until some -tactful soul laughed loudly, and some hostess led the way to music or a -dance. - -The ladies had just gone after one of these debates, leaving us to our -cigars and coffee, when "Daddy" Small made a proposition which startled -me at the time. - -"See here," he said to his host and the other men. "Out of this -discussion one thing stands clear and straight. It is that in this room, -now, at this table, are men of intellect--American and English--men of -goodwill towards mankind, men of power in one way or another, who agree -that whatever happens there must be eternal friendship between England -and the United States." - -"Sure!" said a chorus of voices. - -"In other countries there are men with the same ideals as, -ourselves--peace, justice between men and nations, a hatred of cruelty, -pity for women and children, charity and truth. Is that agreed?" - -"Sure!" said the other guests. - -They were mostly business men, well-to-do, but not of the "millionaire" -class, with here and there a writing-man, an artist and, as I remember, -a clergyman. - -"I am going to be a commercial traveller in charity," said the little -doctor. "I am going across the frontiers to collect clients for an -international society of goodwill. I propose to establish a branch at -this table." - -The suggestion was received with laughter by some of the men, but, as I -saw, with gravity by others. - -"What would be the responsibilities, doctor. Do you want money?" - -This was from the manager of an American railroad. - -"We shall want a bit," said the doctor. "Not much. Enough for stamps and -occasional booklets and typewriting. The chief responsibility would -be to spot lies leading to national antagonism, and to kill them by -exposure to cold truth; also, to put in friendly words, privately and -publicly, on behalf of human kindness across the barriers of hate and -malignity. Any names for the New York branch?" - -The doctor took down twelve names, pledged solemnly to his programmes.... - -I remembered that scene in New York when I stood with the little man in -Susy Whincop's drawing-room. - -"What about this crowd?" I asked. - -"Sonny," he said, "this place is reeking with humanity. The real stuff. -Idealists who have seen hell pretty close, most of them. Why, in this -room there's enough goodwill to move mountains of cruelty, if we could -get a move on all together." - -It was then that I saw Charles Fortune, though I was looking for Brand. - -Fortune was wearing one of his special "faces." I interpreted it as his -soulful and mystical face. It broke a little as he winked at me. - -"Remarkable gathering," he said. "The Intellectuals come back to their -lair. Some of them like little Bo-Peep who lost her sheep and left their -tails behind them." - -"What does that mean?" I asked. - -"Nothing," he answered. "We used to talk like that. I'm trying to grope -back." - -He put his hand over his forehead wearily. - -"God!" he said. "How terrible was war in a Nissen hut! I cannot even now -forget that I was every yard a soldier!" - -He began to hum his well-remembered anthem, "Blear-eyed Bill the Butcher -of the Boche," and then checked himself. - -"Nay, let us forget that melody of blood. Let us rather sing of fragrant -things of peace." He hummed the nursery ballad of "Twinkle, twinkle, -little star, How I wonder what you are!" - -Susy Whincop seized him by the wrist. - -"So the Fat Boy has escaped the massacre? Come and make us laugh. We are -getting too serious at the piano end of the room." - -"Lady," said Fortune, "tempt me not to mirth-making. My irony is -terrible when roused." - -As he went to the piano I caught sight of Brand just making his way -through a group by the door. - -I had never seen him in civil clothes, but he looked as I had imagined -him, in an old pre-war dinner-jacket and baggy trousers, and a shirt -that bulged abominably. A tuft of hair stuck up behind--the tuft that -Eileen O'Connor, had pulled for Auld Lang Syne. But he looked fine and -distinguished, with his hard, lean face and strong jaw and melancholy -eyes. - -He caught sight of me and gripped my hand, painfully. - -"Hullo, old man! Welcome back. I have heaps to tell you." - -"Good things?" I asked. - -He shook his head. - -"Not good.... Damned bad, alas!" - -He did not continue the conversation. He stared across my shoulder at -the door as though he saw an apparition. I turned to see the object of -his gaze. It was Eileen O'Connor, whom I had first met in Lille. - -She was in an evening frock cut low at the neck, and her arms were bare. -There was a smile in her dark Irish eyes, and about her long humorous -mouth. The girl I had seen in Lille was not so elegant as this, not so -pretty. The lifting of care, perhaps, had made the change. - -Susy Whincop gave a cry of "Is that Eileen?" and darted to her. - -"It's myself," said Eileen, releasing herself from an ardent embrace, -"and all the better for seeing you. Who's who in this distinguished -crowd?" - -"Old friends," I said, being nearest to her. "Four men who walked one -day of history up a street in Lille, and met an Irish girl who had the -worship of the crowd." - -She took my hand and I was glad of her look of friendship. - -"Four?" she said. "That's too good to be true. All safe and home again?" - -It was astonishing that four of us should be there in a room in London -with the girl who had been the heroine of Lille. But there was Fortune -and "Daddy" Small and Brand and myself. - -The crowd gave us elbow-room while we stood round Eileen. To each she -gave her hands--both hands--and merry words of greeting. It was only I, -and she, perhaps, who saw the gloom on Brand's face when she greeted him -last and said: "Is it well with you, Wickham?" - -Her colour rose a little at the sight of him, and he was paler than when -I saw him first that night. - -"Pretty well," he said. "One still needs courage--even in peace." - -He laughed a little as he spoke, but I knew that his laughter was the -camouflage of hidden trouble, at which he had hinted in his letters to -me. - -We could not have much talk that evening. The groups shifted and -re-shifted. The best thing was when Eileen sang "The Gentle Maiden" as -on a night in Lille. Brand, standing near the door, listened, strangely -unconscious of the people about him. - -"It's good to hear that song again," I said. - -He started, as though suddenly awakened. - -"It stirs queer old memories." - -It was in Eileen's own house that Brand and I renewed a friendship which -had been made in a rescued city where we had heard the adventure of this -girl's life. - - - - -IV - - -As Brand admitted to me, and as he had outlined the trouble in his -letters, he was having "a bad time." Since his marriage with Elsa von -Kreuzenach he had not had much peace of mind nor any kind of luck. After -leaving Cologne the War Office, prompted by some unknown influence--he -suspected his father, who knew the Secretary for War--had sent him off -on a special mission to Italy and had delayed his demobilisation until -a month before this meeting of ours. That had prevented his plan of -bringing Elsa to England, and now, when he was free and her journey -possible, he was seriously embarrassed with regard to a home for -her. There was plenty of room in his father's house at Cheyne Walk, -Chelsea--too big a house for his father and mother and younger sister, -now that the eldest girl had married and his younger brother lay dead on -the Somme. It had been his idea that he and Elsa would live in the upper -rooms--it made a kind of flat--while he got back to novel-writing until -he earned enough to provide a home of his own. It was still his idea, -as the only possible place for the immediate future, but the family was -dead against it and expressed the utmost aversion, amounting almost to -horror, at the idea of receiving his German wife. By violent argument, -by appeals to reason and charity, most of all by the firm conviction of -his father that he was suffering from shell-shock and would go over the -borderline of sanity if thwarted too much, a grudging consent had been -obtained from them to give Elsa house-room. Yet he dreaded the coldness -of her welcome, and the hostility not only of his own people but of any -English society in which she might find herself. - -"I shouldn't have believed," said Brand, "that such vindictive hatred -could have outlasted the war, in England. The people here at home, who -have never seen war closer than an air-raid, are poisoned, twisted and -envenomed with hate. And the women are worst. My own mother--so sweet -and gentle in the old days--would see every German baby starve rather -than subscribe to a single drop of milk. My own sister--twenty years of -age, add as holy as an angel--would scratch out the eyes of every German -girl. She reads the papers every day with a feverish desire for the -Kaiser's trial. She licks her lips at the stories of starvation in -Austria. 'They are getting punished,' she says. 'Who?' I ask her. -'Austrian babies?' And she says, 'The people who killed my brother -and yours.' What's the good of telling her that I have killed _their_ -brothers--many of them--even the brother of my wife----" - -I shook my head at that, but Brand was insistent. - -"I'm sure of it.... It is useless telling her that the innocent are -being punished for the guilty, and that all Europe was involved in the -same guilt. She says, 'You have altered your ideas. The strain of war -has been too much for you.' She means I'm mad or bad.... Sometimes -I think I may be, but when I think of those scenes in Cologne, the -friendly way of our fighting men with their former enemy, the charity of -our Tommies, their lack of hatred now the job is done, I look at these -people in England, the stay-at-homes, and believe it is they who are -warped." - -The news of Brand's marriage with a German girl had leaked out, though -his people tried to hush it up. It came to me now and then as a tit-bit -of scandal from men who had been up at Oxford with him in the old days. - -"You know that fellow Wickham Brand?" - -"Yes." - -"Heard the rumour about him?" - -"No." - -"They say he's got a German wife. Married her after the armistice." - -"Why not?" - -That question of mine made them stare as though I had uttered some -blasphemy. Generally they did not attempt to answer it, but shrugged -their shoulders with a look of unutterable disgust, or said, -"Disgraceful!" They were men, invariably, who had done _embusqu_ work -in the war, in Government offices and soft jobs. Soldiers who had fought -their way to Cologne were more lenient. One of them said, "Some of the -German girls are devilish pretty. Not my style, perhaps, but kissable." - -I saw something of Brand's trouble when I walked down Knightsbridge with -him one day on the way to his home in Chelsea. Horace Chipchase, the -novelist, came face to face with us and gave a whoop of pleasure when -he saw us. Then suddenly, after shaking hand? with me and greeting Brand -warmly, he remembered the rumour that had reached him. Embarrassment -overcame him, and ignoring Brand he confined his remarks to me, -awkwardly, and made an excuse for getting on. He did not look at Brand, -again. - -"Bit strained in his manner," I remarked, glancing sideways at Wickham. - -He strode on with tightened lips. - -"Shared rooms with me once, and I helped him when he was badly in need -of it.... He's heard about Elsa. Silly blighter!" - -But it hurt the man, who was very sensitive under his hard crust. - -It was on the way to his house that he told me he had made arrangements -at last for Elsa to join him in England. One of his friends at -headquarters in Cologne was providing her with a passport and had agreed -to let her travel with him to Paris where he was to give evidence before -a committee of the Peace Conference. Brand could fetch her from there, -in a week's time. - -"I am going to Paris next week," I told him, and he gave a grunt of -pleasure, and said, "Splendid! We can both meet Elsa." - -I thought it curious then, and afterwards, that he was anxious for my -company when he met his wife and when she was with him. I think the -presence of a third person helped him to throw off a little of the -melancholy into which he relapsed when alone. - -I asked him if Elsa's family knew of her marriage and were reconciled -to it, and he told me that they knew, but were less reconciled now than -when she had first broken the news to her father and mother on the day -of her wedding. Then there had been a family "scene." The General had -raged and stormed, and his wife had wept, but after that outburst had -decided to forgive her, in order to avoid a family scandal. There had -been a formidable assembly of uncles, aunts and cousins of the von -Kreuzenach family to sit in judgment upon this affair which, as they -said, "touched their honour," and Elsa's description of it, and of -her terror and sense of guilt (it is not easy to break with racial -traditions), was very humorous, though at the same time rather pathetic. -They had graciously decided, after prolonged discussions in which they -treated Elsa exactly as though she were the prisoner at a court-martial, -to acknowledge and accept her marriage with Captain Brand. They had been -led to this decision mainly owing to the information given by Franz von -Kreuzenach that Captain Brand belonged to the English aristocracy, -his father being Sir Amyas Brand, and a member of the English House of -Parliament. They were willing to admit that, inferior as Captain Brand's -family might be to that of von Kreuzenach--so old and honoured in German -history--it was yet respectable and not unworthy of alliance with them. -Possibly--it was an idea suggested with enormous solemnity by Onkel -von Kreuzenach--Elsa's marriage with the son of an English Member of -Parliament might be of service to the Father-land in obtaining some -amelioration of the Peace Terms (the Treaty was not yet signed), and in -counteracting the harsh malignity of France. They must endeavour to use -this opportunity provided by Elsa in every possible way as a patriotic -duty.... So at the end of the family conclave Elsa was not only forgiven -but was, to some extent, exalted as an instrument of God for the rescue -of their beloved Germany. - -That position of hers lasted in her family until the terms of the -Peace Treaty leaked out, and then were published in full. A storm -of indignation rose in Germany, and Elsa was a private victim of its -violence in her own house. The combined clauses of the Treaty were read -as a sentence of death by the German people. Clause by clause, they -believed it fastened a doom upon them, and insured their ruin. It -condemned them to the payment of indemnities which would demand all the -produce of their industry for many and uncertain years. It reduced them -to the position of a slave state, without an army, without a fleet, -without colonies, without the right to develop industries in foreign -countries, without ships to carry their merchandise, without coal -to supply their factories or raw material for their manufactures. To -enforce the payment of these indemnities foreign commissions would seize -all German capital invested in former enemy or neutral states, and would -keep armed forces on the Rhine ready to march at any time, years after -the conclusion of peace, into the heart of Germany. The German people -might work, but not for themselves. They had freed themselves of -their own tyrants, but were to be subject to an international tyranny -depriving them of all hope of gradual recovery from the ruin of defeat. -On the West and on the East, Austria was to be hemmed in by new states -formed out of her own flesh-and-blood under the domination of hostile -races. She was to be maimed and strangled. The Fourteen Points to -which the allies had pledged themselves before the armistice had been -abandoned utterly, and Wilson's promise of a peace which would heal -the wounds of the world had been replaced by a peace of vengeance which -would plunge Central Europe into deep gulfs of misery, despair, and -disease. That, at least, was the German point of view. - -"They're stunned," said Brand. "They knew they were to be punished, and -they were willing to pay a vast price of defeat. But they believed that -under a republican Government they would be left with a future hope of -progress, a decent hope of life, based upon their industry. Now they -have no hope, for we have given them a thin chance of reconstruction. -They are falling back upon the hope of vengeance and revolt. We have -prepared another inevitable war when the Germans, with the help of -Russia, will strive to break the fetters we have fastened on them. So -goes the only purpose for which most of us fought this war, and all our -pals have died in vain." - -He stopped in the street and beat the pavement with his stick. - -"The damned stupidity of it all!" he said. "The infernal wickedness of -those old men who have arranged this thing!" - -Three small boys came galloping up Cheyne Walk with toy reins and -tinkling bells. - -"Those children," said Brand, "will see the things that we have seen and -go into the ditches of death before their manhood has been fulfilled. We -fought to save them, and have failed." - -He told me that even Elsa had been aghast at the Peace Terms. - -"I hoped more from the generous soul of England," she had written to -him. - -Franz von Kreuzenach had written more bitterly than that. - -"We have been betrayed. There were millions of young men in Germany who -would have worked loyally to fulfil Wilson's conditions of peace as -they were pledged in his Fourteen Points. They would have taken their -punishment with patience and courage, knowing the penalty of defeat. -They would have worked for the new ideals of a new age, which were to be -greater liberty and the brotherhood of man in a League of Nations. But -what is that league? It is a combination of enemies, associated for the -purpose of crushing the German people and keeping her crushed. I, who -loved England and had no emnity against her even in war, cannot forgive -her now for her share in this peace. As a German I find it unforgivable, -because it perpetuates the spirit of hatred and thrusts us back into the -darkness where evil is bred." - -"Do you agree with that?" I asked Brand. - -"On the whole, yes," he said, gravely. "Mind you, I'm not against -punishing Germany. She had to be punished. But we are substituting slow -torture for just retribution, and like Franz I'm thinking of the effect -on the future. By generosity we should have made the world safe. By -vengeance we have prepared new strife. Europe will be given up to -anarchy and deluged in the blood of the boys who are now babes." - -I had dinner with Brand's people and found them "difficult." Sir Amyas -Brand had Wickham's outward hardness and none of his inner sensibility. -He was a stiff, pompous man who had done extremely well out of the war, -I guessed, by the manufacture of wooden huts, to which he attached a -patriotic significance, apart from his profits. He alluded to the death -of his younger son as his "sacrifice for the Empire," though it seemed to -me that the boy Jack had been the real victim of sacrifice.. To Wickham -he behaved with an exasperating air of forgiveness, as to one who had -sinned and was physically and morally sick. - -"How do you think Wickham is looking?" he asked me at table, and when I -said, "Very well," he sighed and shook his head. - -"The war was a severe nervous strain upon Mm. It has changed him sadly. -We try to be patient with him, poor lad." - -Brand overheard his speech and flushed angrily. - -"I'm sorry I try your patience so severely, sir," he said in a bitter, -ironical way. - -"Don't let's argue about it, dear lad," said Sir Amyas Brand suavely. - -"No," said Lady Brand plaintively, "you know argument is bad for you, -Wickham. You become so violent, dear." - -"Besides," said Ethel Brand, the daughter, in a low and resigned voice, -"what's done can't be undone." - -"Meaning Elsa?" asked Wickham savagely. I could see that but for my -restraining presence as a stranger there was all the inflammable stuff -here for a first-class domestic "flare-up." - -"What else?" asked Ethel coldly, and meeting her brother's challenging -eyes with a perfectly steady gaze. She was a handsome girl with regular, -classical features and tight lips, as narrow-minded, I imagined, as a -mid-Victorian spinster in a cathedral town, and as hard as granite in -principle and prejudice. - -Wickham weakened after signs of an explosion of rage. He spoke gently, -and revealed a hope to which I think he clung desperately. - -"When Elsa comes you will all fall in love with her." - -It was the worst thing he could have said, though he was unconscious of -his "gaffe." - -His sister Ethel reddened, and I could see her mouth harden. - -"So far I have remarkably little love for Germans, male or female." - -"I hope we shall behave with Christian charity," said Lady Brand. - -Sir Amyas Brand coughed uneasily, and then tried to laugh off his -embarrassment for my benefit. - -"There will be considerable scandal in my constituency!" - -"To hell with that!" said Brand, irritably. "It's about time the British -public returned to sanity." - -"Ah!" said Sir Amyas, "there's a narrow border-line between sanity, and -shell-shock. Really, it is distressing what a number of men seem to -come back with disordered nerves. All these crimes, all these cases of -violence----" - -It gave him a chance of repeating a leading article which he had -read that morning in _The Times_. It provided a conversation without -controversy until the end of dinner. - -In the hall, before I left, Wickham Brand laughed, rather miserably. - -"It's not going to be easy! Elsa will find the climate rather cold here, -eh?" - -"She will win them over," I said hopefully, and these words cheered him. - -"Why, yes, they're bound to like her." - -We arranged for the Paris trip two weeks later, but before then we -were sure to meet at Eileen O'Connor's. As a matter of fact, we dined -together with "Daddy" Small next day, and Eileen was with him. - - - - -V - - -I found Eileen O'Connor refreshing and invigorating, so that it was -good to be in her company. Most people in England at that time, at least -those I met, were "nervy," depressed, and apprehensive of evil to come. -There was hardly a family I knew who had not one vacant chair wherein a -boy had sat when he had come home from school or office, and afterwards -on leave. Their ghosts haunted these homes and were present in any -company where people gathered for conversation or distraction. The wound -to England's soul was unhealed, and the men who came back had received -grave hurt, many of them, to their nervous and moral health. - -This Irish girl was beautifully gay, not with that deliberate and -artificial gaiety which filled London theatres and dancing halls, but -with ah inner flame of happiness. It was difficult to account for that. -She had seen much tragedy in Lille. Death and the agony of men had been -familiar to her. She had faced death herself, very closely, escaping, -as she said, by a narrow "squeak." She had seen the brutality of war and -its welter of misery for men and women, and now in time of peace she -was conscious of the sufferings of many people, and did not hide these -things from her mental vision or cry, "All's right with the world!" when -all was wrong. But something in her character, something, perhaps, -in her faith, enabled her to resist the pressure of all this "morbid -emotion" and to face it squarely, with smiling eyes. Another thing that -attracted one was her fearlessness of truth. At a time when most people -shrank from truth her candour was marvellous, with the simplicity of -childhood joined to the wisdom of womanhood. - -I saw this at the dinner-party for four arranged in her honour by -"Daddy" Small. That was given, for cheapness' sake, at a little -old restaurant in Whitehall which provided a good dinner for a few -shillings, and in an "atmosphere" of old-fashioned respectability which -appealed to the little American. - -Eileen knocked Brand edgewise at the beginning of his dinner by -remarking about his German marriage. - -"The news came to me as a shock," she said, and when Wickham raised his -eyebrows and looked both surprised and dismayed (he had counted on her -sympathy and help), she patted his hand as it played a devil's tattoo on -the table-cloth, and launched into a series of indiscretions that fairly -made my hair curl. - -"Theoretically," she said, "I hadn't the least objection to your -marrying a German girl. I have always believed that love is an instinct -which is beyond the control of diplomats who arrange frontiers and -generals who direct wars. I saw a lot of it in Lille--and there was -Franz von Kreuzenach, who fell in love with me, poor child. What really -hurt me for a while was green-eyed jealousy." - -"Daddy" Small laughed hilariously, and filled up Eileen's glass with -Moselle wine. - -Brand looked blank. - -"Jealousy?" - -"Why, yes," said Eileen. "Imagine me, an Irish girl, all soppy with -emotion at the first sight of English khaki (that's a fantastic -situation anyhow!), after four years with the grey men, and then finding -that the first khaki tunic she meets holds the body of a man she knew as -a boy, when she used to pull his hair! And such a grave heroic-looking -man, Wicky! Why, I felt like one of Tennyson's ladies released from her -dark tower by a Knight of the Round Tower. Then you went away and -married a German Gretchen! And all my doing, because if I hadn't given -you a letter to Franz you wouldn't have met Elsa. So when I heard the -news, I thought, 'There goes my romance!'" - -"Daddy" Small laughed again, joyously. - -"Say, my dear," he said, "you're making poor old Wickham blush like an -Englishman asked to tell the story of his V.C. in public." - -Brand laughed, too, in his harsh, deep voice. - -"Why, Eileen, you ought to have told me before I moved out of Lille." - -"And where would maiden modesty have been?" asked Eileen, in her -humorous way. - -"Where is it now?" asked the little doctor. - -"Besides," said Brand, "I had that letter to Franz von Kreuzenach in my -pocket. I don't mind telling you I detested the fellow for his infernal -impudence in making love to you." - -"Sure now, it was a one-sided affair, entirely," said Eileen, -exaggerating her Irish accent, "but one has to be polite to a gentleman -that saves one's life on account of a romantic passion. Oh, Wickham, -it's very English you are!" - -Brand could find nothing to say for himself, and it was I who came to -the rescue of his embarrassment by dragging a red herring across the -thread of Eileen's discourse. She had a wonderful way of saying things -that on most girls' lips would have seemed audacious, or improper, or -'high-falutin', but on hers were natural with a simplicity which shone -through her. - -Her sense of humour played like a light about her words, yet beneath her -wit was a tenderness and a knowledge of tragic things. I remember some -of her sayings that night at dinner, and they seemed to me very good -then, though when put down they lose the deep melody of her voice and -the smile or sadness of her dark eyes. - -"England," she said, "fought the war for liberty and the rights of small -nations, but said to Ireland, 'Hush, keep quiet there, damn you, or -you'll make us look ridiculous.'" - -"Irish soldiers," she said, "helped England to win all her wars, but -mostly in Scottish regiments. When the poor boys wanted to carry an -Irish flag, Kitchener said, 'Go to hell,' and some of them went to -Flanders... and recruiting stopped with a snap." - -"Now, how do you know these things?" asked "Daddy" Small. "Did Kitchener -go to Lille to tell you?" - -"No," said Eileen, "but I found some of the Dublin boys in the prison at -Lille, and they told the truth before they died, and perhaps it was that -which killed them. That and starvation and German brutality." - -"I believe you're a Sinn Feiner," said Dr. Small. "Why don't you go to -Ireland and show your true colours, ma'am?" - -"I'm Sinn Fein all right," said Eileen, "but I hated the look of a white -wall in Lille, and there are so many white walls in the little green -isle. So I'm stopping in Kensington and trying to hate the English, but -can't because I love them." - -She turned to Wickham and said: "Will you take me for a row in -Kensington Gardens the very next day the sun shines?" - -"Rather!" said Wickham, "on one condition!' - -"And that?" - -"That you'll be kind to my little Elsa when she comes." - -"I'll be a mother to her," said Eileen, "but she must come quick or I'll -be gone." - -"Gone?" - -Wickham spoke with dismay in his voice. I think he had counted on Eileen -as his stand-by when Elsa would need a friend in England. - -"Hush now!" said "Daddy" Small. "It's my secret, you wicked lady with -black eyes and a mystical manner." - -"Doctor," said Eileen, "your own President rebukes you. 'Open covenants -openly arrived at--weren't those his words for the new diplomacy?" - -"Would to God he had kept to them," said the little doctor, bitterly, -launching into a denunciation of the Peace Conference until I cut him -short with a question. - -"What's this secret, Doctor?" - -He pulled out his pocket-book with an air of mystery. - -"We're getting on with the International League of Goodwill," he said. -"It's making more progress than the League of Nations. There are names -here that are worth their weight in gold. There are golden promises -which by the grace of God----" - -"Daddy" Small spoke solemnly--"will be fulfilled by golden deeds. -Anyhow, we're going to get a move on--away from hatred towards charity, -not for the making of wounds but for the healing, not punishing the -innocent for the sins of the guilty, but saving the innocent--the Holy -Innocents--for the glory of life. Miss Eileen and others are going to -be the instruments of the machinery of mercy, rather, I should say, the -spirit of humanity." - -"With you as our gallant leader," said Eileen, patting his hand. - -"It sounds good," said Brand. "Let's hear some more." - -Dr. Small told us more in glowing language, and in Biblical utterance -mixed with American slang like Billy Sunday's Bible. He was profoundly -moved. He was filled with hope and gladness, and with a humble pride -because his efforts had borne fruit. - -The scheme was simple. From his friends in the United States he had -promises, as good as gold, of many millions of American dollars. From -English friends he had also considerable sums. With this treasure he -was going to Central Europe to organise relief on a big scale for the -children who were starving to death. Eileen O'Connor was to be his -private secretary and assistant-organiser. She would have heaps of work -to do, and she had graduated in the prisons and slums of Lille. They -were starting in a week's time for Warsaw, Prague, Buda-Pesth and -Vienna. - -"Then," said Brand, "Elsa will lose a friend." - -"Bring her, too," said Eileen. "There's work for all." - -Brand was startled by this, and a sudden light leapt into his eyes. - -"By Jove!... But I'm afraid not. That's impossible." - -So it was only a week we had with Eileen, but in that time we had some -good meetings and merry adventures. Brand and I rowed her on the lake in -Kensington Gardens, and she told us Irish fairy-tales as she sat in the -stem with her hat in her lap, and the wind playing in her brown hair. -We took her to the Russian Ballet and she wept a little at the beauty of -it. - -"After four years of war," she said, "beauty is like water to a parched -soul. It's so exquisite it hurts." - -She took us one day into the Carmelite Church at - -Kensington, and Brand and I knelt each side of her, feeling sinners with -a saint between us. And then, less like a saint, she sang ribald little -songs on the way to her mother's house in Holland Street, and said "Drat -the thing!" when she couldn't find her key to unlock the door. - -"Sorry, Biddy my dear," she said to the little maidservant who opened -the door. "I shall forget my head one day." - -"Sure, Miss Eileen," said the girl, "but never the dear heart of you, at -all, at all." - -Eileen's mother was a buxom, cheery, smiling Irishwoman who did not -worry, I fancy, about anything in the world, and was sure of heaven. -Her drawing-room was littered with papers and novels, some of which she -swept off the sofa with a careless hand. - -"Won't you take a seat then?" - -I asked her whether she had not been anxious about her daughter when -Eileen was all those years under German rule. - -"Not at all," said the lady. "I knew our dear Lord was as near to Lille -as to London." - -Two of her boys had been killed in the war, "fighting," she said, "for -an ungrateful country which keeps its heel on the neck of Ireland," -and two were in the United States, working for the honour of Ireland on -American newspapers. Eileen's two sisters had married during the war and -between them had given birth to four Sinn Feiners. Eileen's father had -died a year ago, and almost his last word had been her name. - -"The dear man thought all the world of Eileen," said Mrs. O'Connor. "I -was out of it entirely when he had, her by his side." - -"You'll be lonely," said Brand, "when your daughter goes abroad again." - -Eileen answered him. - -"Oh, you can't keep me back by insidious remarks like that! Mother -spends most of her days in church, and the rest of them reading naughty -novels which keep her from ascending straight to heaven without the -necessity of dying first. She is never lonely because her spirit is in -touch with those she loves, in this world or the other. And isn't that -the truth I'm after talking, mother o' mine!" - -"I never knew more than one O'Connor who told the truth yet," said the -lady, "and that's yourself, my dear. And it's a frightening way you have -with it that would scare the devil out of his skin." - -They were pleasant hours with Eileen, and when she went away from -Charing Cross one morning with Dr. Small, five hospital nurses and two -Americans of the Red Cross, I wished with all my heart that Wickham -Brand had asked her and not Elsa von Kreuzenach to be his wife. That was -an idle wish, for the next morning Brand and I crossed over to France, -and on the way to Paris my friend told me that the thought of meeting -Elsa after those months of separation excited him so that each minute -seemed an hour. And as he told me that he lit a cigarette and I saw that -his hand was trembling, because of this nervous strain. - - - - -VI - - -We met Elsa at the Gare de l'Est in Paris the evening after our -arrival. Brand's nervous anxiety had increased as the hour drew near, -and he smoked cigarette after cigarette while he paced up and down the -_Salle d'Attente_ as far as he could for the crowds which surged there. - -Once he spoke to me about his apprehensions. - -"I hope to God this will work out all right.... I'm only thinking of her -happiness." - -Another time he said: "This French crowd would tear her to pieces if -they knew she was German." - -While we were waiting we met a friend of old times. I was first to -recognise Pierre Nesle, who had been attached to us as interpreter and -_liaison_ officer. He was in civil clothes and was wearing a bowler -hat and a light overcoat, so that his transformation was astonishing. I -touched him on the arm as he made his way quickly through the crowd, and -he turned sharply and stared at me as though he could not place me at -all. Then a look of recognition leapt into his eyes and he grasped both -my hands delightedly. He was still thin and pale, but some of his old -melancholy had gone out of his eyes and in its place there was an eager, -purposeful look. - -"Here's Brand," I said. "He'll be glad to see you again." - -"_Quelle chance!_" exclaimed Pierre, and he made a dash for his friend -and before Brand could remonstrate kissed him on both cheeks. They had -been good comrades and after the rescue of Marthe from the mob in Lille -it was to Brand that Pierre Nesle had opened his heart and revealed his -agony. He could not stay long with us in the station as he was going -to some political meeting, and perhaps it was well, because Brand was -naturally anxious to escape from him before Elsa came. - -"I am working hard--speaking, writing, organising--on behalf of the -_Ligue des Tranches_," said Pierre. "You must come and see me at -my office. It's the headquarters of the new movement in France. -Anti-militarist, to fulfil the ideals of the men who fought to end war." - -"You're going to fight against heavy odds," said Brand. "Clemenceau -won't love you, nor those who like his peace." - -Pierre laughed and used an old watchword of the war. - -"_Nous les aurons!_ Those old dead-heads belong to the past. Peace has -still to be made by the men who fought for a new world." - -He gave us his address, pledged us to call on him, and slipped into the -vortex of the crowd. - -Brand and I waited another twenty minutes, and then in a tide of new -arrivals we saw Elsa. She was in the company of Major Quin, Brand's -friend who had brought her from Cologne, a tall Irishman who stooped a -little as he gave his arm to the girl. She was dressed in a blue coat -and skirt, very neatly, and it was the glitter of her spun-gold hair -that made me catch sight of her quickly in the crowd. Her eyes had a -frightened look as she came forward, and she was white to the lips. -Thinner, too, than when I had seen her last, so that she looked older -and not, perhaps, quite so wonderfully pretty. But her face lighted up -with intense gladness when Brand stood in front of her, and then, under -an electric lamp, with a crowd surging around him, took her in his arms. - -Major Quin and I stood aloof, chatting together. - -"Good journey?" I asked. - -"Excellent, but I'm glad it's over. That little lady is too unmistakably -German. Everybody spotted her and looked unutterable things. She was -frightened, and I don't wonder. Most of them thought the worst of me. I -had to threaten one fellow with a damned good hiding for an impertinent -remark I overheard." - -Brand thanked him for looking after his wife, and Elsa gave him her hand -and said, "_Danke schn_." - -Major Quin raised his finger and said, "Hush. Don't forget you're in -Paris now." - -Then he saluted with a click of spurs and took his leave. I put Brand -and his wife in a taxi and drove outside by the driver to a quiet old -hotel in the Rue St. Honor, where we had booked rooms. - -When we registered, the manager at the desk stared at Elsa curiously. -She spoke English, but with an unmistakable accent. The man's courtesy -to Brand, which had been perfect, fell from him abruptly and he spoke -with icy insolence when he summoned one of the boys to take up the -baggage. In the dining-room that night all eyes turned to Elsa and -Brand, with inquisitive, hostile looks. I suppose her frock, simple and -ordinary as it seemed to me, proclaimed its German fashion. Or perhaps -her face and hair were not so English as I had imagined. It was a little -while before the girl herself was aware of those unpleasant glances -about her. She was very happy sitting next to Brand, whose hand she -caressed once or twice, and into whose face she looked with adoration. -She was still very pale, and I could see that she was immensely tired -after her journey, but her eyes shone wonderfully. Sometimes she -looked about her and encountered the stares of people--elderly French -_bourgeois_ and some English nurses and a few French officers--dining -at other tables in the great room with gilt mirrors and painted ceiling. -She spoke to Brand presently in a low voice. - -"I am afraid. These people stare at me so much. They guess what I am." - -"It's only your fancy," said Brand. "Besides, they would be fools not to -stare at a face like yours." - -She smiled and coloured up at that sweet flattery. - -"I know when people like one's looks. It is not for that reason they -stare." - -"Ignore them," said Brand. "Tell me about Franz and Frau von Detmold." - -It was unwise of him to sprinkle his conversation with German names. -The waiter at our table was listening attentively. Presently I saw him -whispering behind the screen to one of his comrades and looking our way -sullenly. - -He kept us waiting an unconscionable time for coffee, and when at last -Brand gave his arm to Elsa and led her from the room, he gave a harsh -laugh as they passed, and I heard the words, "_Sale Boche!_" spoken in -a low tone of voice, yet loud enough for all the room to hear. From all -the little tables there came titters of laughter and those words, "_Sale -Boche!_" were repeated by several voices. I hoped that Elsa and Brand -had not heard, but I saw Elsa sway a little on her husband's arm as -though struck by an invisible blow, and Brand turned with a look of -passion, as though he would hit the waiter or challenge the whole room -to warfare. But Elsa whispered to him, and he went with her up the -staircase to their rooms. - -The next morning when I met them at breakfast Elsa still looked -desperately tired, though very happy, and Brand had lost a little of -his haggard look and his nerve was steadier. But it was an uncomfortable -moment for all of us when the manager came to the table and regretted -with icy courtesy that their rooms would not be available another night -owing to a previous arrangement which he had unfortunately overlooked. - -"Nonsense!" said Brand, shortly. "I have taken these rooms for three -nights, and I intend to stay in them." - -"It is impossible," said the manager. "I must ask you to have your -baggage packed by twelve o'clock." - -Brand dealt with him firmly. - -"I am an English officer. If I hear another word from you I will call on -the Provost Marshal and get him to deal with you." - -The manager bowed. This threat cowed him, and he said no more about -a change of rooms. But Brand and his wife, and I, as their friend, -suffered from a policy of passive resistance to our presence. The -chambermaid did not answer their bell, having become strangely deaf. - -The waiter was generally engaged at other tables whenever we wanted him. -The hall porter turned his back upon us. The page-boys made grimaces -behind our backs, as I saw very well in the gilt mirror, and as Elsa -saw. - -They took to having their meals out, Brand insisting always that I -should join them, and we drove out to the Bois and had tea there in the -_Chalet des Iles_. It was a beautiful afternoon in September, and the -leaves were just turning to crinkled gold and the lake was as blue -as the cloudless sky above. Across the ferry came boatloads of young -Frenchmen with their girls, singing, laughing, on this day of peace. -Some of the men limped as they came up the steps from the landing-stage. -One walked on crutches. Another had an empty sleeve. Under the trees -they made love to their girls and fed them with rose-tinted ices. - -"These people are happy," said Elsa. "They have forgotten already the -agony of war. Victory is healing. In Germany there is only misery." - -A little later she talked about the peace. - -"If only the _Entente_ had been more generous in victory our despair -would not be so great. Many of us, great multitudes, believed that the -price of defeat would be worth paying because Germany would take a place -among free nations and share in the creation of a nobler world. Now we -are crushed by the militarism of nations who have used our downfall to -increase their own power. The light of a new ideal which rose above the -darkness has gone out." - -Brand took his wife's hand and stroked it in his big paw. - -"All this is temporary and the work of the old men steeped in the old -traditions which led to war. We must wait for them to die. Then out of -the agony of the world's boyhood will come the new revelation." - -Elsa clasped her hands and leaned forward, looking across the lake in -the Bois de Boulogne. - -"I would like to live long enough to be sure of that," she said, -eagerly. "If we have children, my husband, perhaps they will listen to -our tales of the war as Franz and I read about wolves and goblins in our -fairy-tales. The fearfulness of them was not frightening, for we knew we -were safe." - -"God grant that," said Brand, gravely. - -"But I am afraid!" said Elsa. She looked again across the lake, so blue -under the sky, so golden in sunlight; and shivered a little. - -"You are cold!" said Brand. - -He put his arms about her as they sat side by side, and her head drooped -upon his shoulder and she closed her eyes like a tired child. - -They went to the opera that night and I refused their invitation to join -them, protesting that they would never learn to know each other if a -third person were always present. I slipped away to see Pierre Nesle, -and found him at an office in a street somewhere off the Rue du Louvre, -which was filled with young men whose faces I seemed to have seen before -under blue shrapnel helmets above blue tunics. They were typewriting as -though serving machine-guns, and folding up papers while they whistled -the tune of "_Madelon_." Pierre was in his shirtsleeves, dictating -letters to a _poilu_ in civil clothes. - -"Considerable activity on the western front, eh?" he said when he saw -me. - -"Tell me all about it, Pierre." - -He told me something about it in a restaurant where we dined in the -Rue du March St. Honor. He was one of the organising secretaries of -a society made up exclusively of young soldiers who had fought in the -trenches. There was a sprinkling of intellectuals among them--painters, -poets, novelists, journalists--but the main body were simple soldiers -animated by one idea--to prevent another war by substituting the -common-sense and brotherhood of peoples for the old diplomacy of secret -alliances and the old tradition of powerful armies. - -"How about the Peace Treaty and the League of Nations?" I asked. - -Pierre Nesle shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. - -"The Peace Treaty belongs to the Napoleonic tradition. We've got beyond -that now. It is the programme that has carefully arranged another and -inevitable war. Look at the world now! Look at France, Italy, Germany, -Austria! We are all ruined together, and those most ruined will, by -their disease and death, drag down Europe into general misery. _Mon -vieux_, what has victory given to France! A great belt of devastated -country, cemeteries crowded with dead youth, bankruptcy, and everything -five times the cost of pre-war rates. Another such victory will wipe us -off the map. We have smashed Germany, it is true, for a time. We have -punished her women and children for the crimes of their war lords, but -can we keep her crushed? Are our frontiers impregnable against the time -when her people come back for revenge, smashing the fetters we have -placed on them, and rising again in strength? For ten years, for twenty -years, for thirty years perhaps, we shall be safe. And after that, if -the heart of Europe does not change, if we do not learn wisdom from the -horror that has passed, France will be ravaged again, and all that we -have seen our children will see, and their suffering will be greater -than ours, and they will not have the hope we had." - -He stared back into the past, not a very distant past, and I fancy that -among the figures he saw was Marthe, his sister. - -"What's the remedy?" I asked. - -"A union of democracy across the frontiers of hate," he answered, and I -think it was a phrase that he had written and learnt by heart. - -"A fine phrase!" I said, laughing a little. - -He flared up at me. - -"It's more than a phrase. It's the heart-beat of millions in Europe." - -"In France?" I asked pointedly. "In the France of Clemenceau?" - -"More than you imagine," he answered, boldly. "Beneath our present -Chauvinism, our natural exultation in victory, our inevitable hatred of -the enemy, common-sense is at work, and an idealism higher than that. -At present its voice is not heard. The old men are having their day. -Presently the new men will arrive with the new ideas. They are here, but -do not speak yet." - -"The old men again!" I said. "It is strange. In Germany, in France, in -England, even in America, people are talking strangely about the old men -as though they were guilty of all this agony. That is remarkable." - -"They were guilty," said Pierre Nesle. "It is against the old men in all -countries of Europe that youth will declare war. For it was their ideas -which brought us to our ruin." - -He spoke so loudly that people in the restaurant turned to look at him. -He paid his bill and spoke in a lower voice. - -"It is dangerous to talk like this in public. Let us walk up the Champs -Elyses, where I am visiting some friends." - -Suddenly a remembrance came back to him. - -"Your friends, too," he said. - -"My friends?" - -"But yes; Madame Chri and Hlne. After Edouard's death they could not -bear to live in Lille." - -"Edouard, that poor boy who came back? He is dead?" - -"He was broken by the prison life," said Pierre. "He died within a month -of armistice, and Hlne wept her heart out. He confided a secret to me. -Hlne and he had come to love each other, and would marry when they -could get her mother's consent--or, one day, if not." - -"What's her objection?" I asked. "Why, it's splendid to think that -Hlne and you will be man and wife. The thought of it makes me feel -good." - -He pressed my arm and said, "_Merci, mille fois, mon cher_." - -Madame Chri objected to his political opinions. She regarded them as -poisonous treachery. - -"And Hlne?" - -I remembered that outburst, months back, when Hlne had desired the -death of many German babies. - -"Hlne loves me," said Pierre simply. "We do not talk politics." - -On our way to the Avenue Victor Hugo I ventured to ask him a question -which had been a long time in my mind "Your sister, Marthe? She is -well?" - -Even in the pearly twilight of the Champs Elyses I was aware of -Pierre's sudden change of colour. I had touched a nerve that still -jumped. - -"She is well and happy," he answered gravely. "She is now a -_religieuse_, a nun, in the convent at Lille. They tell me she is a -saint. Her name in religion is _Sour Anglique._" - -I called on Madame Chri and her daughter with Pierre Nesle. They seemed -delighted to see me, and Hlne greeted me like an old and trusted -friend, giving me the privilege of kissing her cheek. She had grown -taller and beautiful, and there was a softness in her eyes when she -looked at Pierre which made me sure of his splendid luck. - -Madame Chri had aged, and some of her fire had burnt out. I guessed -that it was due to Edouard's death. She spoke of that, and wept a -little, and deplored the mildness of the Peace Treaty which had not -punished the evil race who had killed her husband and her boy and the -flower of France. - -"There are many German dead," said Pierre. "They have been punished." - -"Not enough!" cried Madame Chri. "They should all be dead." - -Hlne kissed her hand and snuggled down to her as once I had seen in -Lille. - -"_Petite maman_," she said, "let us talk of happy things to-night. Pierre -has brought us a good friend." - -Later in the evening, when Pierre and Hlne had gone into another room -to find some biscuits for our wine, Madame Chri spoke to me about their -betrothal. - -"Pierre is full of strange and terrible ideas," she said. "They are -shared by other young men who fought bravely for France. To me they -seem wicked, and the talk of cowards, except that their medals tell of -courage. But the light in Hlne's eyes weakens me. I'm too much of a -Frenchwoman to be stern with love." - -By those words of hers I was able to give Pierre a message of good-cheer -when he walked back with me that night, and he went away with gladness. - -With gladness also did Elsa Brand set out next day for England where, as -a girl, she had known happy days, and where now her dream lived with the -man who stood beside her. Together we watched for the white cliffs, and -when suddenly the sun glinted on them she gave a little cry, and putting -her hand through Brand's arm, said, "Our home!" - - - - -VII - - -I saw very little of Brand in London after Elsa's arrival in his -parent's house at Chelsea. I was busy, as usual, watching the way of the -world and putting my nose down to bits of blank paper which I proceeded -to spoil with futile words. Brand was doing the same thing in his study -on the top floor of the house in Cheyne Walk, while Elsa, in true German -style, was working embroidery or reading English literature to improve -her mind and her knowledge of the language. - -Brand was endeavouring strenuously to earn money enough to make him free -of his father's house. He failed, on the whole, rather miserably. He -began a novel on the war, became excited with it for the first six -chapters, then stuck hopelessly and abandoned it. - -"I find it impossible," he wrote to me, "to get the real thing into my -narrative. It is all wooden, unnatural, and wrong. I can't get the right -perspective on paper, although I think I see it clear enough when I'm -not writing. The thing is too enormous, the psychology too complicated -for my power of expression. A thousand characters, four years of -experience, come crowding into my mind, and I can't eliminate the -unessential and stick the point of my pen into the heart of truth. -Besides, the present state of the world, to say nothing of domestic -trouble, prevents anything like concentration... And my nerves have gone -to hell." - -After the abandonment of his novel he took to writing articles for -magazines and newspapers, some of which appeared, thereby producing -some useful guineas. I read them and liked their strength of style and -intensity of emotion. But they were profoundly pessimistic, and "the -gloomy Dean," who was prophesying woe, had an able seconder in Wickham -Brand, who foresaw the ruin of civilisation and the downfall of the -British Empire because of the stupidity of the world's leaders and the -careless ignorance of the multitudes. He harped too much on the same -string, and I fancied that editors would soon begin to tire of his -melancholy tune. I was right. - -"I have had six articles rejected in three weeks," wrote Brand. "People -don't want the truth. They want cheery insincerity. Well, they won't get -it from me, though I starve to death.... But it's hard on Elsa. She's -having a horrible time, and her nerve is breaking. I wish to God I could -afford to take her down to the country somewhere, away from spiteful -females and their cunning cruelty. Have you seen any Christian charity -about in this most Christian country? If so, send me word, and I'll walk -to it on my knees, from Chelsea." - -It was in a postscript to a letter about a short story he was writing -that he wrote an alarming sentence. - -"I think Elsa is dying. She gets weaker every day." Those words sent -me to Chelsea in a hurry. I had been too careless of Brand's troubles, -owing to my own pressure of work and my own fight with a nervous -depression which was a general malady, I found, with most men back from -the war. - -When I rapped the brass knocker on the house in Cheyne Walk the door -was opened by a different maid from the one I had seen on my first visit -there. The other one, as Brand told me afterwards, had given notice -because "she couldn't abide them Huns" (meaning Elsa), and with her had -gone the cook, who had been with Wickham's mother for twenty years. - -Brand was writing in his study upstairs when the new maid showed me in. -Or, rather, he was leaning over a writing-block, with his elbows dug -into the table and his face in his hands, while an unlighted pipe--his -old trench pipe--lay across the inkpot. - -"Thinking out a new plot, old man?" I asked cheerily. - -"It doesn't come," he said. "My own plot cuts across my line of -thought." - -"How's Elsa?" - -He pointed with the stem of his pipe to the door leading from his room. - -"Sleeping, I hope.... Sit down and let's have a yarn." - -We talked about things in general for a time. They were not very -cheerful, anyhow. Brand and I were both gloomy souls just then, and knew -each other too well to camouflage our views about the state of Europe -and the "unrest" (as it was called) in England. - -Then he told me about Elsa, and it was a tragic tale From the very first -his people had treated her with a studied unkindness which had broken -her nerve and spirit. She had come to England with a joyous hope of -finding happiness and friendship with her husband's family, and glad to -escape from the sadness of Germany and the solemn disapproval of her own -people, apart from Franz, who was devoted to her. - -Her first dismay came when she kissed the hand of her mother-in-law, -who drew it away as though she had been stung by a wasp, and when her -movement to kiss her husband's sister Ethel was repulsed by a girl who -drew back icily and said, "How do you do?" - -Even then she comforted herself a little with the thought that this -coldness was due to English reserve, and that in a little while English -kindness would be revealed. But the days passed with only unkindness. - -At first Lady Brand and her daughter maintained a chilly silence towards -Elsa, at breakfast, luncheon, and other meals, talking to each other -brightly, as though she did not exist, and referring constantly to -Wickham as "poor Wicky." Ethel had a habit of reading out morsels from -the penny illustrated papers, and often they referred to "another trick -of the Huns" or "fresh revelations of Hun treachery." At these times Sir -Amyas Brand said "Ah!" in a portentous voice, but, privately, with some -consciousness of decency, begged Ethel to desist from "controversial -topics." She "desisted" in the presence of her brother, whose violence -of speech scared her into silence. - -A later phase of Ethel's hostility to Elsa was in the style of amiable -enquiry. In a simple, childlike way, as though eager for knowledge, -she would ask Elsa such questions as "Why the Germans boiled down their -dead?" - -"Why they crucified Canadian prisoners?" - -"Was it true that German school children sang the Hymn of Hate before -morning lessons?" - -"Was it by order of the Kaiser that English prisoners were starved to -death?" - -Elsa answered all these questions by passionate denials. It was a -terrible falsehood, she said, that the Germans had boiled down bodies -for fats. On the contrary, they paid the greatest reverence to their -dead, as her brother had seen in many cemeteries on the Western front. -The story of the "crucified Canadians" had been disproved by the English -intelligence officers after a special enquiry, as Wickham had told her. -She had never heard the Hymn of Hate. Some of the English prisoners -had been harshly treated--there were brutal commandants--but not -deliberately starved. Not starved more than German soldiers, who had -very little food during the last years of the war. - -"But surely," said Lady Brand, "you must admit, my dear, that Germany -conducted this war with the greatest possible barbarity? Otherwise, why -should the world call them Huns?" - -Elsa said it was only the English who called the Germans - -Huns, and that was for a propaganda of hatred which was very wicked. - -"Do _I_ look like a Hun?" she asked, and then burst into tears. - -Lady Brand was disconcerted by that sign of weakness. - -"You mustn't think us unkind, Elsa, but, of course, we have to uphold -the truth." - -Ethel was utterly unmoved by Elsa's tears, and, indeed, found a holy -satisfaction in them. - -"When the German people confess their guilt with weeping and lamentation -the English will be first to forgive. Never till then." - -The presence of a German girl in the house seemed to act as a blight -upon all domestic happiness. It was the cook who first "gave notice." -Elsa had never so much as set eyes upon that cross-eyed woman -below-stairs who had prepared the family food since Wickham had sat in -a high chair with a bib round his neck. But Mary, in a private interview -with Lady Brand, stormy in its character, as Elsa could hear through the -folding doors, vowed that she would not live in the same house with "one -of those damned Germings." - -Lady Brand's tearful protestations that Elsa was no longer German, being -"Mr. Wickham's wife," and that she had repented sincerely of all the -wrong done by the country in which she had unfortunately been born, did -not weaken the resolution of Mary Grubb, whose patriotism had always -been "above suspicion," "which," as she said, "I hope to remain so." She -went next morning, after a great noise of breathing and the descent of -tin boxes, while Lady Brand and Ethel looked with reproachful eyes at -Elsa as the cause of this irreparable blow. - -The parlour-maid followed in a week's time, on the advice of her young -man, who had worked in a canteen of the Y.M.C.A. at Boulogne and knew -all about German spies. - -It was very awkward for Lady Brand, who assumed an expression of -Christian martyrdom, and told Wickham that his rash act was bearing sad -fruit, a mixed metaphor which increased his anger, as he told me, to a -ridiculous degree. - -He could see that Elsa was very miserable. Many times she wept when -alone with him, and begged him to take her away to a little home of -their own, even if it were only one room in the poorest neighbourhood. -But Wickham was almost penniless, and begged her to be patient a little -longer, until he had saved enough to fulfil their hope. There I think -he was unwise. It would have been better for him to borrow money--he had -good friends--rather than keep his wife in such a hostile atmosphere. -She was weak and ill. He was alarmed at her increasing weakness. Once -she fainted in his arms, and even to go upstairs to their rooms at the -top of the house tired her so much that afterwards she would lie back in -a chair, with her eyes closed, looking very white and worn. She tried to -hide her ill-health from her husband, and when they were alone together -she seemed gay and happy, and would have deceived him but for those fits -of weeping at the unkindness of his mother and sister, and those sudden -attacks of "tiredness" when all physical strength departed from her. - -Her love for him seemed to grow with the weakness of her body. She could -not bear him to leave her alone for any length of time, and while he -was writing, sat near him, so that she might have her head against his -shoulder or touch his hand, or kiss it. It was not conducive to easy -writing or the invention of plots. - -Something like a crisis happened after a painful scene in the -drawing-room downstairs on a day when Brand had gone out to walk off a -sense of deadly depression which prevented all literary effort. - -Several ladies had come to tea with Lady Brand and Ethel, and they gazed -at Elsa as though she were a strange and dangerous animal. - -One of them, a thin and elderly schoolmistress, cross-questioned Elsa as -to her nationality. - -"I suppose you are Swedish, my dear?" she said sweetly. - -"No," said Elsa. - -"Danish, then, no doubt?" continued Miss Clutter. - -"I am German," said Elsa. - -That announcement had caused consternation among Lady Brand's guests. -Two of the ladies departed almost immediately. The others stayed to see -how Miss Clutter would deal with this amazing situation. - -She dealt with it firmly, and with the cold intelligence of a high -schoolmistress. - -"How _very_ interesting!" she said, turning to Lady Brand. "Perhaps your -daughter-in-law will enlighten us a little about German psychology which -we have found so puzzling. I should be so glad if she could explain to -us how the German people reconcile the sinking of merchant ships, the -unspeakable crime of the _Lusitania_ with any belief in God, or even -with the principles of our common humanity. It is a mystery to me how -the drowning of babies could be regarded as legitimate warfare by a -people proud of their civilisation." - -"Perhaps it would be better to avoid controversy, dear Miss Clutter," -said Lady Brand, alarmed at the prospect of an "unpleasant" scene which -would be described in other drawing-rooms next day. - -But Miss Clutter had adopted Ethel's method of enquiry. She so much -wanted to know the German point of view. Certainly they must have a -point of view. - -"Yes, it would be so interesting to know!" said another lady. - -"Especially if we could believe it," said another. - -Elsa had been twisting and re-twisting a little lace handkerchief in her -lap. She was very pale, and tried to conceal a painful agitation from -all these hostile and enquiring ladies. - -Then she spoke to them in a low, strained voice. - -"You will never understand," she said. "You look out from England with -eyes of hate, and without pity in your hearts. The submarine warfare -was shameful. There were little children drowned on the _Lusitania_, and -women. I wept for them and prayed the dear God to stop the war. Did you -weep for our little children and our women? They, too, were killed by -sea warfare, not only a few, as on the _Lusitania_, but thousands and -tens of thousands. Your blockade closed us in with an iron ring. No -ship could bring us food. For two years we starved on short rations and -chemical foods. We were without fats and milk. Our mothers watched their -children weaken and wither and die, because of the English blockade. -Their own milk dried up within their breasts. Little coffins were -carried down our streets day after day, week after week. Fathers and -mothers were mad at the loss of their little ones. 'We must smash -our way through the English blockade!' they said. The U-boat warfare -gladdened them. It seemed a chance of rescue for the children of -Germany. It was wicked. But all the war was wickedness. It was wicked -of you English to keep up your blockade so long after Armistice, so that -more children died and more women were consumptive, and men fainted at -their work. Do you reconcile that with God's good love? Oh, I find -more hatred here in England than I knew even in Germany. It is -cruel, unforgiving, unfair! You, are proud of your own virtue and -hypocritical. God will be kinder to my people than to you, because now -we cry out for His mercy, and you are still arrogant, with the name of -God on your lips but a devil of pride in your hearts. I came here -with my dear husband believing that many English would be like him, -forgiving, hating cruelty, eager to heal the world's broken heart. You -are not like him. You are cruel and lovers of cruelty, even to one poor -German girl who came to you for shelter with her English man. I am sorry -for you. I pity you because of your narrowness. I do not want to know -you." - -She stood up, swaying a little, with one hand on the mantelpiece, as -afterwards she told her husband. She did not believe that she could -cross the floor without falling. There was a strange dizziness in her -head, and a mist before her eyes. But she held her head high and walked -out of the drawing-room, and then upstairs. When Wickham Brand came back -she was lying on her bed very ill. He sent for a doctor who was with her -for half-an-hour. - -"She is very weak," he said. "No pulse to speak of. You will have to be -careful of her--deuced careful." - -He gave no name to her illness. "Just weakness," he said. "Run down like -a worn-out clock. Nerves all wrong, and no vitality." - -He sent round a tonic which Elsa took like a child, and for a little -while it seemed to do her good. But Brand was frightened because her -weakness had come back. - -I am glad now that I had an idea which helped Brand in this time of -trouble and gave Elsa some weeks of happiness and peace. It occurred to -me that young Harding was living alone in his big old country house near -Weybridge, and would be glad and grateful, because of his loneliness, to -give house-room to Brand and his wife. He had a great liking for Brand, -as most of us had, and his hatred of Germany had not been so violent -since his days in Cologne. His good nature, anyhow, and the fine -courtesy which was the essential quality of his character, would make -him kind to Elsa, so ill and so desperately in need of kindness. I was -not disappointed. When I spoke to him over the telephone he said, "It -will be splendid for me. This lonely house is getting on my nerves -badly. Bring them down." - -I took them down in a car two days later. It was a fine autumn day -with a sparkle in the air and a touch of frost on the hedgerows. Elsa, -wrapped up in heavy rugs, lay back next to Brand, and a little colour -crept back into her cheeks and brought back her beauty. I think a shadow -lifted from her as she drove away from that house in Chelsea where she -had dwelt with enmity among her husband's people. - -Harding's house in Surrey was at the end of a fine avenue of beeches, -glorious in their autumn foliage of crinkled gold. A rabbit scuttled -across the drive as we came, and bobbed beneath the red bracken of the -undergrowth. - -"Oh," said Elsa, like a child, "there is Peterkin! What a rogue he -looks!" - -Her eyes were bright when she caught sight of Harding's house in the -Elizabethan style of post-and-plaster splashed with scarlet where the -Virginia creeper straggled on its walls. - -"It is wonderfully English," she said. "How Franz would love this -place!" - -Harding came down from the steps to greet us, and I thought it noble of -him that he should kiss the girl's hand when Brand said, "This is Elsa." -For Harding had been a Hun-hater--you remember his much-repeated phrase, -"No good German but a dead German!"--and that little act was real -chivalry to a woman of the enemy. - -There was a great fire of logs burning in the open hearth in the hall, -flinging a ruddy glare on the panelled walls and glinting on bits of -armour and hunting trophies. Upstairs, also, Brand told me, there was a -splendid fire in Elsa's room, which had once been the room of Harding's -wife. It wanned Elsa not only in body but in soul. Here was an English -welcome and kindness of thought. On her dressing-table there were -flowers from Harding's hot-houses, and she gave a little cry of pleasure -at the sight of them for there had been no flowers in Cheyne Walk, -Chelsea. That night she was strong enough to come down to dinner, -and looked very charming there at the polished board, fit only by -candlelight, whose soft rays touched the gold of her hair. - -"It is a true English home," she said, glancing up at the panelled walls -and at portraits of Harding's people in old-fashioned costumes which -hung there. - -"A lonely one when no friends are here," said Harding, and that was the -only time he referred in any way to the wife who had left him. - -That dinner was the last one which Elsa had sitting at table with -us. She became very tired again. So tired that Brand had to carry her -upstairs and downstairs, which he did as though she weighed no more than -a child. During the day she lay on a sofa in the drawing-room, and Brand -did no writing now nor any kind of work, but stayed always with his -wife. For hours together he sat by her side, and she held his hand and -touched his face and hair, and was happy in her love. - -A good friend came to stay with them and brought unfailing cheerfulness. -It was Charles Fortune who had come down at Harding's invitation. He was -as comical as ever, and made Elsa laugh with ripples of merriment while -he satirised the world as he knew it, with shrewd and penetrating wit. -He played the jester industriously to get that laughter from her, though -sometimes she had to beg of him not to make her laugh so much because -it hurt her. Then he played the piano late into the afternoon, until the -twilight in the room faded into darkness except for the ruddy glow of -the log fire, or after dinner in the evenings until Brand carried his -wife to bed. He played Chopin best, with a magic touch, but Elsa liked -him to play Bach and Schumann, and sometimes Mozart, because that -brought back her girlhood in the days before the war. - -So it was one evening when Brand sat on a low stool by the sofa on -which Elsa lay, with her fingers playing in his hair or resting on his -shoulder, while Fortune filled the room with melody. - -Once or twice Elsa spoke to Brand in a low voice. I heard some of her -words as I lay on a bearskin by the fire. - -"I am wonderfully happy, my dear," she said once, and Brand pulled her -hand down and kissed it. - -A little later she spoke again. - -"Love is so much better than hate. Then why should people go to war?" - -"God knows, my dear," said Brand. - -It was some time after that, when Fortune was playing softly, that I -heard Elsa give a big, tired sigh and say the word "Peace!" - -Charles Fortune played something of Beethoven's now, with grand crashing -chords which throbbed through the room as the last glow of the sunset -flushed through the windows. - -Suddenly Brand stirred on his stool, made an abrupt movement, then rose -and gave a loud, agonising cry. Fortune stopped playing with a slur -of notes. Harding leapt up from his chair in a dark corner and said, -"Brand!... what's the matter?" - -Brand had dropped to his knees and was weeping with, his arms about his -dead wife. - - - - -VIII - - -I was again a wanderer in the land, and going from country to country -in Europe saw the disillusionment that had followed victory, and the -despair that had followed defeat, and the ravages that were bequeathed -by war to peace, not only in devastated earth and stricken towns, but in -the souls of men and women. - -The victors had made great promises to their people, but for the most -part they were still unredeemed. They had promised them rich fruits of -victory to be paid out of the ruin of their enemies. But little fruit of -gold or treasure could be gathered from the utter bankruptcy of Germany -and Austria, whose factories stayed idle for lack of raw material and -whose money was waste paper in value of exchange. "Reconstruction" was -the watchword of statesmen, uttered as a kind of magic spell, but when -I went over the old battlefields in France I found no sign of -reconstruction, but only the vast belt of desolation which in war I had -seen swept by fire. No spell-word had built up those towns and villages -which had been blown into dust and ashes, nor had given life to riven -trees and earth choked and deadened by high explosives. Here and there -poor families had crept back to the place where their old homes had -stood, grubbing in the ruins for some relic of their former habitations -and building wooden shanties in the desert as frail shelters against the -wind and the rain. In Ypres--the city of Great Death--there were wooden -_estaminets_ for the refreshment of tourists who came from Paris to see -the graveyard of youth, and girls sold picture-postcards where boys -of ours had gone marching up the Menin Road under storms of shell-fire -which took daily toll of them. No French statesman by optimistic words -could resurrect in a little while the beauty that had been in Artois and -Picardy and the fields of Champagne. - -On days of national thanksgiving the spirit of France was exalted by the -joy of victory. In Paris it was a feverish joy, wild-eyed, with laughing -ecstasy, with troops of dancing girls and a carnival that broke all -bounds between Montmartre and Montparnasse. France had saved herself -from death. She had revenged herself for 1870 and the years just passed. -She had crushed the enemy that had always been a brutal menace across -the frontier. She had her sword deep in the heart of Germany which lay -bleeding at her feet. - -I who love France with a kind of passion, and had seen during the years -of war the agony and the heroism of her people, did not begrudge them -their ecstasy, and it touched my spirit with its fire so that in France -I could see and understand the French point of view, of ruthlessness -towards the beaten foe. But I saw also what many people of France saw -slowly, but with a sense of fear, that the treaty made by Clemenceau did -not make them safe except for a little while. This had not been, after -all, "the war to end war." There was no guarantee of world-peace. Their -frontiers were not made impregnable against the time when the Germans -might grow strong again and come back for vengeance. They could not -stand alone, but must make new alliances, new secret treaties, new -armies, new armaments, because hate survived, and the League of Nations -was a farce, as it had come from the table at Versailles. - -They looked round and counted their cost--a million and a half dead. A -multitude of maimed and blind and nerve-shocked men. A birth-rate that -had sunk to zero. A staggering debt which they could not pay. A cost of -living which mounted higher and ever higher. A sense of revolt among the -soldiers who had come back because their reward for four years of misery -was no more than miserable. - -So it was in Italy, stricken by a more desperate poverty, disappointed -by a lack of spoil, angry with a sense of "betrayal," afraid of -revolution, exultant when a mad poet seized the port of Fiume which had -been denied to her by President Wilson and his conscience. - -Across the glittering waters of the Adriatic I went to Trieste and found -it a dead port with Italian officers in possession of its deserted -docks and abandoned warehouses and Austrians dying of typhus in the back -streets, and starving to death in tenement houses. - -And then, across the new State of Jugo-Slavia, cut out of the body of -the old Austrian Empire now lying dismembered, I came to Vienna, which -once I had known as the gayest capital of Europe, where charming people -played the pleasant game of life with music and love and laughter. - -In Vienna there was music still, but it played a _danse macabre_, a -dance of death, which struck one with a sense of horror. The orchestras -still fiddled in the restaurants. At night the opera-house was crowded. -In _cafs_ bright with gilt and glass, in restaurants rich in marble -walls, crowds of people listened to the waltzes of Strauss, ate smuggled -food at monstrous prices, laughed, flirted, and drank. They were the -profiteers of war, spending paper money with the knowledge that it had -no value outside Vienna, no value here except in stacks to buy warmth -for their stomachs, a little warmth for their souk, while their stock -of kronen lasted. They were the vultures from Jugo-Slavia and -Czecho-Slovakia come to feed on the corpse of Austria while it still -had flesh on its bones, and while Austrian kronen still had some kind of -purchase power... And outside, two million people were starving slowly -but very surely to death. - -The children were starving quickly to death. Their coffins passed me in -the streets. Ten--twelve--fifteen--in one half-hour between San Stefan's -Chinch and the Favoritenstrasse. Small living skeletons padded after -one with naked feet, thrusting out little claw-like hands, begging for -charity. In the great hospital of Vienna children lay in crowded wards, -with twisted limbs and bulbous heads, diseased from birth, because of -their mother's hunger and a life without milk and any kind of fat. - -Vienna, the capital of a great empire, had been sentenced to death by -the Treaty of Peace which had so carved up her former territory that -she was cut off from all her natural resources and from all means of -industry, commerce and life. - -It was Dr. Small, dear "Daddy" Small, who gave me an intimate knowledge -of what was happening in Vienna a year after Armistice, and it was -Eileen O'Connor who still further enlightened me by taking me into the -babies' _crches_, the _Kinderspital_ and the working people's homes, -where disease and death found their victims. She took me to these places -until I sickened and said, "I can bear no more." - -Dr. Small had a small office in the Krtnerstrasse, where Eileen worked -with him, and it was here that I found them both a day after my arrival -in Vienna. Eileen was on her knees making a wood fire and puffing it -into a blaze for the purpose of boiling a tin kettle which stood on a -trivet, and after that, as I found, for making tea. Outside there was a -raw, horrible day, with a white mist in which those coffins were going -by and with those barefoot children with pallid faces and gaunt cheeks -padding by one's side, so that I was glad to see the flames in the -hearth and to hear the cheerful dink of tea-cups which the doctor was -getting out. Better still, was I glad to see these two good friends, so -sane, so vital, so purposeful, as I found them, in a world of gloom and -neurosis. - -The doctor told me of their work. It was life-saving and increasing -in range of action. They had organised a number of feeding centres in -Vienna, and stores from which mothers could buy condensed milk and cocoa -and margarine, at next to nothing, for their starving babes. Austrian -ladies were doing most of the actual work apart from organisation at -headquarters, and doing it devotedly. From America and from England -money was flowing in. - -"The tide of thought is turning," said the doctor. "Every dollar we get, -and every shilling, is a proof that the call of humanity is being heard -above the old war cries." - -"And every dollar and every shilling," said Eileen, "is helping to save -the life of some poor woman or some little mite who had no guilt in the -war, but suffered from its cruelty." - -"This job," said the doctor, "suits my peculiar philosophy. I am not out -so much to save these babies' lives----" - -Here Eileen threatened to throw the teapot at his head. - -"Because," he added, "some of them would be better dead, and anyhow, you -can't save a nation by charity. But what I am out to do is to educate -the heart of the world above the baseness of the passions that caused -the massacre in Europe. We're helping to do it by saving the children -and by appealing to the chivalry of men and women across the old -frontiers. We're killers of cruelty, Miss Eileen and I. We're rather -puffed up with ourselves, ain't we, my dear?" - -He grinned at Eileen in a whimsical way, and I could see that between -this little American and that Irish girl there was an understanding -comradeship. - -So he told me when she left the room a minute to get another tea-cup or -wash one up. - -"That girl!" he said. "Say, laddie, you couldn't find a better head in -all Europe, including Hoover himself. She's a Napoleon Bonaparte without -his blood-lust. She's Horatio Nelson and Lord Northcliffe and Nurse -Cavell all rolled into one, to produce the organising genius of Eileen -O'Connor. Only you would have to add a few saints like Catherine of -Sienna and Joan of Arc to allow for her spirituality. She organises -feeding-centres like you would write a column article. She gets the -confidence of Austrian women so that they would kiss her feet if she'd -allow it. She has a head for figures that fairly puts me to shame, and -as for her courage--well, I don't mind telling you that I've sworn to -pack her back to England if she doesn't keep clear of typhus dens and -other fever-stricken places. We can't afford to lose her by some dirty -bug-bite." - -Eileen came into the room again with another tea-cup and saucer. I -counted those on the table and saw three already. - -"Who is the other cup for?" I asked. "If you are expecting visitors I'll -go, because I'm badly in need of a wash." - -"Don't worry," said Eileen. "We haven't time to wash in Vienna, and, -anyhow, there's no soap, for love or money. This is for Wickham, who is -no visitor but one of the staff." - -"Wickham?" I said. "Is Brand here?" - -"Rather!" said "Daddy" Small. "He has been here a week and is doing good -work. Looks after the supplies, and puts his heart into the job." - -As he spoke the door opened and Brand strode into the room, with rain -dripping from his waterproof coat which he took off and flung into a -corner before he turned to the table. - -"Lord! A cup of tea is what I want!" - -"And what you shall have, my dear," said Eileen. - -"But don't you know a friend when you see him?" - -"By Jove!" - -He held my hand in a hard grip and patted me on the shoulder. Our -friendship was beyond the need of words. - -So there we three, who had seen many strange and tragic things in those -years of history, were together again in the city of Vienna, the city of -death, where the innocent were paying for the guilty, but where also, -as "Daddy" Small said, there was going out a call to charity which -was being heard by the heart of the world above the old war-cries of -cruelty. - -I stayed with them only a week. I had been long away from England and -had other work to do. But in that time I saw how these three friends, -and others in their service, were devoting themselves to the rescue -of human life, partly, I think, for their own sake, though without -conscious selfishness, and with a passionate pity for those who -suffered. By this service they were healing their own souls, sorely -wounded in the war. That was so, certainly, with Wickham Brand, and a -little, I think, with Eileen O'Connor. - -Brand was rescued in the nick of time by the doctor's call to him. -Elsa's death had struck him a heavy blow when his nerves were already -in rags and tatters. Now by active service in this work of humanity and -healing he was getting back to normality, getting serene and steady. -I saw the change in him, revealed by the light in his eyes and by his -quietude of speech and the old sense of humour, which for a while he had -lost. - -"I see now," he said one night, "that it's no use fighting against the -injustice and brutality of life. I can't re-make the world or change the -things that are written in history or alter in any big way the destiny -of peoples. Stupidity, ignorance, barbarity; will continue among the -multitude. All that any of us can do is to tackle some good job that -lies at hand, and keep his own soul bright and fearless if there is any -chance and use his little intellect in his little circle for kindness -instead of cruelty. I find that chance here, and I am grateful." - -The doctor had larger and bigger hopes, though his philosophy of life -was not much different from that of Brand's. - -"I want to fix up an intellectual company in this funny old universe," -he said. "I want to establish an intellectual aristocracy on -international lines--the leaders of the new world. By intellectuals -I don't mean high-brow fellows with letters after their names and -encyclopaedias in their brain-pans. I mean men and women who by moral -character, kindness of heart, freedom from narrow hatreds, tolerance of -different creeds and races, and love of humanity, will unite in a free, -unfettered way, without a label or a league, to get a move on towards a -better system of human society. No red Bolshevism, mind you, no heaven -by way of hell, but a striving for greater justice between classes and -nations, and for peace within the frontiers of Christendom, and beyond, -if possible. It's getting back to the influence of the individual, the -leadership of multitudes by the power of the higher mind. I'm doing it -by penny postcards to all my friends. This work of ours in Vienna is a -good proof of their response. Let all the folk with good hearts behind -their brains start writing postcards to each other, with a plea for -brotherhood, charity, peace, and the new world would come... You laugh! -Yes, I talk a little nonsense. It's not so easy as that. But see the -idea? The leaders must keep in touch, and the herds will follow." - -I turned to Eileen who was listening with a smile about her lips while -she pasted labels on to packets of cocoa. - -"What's your philosophy?" I asked. - -She laughed, in that deep voice of hers. - -"I've none; only the old faith, and a little hope, and a heart that's -bustin' with love." - -Brand was adding up figures in a book of accounts, and smiled across at -the girl whom he had known since boyhood, when she had pulled his hair. - -His wounds were healing. - - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Back to Life, by Philip Gibbs - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACK TO LIFE *** - -***** This file should be named 50497-8.txt or 50497-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/0/4/9/50497/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by Google Books - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: Back to Life - -Author: Philip Gibbs - -Release Date: November 19, 2015 [EBook #50497] -Last Updated: November 6, 2016 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACK TO LIFE *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by Google Books - - - - - - -</pre> - - <div style="height: 8em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h1> - BACK TO LIFE - </h1> - <h2> - By Philip Gibbs - </h2> - <h3> - London: William Heinemann - </h3> - <h4> - 1920 - </h4> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>BOOK I—THE END OF THE ADVENTURE</b> - </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> IV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> V </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> VIII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> IX </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> X </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> XI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XIII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> XIV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> XV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> XVI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> XVII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> XVIII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> XIX </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> <b>BOOK II—THROUGH HOSTILE GATES</b> </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> I </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> II </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> III </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> IV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> V </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> VI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> VII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0029"> VIII. </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0030"> <b>BOOK III—BUILDERS OF PEACE</b> </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0031"> I </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0032"> II </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0033"> III </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0034"> IV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0035"> V </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0036"> VI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0037"> VII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0038"> VIII </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - BOOK I—THE END OF THE ADVENTURE - </h2> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - I - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t is hard to - recapture the spirit of that day we entered Lille. Other things since have - blurred its fine images. - </p> - <p> - At the time I tried to put down in words the picture of that scene when, - after four years’ slaughter of men, the city, which had seemed a world - away, was open to us a few miles beyond the trench-lines; the riven trees, - the shell-holes, and the stench of death, and we walked across the canal, - over a broken bridge, into that large town where—how wonderful it - seemed I—there were roofs on the houses and glass in the windows, - and crowds of civilian people waiting for the first glimpse of British - khaki. - </p> - <p> - Even now remembrance brings back to me figures that I saw only for a - moment or two, but remain sharply etched in my mind, and people I met in - the streets who told me the story of four years in less than four minutes - and enough to let me know their bitterness, hatred, humiliations, terrors, - in the time of the German occupation.... I have re-read the words I wrote, - hastily, on a truculent typewriter which I cursed for its twisted ribbon, - while the vision of the day was in my eyes. They are true to the facts and - to what we felt about them. Other men felt that sense of exaltation, a - kind of mystical union with the spirit of many people who had been - delivered from evil powers. It is of those other men that I am now - writing, and especially of one who was my friend—Wickham Brand, with - the troubled soul, whom I knew in the years of war and afterwards in the - peace which was no peace to him. - </p> - <p> - His, was one of the faces I remember that day, as I had a glimpse of it - now and then, among crowds of men and women, young girls and children, who - surged about him, kissing his hands and his face when he stooped a little - (he was taller than most of them) to meet the wet lips of some - half-starved baby held up by a pallid woman of Lille, or to receive the - kiss of some old woman who clawed his khaki tunic, or of some girl who - hung on to his belt. There was a shining wetness in his eyes, and the hard - lines of his face had softened as he laughed at all this turmoil about - him, at all these hands robbing him of shoulder-straps and badges, and at - all these people telling him a hundred things together—their - gratitude to the English, their hatred of the Germans, their abominable - memories. His field-cap was pushed back from his high, furrowed forehead - from which at the temples the hair had worn thin, owing to worry or a - steel hat. His long, lean face, deeply tanned, but powdered with white - dust, had an expression of tenderness which gave him a kind of priestly - look, though others would have said “knightly” with, perhaps, equal truth. - Anyhow, I could see that for a little while Brand was no longer worrying - about the casualty lists and the doom of youth, and was giving himself up - to an exaltation that was visible and spiritual in Lille in the day of - liberation. - </p> - <p> - The few of us who went first into Lille while our troops were in a wide - are round the city, in touch, more or less, with the German rearguards, - were quickly separated in the swirl of the crowd that surged about us, - greeting us as conquering heroes, though none of us were actual fighting - men, being war correspondents, intelligence officers (Wickham Brand and - three other officers were there to establish an advanced headquarters), - with an American doctor—that amazing fellow “Daddy” Small—and - our French <i>liaison</i> officer, Pierre Nesle. Now and again we met in - the streets and exchanged words. - </p> - <p> - I remember the doctor and I drifted together at the end of the Boulevard - de la Liberté. A French girl of the middle-class had tucked her hand - through his right arm and was talking to him excitedly, volubly. On his - other arm leaned an old dame in a black dress and bonnet who was also - delivering her soul of its pent-up emotion to a man who did not understand - more than a few words of her French. A small boy dressed as a Zouave was - walking backwards, waving a long tricolour flag before the little - American, and a crowd of people made a close circle about him, keeping - pace. - </p> - <p> - “Assassins, bandits, robbers!” gobbled the old woman. “They stole all our - copper, monsieur. The very mattresses off our beds. The wine out of our - cellars. They did abominations.” - </p> - <p> - “Month after month we waited,” said the girl, with her hand through the - doctor’s right arm. “All that time the noise of the guns was loud in our - ears. It never ceased, monsieur, until to-day. And we used to say: - ‘To-morrow the English will come!’ until at last some of us lost heart—not - I, no, always I believed in victory!—and said, ‘The English will - never come!’ Now you are here, and our hearts are full of joy. It is like - a dream. The Germans have gone!” - </p> - <p> - The doctor patted the girl’s hand and addressed me across the tricolour - waved by the small Zouave. - </p> - <p> - “This is the greatest day of my life! And I am perfectly ashamed of - myself. In spite of my beard and my gig-lamps and my anarchical - appearance, these dear people take me for an English officer and a - fighting hero. And I feel like one. If I saw a German now I truly believe - I should cut his throat. Me—a non-combatant and a man of peace! I’m - horrified at my own blood-thirstiness. The worst of it is I’m enjoying it. - I’m a primitive man for a time, and find it stimulating. To-morrow I shall - repent. These people have suffered hell’s torments. I can’t understand a - word the little old lady is telling me but I’m sure she’s been through - infernal things. And this pretty girl. She’s a peach, though slightly - tuberculous, poor child. My God—how they hate! There is a stored-up - hatred in this town enough to burn up Germany by mental telepathy. It’s - frightening. Hatred and joy, I feel these two passions like a flame about - us. It’s spiritual. It’s transcendental. It’s the first time I’ve seen a - hundred thousand people drunk with joy and hate. I’m against hate, and yet - the sufferings of these people make me see red so that I want to cut a - German throat!” - </p> - <p> - “You’d stitch it up afterwards, doctor,” I said. - </p> - <p> - He blinked at me through his spectacles and said: “I hope so. I hope my - instinct would be as right as that. The world will never get forward till - we have killed hatred. That’s my religion.” - </p> - <p> - “Bandits! Assassins!” grumbled the old lady. “Dirty people!” - </p> - <p> - “<i>Vivent les Anglais!</i>” shouted the crowd, surging about the little - man with the beard. - </p> - <p> - The American doctor spoke in English in a large explanatory way. - </p> - <p> - “I’m American. Don’t you go making any mistake. I’m an Uncle Sam. The - Yankee boys are further south and fighting like hell, poor lads. I don’t - deserve any of this ovation, my dears.” - </p> - <p> - Then in French, with a strong American accent, he shouted: “<i>Vive la - France!</i>’Rah! ‘Rah! ‘Rah!” - </p> - <p> - “<i>Merci, merci, mon Général!</i>” said an old woman, making a grab at - the little doctor’s Sam Brown belt and kissing him on the beard. The crowd - closed round him and bore him away.... - </p> - <p> - I met another of our crowd when I went to a priest’s house in a turning - off the Rue Royale. Pierre Nesle, our <i>liaison</i> officer—a nice - simple fellow, who had always been very civil to me—was talking to - the priest outside his door, and introduced me in a formal way to a tall, - patrician-looking old man in a long black gown. It was the Abbé Bourdin, - well known in Lille as a good priest and a patriot. - </p> - <p> - “Come indoors, gentlemen,” said the old man. “I will tell you what - happened to us, though it would take four years to tell you all.” - </p> - <p> - Sitting there in the priest’s room, barely furnished, with a few oak - chairs and a writing-desk littered with papers, and a table covered with a - tattered cloth of red plush, we listened to a tragic tale, told finely and - with emotion by the old man into whose soul it had burned. It was the - history of a great population caught by the tide of war before many could - escape, and placed under the military law of an enemy who tried to break - its spirit. They failed to break it in spite of an iron discipline which - denied them all liberty. For any trivial offence by individuals against - German rule the whole population was fined or shut up in their houses at - three in the afternoon. There were endless fines, unceasing and - intolerable robberies under the name of “perquisitions.” That had not - broken the people’s spirit. There were worse things to bear—the - removal of machinery from the factories, the taking away of the young men - and boys for forced labour, and then, the greater infancy of that night - when machine-guns were placed at the street corners and German officers - ordered each household to assemble at the front door and chose the - healthy-looking girls by the pointing of a stick and the word, “You—you!” - for slave-labour—it was that—in unknown fields far away. - </p> - <p> - The priest’s face blanched at the remembrance of that scene. His voice - quavered when he spoke of the girls’ screams—one of them had gone - raving mad—and of the wailing that rose among their stricken - families. For a while he was silent, with lowered head and brooding eyes - which stared at a rent in the threadbare carpet, and I noticed the - trembling of a pulse on his right temple above the deeply-graven wrinkles - of his parchment skin. Then he raised his head and spoke harshly. - </p> - <p> - “Not even that could break the spirit of my people. They only said, ‘We - will never forget and never forgive!’ They were hungry—we did not - get much food—but they said, ‘Our sons who are fighting for us are - suffering worse things. It is for us to be patient.’ They were surrounded - by German spies—the secret police—who listened to their words - and haled them off to prison upon any pretext. There is hardly a man among - us who has not been in prison. The women were made to do filthy work for - German soldiers, to wash their lousy clothes, to scrub their dirty - barracks, and they were insulted, humiliated, tempted, by brutal men.” - </p> - <p> - “Was there much of that brutality?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - The priest’s eyes grew sombre. - </p> - <p> - “Many women suffered abominable things. I thank God that so many kept - their pride and their honour. There were, no doubt, some bad men and women - in the city—disloyal, venal, weak, sinful—may God have mercy - on their souls; but I am proud of being a Frenchman when I think of how - great was the courage, how patient was the suffering of the people of - Lille.” - </p> - <p> - Pierre Nesle had listened to that monologue with a visible and painful - emotion. He became pale and flushed by turns, and when the priest spoke - about the forcible recruitment of the women a sweat broke out on his - forehead, and he wiped it away with a handkerchief. - </p> - <p> - I see his face now in profile, sharply outlined against some yellowing - folios in a bookcase behind him, a typical Parisian face in its sharpness - of outline and pallid skin, with a little black moustache above a thin, - sensitive mouth. Before I had seen him mostly in gay moods—though I - had wondered sometimes at the sudden silences into which he fell and at a - gloom which gave him a melancholy look when he was not talking, or - singing, or reciting poetry, or railing against French politicians, or - laughing almost hysterically at the satires of Charles Fortune—our - “funny man”—when he came to our mess. Now he was suffering, as if - the priest’s words had probed a wound—though not the physical wound - which had nearly killed him in Souchez Wood. - </p> - <p> - He stood up from the wooden chair with its widely-curved arms in which he - had been sitting stiffly, and spoke to the priest. - </p> - <p> - “It is not amusing, <i>mon père</i>, what you tell us, and what we have - all guessed. It is one more chapter of tragedy in the history of our poor - France. Pray God the war will soon be over.” - </p> - <p> - “With victory!” said the old priest. “With an enemy beaten and bleeding - beneath our feet. The Germans must be punished for all their crimes, or - the justice of God will not be satisfied.” - </p> - <p> - There was a thrill of passion in the old man’s voice and his nostrils - quivered. - </p> - <p> - “To all Frenchmen that goes without saying,” said Pierre Nesle. “The - Germans must be punished, and will be, though no vengeance will repay us - for the suffering of our <i>poilus</i>—nor for the agony of our - women behind the lines, which, perhaps, was the greatest of all.” - </p> - <p> - The Abbé Bourdin put his claw-like old hands on the young man’s shoulders - and drew him closer and kissed his Croix de Guerre. - </p> - <p> - “You have helped to give victory,” he said. “How many Germans have you - killed? How many, eh?” - </p> - <p> - He spoke eagerly, chuckling with a kind of childish eagerness for good - news. - </p> - <p> - Pierre Nesle drew back a little and a faint touch of colour crept into his - face, and then left it whiter. - </p> - <p> - “I did not count corpses,” he said. He touched his left side and laughed - awkwardly. “I remember better that they nearly made a corpse of me.” - </p> - <p> - There was a moment’s silence, and then my friend spoke in a casual kind of - way. - </p> - <p> - “I suppose, <i>mon père</i>, you have not heard of my sister being in - Lille by any chance? Her name was Marthe. Marthe Nesle.” - </p> - <p> - The Abbé Bourdin shook his head. - </p> - <p> - “I do not know the name. There are many young women in Lille. It is a - great city.” - </p> - <p> - “That is true,” said Pierre Nesle. “There are many.” - </p> - <p> - He bowed over the priest’s hand, and then saluted. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Bon jour, mon père, et merci mille fois</i>.” - </p> - <p> - So we left, and the Abbé Bourdin spoke his last words to me: “We owe our - liberation to the English. We thank you. But why did you not come sooner? - Two years sooner, three years. With your great army?” - </p> - <p> - “Many of our men died to get here,” I said. “Thousands.” - </p> - <p> - “That is true. That is true. You failed many times, I know. But you were - so close. One big push—eh? One mighty effort? No?” - </p> - <p> - The priest spoke a thought which I had heard expressed in the crowds. They - were grateful for our coming, immensely glad, but could not understand why - we had tried their patience so many years. That had been their greatest - misery, waiting, waiting. - </p> - <p> - I spoke to Pierre Nesle on the doorstep of the priest’s house. - </p> - <p> - “Have you an idea that your sister is in Lille?” - </p> - <p> - “No,” he said. “No. At least not more than the faintest hope. She is - behind the lines somewhere—anywhere. She went away from home before - the war—she was a singer—and was caught in the tide.” - </p> - <p> - “No news at all?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - “Her last letter was from Lille. Or rather a postcard with the Lille - stamp. She said, I am amusing myself well, little brother.’ She and I were - good comrades. I look for her face in the crowds. But she may be anywhere—Valenciennes, - Maubeuge—God knows!” - </p> - <p> - A shout of “<i>Vive la France!</i>” rose from a crowd of people surging up - the street. Pierre Nesle was in the blue uniform of the <i>chasseurs à - pied</i>, and the people in Lille guessed it was theirs because of its - contrast to our khaki, though the “<i>horizon bleu</i>” was so different - from the uniforms worn by the French army of ‘14. To them now, on the day - of liberation, Pierre Nesle, our little <i>liaison</i> officer, stood for - the armies of France, the glory of France. Even the sight of our khaki did - not fill them with such wild enthusiasm. So I lost him again as I had lost - the little American doctor in the surge and whirlpool of the crowd. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - II - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> was building up - in my mind the historic meaning of the day. Before nightfall I should have - to get it written—the spirit as well as the facts, if I could—in - time for the censors and the despatch-riders. The facts? By many scraps of - conversation with men and women in the streets I could already reconstruct - pretty well the life of Lille in time of war. I found many of their - complaints rather trivial. The Germans had wanted brass and had taken it, - down to the taps in the washing-places. Well, I had seen worse horrors - than that. They had wanted wool and had taken the mattresses. They had - requisitioned all the wine but had paid for it at cheap rates. These were - not atrocities. The people of Lille had been short of food, sometimes on - the verge of starvation, but not really starved. They complained of having - gone without butter, milk, sugar; but even in England these things were - hard to get. No, the tragedy of Lille lay deeper than that. A sense of - fear that was always with them. “Every time there was a knock at the - door,” said one man, “we started up in alarm. It was a knock at our - hearts.” At any time of the day or night they were subject to visits from - German police, to searches, arrests, or orders to get out of their houses - or rooms for German officers or troops. They were denounced by spies, - Germans or debased people of their own city, for trying to smuggle letters - to their folk in other towns in enemy occupation, for concealing copper in - hiding-places, for words of contempt against the Kaiser or the - Kommandatur, spoken at a street corner between one friend and another. - That consciousness of being watched, overheard, reported and denounced - poisoned the very atmosphere of their lives, and the sight of the - field-grey men in the streets, the stench of them—the smell was - horrible when German troops marched back from the battlefields—produced - a soul-sickness worse than physical nausea. I could understand the - constant fret at the nerves of these people, the nagging humiliation—they - had to doff hats to every German officer who swaggered by—and the - slow-burning passion of people, proud by virtue of their race, who found - themselves controlled, ordered about, bullied, punished for trivial - infractions of military regulations, by German officials of hard, - unbending arrogance. That must have been abominable for so long a time; - but as yet I heard no charges of definite brutality, or of atrocious - actions by individual enemies. The worst I had heard was that levy of the - women for forced labour in unknown places. One could imagine the horror of - it, the cruelty of it to girls whose nerves were already unstrung by - secret fears, dark and horrible imaginings, the beast-like look in the - eyes of men who passed them in the streets. Then the long-delayed hope of - liberation—year after year—the German boasts of victory, the - strength of the German defence that never seemed to weaken, in spite of - the desperate attacks of French and British, the preliminary success of - their great offensive in March and April, when masses of English prisoners - were herded through Lille, dejected, exhausted, hardly able to drag their - feet along between their sullen guards—by heaven, these people of - Lille had needed much faith to save them from despair! No wonder now that - on the first day of liberation some, of them were wet-eyed with joy, and - others were lightheaded with liberty. - </p> - <p> - In the Grande Place below the old balustraded Town Hall I saw young Cyril - Clatworthy, one of the Intelligence crowd, surrounded by a group of girls - who were stroking his tunic, clasping his hands, pushing each other - laughingly to get nearer to him. He was in lively conversation with the - prettiest girl, whom he kept in front of him. It was obvious that he was - enjoying himself as the central figure of this hero-worship, and as I - passed the boy (twenty-four that birthday, he had told me a month before) - I marvelled at his ceaseless capacity for amorous adventure, with or - without a moment’s notice. A pretty girl, if possible, or a plain one if - not, drew him like a magnet, excited all his boyish egotism, called to the - faun-spirit that played the pipes of Pan in his heart. It was an amusing - game for him, with his curly brown hair and Midshipman Easy type of face. - For the French girls whom he had met on his way—little Marcelle on - Cassel Hill, Christine at Corbie on the Somme, Marguérite in the hat-shop - at Amiens (what became of her, poor kid?)—it was not so amusing when - he “blew away,” as he called it, and had a look at life elsewhere. - </p> - <p> - He winked at me, as I passed, over the heads of the girls. - </p> - <p> - “The fruits of victory!” he called out. “There is a little Miss Brown-Eyes - here who is quite enchanting.” - </p> - <p> - It was rather caddish of me to say: “Have you forgotten Marguérite - Aubigny?” - </p> - <p> - He thought so, too, and reddened angrily. - </p> - <p> - “Go to blazes!” he said. - </p> - <p> - His greatest chum, and one of mine—Charles Fortune—was - standing outside a <i>café</i> in the big Place, not far from the Vieille - Bourse, with its richly-carved Renaissance front. Here there was a dense - crowd, but they kept at a respectful distance from Fortune, who, with his - red tabs and red-and-blue arm-band and row of ribbons (all gained by - heroic service over a blotting-pad in a Nissen hut) looked to them, no - doubt, like a great general. He had his “heroic” face on, rather mystical - and saintly. (He had a variety of faces for divers occasions—such as - the “sheep’s face” in the presence of generals who disliked brilliant men, - the “intelligent” facer-bright and inquiring—for senior officers who - liked easy questions to which they could give portentous answers, the - “noble” face for the benefit of military chaplains, foreign visitors to - the war-zone, and batmen before they discovered his sense of humour; and - the “old-English-gentleman” face at times for young Harding, who belonged - to a county family with all its traditions, politics, and instincts, and - permitted Fortune to pull his leg, to criticise generals, and denounce the - British Empire as a licensed jester.) - </p> - <p> - Fortune was addressing four gentlemen of the Town Council of Lille who - stood before him, holding ancient top-hats. - </p> - <p> - “Gentlemen,” said Charles Fortune in deliberate French, with an - exaggerated accent, “I appreciate very much the honour you have just paid - me by singing that heroic old song, ‘It’s a long, long way to Tipperary.’ - I desire, however, to explain to you that it is not as yet the National - Anthem of the British people, and that, personally, I have never been to - Tipperary, that I should find some difficulty in finding that place on the - map, and that I never want to go there. This, however, is of small - importance, except to British generals, to whom all small things are of - great importance—revealing, therefore, their minute attention to - details, even when it does not matter—which, I may say, is the true - test of the military mind which is so gloriously winning the war, after - many glorious defeats (I mean victories) and——” (Here Fortune - became rather tangled in his French grammar, but rescued himself after a - still more heroic look). “And it is with the deepest satisfaction, the - most profound emotion, that I find myself in this great city of Lille on - the day of liberation, and on behalf of the British Army, of which I am a - humble representative, in spite of these ribbons which I wear on my - somewhat expansive chest, I thank you from my heart, with the words, ‘<i>la - France!</i>’” - </p> - <p> - Here Fortune heaved a deep sigh, and looked like a field marshal while he - waited for the roar of cheers which greeted his words. The mystical look - on his face became intensified as he stood there, a fine heroic figure (a - trifle stout for lack of exercise), until he suddenly caught sight of a - nice-looking girl in the crowd nearest to him, and gave her an elaborate - wink, as much as to say, “You and I understand each other, my pretty one! - Beneath this heroic pose I am really human.” - </p> - <p> - The effect of that wink was instantaneous. The girl blushed vividly and - giggled, while the crowd shouted with laughter. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Quel numéro! Quel drôle de type!</i>” said a man by my side. - </p> - <p> - Only the four gentlemen of the Town Hall, who had resumed their top-hats, - looked perplexed at this grotesque contrast between the heroic speech (it - had sounded heroic) and its anti-climax. - </p> - <p> - Fortune took me by the arm as I edged my way close to him. - </p> - <p> - “My dear fellow, it was unbelievable when those four old birds sang - ‘Tipperary’ with bared heads. I had to stand at the salute while they sang - three verses with tears in their eyes. They have been learning it during - four years of war. Think of that! And think of what’s happening in Ireland—in - Tipperary—now! There’s some paradox here which contains all the - comedy and pathos of this war. I must think it out. I can’t quite get at - it yet, but I feel it from afar.” - </p> - <p> - “This is not a day for satire,” I said. “This is a day for sentiment. - These people have escaped from frightful things——” - </p> - <p> - Fortune looked at me with quizzical grey eyes out of his handsome, - mask-like face. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Et tu, Brute?</i> After all our midnight talks, our laughter at the - mockery of the gods, our intellectual slaughter of the staff, our tearing - down of all the pompous humbug which has bolstered up this silly old war.” - </p> - <p> - “I know. But to-day we can enjoy the spirit of victory. It’s real, here. - We have liberated all these people.” - </p> - <p> - “We? You mean the young Tommies who lie dead the other side of the canal? - We come in and get the kudos. Presently the generals will come and say, - ‘We did it! Regard our glory! Fling down your flowers! Cheer us, good - people, before we go to lunch.’ They will not see behind them the legions - they sent to slaughter by ghastly blunders, colossal stupidity, invincible - pomposity.” - </p> - <p> - Fortune broke into song. It was an old anthem of his: - </p> - <p> - “<i>Blear-eyed Bill, the Butcher of the Boche</i>.” - </p> - <p> - He had composed it, after a fourth whisky, on a cottage piano in his - Nissen hut. In crashing chords he had revealed the soul of a general - preparing a plan of battle—over the telephone. It never failed to - make me laugh, except that day in Lille when it was out of tune, I - thought, with the spirit about us. - </p> - <p> - “Let’s put the bitter taste out of our mouth to-day,” I said. - </p> - <p> - Fortune made his sheep-face, saluted behind his ear, and said, “Every inch - a soldier—I don’t think!” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - III - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was then we - bumped straight into Wickham Brand, who was between a small boy and girl, - holding his hands, while a tall girl of sixteen or so, with a yellow - pig-tail slung over her shoulder, walked alongside, talking vivaciously of - family experiences under German rule. Pierre Nesle was on the other side - of her. - </p> - <p> - “In spite of all the fear we had—oh, how frightened we were - sometimes!—we used to laugh very much. <i>Maman</i> made a joke of - everything—it was the only way. <i>Maman</i> was wonderfully brave, - except when she thought that father might have been killed.” - </p> - <p> - “Where was your father?” asked Brand. “On the French side of the lines?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, of course. He was an officer in the artillery. We said good-bye to - him on August 2nd of the first year, when he went off to the dépôt at - Belfort. We all cried except <i>maman</i>—father was crying, too, - but <i>maman</i> did not wink away even the tiniest tear until father had - gone. Then she broke down, so that we all howled at the sight of her. Even - these babies joined in. They were only babies then.” - </p> - <p> - “Any news of him?” asked Brand. - </p> - <p> - “Not a word. How could there be? Perhaps in a few days he will walk into - Lille. So <i>maman</i> says.” - </p> - <p> - “That would be splendid!” said Brand. “What is his name?” - </p> - <p> - “Chéri, M. le Commandant Anatole Chéri, 59th Brigade, <i>artillerie - lourde.</i>” - </p> - <p> - The girl spoke her father’s name proudly. - </p> - <p> - I saw a startled look come into the eyes of Pierre Nesle as he heard the - name. In English he said to Brand: “I knew him at Verdun. He was killed.” - </p> - <p> - Wickham Brand drew a sharp breath, and his voice was husky when he spoke, - in English, too. - </p> - <p> - “What cruelty it all is!” - </p> - <p> - The girl with the pig-tail—a tall young creature with a delicate - face and big brown eyes—stared at Pierre Nesle and then at Wickham - Brand. She asked an abrupt question of Pierre. - </p> - <p> - “Is my father dead?” - </p> - <p> - Pierre Nesle stammered something. He was not sure. He had heard that the - Commandant Chéri was wounded at Verdun. - </p> - <p> - The girl understood perfectly. - </p> - <p> - “He is dead, then? <i>Maman</i> will be very sorry.” - </p> - <p> - She did not cry. There was not even a quiver of her lips. She shook hands - with Brand and said: “I must go and tell <i>maman</i>. Will you come and - see us one day?” - </p> - <p> - “With pleasure,” said Brand. - </p> - <p> - “Promise?” - </p> - <p> - The girl laughed as she raised her finger. - </p> - <p> - “I promise,” said Brand solemnly. - </p> - <p> - The girl “collected” the small boy and girl, holding their heads close to - her waist. - </p> - <p> - “Is father dead?” said the small boy. - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps. I believe so,” said the elder sister. - </p> - <p> - “Then we shan’t get the toys from Paris?” said the small girl. - </p> - <p> - “I am afraid not, <i>coquine?</i>” - </p> - <p> - “What a pity!” said the boy. - </p> - <p> - Pierre Nesle took a step forward and saluted. - </p> - <p> - “I will go with you, if you permit it, mademoiselle. It is perhaps in a - little way my duty, as I met your father in the war.” - </p> - <p> - “Thanks a thousand times,” said the girl. “<i>Maman</i> will be glad to - know all you can tell her.” - </p> - <p> - She waved to Brand a merry <i>au revoir</i>. - </p> - <p> - We stood watching them cross the Grande Place, that tall girl and the two - little ones, and Pierre. - </p> - <p> - Fortune touched Brand on the arm. - </p> - <p> - “Plucky, that girl,” he said. “Took it without a whimper. I wonder if she - cared?” - </p> - <p> - Brand turned on him rather savagely. - </p> - <p> - “Cared? Of course she cared. But she had expected it for four years, grown - up to the idea. These war children have no illusions about the business. - They know that the odds are in favour of death.” - </p> - <p> - He raised his hands above his head with a sudden passionate gesture. - </p> - <p> - “Christ God!” he said. “The tragedy of those people! The monstrous cruelty - of it all!” - </p> - <p> - Fortune took his hand and patted it in a funny affectionate way. - </p> - <p> - “You are too sensitive, Wicky. ‘A sensitive plant in a garden grew’—a - war-garden, with its walls blown down, and dead bodies among the little - daisies-o. I try to cultivate a sense of humour and a little irony. It’s a - funny old war, Wicky, believe me, if you look at it in the right light.” - </p> - <p> - Wickham groaned. - </p> - <p> - “I see no humour in it, nor light anywhere.” - </p> - <p> - Fortune chanted again the beginning of his anthem: - </p> - <p> - “<i>Blear-eyed Bill, the Butcher of the Boche</i>.” - </p> - <p> - As usual there was a crowd about us, smiling, waving handkerchiefs and - small flags, pressing forward to shake hands and to say “<i>Vivent les - Anglais!</i>” - </p> - <p> - It was out of that crowd that a girl came and stood in front of us, with a - wave of her hand. - </p> - <p> - “Good morning, British officers! I’m English—or Irish, which is good - enough. Welcome to Lille.” - </p> - <p> - Fortune shook hands with her first and said very formally, in his mocking - way: “How do you do? Are you by chance my long-lost sister? Is there a - strawberry-mark on your left arm?” She laughed with a big, open-mouthed - laugh, on a contralto note that was good to hear. - </p> - <p> - “I’m everybody’s sister who speaks the English tongue, which is fine to - the ears of me after four years in Lille. Eileen O’Connor, by your leave, - gentlemen.” - </p> - <p> - “Not Eileen O’Connor of Tipperary?” asked Fortune gravely. “You know the - Long Long Way, of course?” - </p> - <p> - “Once of Dublin,” said the girl, “and before the war, of Holland Street, - Kensington, in the village of London. Oh, to hear the roar of ‘buses in - the High Street and to see the glint of sunlight on the Round Pond!” - </p> - <p> - She was a tall girl, shabbily dressed in an old coat and skirt with a bit - of fur round her neck and hat, but with a certain look of elegance in the - thin line of her figure and the poise of her head. Real Irish, by the look - of her dark eyes and a rather irregular nose and humorous lips. Not pretty - in the English way, but spirited, and with some queer charm in her. - </p> - <p> - Wickham Brand was holding her hand. - </p> - <p> - “Good Lord! Eileen O’Connor? I used to meet you, years ago, at the Wilmots—those - funny tea-parties in Chelsea.” - </p> - <p> - “With farthing buns and cigarettes, and young boys with big ideas!” - </p> - <p> - The girl laughed with a kind of wonderment, and stood close to Wickham - Brand, holding his Sam Brown belt and staring up into his face. - </p> - <p> - “Why, you must be—you must be—— you are—the tall - boy who used to grow out of his grey suits and wrote mystical verse and - read Tolstoy, and growled at civilisation and smoked black pipes, and fell - in love with elderly artists’ models. Wickham Brand!” - </p> - <p> - “That’s right,” said Brand, ignoring the laughter of Fortune and myself. - “Then I went to Germany and studied their damned philosophy, and then I - became a briefless barrister, and after that took to writing unsuccessful - novels. Here I am, after four years of war, ashamed to be alive when all - my pals are dead.” - </p> - <p> - He glanced at Fortune and me, and said, “Or most of ‘em. - </p> - <p> - “It’s the same Wicky I remember,” said the girl, “and at the sight of you - I feel I’ve gone back to myself as a tousled-haired thing in a short frock - and long black stockings. The good old days before the war. Before other - things and all kinds of things.” - </p> - <p> - “Why on earth were you in Lille when the war began?” asked Brand. - </p> - <p> - “It just happened. I taught painting here. Then I was caught with the - others. We did not think They would come so soon.” - </p> - <p> - She used the word “They” as we all did, meaning the grey men. - </p> - <p> - “It must have been hell,” said Brand. - </p> - <p> - “Mostly hell,” said Miss O’Connor brightly. “At least, one saw into the - gulfs of hell, and devilishness was close at hand. But there were - compensations, wee bits of heaven. On the whole I enjoyed myself.” - </p> - <p> - “Enjoyed yourself?” - </p> - <p> - Brand was startled by that phrase. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, it was an adventure. I took risks—and came through. I lived all - of it—every minute. It was a touch-and-go game with the devil and - death, and I dodged them both. <i>Dieu soit merci!</i>” She laughed with a - little throw-back of the head, showing a white full throat above the - ragged bit of fur. A number of French women pressed about her. Some of - them patted her arms, fondled her hands. One woman bent down and kissed - her shabby jacket. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Elle était merveilleuse, la demoiselle,</i>” said an old Frenchman by - my side. “She was marvellous, sir. All that she did for the wounded, for - your prisoners, for many men who owe their lives to her, cannot be told in - a little while. They tried to catch her. She was nearly caught. It is a - miracle that she was not shot. A miracle, monsieur!” - </p> - <p> - Other people in the crowd spoke to me about “<i>la demoiselle</i>.” They - were mysterious. Even now they could not tell me all she had done. But she - had risked death every day for four years. Every day. Truly it was a - miracle she was not caught. - </p> - <p> - Listening to them, I missed some of Eileen O’Connor’s own words to Brand, - and saw only the wave of her hand as she disappeared into the crowd. - </p> - <p> - It was Brand who told me that he and I and Fortune had been invited to - spend the evening with her, or an “hour or so. I saw that Wicky, as we - called him, was startled by the meeting with her, and was glad of it. - </p> - <p> - “I knew her when we were kids,” he said. “Ten years ago—perhaps - more. She used to pull my hair! Extraordinary, coming face to face with - her in Lille, on this day of all days.” - </p> - <p> - He turned to Fortune with a look of command. - </p> - <p> - “We ought to get busy with that advanced headquarters. There are plenty of - big houses in these streets.” - </p> - <p> - “<i>Ce qu’on appelle un embarras de choix</i>,” said Fortune, with his - rather comical exaggeration of accent. “And Blear-eyed Bill wants us to go - on beating the Boche. I insist on a house with a good piano—German - for choice.” - </p> - <p> - They went off on their quest, and I to my billet, which had been found by - the major of ours, where I wrote the story of how we entered Lille on a - typewriter with a twisted ribbon, which would not write quickly enough all - I wanted to tell the world about a day of history. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - IV - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> had the luck to - be billeted in Lille at the house of Madame Chéri, in the Rue Esquermoise. - </p> - <p> - This lady was the mother of the girl with the pig-tail and the two - children with whom Wickham Brand had made friends on this morning of - liberation—the wife of that military officer whom Pierre Nesle had - known at Verdun and knew to be killed. It was my luck, because there were - children in the house—the pig-tailed girl, Hélène, was more a woman - than a child, though only sixteen—and I craved for a touch of home - life and children’s company after so long an exile in the war-zone, always - among men who talked of war, thought of it, dreamed of it, year in, year - out. - </p> - <p> - Madame Chéri was, I thought, when I saw her first, a beautiful woman, not - physically—because she was too white and worn—but spiritually, - in courage of soul. Pierre Nesle, our <i>liaison</i> officer, told me how - she had received the news of her husband’s death—unflinchingly, - without a cry. She knew, she said, in her heart that he was dead. Some - queer message had reached her one night during the Verdun battles. It was - no ghost, or voice, but only a sudden cold conviction that her man had - been killed. For the children’s sake she had pretended that their father - might come back. It gave them something to look forward to. The little - ones were always harping on the hope that, when peace came, this - mysterious and glorious man, whom they remembered only vaguely as one who - had played bears with them and had been the provider of all good things, - would return with rich presents from Paris—tin soldiers, - queen-dolls, mechanical toys. Hélène, the elder girl, was different. She - had looked curiously at her mother when the children prattled like that - and Madame Chéri had pretended to believe in the father’s homecoming. Once - or twice the girl had said, “Papa may be killed,” in a matter-of-fact way. - Yet she had been his devoted comrade. They had been such lovers, the - father and daughter, that sometimes the mother had been a little jealous, - so she said, in her frank way, to Pierre Nesle, smiling as she spoke. The - war had made Hélène a realist, like most French girls, to whom the idea of - death became commonplace, almost inevitable, as the ceaseless slaughter of - men went on. The German losses had taught them that. - </p> - <p> - I had the colonel’s dressing-room—he had attained the grade of - colonel before Verdun, so Pierre told me—and Madame Chéri came in - while I was there to see that it was properly arranged for me. Over his - iron bedstead (the Germans had taken the woollen mattress, so that it had - been replaced by bags of straw) was his portrait as a lieutenant of - artillery, as he had been at the time of his marriage. He was a handsome - fellow, rather like Hélène, with her delicate profile and brown eyes, - though more like, said Madame Chéri, their eldest boy, Edouard. - </p> - <p> - “Where is he?” I asked, and that was the only time I saw Madame Chéri - break down utterly. - </p> - <p> - She began to tell me that Edouard had been taken away by the Germans, - among all the able-bodied men and boys who were sent away from Lille for - digging trenches behind the lines, in Easter of ‘16, and that he had gone - bravely, with his little pack of clothes over his shoulder, saying, “It is - nothing, <i>maman</i>. My father taught me the word <i>courage</i>. In a - little while we shall win, and I shall be back. <i>Courage, courage!</i>” - </p> - <p> - Madame Chéri repeated her son’s words proudly, so that I seemed to see the - boy with that pack on his shoulder and a smile on his face. Then, - suddenly, she wept bitterly, wildly, her body shaken with a kind of ague, - while she sat on the iron bedstead with her face in her hands. - </p> - <p> - I repeated the boy’s words. - </p> - <p> - “Courage, courage, madam!” - </p> - <p> - Proudly she wailed out in broken sentences:— - </p> - <p> - “He was such a child!... He caught cold so easily!... He was so - delicate!... He needed mother-love so much!... For two years no word has - come from him!” In a little while she controlled herself and begged me to - excuse her. We went down together to the dining-room, where the children - were playing and Hélène was reading; and she insisted upon my drinking a - glass of wine from the store which she had kept hidden from the Germans in - a pit which Edouard had dug in the garden in the first days of the - occupation. The children were delighted with that trick, and roared with - laughter. - </p> - <p> - Hélène, with a curl of her lip, spoke bitterly. - </p> - <p> - “The Boche is a stupid animal. One can dupe him easily.” - </p> - <p> - “Not always easily,” said Madame Chéri. She opened a secret cupboard - behind a bookcase standing against the panelled wall. - </p> - <p> - “I hid all my brass and copper here. A German police officer came, and - said, ‘Have you hidden any copper, madame?’ I said, ‘There is nothing - hidden.’ ‘Do you swear it?’ he asked. ‘I swear it,’ I answered very - haughtily. He went straight to the bookcase, pushed it on one side, tapped - the wall, and opened the secret cupboard’, which was stuffed full of brass - and copper. ‘You are a liar, madame,’ he said, ‘like all Frenchwomen.’ - ‘And you are an insolent pig, like all Germans,’ I remarked. That cost me - a fine of ten thousand francs.” - </p> - <p> - Madame Chéri saw nothing wrong in swearing falsely to a German. I think - she held that nothing was wrong to deceive or to destroy any individual of - the German race, and I could understand her point of view when Pierre - Nesle told me of one thing that had happened which she never told to me. - It was about Hélène. - </p> - <p> - A German captain was billeted in the house. They ignored his presence, - though he tried to ingratiate himself. Hélène hated him with a cold and - deadly hatred. She trembled if he passed her on the stairs. His presence - in the house, even if she did not see him but only heard him move in his - room, made her feel ill. Yet he was very polite to her, and said, “<i>Guten - gnadiges Fràulein</i>,” whenever they met. To Edouard, also, he was - courteous and smiling, though Edouard was sullen. He was a stout little - man, with a round rosy face and little bright eyes behind big black-rimmed - glasses, an officer in the Kommandantur, and formerly a schoolmaster. - Madame Chéri, was polite to him, but cold, cold as ice. After some months, - she found him harmless, though objectionable, because German. It did not - seem dangerous to leave him in the house one evening when she went to - visit a dying friend—Madame Vailly. She was later than she meant to - be—so late that she was liable to arrest by the military police if - they saw her flit past in the darkness of the unlit streets. When she came - home she slipped the latch-key into the door and went quietly into the - hall. The children would be in bed and asleep. At the foot of the stairs a - noise startled her. It was a curious creaking, shaking noise, as of a door - being pushed by some heavy weight, then banged by it. It was the door at - the top of the stairs, on the left—Helène’s room. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Qu’est-ce que tu fais là?</i>” said Madame Chéri. - </p> - <p> - She was very frightened with some unknown fear, and held tight to the - banister as she went upstairs. There was a glimmer of light on the - landing. It was from a candle which had almost burnt out and was guttering - in a candlestick placed on the topmost stair. A grotesque figure was - revealed by the light—Schwarz, the German officer, in his pyjamas, - with a helmet on his head and unlaced boots on his feet. The loose fat of - the man, no longer girded by a belt, made him look like a mass of jelly as - he had his shoulder to the door, shoving and grunting as he tried to force - it open. He was swearing to himself in German, and, now and then, called - out softly in French, in a kind of drunken German-French: “<i>Ouvrez, - kleines Madchen, ma jolie Schatz. Ouvrez donc.</i>” - </p> - <p> - Madame Chéri was paralysed for a moment by a shock of horror; quite - speechless and motionless. Then suddenly she moved forward and spoke in a - fierce whisper. - </p> - <p> - “What are you doing, beast?” - </p> - <p> - Schwarz gave a queer snort of alarm. - </p> - <p> - He stood swaying a little, with the helmet on the back of his head. The - candlelight gleamed on its golden eagle. His face was hotly flushed and - there was a ferocious look in his eyes. Madame Chéri saw that he was - drunk. - </p> - <p> - He spoke to her in horrible French, so Pierre Nesle told me, imitating it - savagely, as Madame Chéri had done to him. The man was filthily drunk, and - declared that he loved Hélène and would kill her if she did not let him - love her. Why did she lock her door like that? He had been kind to her. He - had smiled at her. A German officer was a human being, not a monster. Why - did they treat him as a monster, draw themselves away when he passed, - become silent when he wished to speak with them, stare at him with hate in - their eyes? The French people were all devils, proud as devils. - </p> - <p> - Another figure stood on the landing. It was Edouard—a tall, slim - figure, with a white face and burning eyes, in which there was a look of - fury. - </p> - <p> - “What is happening, <i>maman?</i>” he said coldly. “What does this animal - want?” - </p> - <p> - Madame Chéri trembled with a new fear. If the boy were to kill that man, - he would be shot. She had a vision of him standing against a wall.... - </p> - <p> - “It is nothing,” she said. “This gentleman is ill. Go back to bed, - Edouard. I command you.” - </p> - <p> - The German laughed stupidly. - </p> - <p> - “To bed, <i>shafskopf</i>. I am going to open your sister’s door. She - loves me. She calls to me. I hear her whisper, ‘<i>Ich liebe dich!</i>’” - </p> - <p> - Edouard had a stick in his hand. It was a heavy walking-stick which had - belonged to his father. Without a word he sprang forward, raised his - weapon, and smashed it down on the German’s head. It knocked off Schwarz’s - helmet, which rolled from the top to the bottom of the staircase, and hit - the man a glancing blow on the temple. He fell like a log. Edouard smiled, - and said, “<i>Très bien.</i>” Then he rattled the lock of his sister’s - door and called out to her: “Hélène.... Have no fear. He is dead. I have - killed him.” - </p> - <p> - It was then that Madame Chéri had her greatest fear. There was no sound - from Hélène. She did not answer any of their cries. She did not open the - door to them. They tried to force the lock, as Schwarz had done, but, - though the lock gave at last, the door would not open, kept closed by some - barricade behind it. Edouard and his mother went out into the yard, and - the boy climbed up to his sister’s window and broke the glass to go - through. Hélène was lying in her nightdress on the bedroom floor, - unconscious. She had moved a heavy wardrobe in front of the door, by some - supernatural strength which came from fear. Then she had fainted.... To - his deep regret, Edouard had not killed the German. - </p> - <p> - Schwarz had crawled back to his bedroom when they went back into the - house, and next morning wept to Madame Chéri and implored forgiveness. - There had been a little banquet, he said, and he had drunk too much. - </p> - <p> - Madame Chéri did not forgive. She called at the Kommandantur, where the - General saw her and listened to her gravely. He did not waste words. - </p> - <p> - “The matter will be attended to,” he said. - </p> - <p> - Captain Schwarz departed that day from the house in the Rue Esquermoise. - He was sent to a battalion in the line and was killed somewhere near - Ypres. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - V - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>ickham Brand paid - his promised visit to the Chéri family, according to his pledge to Hélène, - whom he had met in the street the previous day, and he had to drink some - of the hidden wine, as I had done, and heard the story of its concealment - and of Madame’s oath about the secret hoard of copper. I think he was more - disconcerted than I had been by that avowal, and told me afterwards that - he believed no Englishwoman would have sworn to so deliberate a lie. - </p> - <p> - “That’s because the English are not so logical,” I said, and he puzzled - over that. - </p> - <p> - He was greatly taken with Hélène, as she with him, but he risked their - friendship in an awkward moment when he expressed the hope that the German - offer of peace (the one before the final surrender) would be accepted. - </p> - <p> - It was Madame Chéri who took him up on that, sharply, and with a kind of - surprised anguish in her voice. She hoped, she said, that no peace would - be made with Germany until French and British and American troops had - smashed the German armies, crossed the German frontier, and destroyed many - German towns and villages. She would not be satisfied with any peace that - came before a full vengeance, so that German women would taste the - bitterness of war as Frenchwomen had drunk deep of it, and until Germany - was heaped with ruins as France had been. - </p> - <p> - Wickham Brand was sitting with the small boy on his knees, and stroked his - hair before answering. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Dites, donc!</i>” said Hélène, who was sitting on the hearthrug, - looking up at his powerful profile, which reminded me always of a Norman - knight, or, sometimes, of a young monk worried about his soul and the - devil. - </p> - <p> - He had that monkish look now when he answered. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know,” he said. “I have felt like that often. But I have come to - think that the sooner we get blood out of our eyes the better for all the - world. I have seen enough dead Germans—and dead English and dead - French—to last a lifetime. Many of the German soldiers hate the war, - as I know, and curse the men who drove them on to it. They are trapped. - They cannot escape from the thing they curse, because of their discipline, - their patriotism——” - </p> - <p> - “Their patriotism!” said Madame Chéri. - </p> - <p> - She was really angry with Brand, and I noticed that even Hélène drew back - a little from her place on the rug and looked perplexed and disappointed. - Madame Chéri ridiculed the idea of German patriotism. They were brutes who - liked war except when they feared defeat. They had committed a thousand - atrocities out of sheer joy in bestial cruelty. Their idea of patriotism - was blood-lust and the oppression of people more civilised than - themselves. They hated all people who were not savages like themselves. - </p> - <p> - Wickham Brand shook his head. - </p> - <p> - “They’re not all as bad as that. I knew decent people among them before - the war. For a time, of course, they went mad. They were poisoned by the - damnable philosophy of their leaders and teachers.” - </p> - <p> - “They liked the poison,” said Madame Chéri. “They lapped it up. It is in - their blood and spirits. They are foul through and through.” - </p> - <p> - “They are devils,” said Hélène. She shuddered as though she felt very - cold. - </p> - <p> - Even the small boy on Brand’s knees said: “<i>Sales Boches!</i>” - </p> - <p> - Brand groaned in a whimsical way. - </p> - <p> - “I have said all those things a thousand times! They nearly drove me mad. - But now it’s time to stop the river of blood—if the German army will - acknowledge defeat. I would not go on a day after that, for our own sakes—for - the sake of French boys and English. Every day more of war means more dead - of ours, more blind, more crippled, and more agony of soul. I want some of - our boyhood to be saved.” - </p> - <p> - Madame Chéri answered coldly. - </p> - <p> - “Not before the Germans have been punished. Not before that, if we all - die.” - </p> - <p> - Hélène sprang up with a passionate gesture. - </p> - <p> - “All German babies ought to be strangled in their cradles! Before they - grow up to be fat, beastly men.” - </p> - <p> - She was thinking of Schwarz, I imagine. It was the horror of remembrance - which made her so fierce. Then she laughed, and said: “Oh, <i>là là</i>, - let us be glad because yesterday we were liberated. Do not quarrel with an - English officer, <i>maman</i>. He helped to save us.” - </p> - <p> - She put her hands on Wickham Brand’s shoulders and said: “<i>Merci, mon - capitaine!</i>” - </p> - <p> - So the conversation turned, and Wickham won them back by his courtesy, and - by a tribute to the courage of French civilians behind the lines, of whom - he told many haunting stories. - </p> - <p> - But when I walked round with him to his mess—we were going round - later to see Eileen O’Connor—he referred back to the incident. - </p> - <p> - “Daddy Small is right.” (He referred to the little American doctor.) “The - hatred of these people is transcendental. It is like a spiritual flame. It - is above all self-interest, kindly, human instincts, life itself. That - woman would sacrifice herself, and her children, as quietly as she heard - the death of her husband, rather than grant the Germans peace without - victory and vengeance. How can there be any peace, whatever treaty is - signed? Can Europe ever get peace with all this hatred as a heritage?” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - VI - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e walked silently - towards the Boulevard de la Liberté, where Brand’s little crowd had - established their headquarters. - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps they’re right,” he said presently. “Perhaps the hatred is - divine.... I may be weakening, because of all the horror.” - </p> - <p> - Then he was silent again, and while I walked by his side I thought back to - his career as I had known it in the war, rather well. He had always been - tortured by agonised perplexities. I had guessed that by the look of the - man and some of his odd phrases, and his restlessness and foolhardiness. - It was in the trenches by Fricourt that I had first seen him—long - before the battles of the Somme. He was sitting motionless on a wooden - box, staring through a periscope towards the mine craters and the Bois - Français in No Man’s Land. The fine hardness of his profile, the strength - of his jaw—not massive, but with one clean line from ear to chin—and - something in the utter intensity of his attitude, attracted my attention, - and I asked the colonel about him. - </p> - <p> - “Who is that fellow—like a Norman knight?” - </p> - <p> - The colonel of the K.R.R. laughed as we went round the next bay, ducking - our heads where the sandbags had slipped down. - </p> - <p> - “Further back than Norman,” he said. “He’s the primitive man.” - </p> - <p> - He told me that Wickham Brand—a lieutenant then—was a young - barrister who had joined the battalion at the beginning of ‘15. He had - taken up sniping and made himself a dead shot. He had the hunter’s - instinct and would wait hours behind the sandbags for the sight of a - German head in the trendies opposite. He seldom missed his man, or that - part of his body which showed for a second. Lately he had taken to the - habit of crawling out into No Man’s Land and waiting in some shell-hole - for the dawn, when Germans came out to mend their wire or drag in a dead - body. He generally left another dead man as a bait for the living. Then he - would come back with a grim smile and eat his breakfast wolfishly, after - cutting a notch in one of the beams of his dug-out. - </p> - <p> - “He’s a Hun-hater, body and soul,” said the colonel. “We want more of ‘em. - All the same, Brand makes me feel queer by his ferocity. I like a humorous - fellow who does his killing cheerfully.” - </p> - <p> - After that I met Brand and took a drink with him in his dug-out. He - answered my remarks gruffly for a time. - </p> - <p> - “I hear you go in for sniping a good deal,” I said, by way of - conversation. - </p> - <p> - “Yes. It’s murder made easy.” - </p> - <p> - “Do you get many targets?” - </p> - <p> - “It’s a waiting game. Sometimes they get careless.” He puffed at a black - old pipe, quite silent for a time. Presently he told me about a “young - ‘un” who popped his head over the parapet twice to stare at something on - the edge of the mine crater. - </p> - <p> - “I spared him twice. The third time I said, ‘Better dead,’ and let go at - him. The kid was too easy to miss.” Something in the tone of his voice - told me that he hated himself for that. - </p> - <p> - “Rather a pity,” I mumbled. - </p> - <p> - “War,” he said. “Bloody war.” - </p> - <p> - There was a candle burning on the wooden bench on which he leaned his - elbow, and by the light of it I saw that his eyes were bloodshot. There - was a haggard look on his face. - </p> - <p> - “It must need some nerve,” I said awkwardly, “to go out so often in No - Man’s Land. Real pluck.” - </p> - <p> - He stared at me as though surprised, and then laughed harshly. - </p> - <p> - “Pluck? What’s that? I’m scared stiff half the time. Do you think I like - it?” - </p> - <p> - He seemed to get angry, was angry, I think. - </p> - <p> - “Do any of us like it? These damn things that blow men to bits, make rags - of them, tear their bowels out, and their eyes? Or to live on top of a - mine crater, as we are now, never knowing when you’re going up in smoke - and flame? If you like that sort of thing yourself you can take my share. - I have never met a man who did.” - </p> - <p> - Yet when Brand was taken out of the trenches—by a word spoken over - the telephone from corps headquarters—because of his knowledge of - German and his cousinship to a lady who was a friend of the corps - commander’s niece, he was miserable and savage. I met him many times after - that as an intelligence officer at the corps cages, examining prisoners on - days of battle. - </p> - <p> - “An <i>embusqué</i> job!” he said. “I’m saving my skin while the - youngsters die.” - </p> - <p> - He stood outside his hut one day on a morning of battle in the Somme - fields—up by Pozières. No prisoners had yet come down. He forgot my - presence and stood listening to the fury of gun-fire and watching the - smoke and flame away there on the ridge. - </p> - <p> - “Christ!” he cried. “Why am I here? Why aren’t I with my pals up there, - getting blown to blood and pulp? Blood and pulp! Blood and pulp!” - </p> - <p> - Then he remembered me, and turned in a shamefaced way and said, “Sorry!... - I feel rather hipped to-day.” - </p> - <p> - I was present sometimes at his examination of prisoners—those poor, - grey, muddy wretches who came dazed out of the slime and shambles. - Sometimes he bullied them harshly, in fluent German, and they trembled at - his ferocity of speech, even whimpered now and then. But once or twice he - was in quite a different mood with them and spoke gently, assenting when - they cursed the war and its misery and said that all they wanted was peace - and home again. - </p> - <p> - “Aren’t you fellows going to revolt?” he asked one man—a <i>Feldwebel.</i> - “Aren’t you going to tell your war lords to go to hell and stop all this - silly massacre before Germany is <i>kaput?</i>” - </p> - <p> - The German shrugged his shoulders. - </p> - <p> - “We would if we could. It is impossible. Discipline is too strong for us. - It has enslaved us.” - </p> - <p> - “That’s true,” said Brand. “You are slaves of a system.” - </p> - <p> - He spoke a strange sentence in English as he glanced over to me. - </p> - <p> - “I am beginning to think we are all slaves of a system. None of us can - break the chains.” - </p> - <p> - It was after that day that Brand took a fancy to me, for some reason, - inviting me to his mess, where I met Charles Fortune and others, and it - was there that I heard amazing discussions about the philosophy of war, - German psychology, the object of life, the relation of Christianity to - war, and the decadence of Europe. Brand himself sometimes led these - discussions, with a savage humour which delighted Charles Fortune, who - egged him on. He was always pessimistic, sceptical, challenging, bitter, - and now and then so violent in his criticisms of England, the Government, - the Army Council, the Staff, and above all, the Press, that most of his - fellow officers—apart from Fortune—thought he went “a bit too - far.” - </p> - <p> - Dear old Harding, who was Tory to the backbone, with a deep respect for - all in authority, accused him of being a “damned revolutionary,” and for a - moment it looked as though there would be hot words, until Brand laughed - in a good-natured way and said, “My dear fellow, I’m only talking academic - rot. I haven’t a conviction. Ever since the war began I have been trying - to make head or tail of things in a sea-fog of doubt. All I know is that I - want the bloody orgy to end, somehow and anyhow.” - </p> - <p> - “With victory,” said Harding solemnly. - </p> - <p> - “With the destruction of Prussian philosophy everywhere,” said Brand. - </p> - <p> - They agreed on that, but I could see that Brand was on shifting ground and - I knew, as our friendship deepened; that he was getting beyond a religion - of mere hate, and was looking for some other kind of faith. Occasionally - he harked back, as on the day in Lille when I walked by his side. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - VII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> dined with him in - his mess that evening, before going on with him to spend an hour or two - with Eileen O’Connor, who had a room in some convent on the outskirts of - Lille. The advanced headquarters of this little group of officers had been - established in one of those big private houses which belong to the rich - manufacturers and business people of Lille (rich before the war, but with - desolate factories stripped of all machinery during the German occupation - and afterwards), with large, heavily-furnished rooms built round a - courtyard and barred off from the street by the big front door. There was - a motor lorry inside the door, which was wide open, and some orderlies - were unloading camp-beds, boxes of maps, officers’ kit, a mahogany - gramophone, and other paraphernalia, under the direction of a young - cockney sergeant, who wanted to know why the blazes they didn’t look - slippy. - </p> - <p> - “Don’t you know there’s a war on?” he asked a stolid old soldier—one - of the heroes of Mons—who was sitting on a case of whisky, with a - wistful look, as though reflecting on the unfair privileges of officers - with so much wealth of drink. - </p> - <p> - “War’s all right if you’re not too close to it,” said the Mons hero. “I’ve - seen enough. I’ve done my bleeding bit for King and country. South Africa, - Egypt——” - </p> - <p> - “Shut your jaw,” said the sergeant. “And down that blarsted gramophone.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah!” said the Mons hero. “We didn’t ‘ave no blarsted gramophones in South - Africa. This is a different kind of war. More comfort about it, if you’re - not in the trenches.” - </p> - <p> - Wickham Brand took me through the courtyard and mentioned that the colonel - had come up from St. Omer. - </p> - <p> - “Now we’re sure to beat the Boche,” he said. “Listen!” - </p> - <p> - From a room to the left of the courtyard came the sound of a flute playing - one of Bach’s minuets, very sweetly, with an old-fashioned grace. - </p> - <p> - “A wonderful army of ours!” said Brand. “I can’t imagine a German colonel - of the Staff playing seventeenth century music on a bit of ivory while the - enemy is fighting like a tiger at bay.” - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps that’s our strength,” I answered. “Our amateurs refuse to take - the war too seriously. I know a young gunner major who travels a banjo in - his limber, and at Cambrai I saw fellows playing chuck-penny within ten - yards of their pals’ dead bodies—a pile of them.” - </p> - <p> - The colonel saw us through his window and waved his flute at us. When I - went into the room, after a salute at the doorway, I saw that he had - already littered it with artistic untidiness—sheets of torn music, - water-colour sketches, books of poetry, and an array of splendid shining - boots, of which a pair stood on the mahogany sideboard. - </p> - <p> - “A beautiful little passage this,” said Colonel Lavington, smiling at me - over the flute, which he put to his lips again. He played a bar or two of - old-world melody, and said, “Isn’t that perfect? Can’t you see the little - ladies in their ^puffed brocades and high-heeled shoes!” - </p> - <p> - He had his faun-like look, his clean-shaven face with long nose and thin, - humorous mouth, lighted up by his dark smiling eyes. - </p> - <p> - “Not a bad headquarters,” he said, putting down the flute again. “If we - can only stay here a little while, instead of having to jog on again. - There’s an excellent piano in the dining-room, German, thank goodness—and - Charles Fortune and I can really get down to some serious music.” - </p> - <p> - “How’s the war?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - “War?” he said absent-mindedly. “Oh, yes, the war! That’s going on all - right. They’d be out of Tournai in a few days. Perhaps out of Maubeuge and - Mons. Oh, the game’s up! Very soon the intellectuals will be looking round - for a living in dear old London. My goodness, some of us will find peace a - difficult job! I can see Boredom approaching with its colossal shadow.... - After all, it has been a great game, on the whole.” - </p> - <p> - I laughed, but something stuck in my throat. Colonel Lavington played the - flute, but he knew his job, and was in touch with General Headquarters and - all its secret information. It was obvious that he believed the war was - going to end—soon. Soon, O Lord, after all the years of massacre. - </p> - <p> - I blurted out a straight question. - </p> - <p> - “Do you think there’s a real chance of peace?” - </p> - <p> - The colonel was reading a piece of music, humming it with a la, la, la. - </p> - <p> - “Another month and our job’s done,” he said. “Have you heard that bit of - Gluck? It’s delicious.” - </p> - <p> - I stayed with him a little while and did not follow a note of his music. I - was excited by the supreme hope he had given me. So there was to be an end - of massacre, and my own hopes had not been false. - </p> - <p> - At the mess table that night Charles Fortune was in good form. We sat in a - room which was rather handsomely furnished, in a heavy way, with big - bronzes on the mantelpiece (ticketed for exemption from requisition as - family heirlooms), and some rather good portraits of a French family—from - the eighteenth century onwards—on the panelled walls. The <i>concierge</i> - had told us that it had been the mess of a German headquarters and this - gave Fortune his cue, and he entertained us with some caricatures of - German generals and officers, amazingly comic. He drank his soup in the - style of a German general and ate his potato pie as a German intelligence - officer, who had once been a professor of psychology at Heidelberg. - </p> - <p> - The little American doctor, “Daddy” Small, as we called him, had been made - an honorary member of the mess, and he smiled at Fortune through his - spectacles, with an air of delighted surprise that such things should be. - </p> - <p> - “You English,” he said in his solemn way, “are the most baffling people in - the world. I have been studying you since I came to France, and all my - preconceived ideas have been knocked on the head. We Americans think you - are a hard, arrogant, selfish people, without humour or sympathy, made in - set moulds, turned out as types from your university and public schools. - That is all wrong. I am beginning to see that you are more human, more - various, more whimsical than any race in the world. You decline to take - life seriously. You won’t take even death seriously. This war—you - make a joke of it. The Germans—you kill them in great numbers, but - you have a secret liking for them. Fortune’s caricatures are very comical—but - not unkind. I believe Fortune is a pro-German. You cannot laugh at the - people you hate. I believe England will forgive Germany quicker than any - other nation—far quicker than the Americans. France, of course, will - never forgive.” - </p> - <p> - “No,” said Pierre Nesle, who was at the end of the table. “France will - never forgive.” - </p> - <p> - “We are an illogical people,” said the colonel. “It is only logical people - who can go on hating. Besides, German music is so-good! So good!” - </p> - <p> - Harding, who read no paper but the <i>Morning Post</i>, said that as far - as he was concerned he would never speak to a German again in his life. He - would like to see the whole race exterminated. But he was afraid of the - Socialists with their pestilential doctrine of “brotherhood of man.” Lloyd - George also filled him with the gravest misgivings. - </p> - <p> - Dr. Small’s eyes twinkled at him: “There is the old caste that speaks. - Tradition against the new world of ideas. Of course there will always be - <i>that</i> conflict.... That is a wonderful phrase, ‘the pestilential - doctrine of the brotherhood of man.’ I must make a note of it.” - </p> - <p> - “Shame oh you, doctor,” said Fortune. “You are always jotting down notes - about us. I shall find myself docketed as ‘English gentleman, grade 3; - full-blooded, inclined to obesity, humorous, strain of insanity due to - in-breeding, rare.’” - </p> - <p> - Dr. Small laughed in a high treble, and then was serious. - </p> - <p> - “I’m noting down everything. My own psychology, which alarms me; facts, - anecdotes, scenes, words. I want to find a law somewhere, the essential - thing in human nature. After the war—if there is any afterwards—I - want to search for a way out of the jungle. This jungle civilisation. - There must be daylight somewhere for the human race.” - </p> - <p> - “If you find it,” said Brand earnestly, “tell me, doctor.” - </p> - <p> - “I will,” said Dr. Small, and I remembered that pledge afterwards, when he - and Brand were together in a doomed city, trying to avert the doom, - because of that impulse which urged them to find a little daylight beyond - the darkness. - </p> - <p> - Young Clatworthy jerked his chair on the polished boards and looked - anxiously at the Colonel, who was discoursing on the origins of art, - religion, sex, the perception of form. - </p> - <p> - Colonel Lavington grinned at him. - </p> - <p> - “All right, Cyril. I know you have got a rendezvous with some girl. Don’t - let us keep you from your career of infamy.” - </p> - <p> - “As a matter of fact, sir, I met a sweet little thing yesterday——” - Clatworthy knew that his reputation as an amorist did not displease the - colonel, who was a romantic and loved youth. - </p> - <p> - In a gust of laughter the mess broke up. Charles Fortune and the colonel - prepared for an orgy of Bach over the piano in the drawing-room of that - house in Lille. Those who cared to listen might—or not, as they - pleased. Brand and I went out into the streets, pitch-dark now, unlit by - any glimmer of gas, and made our way to the convent where the girl Eileen - O’Connor lodged. We passed a number of British soldiers in the Boulevard - de la Liberté, wearing their steel hats and carrying their packs. - </p> - <p> - A group of them stopped under a doorway to light cigarettes. One of them - spoke to his pals. - </p> - <p> - “They tell me there’s some bonny wenches in this town.” - </p> - <p> - “Ay,” said another, “an’ I could do wi’ some hugging in a cosy billet.” - </p> - <p> - “Cosy billet!” said the third, with a cockney voice. “Town or trenches, - the poor bloody soldier gets it in the neck. Curse this pack! I’m fed up - with the whole damn show. I want peace.” - </p> - <p> - A hoarse laugh answered him. - </p> - <p> - “Peace! You don’t believe that fool’s talk in the papers, chum? It’s a - hell of a long way to the Rhine, and you and I’ll be dead before we get - there.” - </p> - <p> - They slouched off into the darkness, three points of light where their - cigarettes glowed. - </p> - <p> - “Poor lads!” said Brand. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - VIII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e fumbled our way - to a street on the edge of the canal, according to Brand’s uncanny sense - of direction and his remembrance of what the Irish girl had told him. - There we found the convent, a square box-like building behind big gates. - We pulled a bell which jangled loudly, and presently the gate opened an - inch, letting through the light of a lantern which revealed the - black-and-white coif of a nun. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Qui va là?</i>” - </p> - <p> - Brand told her that we had come to see Miss O’Connor, and the gate was - opened wider and we went into the courtyard, where a young nun stood - smiling. She spoke in English. - </p> - <p> - “We were always frightened when the bell rang during the German - occupation. One never knew what might happen. And we were afraid for Miss - O’Connor’s sake.” - </p> - <p> - “Why?” asked Brand. - </p> - <p> - The little nun laughed. - </p> - <p> - “She did dangerous work. They suspected her. She came here after her - arrest. Before then she had rooms of her own. Oh, <i>messieurs</i>, her - courage, her devotion! Truly, she was heroic!” - </p> - <p> - She led us into a long corridor with doors on each side, and out of one - door came a little group of nuns with Eileen O’Connor. - </p> - <p> - The Irish girl came towards us with outstretched hands which she gave - first to Brand. She seemed excited at our coming and explained that the - Reverend Mother and all the nuns wanted to see us to thank England by - means of us, to hear something about the war and the chance of victory - from the first English officers they had seen. - </p> - <p> - Brand was presented to the Reverend Mother, a massive old lady with a - slight moustache on the upper lip and dark luminous eyes, reminding me of - the portrait of Savonarola at Florence. The other nuns crowded round us, - eager to ask questions, still more eager to talk. Some of them were quite - young and pretty, though all rather white and fragile, and they had a - vivacious gaiety so that the building resounded with laughter. It was - Eileen O’Connor who made them laugh by her reminiscences of girlhood when - she and Brand were “<i>enfants terribles</i>,” when she used to pull - Brand’s hair and hide the pipe he smoked too soon. She asked him to take - off his field-cap so that she might see whether the same old unruly tuft - still stuck up at the back of his head, and she and all the nuns clapped - hands when she found it was so, in spite of war-worry and steel hats. All - this had to be translated into French for the benefit of those who could - not understand such rapid English. - </p> - <p> - “I believe you would like to give it a tug now,” said Brand, bending his - head down, and Eileen O’Connor agreed. - </p> - <p> - “And indeed I would, but for scandalising a whole community of nuns, to - say nothing of Reverend Mother.” - </p> - <p> - The Reverend Mother laughed in a curiously deep voice, and a crowd of - little wrinkles puckered at her eyes. She told Miss O’Connor that even her - Irish audacity would not go as far as that, which was a challenge accepted - on the instant. - </p> - <p> - “One little tug, for old times’ sake,” said the girl, and Brand yelped - with pretended pain at the vigour of her pull, while all the nuns screamed - with delight. - </p> - <p> - Then a clock struck and the Reverend Mother touched Eileen (as afterwards - I called her) on the arm and said she would leave her with her friends. - One by one the nuns bowed to us, all smiling under their white <i>bandeaux,</i> - and then went down the corridor through an open door which led into a - chapel, as we could see by twinkling candlelight. Presently the music of - an organ and of women’s voices came through the closed doors. - </p> - <p> - Eileen O’Connor took us into a little parlour where there were just four - rush chairs and a table, and on the clean whitewashed walls a crucifix. - </p> - <p> - Brand took a chair by the table, rather awkwardly, I thought. - </p> - <p> - “How gay they are!” he said. “They do not seem to have been touched by the - horrors of war.” - </p> - <p> - “It is the gaiety of faith,” said Eileen. “How else could they have - survived the work they have done, the things they have seen? This convent - was a shambles for more than three years. These rooms were filled with - wounded, German wounded, and often English wounded, who were prisoners. - They were the worst cases for amputation and butcher’s work, and the nuns - did all the nursing. They know all there is to know of suffering and - death.” - </p> - <p> - “Yet they have not forgotten how to laugh!” said Brand. “That is - wonderful. It is a mystery to me.” - </p> - <p> - “You must have seen bad things,” said Eileen. “Have you lost the gift of - laughter?” - </p> - <p> - “Almost,” said Brand, “and once for a long time.” - </p> - <p> - Eileen put her hands to her breast. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, learn it again,” she said. “If we cannot laugh we cannot work. Why, I - owe my life to a sense of humour.” - </p> - <p> - She spoke the last words with more than a trivial meaning. They seemed to - tell of some singular episode, and Brand asked her to explain. - </p> - <p> - She did not explain then. She only said some vague things about laughing - herself out of prison and stopping a German bullet with a smile. - </p> - <p> - “Why did the devils put you in prison?” asked Brand. - </p> - <p> - She shrugged her shoulders. - </p> - <p> - “In Lille it was bad form if one had not been arrested once at least. I - was three weeks in a cell half the size of this, and twenty women were - with me there. There was very little elbow-room!” - </p> - <p> - She proved her sense of humour then by that deep-throated laugh of hers, - but I noticed that just for a second behind the smile in her eyes there - crept a shadow as at the remembrance of some horror, and that she shivered - a little, as though some coldness had touched her. - </p> - <p> - “It must have been like the Black Hole of Calcutta,” said Brand, measuring - the space with his eyes. “Twenty women herded in a room like that!” - </p> - <p> - “With me for twenty-one,” said Eileen. “We had no means of washing.” - </p> - <p> - She used an awful phrase. - </p> - <p> - “We were a living stench.” - </p> - <p> - “Good God!” said Brand. - </p> - <p> - Eileen O’Connor waved back the remembrance. “Tell me of England and of - Ireland. How’s the little Green Isle? Has it done well in the war?” - </p> - <p> - “The Irish troops fought like heroes,” said Brand. - </p> - <p> - “But there were not enough of them. Recruiting was slow, and there was—some - trouble.” - </p> - <p> - He did not speak about the Irish Rebellion. - </p> - <p> - “I heard about it vaguely, from prisoners,” said the girl. “It was - England’s fault, I expect. Dear old blundering, muddle-headed England, who - is a tyrant through fear, and twists Irish loyalty into treason by ropes - of red tape in which the Irish mind gets strangled and awry. Well, there’s - another subject to avoid. I want to hear only good things to-night. Tell - me of London, of Kensington Gardens, of the way from Strand to Temple Bar, - of the lights that gleam along the Embankment when lovers go hand-in-hand - and see stars in the old black river. Are they all there?” - </p> - <p> - “They are all changed,” said Brand. “It is a place of gloom. There are no - lights along the embankment. They have dowsed their glims for fear of - air-raids. There are few lovers hand-in-hand. Some of the boys lie dead - round Ypres, or somewhere on the Somme, or weep out of blind eyes, or - gibber in shell-shock homes, or try to hop on one leg—while waiting - for artificial limbs—or trudge on, to-night, towards Maubeuge, where - German machine-guns wait for them behind the ditches. Along the Strand - goes the painted flapper, luring men to hell. In Kensington Gardens there - are training camps for more boys ear-marked for the shambles, and here and - there among the trees young mothers who are widows before they knew their - wifehood. There is vice, the gaiety of madness, the unspeakable - callousness of people who get rich on war, or earn fat wages, and in small - stricken homes a world of secret grief. That is London in time of war. I - hate it.” - </p> - <p> - Brand spoke with bitterness and a melancholy that startled the girl who - sat with folded hands below the crucifix on the whitewashed wall behind - her. - </p> - <p> - “Dear God! Is it like that?” - </p> - <p> - She stared at the wall opposite as though it were a window through which - she saw London. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, of course it is like that. Here in Lille we thought we were - suffering more than anybody in the world. That was our egotism. We did not - realise—not in our souls—that everywhere in the world of war - there was equal suffering, the same cruelty, perhaps the same temptation - to despair.” - </p> - <p> - Brand repented, I think, of having led the conversation into such abysmal - gloom. He switched off to more cheerful things and gave some elaborate - sketches of soldiers he knew, to which Eileen played up with anecdotes of - rare comedy about the nuns—the fat nun who under the rigour of war - rations became as slim as a willow and was vain of her new grace; the - little French mm who had no fear of German officers and dared their fury - by prophecies of defeat—but was terrified of a mouse in the - refectory; the Reverend Mother, who borrowed a safety-razor from an - English Tommy—he had hidden it in his shirt—to shave her upper - lip, lest the Germans should think her a French <i>poilu</i> in disguise. - </p> - <p> - More interesting to me than anything that was said were the things - unspoken by Eileen and Brand. In spite of the girl’s easy way of laughter, - her quick wit, her avoidance, if possible, of any reference to her own - suffering, I seemed to see in her eyes and in her face the strain of a - long ordeal, some frightful adventure of life in which she had taken great - hazards—the people had told me she had risked her life often—and - a woman’s courage which had been tested by that experience and had not - failed, though perhaps at breaking-point in the worst hours. I supposed - her age was twenty-six or so (I guessed it right this side of a year), but - there was already a streak of grey in her dark hair, and her eyes, so - smiling as a rule, looked as if they had often wept. I think the presence - of Brand was a great pleasure to her—bringing to Lille a link with - her childhood—and I saw that she was studying the personality of - this newly-found friend of hers, and the strong character of his face, not - unscathed by the touch of war, with curious, penetrating interest. I felt - in the way, and left them together with a fair excuse—I had always - work to do—and I was pleased that I did so, they were so obviously - glad to have a more intimate talk about old friends and old times. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - IX - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> gained by my - unselfishness (I did not want to go), for the Reverend Mother met me in - the corridor and stood talking, to me about Eileen O’Connor, and told me - part of the girl’s story, which I found strange in its drama, though she - left out the scene of greatest interest, as I heard later from Eileen - herself. - </p> - <p> - The girl had come to Lille just before the war, as an art mistress in an “<i>Ecole - de Jeunes Filles</i>” (her parents in Kensington had too big a family to - keep them all), with lessons twice a week at the convent, and private - pupils in her own rooms. She learned to speak French quickly and - charmingly, and her gift of humour, her Irish frankness and comradeship - made her popular among her pupils, so that she had many invitations to - their homes and became well known in the best houses of Lille—mostly - belonging to rich manufacturers. A commonplace story till then. But when - the Germans occupied Lille this Irish girl became one of the chief - characters in a drama that was exciting and fantastic to the point of - melodrama. It was she who organised the Lille branch of a secret society - of women, with a network all over northern France and Belgium—the - world remembers Nurse Cavell at Brussels—for the escape of young - civilians of military age and prisoners of war, combining that work - (frightfully perilous) with espionage on German movements of troops and - other facts that might be of value to the Belgian Army, and through them - to England and France. It was out of an old book of Jules Verne called - “The Cryptogram” that she copied the cypher in which she wrote her - messages (in invisible ink on linen handkerchiefs and rags), and she had - an audacity of invention in numberless small tricks and plots which - constantly broke through the meshes of the German network of military - police. - </p> - <p> - “She had a contempt for their stupidity,” said the Reverend Mother. - “Called them dunderheads, and one strange word of which I do not know the - meaning—‘yobs’—and I trembled at the risks she took.” - </p> - <p> - She lived with one maid in two rooms on the ground floor of a house near - the Jardin d’Eté, the rest of the house being used as the headquarters of - the German Intelligence Section of the Northern District. All day long - officers went in and out, and by day and night there were always sentries - at the door. Yet it was there that was established also the headquarters - of the Rescue Committee. It was on account of her Irish name and parentage - that Eileen O’Connor was permitted to remain in the two rooms to the left - of the courtyard, entered by a separate door. The German Kommandant was a - man who firmly believed that the Irish nation was ready to break out into - revolt against the English, and that all Irish—men and women—hated - the British Empire as much as any Prussian. Eileen O’Connor played up to - this <i>idée fixe</i>, saw the value of it as a wonderful means of - camouflage, lent the Kommandant books on Irish history dealing with the - injustice of England to Ireland (in which she firmly believed as a staunch - Nationalist), and educated him so completely to the belief that she was - anti-English (as she was in politics, though not in war) that he had no - doubt of her. - </p> - <p> - Here the Reverend Mother made a remark which seemed to illuminate Eileen - O’Connor’s story, as well as her own knowledge of human nature. - </p> - <p> - “The child has beautiful eyes and a most sweet grace. Irish history may - not account for all.” - </p> - <p> - “This German Kommandant,” I asked, “what sort of a man was he?” - </p> - <p> - “For a German not altogether bad,” said the Reverend Mother. “Severe and - ruthless like them all, but polite when there was no occasion to be - violent. He was of good family, as far as there are such things in - Germany. A man of sixty.” - </p> - <p> - Eileen O’Connor, with German permission, continued her work as art - mistress at the <i>Ecole de Jeunes Filles</i>. After six months she was - permitted to receive private pupils in her two rooms on the ground floor - of the Intelligence Headquarters, in the same courtyard, though not in the - same building. Her pupils came with drawing-boards and paint-boxes. They - were all girls with pigtails and short frocks—not so young as they - looked, because three or four at least, including the Baronne de - Villers-Auxicourt, were older than schoolgirls. They played the part - perfectly, and the sentries smiled at them and said, “<i>Guten Tag, - schönes Fraulein</i>,” as each one passed. They were the committee of the - Rescue Society: Julienne de Quesnoy, Marcelle Barbier, Yvonne Marigny, - Marguérite Cléry, and Alice de Taffin, de Villers-Auxicourt. - </p> - <p> - Eileen O’Connor was the director and leading spirit. It seems to me - astonishing that they should have arranged the cypher, practised it, - written down military information gathered from German conversations and - reported to them by servants and agents under the very noses of the German - intelligence officers, who could see into the sitting-room as they passed - through French windows and saluted Eileen O’Connor and her young ladies if - they happened to meet their eyes. It is more astonishing that, at - different times, and one at a time, many fugitives (including five British - soldiers who had escaped from the Citadel) slept in the cellar beneath - that room, changed into German uniforms belonging to men who had died at - the convent hospital—the Reverend Mother did that part of the plot—and - walked quietly out in the morning by an underground passage leading to the - Jardin d’Eté. The passage had been anciently built but was blocked up at - one end by Eileen O’Connor’s cellar, and she and the other women broke the - wall, one brick at a time, until after three months the hole was made. - Their finger-nails suffered in the process, and they were afraid that the - roughness of their hands might be noticed by the officers, but in spite of - German spectacles they saw nothing of that. Eileen O’Connor and her - friends were in constant touch with the prisoners of the Citadel and - smuggled food to them. That was easy. It was done by bribing the German - sentries with tobacco and meat-pies. They were also in communication with - other branches of the work in Belgium, so that fugitives were passed on - from town to town, and house to house. Their success made them confident, - after many horrible fears, and for a time they were lulled into a sense of - security. That was rudely crashed when Eileen O’Connor, the young Baronne - de Villers-Auxicourt, and Marcelle Barbier were arrested one morning in - September of ‘17 on a charge of espionage. They were put into separate - cells of the civil prison, crowded with the vilest women of the slums and - stews, and suffered something like torture because of the foul atmosphere, - the lack of sanitation and unspeakable abomination. - </p> - <p> - “Only the spirit of Christian martyrdom could remain cheerful in such - terrible conditions,” said the Reverend Mother. “Our dear Eileen was - sustained by a great faith and wonderful gaiety. Her laughter, her jokes, - her patience, her courage, were an inspiration even to the poor degraded - women who were prisoners with her. They worshipped her. We, her friends, - gave her up for lost, though we prayed unceasingly that she might escape - death. Then she was brought to trial.” - </p> - <p> - She stood alone in the court. The young Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt had - died in prison owing to the shock of her arrest and a weak heart. A weak - heart, though so brave. Eileen was not allowed to see her on her deathbed, - but she sent a message almost with her last breath. It was the one word - “courage!” Mlle. Marcelle Barbier was released before the trial for lack - of direct evidence. - </p> - <p> - Eileen’s trial was famous in Lille. The court was crowded and the German - military tribunal could not suppress the loud expressions of sympathy and - admiration which greeted her, nor the angry murmurs which interrupted the - prosecuting officer. She stood there, wonderfully calm, between two - soldiers with fixed bayonets. She looked very young and innocent between - her guards, and it is evident that her appearance made a favourable - impression on the court. The President, after peering at her through his - horn spectacles, was not so ferocious in his manner as usual when he bade - her be seated. - </p> - <p> - The evidence seemed very strong against her. “She is lost” was the belief - of all her friends in court. One of the sentries at the Citadel, jealously - savage because another man had received more tobacco than himself—on - such a trivial thing did this girl’s life hang—betrayed the system - by which the women’s committee sent food to the French and English - prisoners. He gave the names of three of the ladies and described Eileen - O’Connor as the ringleader. The secret police watched her, and searched - her rooms at night. They discovered the cypher and the key, a list of men - who had escaped, and three German uniforms in a secret cupboard. They had - been aided in their search by Lieutenant Franz von Kreuzenach, of the - Intelligence Bureau, who was the chief witness for the prosecution, and - whose name was recommended to the court for the vigilance and zeal he had - shown in the detection of the conspiracy against the Army and the - Fatherland. It was he who had found the secret cupboard and had solved the - key to the cypher. - </p> - <p> - “We will take the lieutenant’s evidence in due course,” said the - President. “Does that complete the indictment against this prisoner?” - </p> - <p> - Apart from a savage elaboration of evidence based upon the facts presented - and a demand that the woman’s guilt, if the court were satisfied thereof, - should be punished by death, the preliminary indictment by the prosecution - ended. - </p> - <p> - It was a terrible case, and during its revelations the people in court - were stricken with dread and pity for the girl who was now sitting between - the two soldiers. They were all staring at her, and some at least—the - Reverend Mother among them—noticed with surprise that when the - officer for the prosecution ended his speech she drew a deep breath, - raised her head, as though some weight of fear had been lifted from her, - and—laughed. - </p> - <p> - It was quite a merry laugh, with that full blackbird note of hers, and the - sound of it caused a strange sensation in the court. The President blinked - repeatedly, like an owl blinded by a ray of sunlight. He addressed the - prisoner in heavy, barbarous French. - </p> - <p> - “You are charged with conspiracy against our German martial law. The - punishment is death. It is no laughing matter, Fraulein.” - </p> - <p> - They were stem words, but there was a touch of pity in that last sentence. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Ce riest pas une affaire pour rire, Fràulein.</i>” - </p> - <p> - Eileen O’Connor, said the Reverend Mother, who was to be called as a - witness on her behalf, bowed in a gracious way to the President, but with - a look of amusement that was amazing to the German officers assembled for - her trial. Some of them scowled, but there were others, the younger men, - who whispered, and smiled also with no attempt to disguise their - admiration of such courage. - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps it was only I,” said the Reverend Mother, “who understood the - child’s joyous relief which gave her this courage. I had waited with - terrible dread for the announcement of the discovery of the secret - passage. That it had been discovered I knew, for the German Lieutenant, - Franz von Kreuzenach, had come round to me and very sternly questioned me - about a case of medicine which he had found there, stamped with the name - of our convent.” - </p> - <p> - “Then,” I said, “this Franz von Kreuzenach must have suppressed some of - the evidence. By what motive——” - </p> - <p> - The Reverend Mother interrupted me, putting her hand on my sleeve with a - touch of protest. - </p> - <p> - “The good God works through strange instruments, and may touch the hardest - heart with His grace. It was indeed a miracle.” - </p> - <p> - I would give much to have been in that Court at Lille when Eileen O’Connor - was permitted to question the German lieutenant, who was the chief witness - against her. - </p> - <p> - From what I have heard, not only from the Reverend Mother, but from other - people of Lille who were present at the trial, she played with this German - officer, making him look very foolish, ridiculing him in a merry, - contemptuous way before the court. Indeed, he seemed strangely abashed - before her. - </p> - <p> - “The cypher!... Have you ever been a schoolboy, or were you born a - lieutenant in the German Army?” - </p> - <p> - Franz von Kreuzenach admitted that he had once been a boy—to the - amusement of his brother officers. - </p> - <p> - Had he ever read stories of adventure, fairy tales, romances, or did he - spend his childhood in the study of Nietzsche, Haegel, Schopenhauer, Kant, - Goethe, von Bemhardi, Karl Marx———- - </p> - <p> - When she strung off these names—so incongruous in association—even - the President permitted a slight smile to twist his thin hard mouth. - </p> - <p> - Franz von Kreuzenach said that he had read some fairy tales and stories of - adventure. Might he ask the <i>gnadiges Fraulein</i>—— - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” said the President, “what has this to do with your case, Fràulein? - I desire to give you full liberty in your defence, but this is entirely - irrelevant to the evidence.” - </p> - <p> - “It is my case!” cried Miss O’Connor. “Listen to the next question, Herr - President. It is the key of my defence.” - </p> - <p> - Her next question caused laughter in court. - </p> - <p> - “I ask the Herr Lieutenant whether, as a boy, or a young man, he has read - the romances of the French writer, Jules Verne?” - </p> - <p> - Franz von Kreuzenach looked abashed, and blushed like a schoolboy. His - eyes fell before the challenging look of the Irish girl. - </p> - <p> - “I have read some novels by Jules Verne, in German translations.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, in German translations—of course!” said Miss O’Connor. “German - boys do not learn French very well.” - </p> - <p> - “Keep to the case,” said the President. “In heaven’s name, Fraulein, what - has this to do with your defence?” - </p> - <p> - She raised her hand, for patience, and said, “Herr President, my innocence - will soon be clear.” - </p> - <p> - She demanded of the witness for the prosecution whether he had ever read - the novel by Jules Verne called “The Cryptogram.” He said that he had read - it only a few days ago. He had discovered it in her room. - </p> - <p> - Eileen O’Connor turned round eagerly to the President. - </p> - <p> - “I demand the production of that book.” - </p> - <p> - An orderly was sent to the lieutenant’s rooms to fetch it. It was clear - that the President of the Court made a black mark against Franz von - Kreuzenach for not having mentioned its discovery to the Court. As yet, - however, he could not see the bearing of it on the case. - </p> - <p> - Then, with the book in her hand, Eileen O’Connor turned to the famous - cryptogram, showed how it corresponded exactly with her own cypher, proved - that the pieces of paper found in her rooms were copies of the Jules Verne - cypher in the handwriting of her pupils. - </p> - <p> - “You see, Herr President!” she cried eagerly. - </p> - <p> - The President admitted that this was proved, but, as he asked, leaning - forward in his chair, for what purpose had they copied out that cypher? - Cyphers were dangerous things to write in time of war. Deadly things. Why - did these ladies want to learn the cypher? - </p> - <p> - It was then that Eileen O’Connor was most brilliant. She described in a - simple and girlish way how she and her pupils worked in their little room. - While they copied freehand models, one of them read out to the others, - books of romance, love, adventure, to forget the gloom of life and the - tragedy of war. One of those books was Jules Verne’s “Cryptogram.” It had - fascinated them. It had made them forget the misery of war. They were - romantic girls, imaginative girls. Out of sheer merriment, to pass the - hours, they had tried to work out the cypher. They had written - love-letters to imaginary young men in those secret numbers. Here Eileen, - smiling ironically, read out specimens of the letters that had been found. - </p> - <p> - “Come to the corner of the Rue Esquermoise at 9.45. You will know me - because I shall be wearing a blue bow in a black hat.” - </p> - <p> - That was the romantic imagination of the Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt. - </p> - <p> - “When you see a lady standing outside the Jardin d’Eté, with a little - brown dog, speak to her in French and say, ‘<i>Comme il fait froid - aujourd’hui, mademoiselle</i>.’ If she answers, ‘<i>Je ne vous comprends - pas, monsieur</i>,’ you will understand that she is to be trusted, and you - must follow her.” - </p> - <p> - That was a romantic idea to which Eileen herself pleaded guilty. - </p> - <p> - “Herr President,” said Eileen, “you cannot put old heads on young - shoulders, even in time of war. A party of girls will let their foolish - little minds run upon ideas of love, even when the sound of guns is not - far away. You, Herr President, will understand that perfectly.” - </p> - <p> - Perhaps there was something in the character of the President that made - this a chance hit. All the German officers laughed, and the President - shifted in his seat and flushed to the top of his bald, vulture-like head. - </p> - <p> - The possession of those German uniforms was also explained in the - prettiest way by Eileen O’Connor. They were uniforms belonging to three - handsome young German soldiers who had died in hospital. They had kept - them to return to their mothers after the war, those poor German mothers - who were weeping for their sons. This part of her defence touched the - German officers deeply. One of them had tears in his eyes. - </p> - <p> - The list of escaped fugitives was harder to explain, but again an Irish - imagination succeeded in giving it an innocent significance. It had been - compiled by a prisoner in the Citadel and given to Eileen as a proof that - his own hope of escape was not in vain, though she had warned him of the - fearful risk. “The poor man gave me the list in sheer simplicity, and in - innocence I kept it.” - </p> - <p> - Simply and touchingly she admitted her guilt in smuggling food to French - and British prisoners, and to German sentries, and claimed that her fault - was only against military regulations, but in humanity was justified. - </p> - <p> - “I am Irish,” she said. “I have in my heart the remembrance of English - crimes to Ireland—old, unforgettable crimes that still cry out for - the justice and the liberty which are denied my country.” - </p> - <p> - Some of the younger German officers shook their heads approvingly. They - liked this Irish hatred of England. It was according to their text-books. - </p> - <p> - “But,” said the Irish girl, “the sufferings of English prisoners—you - know here of their misery, their hunger, their weakness in that Citadel - where many have died and are dying—stirred my compassion as a woman - to whom all cruelty is tragic, and all suffering of men a call to that - mother-love which is in the spirit of all their womanhood, as you know by - your German women—as I hope you know. Because they were starved I - tried to get them food, as I would to starving dogs or any poor creatures - caught in the trap of war or of men’s sport. To that I confess guilty, - with gladness in my guilt.” - </p> - <p> - The Reverend Mother, standing there in the whitewashed corridor of the - convent, in the flickering light of an oil lantern, which gleamed on the - white ruff round her neck and the silver cross on her breast, though her - face was shadowed in the cavern of her black headdress, repeated this - speech of Eileen O’Connor as though in hearing it first she had learnt it - by heart. - </p> - <p> - “The child was divinely inspired, monsieur. Our Lady stood by her side, - prompting her. I am sure of that.” - </p> - <p> - The trial lengthened out, until it was late in the evening when the judge - summed up. He spoke again of the gravity of the accusation, the dread - punishment that must befall the prisoner if her guilt were proved, the - weight of evidence against her. For a time he seemed to press her guilt - heavily, and the court was gloomy. The German officers looked grave. One - thing happened in the course of his speech which affected the audience - profoundly. It was when he spoke of the romantic explanation that had been - offered by the prisoner regarding the secret cypher. - </p> - <p> - “This lady,” he said, “asks me to believe that she and her companions were - playing a simple girlish game of make-believe. Writing imaginary letters - to mythical persons. Were these young ladies—nay, is she, herself—so - lacking in woman’s charm that she has no living man to love her, and needs - must write fictitious notes to nonexistent men?” - </p> - <p> - The President said these words with portentous solemnity. Perhaps only a - German could have spoken them. He paused and blinked at the German - officers below him. Suddenly into the silence of the court came a ripple - of laughter, clear and full of most mirthful significance. - </p> - <p> - Eileen O’Connor’s laugh bewitched the crowded court, and there was a roar - of laughter, in which all the officers joined. By that laugh more even - than by her general gaiety, her courage and eloquence, she won her life. - </p> - <p> - “I said a decade of the rosary to our Blessed Lady,” said the Reverend - Mother, “and thanked God that this dear child’s life would not be taken. I - was certain that those men would not condemn her to death. She was - acquitted on the charge of espionage, and sentenced to two weeks’ - imprisonment for smuggling food to prisoners, by a verdict of seven - against three. Only when she left the court did she fall into so deep a - swoon that for a little while we thought her dead.” - </p> - <p> - The Reverend Mother had told her story well. She held me in a deep - strained interest. It was rather to myself than to her that I spoke the - words which were my comment at the end of this narrative. - </p> - <p> - “How splendid!... But I am puzzled about that German lieutenant, Franz von - Kreuzenach. He kept the real evidence back.” - </p> - <p> - “That,” said the Reverend Mother solemnly, “was a great mystery, and a - miracle.” - </p> - <p> - Wickham Brand joined us in the passage, with Eileen O’Connor by his side. - </p> - <p> - “Not gone yet?” said Wickham. - </p> - <p> - “I have been listening to the tale of a woman’s courage,” I said, and when - Eileen gave me her hand, I raised it to my lips, in the French style, - though not in gallantry. - </p> - <p> - “Reverend Mother,” she said, “has been exalting me to the seventh heaven - of her dear heart.” - </p> - <p> - On my way back to Brand’s mess I told him all I had heard about Eileen’s - trial, and I remember his enthusiasm. - </p> - <p> - “Fine! Thank heaven there are women like that in this blood-soaked world. - It saves one from absolute despair.” - </p> - <p> - He made no comment about the suppression of evidence, which was a puzzle - to me. - </p> - <p> - We parted with a “So long, old man,” outside his headquarters, and I did - not see him until a few days later. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - X - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was Frederick E. - Small, the American doctor attached to Brand’s crowd, who was with me on a - night in Lille, before the armistice, when by news from the colonel we - were stirred by the tremendous hope—almost a certainty—that - the end of the war was near. I had been into Courtrai, which the enemy had - first evacuated and then was shelling. It was not a joyous entry like that - into Lille. Most of the people were still down in their cellars, where for - several days they had been herded together until the air became foul. On - the outskirts I had passed many groups of peasants with their babies and - old people, trudging past our guns, trekking from one village to another - in search of greater safety, or standing in the fields where our artillery - was getting into action, and where new shell craters should have warned - them away, if they had had more knowledge of war. For more than four years - I had seen, at different periods, crowds like that, after the first flight - of fugitives in August of ‘14, when the world seemed to have been tilted - up and great populations in France and Belgium were in panic-stricken - retreat from the advancing edge of war. I knew the types, the attitudes, - the very shape of the bundles, in these refugee processions, the haggard - look of the mothers pushing their perambulators, the bewildered look of - old men and women, the tired sleepy look of small boys and girls, the - stumbling dead-beat look of old farm horses dragging carts piled high with - cottage furniture. As it was at the beginning so it was at the end—for - civilians caught in the fires of war. With two other men I went into the - heart of Courtrai and found it desolate, and knew the reason why, when, at - the corner of the Grande Place, a heavy shell came howling and burst - inside a house with frightful explosive noise, followed by a crash of - masonry. The people were wise to keep to their cellars. Two girls, not so - wise, made a dash from one house to another, and were caught by chunks of - steel and killed close to the church of St. Martin, where they lay all - crumpled up in a clotted pool of blood. A man came up to me, utterly - careless of such risks, and I hated to stand talking to him with the - shells coming every half-minute overhead. - </p> - <p> - There was a fire of passion in his eyes, and at every sentence he spoke to - me his voice rose and thrilled as he denounced the German race for all - they had done in Courtrai, for their robberies, their imprisonments, their - destruction of machinery, their brutality. The last Kommandant of Courtrai - was von Richthofen, father of the German aviator, and he was a hard, - ruthless man, and kept the city under an iron rule. - </p> - <p> - “All that, thank God, is finished now,” said the man. “The English have - delivered us from the beast!” As he spoke, another monstrous shell came - overhead, but he took no notice of it, and said, “We are safe now from the - enemy’s evil power!” It seemed to me a comparative kind of safety. I had - no confidence in it when I sat in the parlour of an old lady who, like - Eileen O’Connor, in Lille, had been an Irish governess in Courtrai, and - who now, living in miserable poverty, sat in a bed-sitting-room whose - windows and woodwork had been broken by shell-splinters. “Do you mind - shutting the door, my dear?” she said. “I can’t bear those nasty bombs.” I - realised with a large, experienced knowledge that we might be torn to - fragments of flesh at any moment by one of those nasty “bombs,” which were - really eight-inch shells; but the old lady did not worry, and felt safe - when the door was shut. - </p> - <p> - Outside Courtrai, when I left, lay some khaki figures in a mush of blood. - They were lads whom I had seen unloading ammunition that morning on the - bank of the canal. One had asked me for a light, and said, “What’s all - this peace talk?... Any chance?” A big chance, I had told him. Home for - Christmas, certain sure this time. The boy’s eyes had lighted up for a - moment, quicker than the match which he held in the cup of his hands. - </p> - <p> - “Jesus! Back for good, eh?” - </p> - <p> - Then the light went out of his eyes as the match flared up. - </p> - <p> - “We’ve heard that tale a score of times. ‘The Germans are weakening. The - Huns ‘ave ‘ad enough!...’ Newspaper talk. A man would be a mug——” - </p> - <p> - Now the boy lay in the mud, with half his body blown away.... I was glad - to get back to Lille for a spell, where there were no dead bodies in the - roads. And the colonel’s news, straight from G.H.Q.—which, surely, - were not playing up the old false optimism again!—helped one to hope - that, perhaps, in a week or two the last boys of our race, the lucky ones, - would be reprieved from that kind of bloody death which I had seen so - often, so long, so heaped up, in many fields of France and Flanders, where - the flower of our youth was killed. - </p> - <p> - Dr. Small was excited by the hope brought back by Colonel Lavington. He - sought me out in my billet, <i>Madame Chéri</i>, and begged me to take a - walk with him. (It was a moonlight night, but no double throb of a German - air-engine came booming over Lille.) He walked at a hard pace, with the - collar of his “British warm” tucked up to his ears, and talked in a queer - disjointed monologue, emotionally, whimsically. I remember some of his - words, more or less—anyhow, the gist of his thoughts, “I’m not - worrying any more about how the war will end. We’ve won! Remarkable, that, - when one thinks back to the time, less than a year ago, when the best - thing seemed a draw. I’m thinking about the future. What’s the world going - to be afterwards? That’s my American mind—the next job, so to - speak.” - </p> - <p> - He thought hard while we paced round our side of the Jardin d’Eté, where - the moonlight made the bushes glamorous and streaked the tree trunks with - a silver line. - </p> - <p> - “This war is going to have prodigious effects on nations; on individuals, - too. I’m scared. We’ve all been screwed up to an intense pitch—every - nerve in us is beyond the normal stretch of nature. After the war there - will be a sudden relaxing. We shall be like bits of chewed elastic. Rather - like people who have drugged themselves to get through some big ordeal. - After the ordeal their nerves are all ragged. They crave the old stimulus, - though they dread it. They’re depressed—don’t know what’s the matter—get - into sudden rages—hysterical—can’t settle to work—go out - for gaiety and get bored. I’ve seen it many times in bad cases. Europe—yes, - and America, too—is going to be a bad case. A neurotic world—Lord, - it’ll take some healing!” - </p> - <p> - For a time his thoughts wandered round the possible terms of peace and the - abasement of Germany. He prophesied the break-up of Germany, the downfall - of the Emperor and of other thrones. - </p> - <p> - “Crowns will be as cheap as twenty cents,” he said. He hoped for the - complete overthrow of Junkerdom—“all the dirty dogs,” as he called - the Prussian war lords and politicians. But he hoped the Allies would be - generous with the enemy peoples—“magnanimous” was the word he used. - </p> - <p> - “We must help the spirit of democracy to rise among them,” he said. “We - must make it easy for them to exorcise the devil. If we press them too - hard, put the screw on to the torture of their souls (defeat will be - torture to a proud people), they will nourish a hope of vengeance and go - back to their devil for hope.” - </p> - <p> - I asked him whether he thought his President would lead the world to a - nobler stage of history. - </p> - <p> - He hesitated at that, groped a little, I thought, among old memories and - prejudices. - </p> - <p> - “Why,” he said, “Wilson has the biggest chance that ever came to a human - being—the biggest chance and the biggest duty. We are rich (too - darned rich) and enormously powerful when most other peoples are poor and - weak—drained of wealth and blood. That’s our luck, and a little bit, - perhaps, our shame, though our boys have done their bit all right and are - ready to do more; and it’s not their fault they weren’t here before—but - we’re hardly touched by this war as a people, except spiritually. There - we’ve been touched by the finger of Fate. (God, if you like that better!) - So, with that strength behind him, the President is in a big way of - business. He can make his voice heard, stand for a big idea. God, sonny, I - hope he’ll do it! For the world’s sake, for the sake of all these - suffering people, here in this city of Lille, and in a million little - towns where people have been bashed by war.” - </p> - <p> - I asked him if he doubted Wilson’s greatness, and the question embarrassed - him. - </p> - <p> - “I’m loyal to the man,” he said. “I’ll back him if he plays straight and - big. Bigness, that’s what we want. Bigness of heart as well as bigness of - brain. Oh, he’s clever, though not wise in making so many enemies. He has - fine ideas and can write real words. Things which speak. True things. I’d - like to be sure of his character—its breadth and strength, I mean. - The world wants a nobleman, bigger than the little gentlemen of politics; - a leader calling to the great human heart of our tribes and lifting them, - with one grand gesture, out of the mire of old passions and vendettas and - jealousies to a higher plane of—common sense. Out of the jungle to - the daylight of fellowship. Out of the jungle.” - </p> - <p> - He repeated those words twice, with a reverent solemnity. He believed that - so much emotion had been created in the heart of the world that, when the - war ended, anything might happen if a leader came—a new religion of - civilisation, any kind of spiritual and social revolution. - </p> - <p> - “We might kill cruelty,” he said. “My word, what a victory that would be!” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XI - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>ur conversation - was interrupted by a figure that slipped out of the darkness of some - doorway, hesitated before us, and then spoke in French. - </p> - <p> - “You are English officers? May I speak with you?” - </p> - <p> - It was a girl, whom I could see only vaguely in the darkness—she - stood in the shadow of a doorway beyond the moonlight—and I answered - her that I was English and my friend American. - </p> - <p> - “Is there any way,” she asked, “of travelling from Lille, perhaps to - Paris? In a motor car, for example? To-night?” - </p> - <p> - I laughed at this startling request, put so abruptly. It was already nine - o’clock at night! - </p> - <p> - “Not the smallest chance in the world, mademoiselle! Paris is far from - Lille.” - </p> - <p> - “I was stupid,” said the girl. “Not all the way to Paris, but to some town - outside Lille. Any town. There are motor cars always passing through the - streets. I thought if I could get a little place in one——” - </p> - <p> - “It is difficult,” I said. “As a matter of fact, it is forbidden for - officers to take civilians except in case of saving them from danger—in - shelled places.” - </p> - <p> - She came suddenly out of the shadow into the moonlight, and I saw that she - was a girl with red hair and a face strangely white. I knew by the way she - spoke—the accent—as well as by the neatness of her dress, that - she was not a working-girl. She was trembling painfully, and took hold of - my arm with both her hands. - </p> - <p> - “Monsieur, I beg of you to help me. I beseech you to think of some way in - which I may get away from Lille to-night. It is a matter of extreme - importance to me.” - </p> - <p> - A group of young men and women came up the street arm-in-arm, shouting, - laughing, singing the “Marseillaise.” They were civilians, with two of our - soldiers among them, wearing women’s hats. - </p> - <p> - Before I could answer the girl’s last words, she made a sudden retreat - into the dark doorway, and I could see dimly that she was cowering back. - </p> - <p> - Dr. Small spoke to me. “That girl is scared of something. The poor child - has got the jim-jams.” - </p> - <p> - I went closer to her and heard her breathing. It was quite loud. It was as - though she were panting after hard running. - </p> - <p> - “Are you ill?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - She did not answer until the group of civilians had passed. They did not - pass at once, but stood for a moment looking up at a light burning in an - upper window. One of the men shouted something in a loud voice—some - word in <i>argot</i>—which I did not understand, and the women - screeched with laughter. Then they went on, dancing with linked arms, and - our two soldiers in the women’s hats lurched along with them. - </p> - <p> - “I am afraid!” said the girl. - </p> - <p> - “Afraid of what?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - I repeated the question—“Why are you afraid, mademoiselle?”—and - she answered by words which I had heard a million times since the war - began as an explanation of all trouble, tears, ruin, misery. - </p> - <p> - “<i>C’est la guerre!</i>” - </p> - <p> - “Look out!” said the little doctor. “She’s fainting.” - </p> - <p> - She had risen from her cowering position and stood upright for a moment, - with her hand against the doorpost. Then she swayed, and would have fallen - if the doctor had not caught her. Even then she fell, indeed, though - without hurt, because he could not support her sudden weight—though - she was of slight build—and they sank together in a kind of huddle - on the doorstep. - </p> - <p> - “For the love of Mike!” said Dr. Small. He was on his knees before her - now, chafing her cold hands. She came to in about a minute, and I leaned - over her and asked her where she lived, and made out from her faint - whisper that she lived in the house to which this doorway belonged, in the - upper room where the light was burning. With numbed fingers—“cold as - a toad,” said “Daddy” Small—she fumbled at her bodice and drew out a - latchkey. - </p> - <p> - “We had better carry her up,” I said, and the doctor nodded. - </p> - <p> - The front door opened into a dimly-lit passage, uncarpeted, and with - leprous-looking walls. At one end was a staircase with heavy banisters. - The doctor and I supported the girl, who was able to walk a little now, - and managed to get her to the first landing. - </p> - <p> - “Where?” I asked, and she said, “Opposite.” - </p> - <p> - It was the front room looking on to the street. A lamp was burning on the - round table in the centre of the room, and I saw by the light of it the - poverty of the furniture and its untidiness. At one end of the room was a - big iron bedstead with curtains of torn lace, and on the wooden chairs - hung some soiled petticoats and blouses. There was a small cooking-stove - in a corner, but no charcoal burned in it, and I remember an ebony-framed - mirror over the mantelpiece. I remember that mirror vividly. I remember, - for instance, that a bit of the ebony had broken off, showing the white - plaster underneath, and a crack in the right-hand corner of the - looking-glass. - </p> - <p> - Probably my eyes were attracted to it because of a number of photographs - stuck into the framework. They were photographs of a girl in a variety of - stage costumes; and glancing at the girl, whom the doctor had put into a - low arm-chair, I saw that they were of her. But with all the tragic - difference between happiness and misery; worse than that—between - unscathed girlhood and haggard womanhood. This girl with red hair and a - white waxen face was pretty still. There was something more than - prettiness in the broadness of her brow and the long tawny lashes that - were now veiling her closed eyes as she sat with her head back against the - chair, showing a long white throat. But her face was lined with an imprint - of pain, and her mouth, rather long and bow-like, was drawn with a look of - misery. - </p> - <p> - The doctor spoke to me—in English, of course. - </p> - <p> - “Half-starved, I should say. Or starved.” - </p> - <p> - He sniffed at the stove and the room generally. - </p> - <p> - “No sign of recent cooking.” - </p> - <p> - He opened a cupboard and looked in. - </p> - <p> - “Nothing in the pantry, sonny. I guess the girl would do with a meal.” - </p> - <p> - I did not answer him. I was staring at the photographs stuck into the - mirror, and saw one that was not a girl’s portrait. It was the photograph - of a young French lieutenant. I crossed the room and looked at it closer, - and then spoke to the little doctor in a curiously unexcited voice, as one - does in moments of living drama. - </p> - <p> - “This girl is Pierre Nesle’s sister.” - </p> - <p> - “For the love of Mike!” said the little doctor, for the second time that - night. - </p> - <p> - The girl heard the name of Pierre Nesle and opened her eyes wide, with a - wondering look. - </p> - <p> - “Pierre Nesle? That is my brother. Do you know him?” - </p> - <p> - I told her that I knew him well and had seen him in Lille, where he was - looking for her, two days ago. He was now in the direction of Courtrai. - </p> - <p> - The girl was painfully agitated and uttered pitiful words. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, my little brother!” she murmured. “My dear little comrade!” She rose - from her chair, steadying herself with one hand on the back of it, and - with feverish anxiety said that she must go at once. She must leave Lille. - </p> - <p> - “Why?” I asked. “Why do you want to leave Lille?” - </p> - <p> - “I am afraid!” she answered again, and burst into tears. - </p> - <p> - I turned to the doctor and translated her words. - </p> - <p> - “I can’t understand this fear of hers—this desire to leave Lille.” - </p> - <p> - Dr. Small had taken something off the mantelpiece—a glass tube with - some tablets—which he put in his pocket. - </p> - <p> - “Hysteria,” he said. “Starvation, war-strain, and—drugs. There’s a - jolly combination for a young lady’s nerves! She’s afraid of herself, old - ghosts, the horrors. Wants to run away from it all, forgetting that she - carries her poor body and brain with her. I know the symptoms—even - in little old New York in time of peace.” - </p> - <p> - He had his professional manner. I saw the doctor through his soldier’s - uniform. He spoke with the authority of the medical man in a patient’s - bedroom. He ordered me to go round to my mess and bring back some food, - while he boiled up a kettle and got busy. When I returned, after - half-an-hour, the girl was more cheerful. Some of the horrors had passed - from her in the doctor’s company. She ate some of the food I had brought - in a famished way, but after a few mouthfuls sickened at it and would eat - no more. But a faint colour had come into her cheeks and gave her face a - touch of real beauty. She must have been extraordinarily attractive before - the war—as those photographs showed. She spoke of Pierre with - adoration. He had been all that was good to her before she left home (she - hated her mother!) to sing in cabarets and café concerts. - </p> - <p> - “I cannot imagine Pierre as a lieutenant!” she remarked, with a queer - little laugh. - </p> - <p> - Dr. Small said he would get some women in the house to look after her in - the night, but she seemed hostile to that idea. - </p> - <p> - “The people here are unkind. They are bad women here. If I died they would - not care.” - </p> - <p> - She promised to stay in the house until we could arrange for Pierre to - meet her and take her away to Paris. But I felt the greatest pity for the - girl when we left her alone in her miserable room. The scared look had - come back to her face. I could see that she was in terror of being alone - again. - </p> - <p> - When we walked back to our billets the doctor spoke of the extraordinary - chance of meeting the girl like that—the sister of our <i>liaison</i> - officer. The odds were a million to one against such a thing. - </p> - <p> - “I always feel there’s a direction in these cases,” said Daddy Small. - “Some Hand that guides. Maybe you and I were being led to-night. I’d like - to save that girl, Marthe.” - </p> - <p> - “Is that her name?” - </p> - <p> - “Marthe de Méricourt, she calls herself, as a singing-girl. I guess that’s - why Pierre could not hear of her in this town.” - </p> - <p> - Later on the doctor spoke again. - </p> - <p> - “That girl is as much a war victim as if she had been shell-shocked on the - field of battle. The casualty lists don’t say anything about civilians, - not a darned thing about broken hearts, stricken women, diseased babies, - infant mortality—all the hell of suffering behind the lines. May God - curse all war devils!” - </p> - <p> - He put his hand on my shoulder and said in a very solemn way: “After this - thing is finished—this grisly business—you and I, and all men - of goodwill, must put our heads together to prevent it happening again. I - dedicate whatever life I have to that.” - </p> - <p> - He seemed to have a vision of hope. - </p> - <p> - “There are lots of good fellows in the world. Wickham Brand is one of ‘em. - Charles Fortune is another. One finds them everywhere on your side and - mine. Surely we can get together when peace comes and make a better System - somehow!” - </p> - <p> - “Not easy, doctor.” - </p> - <p> - He laughed at me. - </p> - <p> - “I hate your pessimism!... We must get a message to Pierre Nesle.... - Good-night, sonny!” - </p> - <p> - On the way back to my billet I passed young Clatworthy. - </p> - <p> - He was too engrossed to see me, having his arm round a girl who was - standing with him under an unlighted lamp-post. She was looking up into - his face on which the moonlight shone—a pretty creature, I thought. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Je t’adore!</i>” she murmured, as I passed quite close; and Clatworthy - kissed her. - </p> - <p> - I knew the boy’s mother and sisters, and wondered what they would think of - him if they saw him now with this little street-walker. To them Cyril was - a white knight <i>sans peur et sans reproche</i>. The war had not improved - him. He was no longer the healthy lad who had been captain of his school, - with all his ambition in sport, as I had known him five years before. - Sometimes, in spite of his swagger and gallantry, I saw something sinister - in his face, the look of a soiled soul. Poor kid! He, too, would have his - excuse for all things: - </p> - <p> - “<i>C’est la guerre!</i>” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was five o’clock - on the following evening that I saw the girl Marthe again. The doctor and - I had arranged to go round to her lodging after dinner, by which time we - hoped to have a letter for her from Pierre, by despatch-rider. But Brand - was with me in the afternoon, having looked into my billet with an English - conversation-book for Hélène, who was anxious to study our way of speech. - Madame Chéri insisted upon giving him a glass of wine, and we stood - talking in her drawing-room a while about the certain hope of victory, and - then trivial things. Hélène was delighted with her book and Brand had a - merry five minutes with her, teaching her to pronounce the words. - </p> - <p> - “<i>C’est effroyable!</i>” cried Hélène. “‘Through’... ‘Tough’ ‘Cough ‘... - <i>Mon Dieu, comme c’est difficile!</i> There is no rule in your tongue.” - </p> - <p> - Madame Chéri spoke of Edouard, her eldest boy, who had disappeared into - the great silence, and gave me a photograph of him, in case I should meet - him in our advance towards the Rhine. She kissed the photograph before - giving it to me, and said a few words which revealed her strong character, - her passionate patriotism. - </p> - <p> - “If he had been four years older he would have been a soldier of France. I - should have been happy if he could have fought for his country, and died - for it, like my husband.” - </p> - <p> - Brand and I left the house and went up towards the Grande Place. I was - telling him about Pierre Nesle’s sister and our strange meeting with her - the night before. - </p> - <p> - “I’m precious glad,” said Brand, “that no sister of mine was behind German - lines. God knows how much they had to endure. Imagine their risks! It was - a lucky escape for that girl Hélène. Supposing she had failed to barricade - her door?” - </p> - <p> - When we came into the Grande Place we saw that something was happening. It - was almost dark after a shadowy twilight, but we could see a crowd of - people surging round some central point of interest. Many of them were - laughing loudly. There was some joke in progress. The women’s tongues - sounded most loud and shrill. - </p> - <p> - “They’re getting back to gaiety,” said Brand. “What’s the jest, I wonder?” - </p> - <p> - A gust of laughter came across the square. Above it was another sound, not - so pleasant. It was a woman’s shrieks—shriek after shriek, most - blood-curdling, and then becoming faint. - </p> - <p> - “What the devil——!” said Brand. - </p> - <p> - We were on the edge of the crowd and I spoke to a man there. - </p> - <p> - “What’s happening?” - </p> - <p> - He laughed in a grim way. - </p> - <p> - “It’s the <i>coiffure</i> of a lady.. They are cutting her hair.” - </p> - <p> - I was mystified. - </p> - <p> - “Cutting her hair?” - </p> - <p> - A woman spoke to me, by way of explanation, laughing like the man. - </p> - <p> - “Shaving her head, monsieur. She was one of those who were too complaisant - with German officers. You understand? There were many of them. They ought - to have their heads cut off as well as their hair.” - </p> - <p> - Another man spoke gruffly. - </p> - <p> - “There would be a good many headless corpses if that were so. To their - shame be it said. It was abominable. No pride. No decency.” - </p> - <p> - “But the worst will escape,” said another. “In private houses. The - well-dressed demoiselles!” - </p> - <p> - “<i>Tuez-les!</i>” cried a woman. “<i>Tuez-les!</i>” - </p> - <p> - It was a cry for killing, such as women had screamed when pretty - aristocrats were caught by the mobs of the French Revolution. - </p> - <p> - “My God!” said Brand. - </p> - <p> - He shouldered his way through the crowd, and I followed him. The people - made a gap for us, seeing our uniforms, and desired us to enjoy the joke. - What I saw when I came closer was a group of young men holding a limp - figure. One of them was brandishing a large pair of scissors, as large as - shears. Another held up a tangled mass of red hair. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Regardez!</i>” he shouted to the crowd, and they cheered and laughed. - </p> - <p> - I had seen the hair before, as I knew when I saw a girl’s face, - dead-white, lifeless, as it seemed, and limp against a man’s shoulder. - </p> - <p> - “It is Marthe!” I said to Brand. “Pierre Nesle’s sister.” - </p> - <p> - A curious sense of faintness overcame me, and I felt sick. - </p> - <p> - Brand did not answer me, but I saw his face pale under its tan. He pushed - forward through the crowd and I lost sight of him for a few moments. After - that I saw him carrying the girl; above the heads of the people, I saw her - head flopping from side to side horribly, a head with close-cropped hair. - They had torn her clothes off her shoulders, which were bleeding. - </p> - <p> - “Help me,” said Brand. - </p> - <p> - I am not quite clear what happened. I have only a vague remembrance of the - crowd making way for us, with murmurs of surprise and some hostile cries - of women. I remember helping Brand to carry the girl—enormously - heavy she seemed with her dead weight—but how we managed to get her - into Dr. Small’s car is to this day a blank in my mind. We must have seen - and hailed him at the corner of the Grande Place as he was going back to - his billet. I have a distinct recollection of taking off my Burberry and - laying it over the girl, who was huddled in the back of the car, and of - Brand saying, “Where can we take her?” I also remember trying to light a - cigarette and using many matches which went out in the wind. It was - Brand’s idea that we should go to Madame Chéri’s house for sanctuary, and - by the time we had driven to that place we had left the crowd behind and - were not followed. - </p> - <p> - “You go in and explain things,” said Brand. “Ask Madame to give the girl a - refuge.” - </p> - <p> - I think Madame Chéri was startled by the sight of the car, and perhaps by - some queer look I had. I told her what had happened. This girl was the - sister of Pierre Nesle, whom Madame Chéri had met. The crowd, for some - reason, had cut off her hair. Would Madame save the poor child, who was - unconscious? - </p> - <p> - I shall never forget the face or speech of that lady, whom I had found so - kind. She drew herself up very stiffly and a relentless expression - hardened her face. - </p> - <p> - “If you were not English I should say you desired to insult me, sir. The - people have cut off the creature’s hair. ‘For some reason,’ you say. There - is only one reason. Because she was faithless to her country and to her - sex, and was familiar with men who were the enemies of France, the - murderers of our men, robbers and assassins. She has been well punished. I - would rather burn down my house than give her shelter. If they gave her to - the dogs to tear in pieces I would not lift my little finger to save her.” - </p> - <p> - Hélène came in, and was surprised at the emotion of her mother’s voice. - </p> - <p> - “What is it, little <i>maman?</i>” - </p> - <p> - Madame Chéri regained control of herself, which for a moment she had lost - in a passion that shook her. - </p> - <p> - “It is a little matter. This officer and I have been talking about vile - people who sold themselves to our enemy. He understands perfectly.” - </p> - <p> - “I understand,” I said gravely. “There is a great deal of cruelty in the - world, madame, and less charity than I had hoped.” - </p> - <p> - “There is, praise be to God, a little justice,” said Madame Chéri very - calmly. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Au revoir, madame!</i>” - </p> - <p> - “<i>Au revoir, monsieur!</i>” - </p> - <p> - “<i>Au revoir, mademoiselle!</i>” - </p> - <p> - I was shocked then at the callousness of the lady. It seemed to me - incredible. Now I am no longer shocked, but understand the horror that was - hers, the loathing for a daughter of France who had—if the mob were - not mistaken—violated the code of honour which enabled the French - people to resist German brutality, even German kindness, which they hated - worse, with a most proud disdain. That girl outside, bleeding and - senseless in the car, had been friendly with German officers, notorious in - her company with them. Otherwise she would not have been seized by the - crowd and branded for shame. There was a fierce protective instinct which - hardened Madame Chéri against charity. Only those who have seen what war - means to women close to it, in enemy hands, may truly understand, and, - understanding, curse war again for all its destruction of souls and - bodies. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XIII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>rand and Dr. Small - were both astonished and indignant. - </p> - <p> - “Do you mean to say she shuts her door against this poor bleeding girl?” - said Brand. - </p> - <p> - The American doctor did not waste words. He only used words when there was - no action on hand. - </p> - <p> - “The next place?” he said. “A hospital?” - </p> - <p> - I had the idea of the convent where Eileen O’Connor lodged. There was a - sanctuary. Those nuns were vowed to Christian charity. They would - understand and have pity. - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” said Brand, and he called to the driver. - </p> - <p> - We drove hard to the convent, and Brand was out of the car before it - stopped, and rang the bell with such a tug that we heard it jangling - loudly in the courtyard. - </p> - <p> - It seemed long before the little wicket opened and a woman’s voice said, “<i>Qui - est la?</i>” - </p> - <p> - Brand gave his name and said, “Open quickly, <i>ma sour</i>. We have a - woman here who is ill.” - </p> - <p> - The gate was opened, and Brand and I lifted out the girl, who was still - unconscious, but moaning slightly, and carried her into the courtyard, and - thence inside the convent to the whitewashed passage where I had listened - so long to the Reverend Mother telling me of the trial scene. - </p> - <p> - It was the Reverend Mother who came now, with two of her nuns, while the - little portress stood by, clasping her hands. - </p> - <p> - “An accident?” said the Reverend Mother. “How was the poor child hurt?” - </p> - <p> - She bent over the girl, Marthe—Pierre Nesle’s sister, as I - remembered with an added pity—pulled my Burberry from her face and - shoulders and glanced at the bedraggled figure there. - </p> - <p> - “Her hair has been cut off,” said the old nun. “That is strange! There are - the marks of finger-nails on her shoulder. What violence was it, then?” - </p> - <p> - Brand described the rescue of the girl from the mob, who would have torn - her to pieces, and as he spoke I saw a terrible look come into the - Reverend Mother’s face. - </p> - <p> - “I remember—1870,” she said harshly. “They cut the hair of women who - had disgraced themselves—and France—by their behaviour with - German soldiers. We thought then that it was a light punishment... we - think so now, monsieur!” - </p> - <p> - One of the nuns, a young woman who had been touching the girl’s head, - smoothing back her tousled, close-cropped hair, sprang up as though she - had touched an evil thing and shrank back. - </p> - <p> - Another nun spoke to the Reverend Mother. - </p> - <p> - “This house would be defiled if we took in a creature like that. God - forbid, Reverend Mother——” - </p> - <p> - The old Superior turned to Brand, and I saw how her breast was heaving - with emotion. - </p> - <p> - “It would have been better, sir, if you had left this wretched woman to - the people. The voice of the people is sometimes the voice of God. If they - knew her guilt their punishment was just. Reflect what it means to us—to - all our womanhood. Husbands, fathers, brothers were being killed by these - Germans. Our dear France was bleeding to death. Was there any greater - crime than that a Frenchwoman should show any weakness, any favour, to one - of those men who were helping to cause the agony of France, the martyrdom - of our youth?” - </p> - <p> - Brand stammered out a few words. I remember only two: “Christian charity!” - </p> - <p> - The American doctor and I stood by silently. Dr. Small was listening with - the deepest attention, as though some new truth about human nature were - being revealed to him. - </p> - <p> - It was then that a new voice was raised in that whitewashed corridor. It - was Eileen O’Connor’s Irish contralto, and it vibrated with extraordinary - passion as she spoke in French. - </p> - <p> - “Reverend Mother!... I am dismayed by the words you have spoken. I do not - believe, though my ears have heard them. No, they are unbelievable! I have - seen your holiness, your charity, every day for four years, nursing German - prisoners, and English, with equal tenderness, with a great pity. Not - shrinking from any horror or the daily sight of death, but offering it all - as a sacrifice to God. And now, after our liberation, when we ought to be - uplifted by the Divine favour that has come to us, you would turn away - that poor child who lies bleeding at our feet, another victim of war’s - cruelty. Was it not war that struck her down? This war which has been - declared against souls as well as bodies! This war on women, as well as on - fighting-men who had less need of courage than some of us! What did our - Lord say to a woman who was taken by the mob? ‘He that is without sin - among you, let him cast the first stone!’ It was Mary Magdalen who kissed - His feet, and wiped them with her hair. This girl has lost her hair, but - perhaps Christ has taken it as a precious napkin for His wounds. We who - have been lucky in escape from evil—shall we cast her out of the - house which has a cross above its roof? I have been lucky above most women - in Lille. If all things were known, I might be lying there in that girl’s - place, bleeding and senseless, without this hair of mine. Reverend Mother—<i>remember - Franz von Kreuzenach!</i>” - </p> - <p> - We—Dr. Small, Brand, and I—were dumbfounded by Eileen - O’Connor’s passionate outcry. She was utterly unconscious of us and looked - only at the Reverend Mother, with a light in her eyes that was more - intensely spiritual than I had seen before in any woman’s face. - </p> - <p> - The old nun seemed stricken by Eileen’s words. Into her rugged old face, - all wrinkled about the eyes, crept an expression of remorse and shame. - Once she raised her hands, slowly, as though beseeching the girl to spare - her. Then her hands came down again and clasped each other at her breast, - and her head bowed so that her chin was dug into her white bib. Tears came - into her eyes and fell unheeded down her withered cheeks. I can see now - the picture of us all standing there in the whitewashed corridor of the - convent, in the dim light of a hanging lantern—we three officers - standing together, the huddled figure of Marthe Nesle lying at our feet, - half covered with my trench-coat, but with her face lying sideways, white - as death under her cropped red hair, and her bare shoulders stained with a - streak of blood; opposite, the old Mother, with bowed head and clasped - hands; the two young nuns, rigid, motionless, silent; and Eileen O’Connor, - with that queer light on her face and her hands stretched out with a - gesture of passionate appeal. - </p> - <p> - The Reverend Mother raised her head and spoke—after what seemed like - a long silence, but was only a second or two, I suppose. - </p> - <p> - “My child, I am an old woman, and have said many prayers. But you have - taught me the lesson, which I thought I knew, that the devil does not - depart from us until our souls have found eternal peace. I am a wicked old - woman, and until you opened my eyes I was forgetful of charity and of our - Lord’s most sweet commands.” - </p> - <p> - She turned to us now with an air of wonderful dignity and graciousness. - </p> - <p> - “Gentlemen, I pray you to carry this wounded girl to my own cell. To-night - I will sleep on bare boards.” - </p> - <p> - One of the young nuns was weeping bitterly. - </p> - <p> - So we lifted up Marthe Nesle, and, following the Reverend Mother, carried - her to a little white room and laid her on an iron bedstead under a - picture of the Madonna below which burned an oil lamp on a wooden table. - The American doctor asked Eileen O’Connor to bring him some hot water. - </p> - <p> - Brand and I went back in the car, and I dined at his mess again. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XIV - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>olonel Lavington - was discussing the art of the sonnet and the influence of Italian culture - in Elizabethan England. From that subject he travelled to the psychology - of courage, which in his opinion, for the moment, was founded on vanity. - </p> - <p> - “Courage,” he said, with that gallant look of his which I had seen with - admiration when he walked up the old duckboards beyond Ypres, with a - whimsical smile at “crumps” bursting abominably near—he had done - bravely in the old days as a battalion commander. “Courage is merely a - pose before the mirror of one’s own soul and one’s neighbours. We are all - horribly afraid in moments of danger, but some of us have the gift of - pretending that we don’t mind. That is vanity. We like to look heroes, - even to ourselves. It is good to die with a <i>beau geste</i>, though - death is damnably unpleasant.” - </p> - <p> - “I agree, colonel,” said Charles Fortune. “Always the right face for the - proper occasion. But it wants a lot of practice.” - </p> - <p> - He put on his gallant, devil-may-care face, and there was appreciative - laughter from his fellow officers. - </p> - <p> - Harding, the young landowner, was of opinion that courage depended - entirely on the liver. - </p> - <p> - “It is a matter of physical health,” he said. “If I am out-of-sorts, my <i>moral</i> - goes down to zero. Not that I’m ever really brave. Anyhow, I hate things - that go off. Those loud noises of bursting shells are very objectionable. - I shall protest against Christmas crackers after the war.” - </p> - <p> - Young Clatworthy was in the sulks, and sat very silent during all this - badinage. - </p> - <p> - “What’s the matter?” I asked, and he confided to me his conviction, while - he passed the salt, that “life was a rummy game.” - </p> - <p> - “Hipped?” I said, and his answer was, “Fed up to the back teeth!” - </p> - <p> - That seemed to me curious, after the glimpse I had had of him with a - little lady of Lille. The boy explained himself somewhat under cover of - the colonel’s conversation, which was holding the interest of the mess. - </p> - <p> - “We’re living unnaturally,” he said. “It’s all an abnormal show, and we - pretend to be natural and normal when everything that happens round us is - fantastic and disorderly.” - </p> - <p> - “What’s your idea?” I enquired. It was the first time I had heard the boy - talk seriously, or with any touch of gravity. - </p> - <p> - “Hard to explain,” he said. “But, take my case to-day. This morning I went - up the line to interrogate the latest batch of P.O.W.‘s.” (He meant - prisoners of war.) “A five-point-nine burst within ten yards of my car, - the other side of Courtrai, killed my driver and missed me by a couple of - inches. I felt as sick as a dog when I saw Saunders crumpled over his - steering-wheel with blood pouring down his neck. Not that it’s the first - time I’ve seen blood!” - </p> - <p> - He laughed as he gave a glance at his wound-stripe, and I remembered the - way in which he had gained his M.C. at Gommecourt—one of three left - alive in his company. - </p> - <p> - “We had been talking, three minutes before, about his next leave. He had - been married in ‘16, after the Somme, and hadn’t seen his wife since. Said - her letters made him ‘uneasy.’ Thought she was drinking because of the - loneliness. Well, there he was—finished—and a nasty sight. I - went off to the P.O.W. cage and examined the beggars—one of them, as - usual, had been a waiter at the ‘Cecil,’ and said, ‘How’s dear old - London?’—and passed the time of day with Bob Mellett—you know, - the one-armed lad. He laughed no end when he heard of my narrow squeak. So - did I—though it’s hard to see the joke. He lent me his car on the - way back, and somewhere outside Courtrai we bumped over a dead body with a - queer soft squelch. It was a German—a young ‘un—and Bob - Mellett said, ‘<i>He</i> won’t be home for Christmas!’ Do you know Bob?—he - used to cry at school when a rat was caught. Queer, isn’t it? Now here I - am, sitting at a white table-cloth, listening to the colonel’s talk, and - pretending to be interested. I’m not a bit, really. I’m wondering why that - bit of shell hit Saunders and not me. Or why I’m not lying in a muddy road - as a bit of soft squelch for staff cars to bump over. And on top of that - I’m wondering how it will feel to hang up a bowler hat again in a house at - Wimbledon, and say, ‘Cheerio, mother!’ to the mater (who will be knitting - in the same armchair—chintz-covered—by the piano) and read the - evening paper until dinner’s ready, take Ethel to a local dance, and get - back into the old rut of home life in a nice family, don’t you know? With - all my memories! With the ghosts of <i>this</i> life crowding up! Ugly - ghosts, some of ‘em! Dirty ghosts!... It’s inconceivable that we can ever - go back to the funny old humdrum! I’m not sure that I want to.” - </p> - <p> - “You’re hipped,” I told him. “You’ll be glad to get back all right. - Wimbledon will be Paradise after what you’ve been through.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Lord, <i>I’ve</i> done nothing,” said the boy. “Fact is, I’ve been - talking tripe. Forget it.” - </p> - <p> - But I did not forget, and remembered every word later, when I heard his - laughter on Armistice night. - </p> - <p> - A despatch-rider stood outside the door in his muddy overalls and Brand - went to get his message. It was from Pierre Nesle. - </p> - <p> - “I am mad with joy that you have found Marthe! Alas! I cannot get back for - a week. Tell her that I am still her devoted comrade and loving brother.—Pierre.” - Brand handed me the slip and said, “Poor devil!” I went back to my billet - in Madame Chéri’s house, and she made no allusion to our conversation in - the afternoon, but was anxious, I thought, to assure me of her friendship - by special little courtesies, as when she lighted my candle and carried it - upstairs before saying good-night. Hélène was learning English fast and - furiously, and with her arm round her mother’s waist said, “Sleep well, - sir, and very good dreams to you!” which I imagine was a sentence out of - her text-book. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XV - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>hey were great - days—in the last two weeks before the Armistice! For me, and for - many men, they were days of exultation, wild adventure, pity, immense - hope, tremendous scenes uplifted by a sense of victory; though for others, - the soldiers who did the dirty work, brought up lorry columns through the - mud of the old battlefields far behind our new front line, carried on - still with the hard old drudgery of war, they were days not marked out by - any special jubilation, or variety, or hope, but just like all the others - that had gone before since first they came to France. - </p> - <p> - I remember little scenes and pictures of those last two weeks as they pass - through my mind like a him drama; episodes of tragedy or triumph which - startled my imagination, a pageantry of men who had victory in their eyes, - single figures who spoke to me, told me unforgettable things, and the last - dead bodies who fell at the very gate of peace. - </p> - <p> - One of the last dead bodies I saw in the war was in the city of - Valenciennes, which we entered on the morning of November 3rd. Our guns - had spared the city which was full of people, but the railway station was - an elaborate ruin of twisted iron and broken glass. Rails were torn up and - sleepers burnt. Our airmen, flying low day after day during the German - retreat, had flung down bombs, which had torn the fronts off the - booking-offices and made match-wood of the signal-boxes and sheds. For - German soldiers detraining here it had been a hellish place, and the fire - of our flying-men had been deadly accurate. I walked through the ruin out - into the station square. It was empty of all life, but one human figure - was there all alone. It was the dead body of a young German soldier, lying - with outstretched arms, on his back, in a pool of blood. His figure formed - a cross there on the cobblestones, and seemed to me a symbol of all that - youth which had been sacrificed by powers of monstrous evil. His face was - still handsome in death, the square, rough-hewn face of a young peasant. - </p> - <p> - There was the tap-tap-tap of a German machine-gun somewhere on the right - of the square. As I walked forward all my senses were alert to the menace - of death. It would be foolish, I thought, to be killed at the end of the - war—for surely the end was very near? And then I had a sudden sharp - thought that perhaps it would be well if this happened. Why should I live - when so many had died? The awful job was done, and my small part in it. I - had seen it through from start to finish, for it was finished but for a - few days of waiting. It might be better to end with it, for all that came - afterwards would be anticlimax. I remember raising my head and looking - squarely round at that staccato hammering of the German machine-gun, with - an intense desire that a bullet might come my way. But I went on untouched - into the town.... As in Courtrai, a fury of gun-fire overhead kept the - people in their houses. Our field batteries were firing over the city and - the enemy was answering. Here and there I saw a face peering out of a - broken window, and then a door opened, and a man and woman appeared behind - it with two thin children. The woman thrust out a skinny hand and grasped - mine, and began to weep. She talked passionately, with a strange mingling - of rage and grief. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, my God!” she said, “those devils have gone at last! What have they - not made us suffer! My husband and I had four little houses—we were - innkeepers—and last night they sent us to this part of the town and - burnt all of them.” She used a queer word in French. “Last night,” she - said, “they made a devil’s <i>charivari</i> and set many houses on fire.” - </p> - <p> - Her husband spoke to me over his wife’s shoulder. - </p> - <p> - “Sir, they have stolen everything, broken everything, ground us down for - four years. They are bandits and robbers.” - </p> - <p> - “We are hungry,” said the thin girl. - </p> - <p> - By her side the boy, with a white pinched face, echoed her plaint. - </p> - <p> - “We have eaten our bread and I am hungry.” - </p> - <p> - They had some coffee left, and asked me to go inside and drink it with - them, but I could not wait. - </p> - <p> - The woman held my wrist tight in her skinny hands. - </p> - <p> - “You will come back?” she asked. - </p> - <p> - “I will try,” I said. - </p> - <p> - Then she wept again and said: “We are grateful to the English soldiers. It - is they who saved us.” - </p> - <p> - That is one out of a hundred little scenes that I remember in those last - two weeks when, not without hard fighting, for the German machine-gun - rearguards fought bravely to the end, our troops entered many towns and - villages, and liberated many thousands of poor people. I remember the - girls of a little town called Bohain who put on their best frocks and - clean pinafores to welcome us. It was not until a little while that we - found they were starving and had not even a crust of bread in all the - town. Then the enemy started shelling, and some of the girls were killed, - and many were suffocated by gas shells. That was worse in St. Amand, by - Valenciennes, where all the women and children took refuge in the cellars. - The German batteries opened fire with yellow cross shell as our guns - passed through. Some of our men, and many of their horses, lay dead in the - streets as I passed through; but worse things happened in the cellars - below the houses. The heavy gas of the yellow cross shells filtered down - to where the women and their babies cowered on their mattresses. They - began to choke and gasp, and babies died in the arms of dying mothers.... - Dr. Small, our American, went with a body of English doctors and nurses to - the rescue of St. Amand. “I’ve seen bad things,” he told me. “I am not - weak in the stomach—but I saw things in those cellars which nearly - made me vomit.” - </p> - <p> - He put a hand on my shoulder and blinked at me through his glasses. - </p> - <p> - “It’s no good cursing the Germans. As soon as your troops entered the - village they had a right to shell. That’s war. We should do the same. - War’s war. I’ve been cursing the Germans in elaborate and eccentric - language. It did me good. I feel all the better for it. But all the same I - was wrong. It’s war we ought to curse. War which makes these things - possible among civilised peoples. It’s just devilry. Civilised people must - give up the habit. They must get cured of it. You have heard of - typhoid-carriers? They are people infected with the typhoid microbe who - spread the disease. When peace comes we must hunt down the war-carriers, - isolate them, and, if necessary, kill them.” - </p> - <p> - He waved his hand to me and went off in an ambulance filled with - suffocated women. - </p> - <p> - I met Brand in Valenciennes five days after our liberation of the city, - when our troops were making their formal entry with band and banners. He - came up to me and said, “Have you heard the news?” I saw by his face that - it was good news, and I felt my heart give a lurch when I answered him. - </p> - <p> - “Tell me the best.” - </p> - <p> - “Germany is sending plenipotentiaries, under a white flag, to Foch. They - know it is unconditional surrender.... And the Kaiser has abdicated.” - </p> - <p> - I drew a deep breath. Something seemed to lift from my soul. The sky - seemed to become brighter, as though a shadow had passed from the face of - the sun. - </p> - <p> - “Then it’s the end?... The last battle has been fought!” - </p> - <p> - Brand was staring at a column of troops—all young fellows of the 4th - Division. His eyes were glistening, with moisture in them. - </p> - <p> - “Reprieved!” he said. “The last of our youth is saved!” - </p> - <p> - He turned to me suddenly, and spoke in the deepest melancholy. - </p> - <p> - “You and I ought to be dead. So many kids were killed. We’ve no right to - be alive.” - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps there is other work to do,” I answered him, weakly, because I had - the same thought. - </p> - <p> - He did not seem sure of that. - </p> - <p> - “I wonder!... If we could help to save the next generation.” - </p> - <p> - In the Place d’Armes of Valenciennes there was a great crowd, and many of - our generals and staff officers on the steps and below the steps of the - Hôtel de Ville. Brand and I caught a glimpse of Colonel Lavington, looking - very gallant and debonair, as usual. Beside him was Charles Fortune, with - his air of a staff officer dreadfully overworked in the arrangement of - victory, modest in spite of his great achievements, deprecating any public - homage that might be paid him. This careful mask of his was slightly - disarranged for a moment when he winked at me under the very nose of the - great general whom he had set to music—“Blear-eyed Bill, the Butcher - of the Boche,” who stood magnificent with his great chest emblazoned with - ribbons. The Prince of Wales was there, shifting from one leg to another, - chatting gaily with a group of staff officers. A bevy of French girls - advanced with enormous bouquets and presented them to the Prince and his - fellow officers. The Prince laughed and blushed like a schoolboy, sniffed - at the flowers, did not know what to do with them. The other officers held - the bouquets with equal embarrassment, with that strange English shyness - which not even war could cure. - </p> - <p> - Some officers close to me were talking of the German plea for armistice. - </p> - <p> - “It’s abject surrender!” said one of them. - </p> - <p> - “The end!” said another, very solemnly. “Thank God!” - </p> - <p> - “The end of a dirty business!” said a young machine-gun officer. I noticed - that he had three wound-stripes. - </p> - <p> - One of them, holding a big bouquet, began to dance, pointing his toes, - cutting abbreviated capers in a small space among his comrades. - </p> - <p> - “Not too quick for me, old dears! Back to peace again!... Back to life! - Hooray!” - </p> - <p> - The colours of many flags fluttered upon the gables of the Place d’Armes, - and the balconies were draped with the Tricolour, the Union Jack, and the - Stars and Stripes. Old citizens wore tall hats saved up for this day, and - girls had taken their lace from hiding-places where the Germans had not - found it, and wore it round their necks and wrists for the honour of this - day. Old women in black bonnets sat in the centre of window-places and - clapped their hands—their wrinkled, hard-working old hands—to - every British soldier who passed, and thousands were passing. Nobody heard - a word of the speeches spoken from the Town Hall steps, the tribute of the - councillors of Valenciennes to the glory of the troops who had rescued - their people from servitude under a ruthless enemy, nor the answer of Sir - Henry Home, the Army Commander, expressing the pride of his soldiers in - the rescue of that fair old city, and their admiration for the courage of - its people. Every word was overwhelmed by cheering. Then the pipers of a - Highland Division, whose fighting I had recorded through their years of - heroic endurance, played a march tune, and the music of those pipes was - loud in the square of Valenciennes and in the hearts of its people. The - troops marched past, and thousands of bayonets shone above their steel - helmets.... - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XVI - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> was in Mons on - the day of Armistice, and on the roads outside when I heard the news that - the Germans had surrendered to all our terms, and that the “Cease fire” - would sound at eleven o’clock. It was a misty morning, with sunlight - glinting through the mist and sparkling in the coppery leaves of autumn - trees. There was no heavy bombardment in progress round Mons—only - now and then the sullen bark of a gun. The roads were crowded with the - usual transport of war—endless columns of motor-lorries and - horse-wagons, and mule-teams, crawling slowly forward, and infantry - battalions trudging alongside with their heavy packs. I stared into the - faces of the marching men, expecting to see joy in their eyes, wondering - why they were not singing—because to-day the guns would be silent - and the fighting finished. Their packs weighed heavy. The mud from passing - lorries splashed them with great gobs of filth. Under their steel hats the - sweat ran down. They looked dead-beat, and marched in a grim fine of tired - men. But I noticed that the transport wagons were decorated with small - flags, and these bits of fluttering colour were stuck into the harness of - gun horses and mules. From the other way came another tide of traffic—crowds - of civilians, who were middle-aged men and boys, and here and there women - pushing hand-carts, and straining forward with an eager, homing look. The - men and boys were carrying bundles, too heavy for many of them, so that - they were bent under their burdens. But each one had added the last straw - but one to his weight by fastening a flag to his bundle or his cap. I - spoke to some of them, and they told me that they were the civilians from - Lille, Valenciennes, and other towns, who had been taken away by the - Germans for forced labour behind the lines. Two days ago the Germans had - said, “We’ve no more use for you. Get back to your own people. The war is - over.” - </p> - <p> - They looked worn and haggard, like men who had been shipwrecked. Some of - the boys were weak and sat down on the roadside with their bundles and - could go no farther. Others trudged on gamely, with crooks which they had - cut from the hedges, and only stopped to cry, “<i>Vivent les Anglais!</i>” - as our soldiers passed. I looked into many of their faces, remembering the - photograph of Edouard Chéri which had been given to me by his mother. - Perhaps he was Somewhere in those troops of homing exiles. But he might - have been any one of those lanky boys in ragged jackets and broken boots, - and cloth caps pulled down over the ears. - </p> - <p> - Just outside Mons, at one minute to eleven o’clock, there was a little - desultory firing. Then a bugle blew, somewhere in a distant field, one - long note. It was the “Cease fire”! A cheer coming faintly over the fields - followed the bugle-call. Then there was no other sound where I stood but - the scrunching of wheels of gun limbers and transport wagons, the squelch - of mud in which horses and mules trudged, and the hard breathing of tired - men marching by under their packs. So, with a curious lack of drama, the - Great Adventure ended! That bugle had blown the “Cease fire” of a strife - which had filled the world with agony and massacre; destroyed millions of - men; broken millions of lives; ruined many great cities and thousands of - hamlets, and left a long wide belt of country across Europe where no tree - remained alive and all the earth was ravaged; crowded the world with - maimed men, blind men, mad men, diseased men; flung Empires into anarchy, - where hunger killed the children and women had no milk to feed their - babies; and bequeathed to all fighting nations a heritage of debt beneath - which many would stagger and fall. It was the “Cease fire” of all that - reign of death, but sounded very faintly across the fields of France. - </p> - <p> - In Mons Canadian soldiers were being kissed by French girls. Women were - giving them wine in the doorways, and these hard-bitten fellows, tough as - leather, reckless of all risk, plastered with mud which had worn into - their skins and souls, drank the wine and kissed the women, and lurched - laughing down the streets. There would be no strict discipline in Mons - that night. They had had enough of discipline in the dirty days. Let it go - on the night of Armistice! Already at mid-day some of these soldiers were - unable to walk except with an arm round a comrade’s neck, or round the - neck of strong peasant girls who screeched with laughter when they - side-slipped or staggered. They had been through hell, those men. They had - lain in ditches, under frightful fire, among dead men and bleeding men. - Who would grudge them their bit of fun on Armistice night? Who would - expect saintship of men who had been taught in the school of war, taught - to kill quick lest they be killed, to see the worst horrors of the - battlefield without going weak, to educate themselves out of the - refinements of peaceful life where Christian virtues are easy and not - meant for war? - </p> - <p> - “Come here, lassie. None of your French tricks for me. I’m Canadian-born. - It’s a kiss or a clout from me.” - </p> - <p> - The man grabbed the girl by the arm and drew her into a barn. - </p> - <p> - On the night of Armistice in Mons, where, at the beginning of the war, the - Old Contemptibles had first withstood the shock of German arms (I saw - their ghosts there in the market place), there would be the devil to pay—the - devil of war, who plays on the passions of men, and sets his trap for - women’s souls. But I went away from Mons before nightfall, and travelled - back to Lille, in the little old car which had gone to many strange places - with me. - </p> - <p> - How quiet it was in the open countryside when darkness fell! The guns were - quiet at last, after four years and more of labour. There were no fires in - the sky, no ruddy glow of death. I listened to the silence which followed - the going down of the sun, and heard the rustling of the russet leaves and - the little sounds of night in peace, and it seemed as though God gave a - benediction to the wounded soul of the world. ‘Other sounds rose from the - towns and fields in the deepening shadow-world of the day of Armistice. - They were sounds of human joy. Men were singing somewhere on the roads, - and their voices rang out gladly. Bugles were playing. In villages from - which the enemy had gone out that morning round about Mons crowds of - figures surged in the narrow streets, and English laughter rose above the - chatter of women and children. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XVII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen I came into - Lille rockets were rising above the city. English soldiers were firing off - Verey lights. Above the houses of the city in darkness rose also gusts of - cheering. It is strange that when I heard them I felt like weeping. They - sounded rather ghostly, like the voices of all the dead who had fallen - before this night of Armistice. - </p> - <p> - I went to my billet at Madame Chéri’s house, from which I had been absent - some days. I had the key of the front door now and let myself into the - hall. The diningroom door was open, and I heard the voices of the little - French family, laughing, crying, hysterical. Surely hysterical! - </p> - <p> - “<i>O mon Dieu! O mon petit Toto! Comme tu es grandi! Comme tu es maigre!</i>” - </p> - <p> - I stood outside the door, understanding the thing that had happened. - </p> - <p> - In the centre of the room stood a tall, gaunt boy in ragged clothes, in - the embrace of Madame Chéri, and with one hand clutched by Hélène and the - other by the little Madeleine, her sister. It was Edouard who had come - back. - </p> - <p> - He had unloosed a pack from his shoulder, and it lay on the carpet beside - him, with a little flag on a broken stick. He was haggard, with high - cheek-bones prominent through his white, tightly-drawn skin, and his eyes - were sunk in deep sockets. His hair was in a wild mop of black, disordered - locks. He stood there, with tears streaming from his eyes, and the only - words he said were: - </p> - <p> - “<i>Maman! O maman! maman!</i>” - </p> - <p> - I went quietly upstairs and changed my clothes, which were all muddy. - Presently there was a tap at my door and Hélène stood there, transfigured - with joy. She spoke in French. - </p> - <p> - “Edouard has come back—my brother! He travelled on an English - lorry.” - </p> - <p> - “Thank God for that,” I said. “What gladness for you all!” - </p> - <p> - “He has grown tall,” said Hélène. She mopped her eyes and laughed and - cried at the same time. “Tall as a giant, but oh! so thin! They starved - him all the time. He fed only on cabbages. They put him to work digging - trenches behind the line—under fire. The brutes! The devils!” - </p> - <p> - Her eyes were lit up by passion at the thought of this cruelty and her - brother’s suffering. Then her expression changed to a look of pride. - </p> - <p> - “He says he is glad to have been under fire—like father. He hated - it, though, at the time, and said he was frightened! I can’t believe that. - Edouard was always brave.” - </p> - <p> - “There’s no courage that takes away the fear of shellfire—as far as - I’m concerned,” I told her, but she only laughed and said, “You men make a - pose of being afraid.” - </p> - <p> - She spoke of Edouard again, hugging the “thought of his return. - </p> - <p> - “If only he were not so thin and so tired! I find him changed. The poor - boy cries at the sight of <i>maman</i>—like a baby.” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t wonder,” I said. “I should feel like that if I had been a - prisoner of war and was now home again.” - </p> - <p> - Madame Chéri’s voice called from downstairs: “Hélène! <i>Où es-tu? Edouard - veut te voir!</i>” - </p> - <p> - “Edouard wants me,” said Hélène. - </p> - <p> - She seemed rejoiced at the thought that Edouard had missed her, even for - this minute. She took my hand and kissed it, as though wishing me to share - her joy and to be part of it, and then ran downstairs. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XVIII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> went out to the - officers’ club which had been established in Lille, and found Brand there, - and Fortune, and young Clatworthy, who made a place for me at their table. - </p> - <p> - Two large rooms which had been the dining and drawingrooms of a private - mansion were crowded with officers, mostly English, but with here and - there a few Americans and French, seated at small tables, waited on by the - girls we called Waacs (of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps). Two - old-fashioned candelabra of cut-glass gave light to each room, and I - remember that the walls were panelled with wood painted a greyish-white - below a moulding of fruit and flowers. Above the table where my friends - sat was the portrait of a French lady of the eighteenth century, in an - oval frame of tarnished gilt. - </p> - <p> - I was late for the meal on Armistice night, and many bottles of champagne - had already been opened and drunk. The atmosphere reeked with the smell of - food, the fumes of wine and cigarette smoke, and there was the noise of - many men talking and laughing. I looked about the tables and saw familiar - faces. There were a good many cavalry officers in the room where I sat, - and among them officers of the Guards and the Tank Corps, aviators, - machine-gunners, staff officers of infantry divisions, French - interpreters, American <i>liaison</i> officers, A.P.M.‘s, town majors, and - others. The lid was off at last. All these men were intoxicated with the - thought of the victory we had won—complete, annihilating—and - of this Armistice which had ended the war and made them sure of life. Some - of them were a little drunk with wine, but not enough at this hour to - spoil their sense of joy. - </p> - <p> - Officers rose at various tables to make speeches, cheered by their own - groups, who laughed and shouted and did not listen. - </p> - <p> - “The good old British Army has done the trick at last——” - </p> - <p> - “The old Hun is down and out.” - </p> - <p> - “Gentlemen, it has been a damned tough job——” - </p> - <p> - Another group had burst into song: - </p> - <p> - “<i>Here’s to good old beer, put it down, put it down!</i>” - </p> - <p> - “The cavalry came into its own in the last lap. We’ve fought mounted and - fought dismounted. We’ve rounded up innumerable Huns. We’ve ridden down - machine-guns——” - </p> - <p> - Another group was singing independently: - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - “There’s a long, long trail a-winding, - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - To the land of my dreams.” - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p> - A toast was being pledged at the next table by a Tank officer, who stood - on a chair with a glass of champagne-raised high above his head: - “Gentlemen, I give you the toast of the Tank Corps. This war was won by - the Tanks——” - </p> - <p> - “Pull him down!” shouted two lads at the same table. “Tanks be damned! It - was the poor old bloody infantry all the time.” - </p> - <p> - One of them pulled down the little Tank officer with a crash and stood on - his own chair. - </p> - <p> - “Here’s to the foot-sloggers—the infantry battalions, Tommy Atkins - and his company officer, who did all the dirty work and got none of the - reward, and did most of the dying.” - </p> - <p> - A cavalry officer with a monocle immovably screwed in his right eye - demanded the attention of the company, and failed to get it. - </p> - <p> - “We all know what we have done ourselves, and what we failed to do. I give - you the toast of our noble Allies, without whom there would be no - Armistice to-night. I drink to the glory of France——” - </p> - <p> - The words were heard at several tables, and for once there was a general - acknowledgment of the toast. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Vive la France!</i>” - </p> - <p> - The shout thundered out from all the tables, so that the candelabra - rattled. Five French interpreters in various parts of the room rose to - respond. - </p> - <p> - There were shouts of “The Stars and Stripes—Good old Yanks—Well - done, the U.S.A.!” and I was sorry Dr. Small was still at Valenciennes. I - should like him to have heard those shouts. An American staff officer was - on his feet, raising his glass to “England.” - </p> - <p> - Charles Fortune stood up at my table. He reminded me exceedingly at that - moment of old prints portraying George IV. in his youth—“the First - Gentleman of Europe”—slightly flushed, with an air of noble dignity - and a roguish eye. - </p> - <p> - “Go to it, Fortune,” said Brand. “Nobody’s listening, so you can say what - you like.” - </p> - <p> - “Gentlemen,” said Fortune, “I venture to propose the health of our late - enemy, the Germans.” - </p> - <p> - Young Clatworthy gave an hysterical guffaw. - </p> - <p> - “We owe them a very great debt,” said Fortune. - </p> - <p> - “But for their simplicity of nature and amiability of character the - British Empire—that glorious conglomeration of races upon which the - sun utterly declines to set—would have fallen into decay and - debility as a second-class Power. Before the war the German Empire was - gaining our trade, capturing all the markets of the world, waiting at - table in all the best hotels, and providing all the music in the <i>cafés-chantants</i> - of the universe.... With that immense unselfishness so characteristic of - their race, the Germans threw away these advantages and sacrificed - themselves for the benefit of the British. By declaring war they enabled - all the ancient virtues of our race to be revived. Generals sprang up in - every direction—especially in Whitehall, Boulogne and Rouen. Staff - officers multiplied exceedingly. British indigestion—the curse of - our race—became subject to a Sam Brown belt. Business men, mostly - bankrupt, were enriched enormously. Clergymen thundered joyfully from - their pulpits and went back to the Old Testament for that fine old law, - ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ Elderly virgins married the - youngest subalterns. The youngest flapper caught the eldest and wiliest of - bachelors. Our people were revivified, gentlemen—revivified-” - </p> - <p> - “Go easy,” growled Brand. “This is not a night for irony.” - </p> - <p> - “Even I,” said Charles Fortune, with a sob of pride in his voice, “even I, - a simple piano-tuner, a man of music, a child of peace and melody—Shut - up, Brand!—became every inch a soldier!” - </p> - <p> - He drew himself up in a heroic pose and, raising his glass, cried out: - “Here’s to our late enemy—poor old Fritz!” - </p> - <p> - A number of glasses were raised amidst a roar of laughter. - </p> - <p> - “Here’s to Fritz—and may the Kaiser roast at Christmas!” - </p> - <p> - “And they say we haven’t a sense of humour,” said Charles Fortune - modestly, and opened a new bottle of champagne. - </p> - <p> - Brand had a sense of humour, and had laughed dining Fortune’s oration, - knowing that beneath its mockery there was no malice. But I noticed that - he had no spontaneous gaiety on this night of Armistice and sat rather - silent, with a far-away look in his eyes and that hag-ridden melancholy of - his. - </p> - <p> - Young Clatworthy was between me and Brand, drinking too heavily, I - thought. Brand thought so too, and gave him a word of caution. - </p> - <p> - “That champagne is pretty bad. I’d ‘ware headaches, if I were you, - young’un.” - </p> - <p> - “It’s good enough,” said Clatworthy. “Anything to put me in the right - spirit.” - </p> - <p> - There was an unnatural glitter in his eyes, and he laughed too easily at - any joke of Fortune’s. Presently he turned his attention to me, and began - talking excitedly in a low monologue. - </p> - <p> - “Funny to think it’s the last night! Can you believe it? It seems a - lifetime since I came out in ‘14. I remember the first night, when I was - sent up to Ypres to take the place of a subaltern who’d been knocked out. - It was Christmas Eve, and my battalion was up in the line round Hooge. I - detrained at Vlamertinghe. ‘Can any one tell me the way to Hooge?’ I asked - one of the traffic men, just like a country cousin at Piccadilly Circus. - He looked at me in a queer way, and said, ‘It’s the same way to hell, sir. - Straight on until you get to Ypres, then out of the Menin Gate and along - the road to Hell-fire Corner. After that you trust to luck. Some young - gentlemen never get no further.’ I damned his impertinence and went on, - till I came to the Grande Place in Ypres, where I just missed an - eight-inch shell. It knocked out a gun-team. Shocking mess it made. ‘The - same way to hell,’ I kept saying, until I fell into a shell-hole along the - Menin Road. But, d’you know, the fellow was wrong, after all.” - </p> - <p> - “How?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - Young Clatworthy drank up his wine and laughed, as though very much - amused. - </p> - <p> - “Why, <i>that</i> wasn’t the way to hell. It was the other way.” - </p> - <p> - I was puzzled at his meaning and wondered if he were really drunk. - </p> - <p> - “What other way?” - </p> - <p> - “Behind the lines—in the back areas. I should have been all right if - I had stuck in the trenches. It was in places like Amiens that I went to - the devil.” - </p> - <p> - “Not as bad as that,” I said. - </p> - <p> - “Mind you,” he continued, lighting a cigarette and smiling at the flame, - “I’ve had pleasant times in this war, between the bad ones, and, - afterwards, in this cushy job. Extraordinarily amusing and agreeable along - the way to hell. There was little Maiguérite in Amiens—such a kid! - Funny as a kitten! She loved me not wisely, but too well. I had just come - down from the Somme battles then. That little idyll with Marguérite was - like a dream. We two were Babes in the Wood. We plucked the flowers of - life and didn’t listen to the howling of the wolves beyond the forest.” - </p> - <p> - He jerked his head up and listened, and repeated the words: - </p> - <p> - “The howling of the wolves!” - </p> - <p> - Somebody was singing “John Peel”: - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - “D’ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay. - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - D’ye ken John Peel at the break of day, - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - D’ye ken John Peel when he’s far, far away. - </p> - <p class="indent20"> - With, his horn, and his hounds in. the morning?” - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p> - Cyril Clatworthy was on his feet, joining in the chorus with a loud joyous - voice. - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - “We’ll follow John Peel through fair and through foul. - </p> - <p class="indent20"> - If we want a good hunt in the morning!’’ - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p> - “Bravo! Bravo!” - </p> - <p> - He laughed as he sat down. - </p> - <p> - “I used to sing that when I was captain of the school,” he said. “A long - time ago, eh? How many centuries?... I was as clean a fellow as you’d meet - in those days. Keen as mustard on cricket. Some bat, too! That was before - the dirty war, and the stinking trenches, and fever, and lice, and dead - bodies, and all that. But I was telling you about Yvonne, wasn’t I?” - </p> - <p> - “Marguérite,” I reminded him. - </p> - <p> - “No. Yvonne. I met her at Cassel. A brown-eyed thing. Demure. You know the - type?... One of the worst little sluts I ever met. Oh, a wicked little - witch... Well, I paid for that affair. That policeman was wrong.” - </p> - <p> - “What policeman?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - “The traffic man at Vlamertinghe. ‘It’s the same way to hell,’ he said, - meaning Hooge. It was the other way, really. All the same, I’ve had some - good hours. And now it’s Armistice night.... Those fellows are getting - rather blue, aren’t they? It’s the blinking cavalry who used to get in the - way of the infantry, blocking up the roads with their ridiculous horses - and their preposterous, lances. Look here, old man, there’s one thing I - want to know. Tell me, as a wise owl.” - </p> - <p> - “What is that?” I asked, laughing at his deference to my wisdom. - </p> - <p> - “How are we going to get clean enough for peace?” - </p> - <p> - “Clean enough?” - </p> - <p> - I could not follow the drift of his question, and he tried to explain - himself. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I don’t mean the soap and water business. But morally, spiritually, - intellectually, and all that? Some of us will want a lot of scrubbing - before we sit down in our nice little Christian families, somewhere at - Wimbledon or Ealing. Somehow I funk peace. It means getting back again to - where one started, and I don’t see how it’s possible.... Good Lord, what - tripe I’ve been talking!” - </p> - <p> - He pulled the bow of one of the “Waacs” and undid her apron. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Encore une bouteille de champagne, mademoiselle!</i>” he said in his - best French, and started singing “La Marseillaise.” Some of the officers - were dancing the fox trot and the bunny hug. - </p> - <p> - Brand rose with a smile and a sigh. - </p> - <p> - “Armistice night!” he said. “Thank God there’s a crowd of fellows left to - do the dancing.... I can’t help thinking of the others.” - </p> - <p> - He touched a glass with his lips to a silent toast, and I saw that he - drank to ghosts. Then he put the glass down and laid his hand on - Clatworthy’s shoulder. - </p> - <p> - “Care for a stroll?” he said. “This room is too fuggy.” - </p> - <p> - “Not I, old lad,” said the boy. “This is Armistice night—and the end - of the adventure. See it through!” - </p> - <p> - Brand shook his head and said he must breathe fresh air. Fortune was - playing a Brahms concerto in the style of a German master on the - table-cloth. - </p> - <p> - I followed Brand, and we strolled through the dark streets of Lille and - did not talk. In each of our minds was the stupendous thought that it was - the last night of the war—the end of the adventure, as young - Clatworthy had said. God! It had been a frightful adventure from first to - last—a fiery furnace in which youth had been burnt up like grass. - How much heroism we had seen, how much human agony, ruin, hate, cruelty, - love! There had been comradeship and laughter in queer places and perilous - hours. Comradeship, perhaps that was the best of all: the unselfish - comradeship of men. But what a waste of life! What a lowering of - civilisation! Our heritage—what was it, after victory? Who would - heal the wounds of the world? - </p> - <p> - Brand suddenly spoke, after our long tramp in the darkness, past windows - from which came music, and singing, and shouts of laughter. He uttered - only one word, but all his soul was in it. - </p> - <p> - “Peace!” - </p> - <p> - That night we went to see Eileen O’Connor and to enquire after the girl - Marthe. Next day Pierre Nesle was coming to find his sister. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XIX - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">E</span>ileen O’Connor had - gone back from the convent to the rooms she had before her trial and - imprisonment. I was glad to see her in a setting less austere than the - whitewashed parlour in which she had first received us. There was - something of her character in the sitting-room where she had lived so long - during the war, and where with her girl friends she had done more - dangerous work than studying the elements of drawing and painting. In that - setting, too, she looked at home—“The Portrait of a Lady,” by - Lavery, as I saw her in my mind’s eye, when she sat in a low armchair by - the side of a charcoal stove, with the lamplight on her face and hair and - her dress shadowy. She wore a black dress of some kind, with a tiny edge - of lace about the neck and a string of coloured beads so long that she - twisted it about her fingers in her lap. The room was small, but cosy in - the light of a tall lamp on an iron stand shaded with red silk. Like all - the rooms I had seen in Lille—not many—this was panelled, with - a polished floor, bare except for one rug. On the walls were a few - etchings framed in black—London views mostly—and some - water-colour drawings of girls’ heads, charmingly done, I thought. They - were her own studies of some of her pupils and friends, and one face - especially attracted me because of its delicate and spiritual beauty. - </p> - <p> - “That was my fellow prisoner,” said Eileen O’Connor. “Alice de - Villers-Auxicourt. She died before the trial—happily, because she - had no fear.” - </p> - <p> - I noticed one other thing in the room which was pleasant to see—an - upright piano, and upon a stool by its side a pile of old songs which I - turned over one by one as we sat talking. They were English and Irish, - mostly from the seventeenth century onwards, but among them I found some - German songs, and on each cover was written the name of Franz von - Kreuzenach. At the sight of that name I had a foolish sense of - embarrassment and dismay, as though I had discovered a skeleton in the - cupboard, and I slipped them hurriedly between other sheets. - </p> - <p> - Eileen was talking to Wickham Brand. She did not notice my confusion. She - was telling him that Marthe, Pierre’s sister, was seriously ill with - something like brain-fever. The girl had regained consciousness at times, - but was delirious, and kept crying out for her mother and Pierre to save - her from some horror that frightened her. The nuns had made enquiries - about her through civilians in Lille. Some of them had heard of the girl - under her stage name—“Marthe de Méricourt.” She had sung in the <i>cabarets</i> - before the war. After the German occupation she had disappeared for a - time. Somebody said she had been half-starved and was in a desperate - state. What could a singing-girl do in an “occupied” town? She reappeared - in a restaurant frequented by German officers and kept up by a woman of - bad character. She sang and danced there for a miserable wage, and part of - her duty was to induce German officers to drink champagne—the worst - brand for the highest price. A horrible degradation for a decent girl! But - starvation, so Eileen said, has fierce claws. Imagine what agony, what - terror, what despair must have gone before that surrender! To sing and - dance before the enemies of your country! - </p> - <p> - “Frightful!” said Brand. “A girl should prefer death.” - </p> - <p> - Eileen O’Connor was twisting the coloured beads between her fingers. She - looked up at Wickham Brand with a deep thoughtfulness in her dark eyes. - </p> - <p> - “Most men would say that. And all women beyond the war zone, safe and - shielded. But death does not come quickly from half-starvation in a garret - without fire, in clothes that are worn threadbare. It is not the quick - death of the battlefield. It is just a long-drawn misery.... Then there is - loneliness. The loneliness of a woman’s soul. Do you understand that?” - </p> - <p> - Brand nodded gravely. “I understand the loneliness of a man’s soul. I’ve - lived with it.” - </p> - <p> - “Worse for a woman,” said Eileen. “That singing-girl was lonely in Lille. - Her family—with that boy Pierre—were on the other side of the - lines. She had no friends here before the Germans came.” - </p> - <p> - “You mean that afterwards——” - </p> - <p> - Brand checked the end of his sentence and the line of his mouth hardened. - </p> - <p> - “Some of the Germans were kind,” said Eileen. “Oh, let us tell the truth - about that! They were not all devils.” - </p> - <p> - “They were our enemies,” said Brand. - </p> - <p> - Eileen was silent for another moment, staring down at those queer beads of - hers in her lap, and before she spoke again I think her mind was going - back over many episodes and scenes during the German occupation of Lille. - </p> - <p> - “It was a long time—four years. A tremendous time for hatred to hold - out against civility, kindness, and—human nature.... Human nature is - strong; stronger than frontiers, nations, even patriotism.” - </p> - <p> - Eileen O’Connor flung her beads back, rose from the low chair and turned - back her hair with both hands with a kind of impatience. - </p> - <p> - “I’ve seen the truth of things, pretty close—almost as close as - death.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” said Brand in a low voice. “You were pretty close to all that.” - </p> - <p> - The girl seemed to be anxious to plunge deep into the truth of the things - she had seen. - </p> - <p> - “The Germans—here in Lille—were of all kinds. Everything there - was in the war, for them, their emotion, their pride in the first - victories, their doubts, fears, boredom, anguish, brutality, sentiment, - found a dwelling-place in this city behind the battle-front. Some of them—in - the administration—stayed here all the time, billeted in French - families. Others came back from the battlefields, horror-stricken, trying - to get a little brief happiness—forgetfulness. There were lots of - them who pitied the French people and had an immense sympathy with them. - They tried to be friends. Tried hard, by every sort of small kindness in - their billets.” - </p> - <p> - “Like Schwarz in Madame Chéri’s house,” said Brand bitterly. It seemed to - me curious that he was adopting a mental attitude of unrelenting hatred to - the Germans, when, as I knew, and as I have told, he had been of late on - the side of toleration. That was how his moods swung when as yet he had no - fixed point of view. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, yes, there were many beasts,” said Eileen quickly. - </p> - <p> - “But others were different. Beasts or not, they were human. They had eyes - to see and to smile, lips to talk and tempt. It was their human nature - which broke some of our hatred. There were young men among them, and in - Lille girls who could be angry for a time, disdainful longer, and then - friendly. I mean lonely, half-starved girls, weak, miserable girls—and - others not starved enough to lose their passion and need of love. German - boys and French girls—entangled in the net of fate.... God pity - them!” - </p> - <p> - Brand said, “I pity them, too.” - </p> - <p> - He walked over to the piano and made an abrupt request, as though to - change the subject of conversation. - </p> - <p> - “Sing something... something English!” - </p> - <p> - Eileen O’Connor sang something Irish first, and I liked her deep voice, so - low and sweet. - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - “There’s one that is pure as an angel - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - And fair as the flowers of May, - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - They call her the gentle maiden - </p> - <p class="indent20"> - Wherever she takes her way. - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - Her eyes have the glance of sunlight - </p> - <p class="indent20"> - As it brightens the blue sea-wave, - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - And more than the deep-sea treasure - </p> - <p class="indent20"> - The love of her heart I crave. - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - “Though parted afar from my darling, - </p> - <p class="indent20"> - I dream of her everywhere; - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - The sound of her voice is about me, - </p> - <p class="indent20"> - The spell of her presence there. - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - And whether my prayer be granted, - </p> - <p class="indent20"> - Or whether she pass me by, - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - The face of that gentle maiden - </p> - <p class="indent20"> - Will follow me till I die.” - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p> - Brand was standing by the piano, with the light of the tall lamp on his - face, and I saw that there was a wetness in his eyes before the song was - ended. - </p> - <p> - “It is queer to hear that in Lille,” he said. “It’s so long since I heard - a woman sing, and it’s like water to a parched soul.” - </p> - <p> - Eileen O’Connor played the last bars again and, as she played, talked - softly. - </p> - <p> - “To me, the face of that gentle maiden is a friend’s face. Alice de - Villers-Auxicourt, who died in prison.” - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - “And whether my prayer be granted, - </p> - <p class="indent20"> - Or whether she pass me by, - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - The face of that gentle maiden - </p> - <p class="indent20"> - Will follow me till I die.” - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p> - Brand turned over the songs, and suddenly I saw his face flush, and I knew - the reason. He had come to the German songs on which was written the name - of Franz von Kreuzenach. - </p> - <p> - He turned them over quickly, but Eileen pulled one out—it was a - Schubert song—and opened its leaves. - </p> - <p> - “That was the man who saved my life.” - </p> - <p> - She spoke without embarrassment, simply. - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” said Brand. “He suppressed the evidence.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, you know?” - </p> - <p> - I told her that we had heard part of the tale from the Reverend Mother, - but not all of it. Not the motive, nor what had really happened. - </p> - <p> - “But you guessed?” - </p> - <p> - “No,” I answered sturdily. - </p> - <p> - She laughed, but in a serious way. - </p> - <p> - “It is not a hard guess, unless I am older than I feel, and uglier than - the mirror tells me. He was in love with me.” - </p> - <p> - Brand and I looked absurdly embarrassed. Of course we <i>had</i> guessed, - but this open confession was startling, and there was something repulsive - in the idea to both of us who had come through the war-zone into Lille, - and had seen the hatred of the people for the German race, and the fate of - Pierre Nesle’s sister. - </p> - <p> - Eileen O’Connor told us that part of her story which the Reverend Mother - had left out. It explained the “miracle” that had saved this girl’s life, - though, as the Reverend Mother said, perhaps the grace of God was in it as - well. Who knows? - </p> - <p> - Franz von Kreuzenach was one of the intelligence officers whose - headquarters were in that courtyard. After service in the trenches with an - infantry battalion he had been stationed since 1915 at Lille until almost - the end. He had a lieutenant’s rank, but was Baron in private life, - belonging to an old family in Bonn. Not a Prussian, therefore, but a - Rhinelander, and without the Prussian arrogance of manner. Just before the - war he had been at Oxford—Brasenose College—and spoke English - perfectly, and loved England with a strange, deep, unconcealed sentiment. - </p> - <p> - “Loved England?——” exclaimed Brand at this part of Eileen’s - tale. - </p> - <p> - “Why not?” asked Eileen. “I’m Irish, but I love England, in spite of all - her faults and all my grievances! Who can help loving England that has - lived with her people?” - </p> - <p> - This Lieutenant von Kreuzenach was two months in Lille before he spoke a - word with Eileen. She passed him often in the courtyard and always he - saluted her with great deference. She fancied she noticed a kind of - wistfulness in his eyes, as though he would have liked to talk to her. He - had blue eyes, sad sometimes, she noticed, and a clean-cut face, rather - delicate and pale. - </p> - <p> - One day she dropped a pile of books in the yard all of a heap as he was - passing, and he said, “Allow me,” and helped to pick them up. One of the - books was “Puck of Pook’s Hill,” by Kipling, and he smiled as he turned - over a page or two. - </p> - <p> - “I love that book,” he said in perfect English. “There’s so much of the - spirit of old England in it. History, too. That’s fine about the Roman - wall, where the officers go pig-sticking.” - </p> - <p> - Eileen O’Connor asked him if he were half English—perhaps he had an - English mother?—but he shook his head and said he was wholly German—<i>echt - Deutsch</i>. - </p> - <p> - He hesitated for a moment as though he wanted to continue the - conversation, but then saluted and passed on. - </p> - <p> - It was a week or so later when they met again, and it was Eileen O’Connor - who said “Good-morning” and made a remark about the weather. - </p> - <p> - He stopped, and answered with a look of pleasure and boyish surprise. - </p> - <p> - “It’s jolly to hear you say ‘Good-morning’ in English. Takes me straight - back to Oxford before this atrocious war. Besides——” - </p> - <p> - Here he stopped and blushed. - </p> - <p> - “Besides what?” asked Eileen. - </p> - <p> - “Besides, it’s a long time since I talked to a lady. Among officers one - hears nothing but war-talk—the last battle, the next battle, - technical jargon, ‘shop,’ as the English say. It would be nice to talk - about something else—art, music, poetry, ideas.” - </p> - <p> - She chaffed him a little, irresistibly. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, but you Germans have the monopoly of all that! Art, music, poetry, - they are all absorbed into your <i>Kultur</i>—properly Germanised. - As for ideas—what is not in German philosophy is not an idea.” - </p> - <p> - He looked profoundly hurt, said Eileen, “Some Germans are very narrow, - very stupid, like some English perhaps. Not all of us believe that German - <i>Kultur</i> is the only knowledge in the world.” - </p> - <p> - “Anyhow,” said Eileen O’Connor, “I’m Irish, so we needn’t argue about the - difference between German and English philosophy.” He spoke as if quoting - from a text-book. - </p> - <p> - “The Irish are a very romantic race.” - </p> - <p> - That, of course, had to be denied by Eileen, who knew her Bernard Shaw. - </p> - <p> - “Don’t you believe it,” she said. “We’re a hard, logical, relentless - people, like all peasant folk of Celtic stock. It’s the English who are - romantic and sentimental, like the Germans.” - </p> - <p> - He was amazed at those words (so Eileen told us) and then laughed heartily - in his very boyish way. - </p> - <p> - “You are pleased to make fun of me. You are pulling my leg, as we said at - Oxford.” - </p> - <p> - So they took to talking for a few minutes in the courtyard when they met, - and Eileen noticed that they met more often than before. She suspected him - of arranging that, and it amused her. By that time she had a staunch - friend in the old Kommandant who believed her to be an enemy of England - and an Irish patriot. She was already playing the dangerous game under his - very nose, or at least within fifty yards of the blotting-pad over which - his nose used to be for many hours of the day in his office. - </p> - <p> - It was utterly necessary to keep him free from any suspicion. His - confidence was her greatest safeguard. It was therefore unwise to refuse - him (an honest, stupid old gentleman) when he asked whether now and again - he might bring one of his officers and enjoy an hour’s music in her rooms - after dinner. He had heard her singing, and it had gone straight to his - heart. There was one of his officers, Lieutenant Baron Franz von - Kreuzenach, who had a charming voice. They might have a little musical - recreation which would be most pleasant and refreshing. - </p> - <p> - “Bring your Baron,” said Eileen. “I shall not scandalise my neighbours - when the courtyard is closed.” - </p> - <p> - Her girl-friends were scandalised when they heard of these musical - evenings—two or three times a month—until she convinced them - that it was a service to France, and a life insurance for herself and - them. There were times when she had scruples. She was tricking both those - men who sat in her room for an hour or two now and then, so polite, so - stiffly courteous, so moved with sentiment when she sang old Irish songs - and Franz von Kreuzenach sang his German songs. She was a spy, in plain - and terrible language, and they were utterly duped. On more than one night - while they were there an escaped prisoner was in the cellar below, with a - German uniform and cypher message, and all directions for escape across - the lines. Though they seldom talked about the war, yet now and again by - casual remarks they revealed the intentions of the German army and its <i>moral</i>, - or lack of <i>moral</i>. With the old Kommandant she did not feel so - conscience-stricken. To her he was gentle and charming, but to others a - bully, and there was in his character the ruthlessness of the Prussian - officer on all matters of “duty,” and he hated England ferociously. - </p> - <p> - With Franz von Kreuzenach it was different. He was a humanitarian, and - sensitive to all cruelty in life. He hated, not the English, but the war - with real anguish, as she could see by many words he let fall from time to - time. - </p> - <p> - He was, she said, a poet, and could see across the frontiers of hatred to - all suffering humanity, and so revolted against the endless, futile - massacre and the spiritual degradation of civilised peoples. It was only - in a veiled way he could say these things in the presence of his superior - officer, but she understood. She understood another thing as time went on—nearly - eighteen months all told. She saw quite clearly, as all women must see in - such a case, that this young German was in love with her. - </p> - <p> - “He did not speak any word in that way,” said Eileen when she told us - this, frankly, in her straight manner of speech, “but in his eyes, in the - touch of his hand, in the tones of his voice, I knew that he loved me, and - I was very sorry.” - </p> - <p> - “It was a bit awkward,” said Brand, speaking with a strained attempt at - being casual. I could see that he was very much moved by that part of the - story, and that there was a conflict in his mind. - </p> - <p> - “It made me uneasy and embarrassed,” said Eileen. “I don’t like to be the - cause of any man’s suffering, and he was certainly suffering because of - me. It was a tragic thing for both of us when I was found out at last.” - </p> - <p> - “What happened?” asked Brand. - </p> - <p> - The thing that happened was simple—and horrible. When Eileen and her - companions were denounced by the sentry at the Citadel the case was - reported to the Kommandant of the Intelligence Office, who was in charge - of all anti-espionage business in Lille. He was enormously disturbed by - the suspicion directed against Eileen. It seemed to him incredible, at - first, that he could have been duped by her. After that, his anger was so - violent that he became incapable of any personal action. He ordered Franz - von Kreuzenach to arrest Eileen and search her rooms. “If she resist, - shoot her at once,” he thundered out. - </p> - <p> - It was at seven o’clock in the evening when Baron Franz von Kreuzenach - appeared at Eileen’s door with two soldiers. He was extremely pale and - agitated. - </p> - <p> - Eileen rose from her little table, where she was having an evening meal - of. soup and bread. She knew the moment had come which in imagination she - had seen a thousand times. - </p> - <p> - “Come in, Baron!” - </p> - <p> - She spoke with an attempt at cheerfulness, but had to hold to the back of - her chair to save herself from falling, and she felt her face become - white. - </p> - <p> - He stood for a moment in the room, silently, with the two soldiers behind - him, and when he spoke, it was in a low voice, in English. “It is my - painful duty to arrest you, Miss O’Connor.” - </p> - <p> - She pretended to be amazed, incredulous, but it was, as she knew, a feeble - mimicry. - </p> - <p> - “Arrest me? Why, that is—ridiculous! On what charge?” - </p> - <p> - Franz von Kreuzenach looked at her in a pitiful way. - </p> - <p> - “A terrible charge: Espionage and conspiracy against German martial law... - I would rather have died than do this—duty.” - </p> - <p> - Eileen told us that he spoke that word “duty” as only a German could—as - that law which for a German officer is above all human things, all kindly - relationships, all escape. She pitied him then more, she said, than she - was afraid for herself, and told him that she was sorry the duty had - fallen to him. He made only one other remark before he took her away from - her rooms. - </p> - <p> - “I pray God the evidence will be insufficient.” - </p> - <p> - There was a military car waiting outside the courtyard, and he opened the - door for her to get in and sat opposite to her. The two soldiers sat - together next to the driver, squeezed close—they were both stout men—with - their rifles between their knees. It was dark in the streets of Lille and - in the car. Eileen could only see the officer’s face vaguely and white. He - spoke again as they were driven quickly. - </p> - <p> - “I have to search your rooms to-night. Have you destroyed your papers?” - </p> - <p> - He seemed to have no doubt about her guilt, but she would not admit it. - </p> - <p> - “I have no papers of which I am afraid.” - </p> - <p> - “That is well,” said Franz von Kreuzenach. - </p> - <p> - He told her that the Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt and Marcelle Barbier had - been arrested also, and that news was like a death-blow to the girl. It - showed that their conspiracy had been revealed, and she was stricken at - the thought of the fate awaiting her friends, those young delicate girls, - who had been so brave in taking risks. - </p> - <p> - Towards the end of the journey, which was not far, Franz von Kreuzenach - began speaking in a low, emotional voice. - </p> - <p> - Whatever happened, he said, he prayed that she might think of him with - friendship, not blaming him for that arrest, which was in obedience to - orders. He would ever be grateful to her for her kindness, and the songs - she had sung. They had been happy evenings to him when he could see her - and listen to her voice. He looked forward to them in a hungry way, - because of his loneliness. - </p> - <p> - “He said—other things,” added Eileen, and she did not tell us, - though dimly we guessed at the words of that German officer who loved her. - At the gate of the prison he delivered her to a group of military police, - and then saluted as he swung round on his heel. - </p> - <p> - The next time she saw him was at her trial. Once only their eyes met, and - he became deadly pale and bent his head. During her cross-examination of - him he did not look at her, and his embarrassment, his agony—she - could see that he was suffering—made an unfavourable impression on - the court, who thought he was not sure of his evidence and was making - blundering answers when she challenged him. She held him up to ridicule, - but all the time was sorry for him, and grateful to him, because she knew - how much evidence against her he had concealed. - </p> - <p> - “He behaved strangely about that evidence,” said Eileen. “What puzzles me - still is why he produced so much and yet kept back the rest. You see, he - put in the papers he had found in the secret passage, and they were enough - to have me shot, yet he hushed up the fact about the passage, which, of - course, was utterly damning. It looked as though he wanted to give me a - sporting chance. But that was not his character, because he was a simple - young man. He could have destroyed the papers as easily as he kept back - the fact about the underground passage, but he produced them, and I - escaped only by the skin of my teeth. Read me that riddle, Wickham Brand!” - </p> - <p> - “It’s easy,” said Brand. “The fellow was pulled two ways. By duty and—sentiment.” - </p> - <p> - “Love,” said Eileen in her candid way. - </p> - <p> - “Love, if you like... It was a conflict. Probably his sense of duty (I - know these German officers!) was strong enough to make him hand up the - papers to his superior officers. He couldn’t bring himself to burn them—the - fool! Then the other emotion in him——” - </p> - <p> - “Give it a name,” said Eileen, smiling in her whimsical way. - </p> - <p> - “That damned love of his,” said Brand, “tugged at him intolerably, and - jabbed at his conscience. So he hid the news about the passage and thought - what a fine fellow he was. Mr. Facing-Both-Ways. Duty and love, both - sacrificed!... He’d have looked pretty sick if you’d been shot, and it - wasn’t to his credit that you weren’t.” - </p> - <p> - Eileen O’Connor was amused with Brand’s refusal to credit Franz von - Kreuzenach with any kindness. - </p> - <p> - “Admit,” she said, “that his suppression of evidence gave me my chance. If - all were told, I was lost.” - </p> - <p> - Brand admitted that. - </p> - <p> - “Admit also,” said Eileen, “that he behaved like a gentleman.” - </p> - <p> - Brand admitted it grudgingly. - </p> - <p> - “A German gentleman.” - </p> - <p> - Then he realised his meanness, and made amends. - </p> - <p> - “That’s unfair! He behaved like a good fellow. Probably took big risks. - Every one who knows what happened must be grateful to him. If I meet him - I’ll thank him.” - </p> - <p> - Eileen O’Connor held Brand to that promise, and asked him for a favour - which made him hesitate. - </p> - <p> - “When you go on to the Rhine will you take him a letter from me?” - </p> - <p> - “It’s against the rules,” said Brand rather stiffly. - </p> - <p> - Eileen pooh-poohed those rules, and said Franz von Kreuzenach had broken - his for her sake. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll take it,” said Brand. - </p> - <p> - That night when we left Eileen O’Connor’s rooms the Armistice was still - being celebrated by British soldiers. Verey lights were rising above the - houses, fired off by young officers as symbols of their own soaring - spirits. Shadows lurched against us in the dark streets as officers and - men went singing to their billets. Some girls of Lille had linked arms - with British Tommies and were dancing in the darkness with screams of - mirth. In one of the doorways a soldier with his steel hat at the back of - his head and his rifle lying at his feet kept shouting one word in a - drunken way: “Peace!... Peace!” - </p> - <p> - Brand had his arm through mine, and when we came to his headquarters he - would not let me go. - </p> - <p> - “Armistice night!” he said. “Don’t let’s sleep just yet. Let’s hug the - thought over a glass of whisky. The war is over!... No more blood!... No - more of its tragedy!” - </p> - <p> - Yet we had got no farther than the hall before we knew that tragedy had - not ended with the Armistice. - </p> - <p> - Colonel Lavington met us and spoke to Brand. - </p> - <p> - “A bad thing has happened. Young Clatworthy has shot himself... upstairs - in his room.” - </p> - <p> - “No!” - </p> - <p> - Brand started back as if he had been hit. He had been fond of Clatworthy, - as he was of all boys, and they had been together for many months. It was - to Brand that Clatworthy wrote his last strange note, and the colonel gave - it to him then in the hall. - </p> - <p> - I saw it afterwards, written in a big scrawl—a few lines which now I - copy out:— - </p> - <p> - “<i>Dear old Brand,—It’s the end of the adventure. Somehow I funk - Peace. I don’t see how I can go back to Wimbledon as if nothing had - happened to me. None of us are the same as when we left, and I’m quite - different. I’m going over to the pals on the other side. They will - understand. Cheerio!</i> - </p> - <p> - “<i>Cyril Clatworthy</i>.” - </p> - <p> - “I was playing my flute when I heard the shot,” said the colonel. - </p> - <p> - Brand put the letter in his pocket and made only one comment. - </p> - <p> - “Another victim of the war-devil.... Poor kid!” - </p> - <p> - Presently he went up to young Clatworthy’s room, and stayed there a long - time. - </p> - <p> - A few days later we began to move on towards the Rhine by slow stages, - giving the German Army time to get back. In Brand’s pocket-book was the - letter to Franz von Kreuzenach from Eileen O’Connor. - </p> - <h3> - END OF BOOK I. - </h3> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - BOOK II—THROUGH HOSTILE GATES - </h2> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - I - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he advance of the - Allied Armies towards the Rhine was by definite, slow stages, enabling the - German Army to withdraw in advance of us with as much material of war as - was left to them by the conditions of the Armistice. On that retreat of - theirs they abandoned so much that it was clearly impossible for them to - resist our demands by fighting again, however hard might be the peace - terms. Their acceptance of the Armistice drawn up by Marshal Foch with a - relentless severity in every clause, so that the whole document was a - sentence of death to the German military system, proved that they had no - more “fight” in them. It was the most abject and humiliating surrender - ever made by a great nation in the hour of defeat, and an acknowledgment - before the whole world that their armies had broken to bits, in - organisation and in spirit. - </p> - <p> - On the roads for hundreds of kilometres out from Mons and Le Cateau, past - Brussels and Liège and Namur, was the visible proof of the disintegration - and downfall of what had been the greatest military machine in the world. - Mile after mile and score after score of miles, on each side of the long - straight roads, down which, four years before, the first German Armies had - marched in endless columns after the first brief check at Liège, with - absolute faith in victory, there lay now abandoned guns, trench mortars, - aeroplanes, motor lorries, motor cars and transport wagons. Those - monstrous guns which had pounded so much of our young flesh to pulp, year - after year, were now tossed into the ditches, or overturned in the wayside - fields, with broken breech-blocks or without their sights. - </p> - <p> - It was good to see them there. Field-guns, upturned, thrust their muzzles - into the mud, and Belgian peasant-, boys made cock-shies of them. I liked - to see them at that game. Here also was the spectacle of a war machine - which had worn out until, like the “one-hoss shay,” it had fallen to - pieces. Those motor lorries, motor cars, and transport wagons were in the - last stage of decrepitude, their axles and spokes all rusty, their - woodwork cracked, their wheels tied round with bits of iron in the place - of tyres. Everywhere were dead horses worn to skin and bones before they - had fallen. For lack of food and fats and rubber and labour the German - material of war was in a sorry state before the failure of their man-power - in the fighting fields after those years of massacre brought home to them - the awful fact that they had no more strength to resist our onslaughts. - </p> - <p> - One of those who pointed the moral of all this was the little American - doctor, Edward Small, and he found an immense satisfaction in the sight of - those derelict wrecks of the German war-devils. He and I travelled - together for some time, meeting Brand, Harding, and other friends, in - towns like Liège and Namur. I remember him now, standing by a German - howitzer—a colossus—sprawling out of a ditch. He chuckled in a - goblin way, with his little grey beard thrust up by a muffler which he had - tied over his field-cap and under his chin. (It was cold, with a white - mist which clung damply to our faces.) He went so far in his pleasure as - to pick up a big stone (like those Belgian boys) and heave it at the - monster. - </p> - <p> - “Fine!” he said. “That devil will never again vomit out death upon men - crouching low in ditches—fifteen miles away. Never again will it - smash through the roofs of farmhouses where people desired to live in - peace, or bash big holes in little old churches where folk worshipped - through the centuries—a loving God!... Sonny, this damned thing is - symbolical. Its overthrow means the downfall of all the machinery of - slaughter which has been accumulated by civilised peoples afraid of each - other. In a little while, if there’s any sense in humanity after this - fearful lesson, we shall put all our guns on to the scrap-heap and start a - new era of reasonable intercourse between the peoples of the world.” - </p> - <p> - “Doctor,” I answered, “there’s a mighty big ‘If’ in that long sentence of - yours.” - </p> - <p> - He blinked at me with beads of mist on his lashes. - </p> - <p> - “Don’t you go wet-blanketing my faith in a step-up for the human race! - During the next few months we’re going to re-arrange life. We are going to - give Fear the knock-out blow.... It was Fear that was the cause of all - this horrible insanity and all this need of sacrifice. Germany was afraid - of being ‘hemmed in’ by England, France and Russia. Fear, more than the - lust of power, was at the back of her big armies. France was afraid of - Germany trampling over her frontiers again. Russian Czardom was afraid of - revolution within her own borders and looked to war as a safety-valve. - England was afraid of the German Navy and afraid of Germans at Calais and - Dunkirk. All the little Powers were afraid of the big Powers and made - their beastly little alliances as a life insurance against the time when - they would be dragged into the dog-fight. Now, with the German bogey - killed—the most formidable and frightful bogey—Austria - disintegrated, Russia groping her way with bloodshot eyes to a new - democracy, a complete set of fears has been removed. The spirits of the - peoples will be uplifted, the darkness of fear having passed from them. We - are coming out into the broad sunlight of sanity, and mankind will march - to better conquests than those of conscript armies. Thank God, the United - States of America (and don’t you forget it!) will play a part in this - advance to another New World.” - </p> - <p> - It was absurd to argue with the little man in a sodden field on the road - to Liège. Besides, though I saw weak links in his chain of reasoning, I - did not want to argue. - </p> - <p> - I wanted to believe also that our victory would not be a mere vulgar - triumph of the old kind, one military power rising upon the ruins of its - rival, one great yell (or many) of “Yah—we told you so!” but that it - would be a victory for all humanity, shamed by the degradation of its orgy - of blood, in spite of all pride in long-enduring manhood, and that the - peoples of the world, with one common, enormous, generous instinct, would - cry out, “The horror has passed! Never again shall it come upon us.... Let - us pay back to the dead by contriving a better way of life for those who - follow!” The chance of that lay with living youth, if they would not allow - themselves to be betrayed by their old men. That also was a mighty “If,” - but I clung to the hope with as passionate a faith as that of the little - American doctor.... - </p> - <p> - The way to the Rhine lay through many cities liberated from hostile rule, - through many wonderful scenes in which, emotion surged like a white flame - above great crowds. There was a pageantry of life which I had never before - seen in war or in peace, and those of us who went that way became dazed by - the endless riot of colour, and our ears were tired by a tumult of joyous - sound. In Brussels, Bruges, Ghent, Liège, Namur, Venders, banners waved - above every house. Flags—flags—flags of many nations and - designs, decorated the house-fronts, were draped on the balconies, were - entwined in the windows, came like flames above the heads of marching - crowds. Everywhere there was the sound of singing by multitudes, and - through those weeks one song was always in the air, triumphant, exultant, - intoxicating, almost maddening in its effect upon crowds and individuals—the - old song of liberty and revolt: “La Marseillaise.” With it, not so - universal, but haunting in constant refrain between the outbursts of that - other tune, they sang “La Brabançonne” of Belgium and quaint old - folk-songs that came to life again with the spirit of the people. Bells - pealed from churches in which the Germans had left them by special favour. - The belfry of Bruges had not lost its carillon. In Ghent, when the King of - the Belgians rode in along flower-strewn ways, under banners that made one - great canopy, while cheers swept up and around him to his grave, tanned, - melancholy face, unchanged by victory—so I had seen him in his - ruined towns among his dead—I heard the great boom of the cathedral - bell. In Brussels, when he rode in later, there were many bells ringing - and clashing, and wild cheering, which to me, lying in an upper room after - a smash on the Field of Waterloo, seemed uncanny and inhuman, like the - murmur of innumerable ghost-voices. Into these towns, and along the roads - through Belgium to the Meuse, bands were playing and soldiers singing, and - on each man’s rifle was a flag or a flower. In every city there was - carnival. It was the carnival of human joy after long fasting from the - pleasure of life. Soldiers and civilians, men and women, sang together, - linked arms, danced together through many streets, in many towns. In the - darkness of those nights of Armistice one saw the eyes of people - sparkling, laughing, burning; the eyes of girls lit up by inner fires, - eager, roving, alluring, untamed; and the eyes of soldiers, surprised, - amused, adventurous, drunken, ready for any kind of fun; and sometimes in - those crowds, dead eyes, or tortured eyes, staring inwards and not - outwards, because of some remembrance which came like a ghost between them - and carnival. - </p> - <p> - In Ghent there were other sounds besides music and laughter, and - illuminations too fierce and ruddy in their glow to give me pleasure. At - night I heard the screams of women. I had no need to ask the meaning of - them. I had heard such screams before, when Pierre Nesle’s sister Marthe - was in the hands of the mob. But one man told me, as though I did not - know. - </p> - <p> - “They are cutting off some ladies’ hair. Six of them—the hussies! - They were too friendly with the Germans, you understand? Now they are - being stripped, for shame. There are others, monsieur. Many, many, if one - only knew. Hark at their howling!” - </p> - <p> - He laughed heartily, without any touch of pity. I tried to push my way - nearer to try by some word of protest to stop that merry sport with hunted - women. The crowds were too dense, the women too far away. In any case no - word of mine would have had effect. I went into a restaurant and ordered - dinner, though not hungry. Brand was there, sitting alone till I joined - him. The place was filled with French and Belgian officers and womenfolk. - The swing-door opened and another woman came in and sat a few tables away - from ours. She was a tall girl, rather handsome, and better dressed than - the ordinary <i>bourgeoisie</i> of Ghent. At least, so it seemed to me - when she hung up some heavy furs on the peg above her chair. - </p> - <p> - A waiter advanced towards her, and then, standing stock-still, began to - shout, with a thrill of fury in his voice. He shouted frightful words in - French, and one sentence which I remember now. - </p> - <p> - “A week ago you sat here with a German officer!” - </p> - <p> - The Belgian officers were listening gravely. One of them half-rose from - his chair with a flushed, wolfish face. I was staring at the girl. She was - white to the lips, and held on to a brass rail as though about to faint. - Then, controlling herself instantly, she fumbled at the peg, pulled down - her furs and fled through the swing-door... She was another Marthe. - </p> - <p> - Somebody laughed in the restaurant, but only one voice. For a moment there - was silence, then conversation was resumed, as though no figure of tragedy - had passed. The waiter who had denounced the woman swept some crumbs off a - table and went to fetch some soup. - </p> - <p> - Brand did not touch his food. - </p> - <p> - “I feel sick,” he said. - </p> - <p> - He pushed his plate away and paid the bill. - </p> - <p> - “Let’s go.” - </p> - <p> - He forgot to ask whether I wanted to eat—he was absent-minded in - that way—but I felt like him, and avoiding the Grande Place we - walked by hazard to a part of the city where some fires were burning. The - sky was reddened and we smelt smoke, and presently felt the heat of - flames. - </p> - <p> - “What new devilry?” asked Brand. “Can’t these people enjoy peace? Hasn’t - there been enough violence?” - </p> - <p> - “Possibly a bonfire,” I said, “symbolical of joy and warmth after cold - years!” - </p> - <p> - Coming closer, I saw that Brand was right. Black figures like dancing - devils were in the ruddy glare of a savage fire up a side street of Ghent. - In other streets were other fires. Close to where we stood was an old inn, - called the Hotel de la Demie-Lune—the Hotel of the Half-Moon—and - its windows had been heaved out, and inside the rooms Belgian soldiers and - citizens were flinging out tables and chairs and planks and wainscoting to - feed the bonfire below, and every time the flames licked up to the new - fuel there were shouts of joy from the crowd. - </p> - <p> - “What does it mean?” asked Brand, and a man in the crowd told us that the - house had been used as the headquarters of a German organisation for - “Flemish Activists”—or Flamagands, as they were called—whose - object was to divide the Walloons, or French-speaking Belgians, from the - Flemings, in the interests of Germany. - </p> - <p> - “It is the people’s revenge for those who have tried to sow seeds of - hatred among-them,” said the man. - </p> - <p> - Other people standing by spoke disapprovingly of the scene. - </p> - <p> - “The Germans have made too many fires in this war,” said an elderly man in - a black hat with a high crown and broad brim, like a portrait by Franz - Hals. “We don’t want to destroy our own houses now the enemy has gone. - That is madness.” - </p> - <p> - “It seems unnecessary!” said Brand. - </p> - <p> - As we made our way back we saw the light of other fires, and heard the - noise of smashing glass and a splintering of woodwork. The mob was sacking - shops which had traded notoriously with the Germans. Out of one alley a - man came running like a hunted animal. We heard his breath panting as he - passed. A shout of “Flamagand! Flamagand!” followed him, and in another - second a mob had caught him. We heard his death-cry before they killed him - like a rat. - </p> - <p> - Never before in the history of the world had such crowds gathered together - as now in Brussels, Ghent or Liège. French and English soldiers walked the - same streets, khaki and sky-blue mingling. These two races had met before, - not as friends, in some of these towns—five centuries and more - before in history. But here also were men from Canada, Australia, New - Zealand, South Africa, and the new world which had come to the old world - on this adventure, paying back something to the old blood and the old - ghosts because of their heritage, yet strangely aloof on the whole from - these continental peoples, not understanding them, despising them. - </p> - <p> - The English soldier took it all as it came, with that queer adaptability - of his to any environment or any adventure, with his simple human touch. - </p> - <p> - “Better than the old Ypres salient,” said one of them, grinning at me - after a game of kiss-in-the-ring at Venders. He wiped the sweat from his - face and neck, and as he raised his arm I saw by his gold stripes that he - had been three times wounded. Yes, that was better than the old hell. He - roared with laughter when one of his comrades went into the ring with a - buxom girl while the crowd danced round him, holding hands, singing, - laughing, pulling him this side and that. - </p> - <p> - The man who had just left the ring spoke to me again in a confidential - way. - </p> - <p> - “My wife wouldn’t like it if she’d seen me just then. I shan’t tell ‘er. - She wouldn’t understand. Nobody can understand the things we’ve done, the - things we’ve thought, nor the things we’ve seen, unless they’ve been - through with us... and we don’t understand, neither!” - </p> - <p> - “Who does?” I asked, to express agreement with him, but he took my words - as a question to be answered. - </p> - <p> - “P’raps Gord knows. If so, ‘E’s a clever One, ‘E is!... I wish I ‘ad ‘alf - ‘Is sense.” - </p> - <p> - He drifted away from me with a gurgle of laughter at a girl who pushed his - cap on one side. - </p> - <p> - Along the kerbstone of the market-place some transport wagons were halted, - and the drivers were cooking their evening meal over a charcoal stove, as - though on one of the roads of war, while a crowd of Belgians roared with - laughter at their by-play with clasp-knives, leaden spoons, and dixies. - One of them was a cockney humorist—his type was always to be found - in any group of English soldiers—and was performing a pantomime for - the edification of the onlookers and his own pleasure. - </p> - <p> - A woman standing on the edge of this scene touched me on the sleeve. - </p> - <p> - “Are you going forward to the Rhine, <i>mon lieutenant?</i>” - </p> - <p> - I told her “yes,” and that I should soon be among the Germans. - </p> - <p> - She gave a little tug to my sleeve, and spoke in a kind of coaxing - whisper. - </p> - <p> - “Be cruel to them, <i>mon lieutenant!</i> Be hard and ruthless. Make them - suffer as we have suffered. Tread on their necks so that they squeal. <i>Soyez - cruel.</i>” - </p> - <p> - Her face and part of her figure were in the glow from the charcoal fire of - the transport men, and I saw that she was a little woman, neatly dressed, - with a thin, gentle, rather worn-looking face. Those words, “<i>Soyez - cruel!</i>” gave me a moment’s shock, especially because of the soft, - wheedling tone of her voice. - </p> - <p> - “What would you do,” I asked in a laughing way, “if you were in my place?” - </p> - <p> - “I dream at nights of what I would like to do. There are so many things I - would like to do for vengeance. I think all German women should be killed - to stop them breeding. That is one thing.” - </p> - <p> - “And the next?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - “It would be well to kill all German babies. Perhaps the good God will do - it in His infinite wisdom.” - </p> - <p> - “You are religious, madame?” - </p> - <p> - “We had only our prayers,” she said, with piety. - </p> - <p> - A band of dancing people bore down upon us and swept us apart. From a high - balcony an Italian who had been a prisoner of war sang “La Marseillaise,” - and though these people’s ears had been dinned with it all day, though - their throats were hoarse with singing it, they listened to it now, again, - as though it were a new revelation. The man sang with passion in his - voice, as powerful as a trumpet, more thrilling than that. The passion of - four years’ agony in some foul prison-camp inspired him now, as he sang - that song of liberty and triumph. - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="indent20"> - “Allons, Enfants de la patrie! - </p> - <p class="indent20"> - Le jour de gloire est arrivé!” - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p> - The crowd took up the song again, and it roared across the square of - Venders until another kind of music met and clashed with it, and - overwhelmed it with brazen notes. It was the town band of Venders, - composed of twenty-five citizens, mostly middle-aged and portly—some - old and scraggy, in long frock-coats and tall pot-hats. Solemnly, with - puffed cheeks, they marched along, parting the waves of people as they - went, as it seemed, by the power of their blasts. They were playing an old - tune called “Madelon”—its refrain comes back to me now with the - picture of that carnival in Venders, with all those faces, all that human - pressure and emotion—and behind them, as though following the Pied - Piper (twenty-five pied pipers!) came dancing at least a thousand people, - eight abreast, with linked arms or linked hands. They were young Belgian - boys and girls, old Belgian men and women, children, British soldiers, - American soldiers, English, Scottish, Irish, Canadian, Australian, - Russian, and Italian ex-prisoners of war just liberated from their - prison-camps, new to liberty. They were all singing that old song of - “Madelon,” and all dancing in a kind of jig. Other crowds, dancing and - singing, came out of side-streets into the wide Grande Place, mingled, - like human waves meeting, swirled in wild, laughing eddies. Carnival after - the long fasting. - </p> - <p> - Brand clutched me by the arm and laughed in his deep, hollow voice. - </p> - <p> - “Look at that old satyr!... I believe Daddy Small is Pan himself!” - </p> - <p> - It was the little American doctor. He was in the centre of a row of eight - in the vanguard of a dancing column. A girl of the <i>midinette</i> type—pretty, - impudent, wild-eyed, with a strand of fair hair blowing loose from her - little fur cap—was clinging to his arm on one side, while on the - other was a stout, middle-aged woman with a cheerful Flemish face and - mirth-filled eyes. Linked up with the others they jigged behind the town - band. Dr. Small’s little grey beard had a raffish look. His field cap was - tilted back from his bony forehead. His spectacles were askew. He had the - happy look of careless boyhood. He did not see us then, but later in the - evening detached himself from the stout Flemish lady, who kissed him on - both cheeks, and made his way to where Brand and I stood under the portico - of a hotel. - </p> - <p> - “Fie, doctor!” said Brand. “What would your old patients in New York say - to this Bacchanalian orgy?” - </p> - <p> - “Sonny,” said the doctor, “they wouldn’t believe it. It’s incredible!” - </p> - <p> - He wiped the perspiration from his brow, threaded his fingers through his - grey beard, and laughed in that shrill way which was his habit when - excited. - </p> - <p> - “My word, it was good fun! I became part of a people’s joy. I had their - sense of escape from frightful things. Youth came back to me. Their songs - danced in my blood. In spite of my goggles and my grey beard that buxom - lady adored me as though I were the young Adonis. The little girl clasped - my hand as though I were her younger brother. Time rolled back from the - world. Old age was touched with the divine elixir. In that crowd there is - the springtime of life, when Pan played on his pipes through pagan woods. - I wouldn’t have missed it for a million dollars!” - </p> - <p> - That night Brand and I and some others (Charles Fortune among them) were - billeted in a small hotel which had been a German headquarters a few days - before. There was a piano in the billiard room, and Fortune touched its - keys. Several notes were broken but he skipped them deftly and improvised - a musical caricature of “Daddy” Small dancing in the carnival. He, too, - had seen that astonishing vision, and it inspired him to grotesque - fantasies. In his imagination he brought a great general to Venders—“Blear-eyed - Bill, the Butcher of the Boche”—and gave him a <i>pas seul</i> in - the Grande Place, like an elephant gambolling in green fields and - trumpeting his joy. - </p> - <p> - Young Harding was moody, and confided to me that he did not like the idea - of crossing the German frontier and going to Cologne. - </p> - <p> - “There will be dirty work,” he said, “as sure as fate. The Huns will begin - sniping and then we shall have to start reprisals. Well, if they ask for - it I hope we shall give it them. Without mercy, after all they have done. - At the first sign of treachery I hope the machine-guns will begin to play. - Every time I see a Hun I shall feel like slitting his throat.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, you’ll get into a murderous state of mind,” I answered him. “We - shall see plenty, and live among them. I expect they will be tame enough.” - </p> - <p> - “Some poor devils of ours will be murdered in their beds,” said Harding. - “It makes my blood boil to think of it. I only hope we shan’t stand any - nonsense. I’d like to see Cologne Cathedral go up in flames. That would be - a consolation.” - </p> - <p> - Charles Fortune broke away from his musical fantasy of “Blear-eyed Bill” - and played a bar or two of the “Marseillaise” in ragtime. It was a - greeting to Pierre Nesle, who came into the room quietly in his <i>képi</i> - and heavy motor-coat, with a salute to the company. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Bon soir, petit Pierre!</i>” said Fortune, “<i>qu’il y a, done—quoi?—avec - ta figure si sombre, si mélancolique, d’une tristesse pitoyable</i>——” - </p> - <p> - Pierre Nesle inspired him to sing a little old French <i>chanson</i> of - Pierrot disconsolate. - </p> - <p> - Pierre had just motored down from Lille—a long journey—and was - blue with cold, as he said, warming his hands at the charcoal stove. He - laughed at Fortune’s jesting, begged a cigarette from Harding, apologised - for keeping on his “stink-coat” for a while until he had thawed out—and - I admired the boy’s pluck and self-control. It was the first time I had - seen him since he had gone to Lille to see his sister. I knew by the new - lines about his eyes and mouth, by a haggard, older look he had that he - had seen that sister of his—Marthe—and knew her tragedy. - </p> - <p> - It was to Brand’s room that he went after midnight, and from Brand, a day - later, I heard what had happened. He had begun by thanking Brand for that - rescue of his sister in Lille, in a most composed and courteous way. Then - suddenly that mask fell from him and he sat down heavily in a chair, put - his head down on his arms upon the table and wept like a child in - uncontrollable grief. Brand was immensely distressed and could not think - of any word to comfort him. He kept saying, “Courage! Courage!” as I had - said to Madame Chéri when she broke down about her boy Edouard, as the - young Baronne had sent word to Eileen from her prison death-bed, and as so - many men and women had said to others who had been stricken by the - cruelties of war. - </p> - <p> - “The boy was down and out,” said Brand. “What could I say? It is one of - those miseries for which there is no cure. He began to talk about his - sister when they had been together at home, in Paris before the war. She - had been so gay, so comradely, so full of adventure. Then he began to - curse God for having allowed so much cruelty and men for being such - devils. He cursed the Germans, but then, in most frightful language, most - bitterly of all he cursed the people of Lille for having tortured a woman - who had been starved into weakness, and had sinned to save her life. He - contradicted himself then, violently, and said, ‘It was no sin. My sister - was a loyal girl to France. In her soul she was loyal. So she swore to me - on her crucifix. I would have killed her if she had been disloyal.’... So - there you are! Pierre Nesle is broken on the wheel of war, like so many - others. What’s the cure?” - </p> - <p> - “None,” I said, “for his generation. One can’t undo the things that are - done.” - </p> - <p> - Brand was pacing up and down his bedroom, where he had been telling me - these things, and now, at my words, he stopped and stared at me before - answering. - </p> - <p> - “No. I think you’re right. This generation has been hard hit, and we shall - go about with unhealed wounds. But the next generation?... Let’s try to - save it from all this horror! If the world will only understand——” - </p> - <p> - The next day we left Venders and crossed the German frontier on the way to - the Rhine. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - II - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>rand and I, who - were inseparable now, and young Harding, who had joined us, crossed the - Belgian frontier with our leading troop of cavalry—the Dragoon - Guards—and entered Germany on the morning of December 4th. For three - days our advanced cavalry outposts had been halted on the frontier line - beyond Venders and Spa. The scenery had become German already—hill-country, - with roads winding through fir forests above deep ravines, where red - undergrowth glowed like fire through the rich green of fir-trees, and - where, on the hillsides and in the valleys, were wooden <i>châlets</i> and - villas with pointed turrets like those in the Black Forest. - </p> - <p> - We halted this side of a little stone bridge over the stream which divides - the two countries. A picket of Dragoons was holding the bridge with double - sentries, under orders to let no man pass until the signal was given to - advance. - </p> - <p> - “What’s the name of this place?” asked Brand of a young cavalry officer - smoking a cigarette and clapping his hands to keep warm. - </p> - <p> - “Rothwasser, sir,” said that child, removing the cigarette from his lips. - He pointed to a small house on rising ground beyond, a white building with - a slate roof, and said: “That’s the first house in Germany. I don’t - suppose they’ll invite us to breakfast.” - </p> - <p> - Brand and I leaned over the stone bridge, watching and listening to the - swirl of tawny water over big grey stones. - </p> - <p> - “The Red Water,” said Brand. “Not a bad name when one thinks of the rivers - of blood that have flowed between our armies and this place. It’s been a - long journey to this little bridge.” - </p> - <p> - We stared across the brook and were enormously stirred (I was, at least) - by the historic meaning of this scene. Over there, a few yards away, was - Germany, the fringe of what had been until some weeks ago the mighty - German Empire. Not a human being appeared on that side of the stone - bridge. There was no German sentry facing ours. The gate into Germany was - open and unguarded. A deep silence was over there by the pine-woods where - the undergrowth was red. I wondered what would happen when we rode through - that silence and that loneliness into the first German town—Malmédy—and - afterwards through many German towns and villages on the way to the - Rhine.... - </p> - <p> - Looking back on that adventure, I remember our psychological sensations, - our surprise at the things which happened and failed to happen, the change - of mind which gradually dawned upon some of our officers, the incredulity, - resentment, suspicion, amazement, which overcame many of them because of - the attitude of the German people whom they met for the first time face to - face without arms in their hands. I have already said that many of our - officers had a secret dread of this advance into German territory, not - because they were afraid of danger to their own skins, but because they - had a greater fear of being called upon to do “dirty work” in the event of - civilians sniping and any sign of the <i>franc-tireur</i>. They had been - warned by the High Command that that might happen, and that there must be - a ruthless punishment of any such crimes. - </p> - <p> - “Our turn for atrocities!” whispered young cavalry officers, remembering - Louvain and Alost, and they hated the idea. We were in the state of mind - which led to some of the black business in Belgium when the Germans first - advanced—nervous, ready to believe any rumour of treacherous attack, - more afraid of civilian hostility than of armed troops. A single shot - fired by some drunken fool in a German village, a single man of ours - killed in a brawl, or murdered by a German out for vengeance, might lead - to most bloody tragedy. Rumour was already whispering of ghastly things. - </p> - <p> - I remember on the first day of our advance meeting a young officer of ours - in charge of an armoured car which had broken down across the frontier, - outside a village. - </p> - <p> - “I’d give a million pounds to get out of this job,” he said gloomily. - </p> - <p> - “What’s the matter?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - He told me that the game was already beginning, and swore frightful oaths. - </p> - <p> - “What game?” - </p> - <p> - “Murder,” he answered sharply. “Don’t you get the news? Two of our fellows - have been killed in that village. Sniped from the windows. Presently I - shall be told to sweep the streets with machine-guns. Jolly work, what?” - </p> - <p> - He was utterly wrong, though where he heard the lie which made him - miserable I never knew. I walked into the village and found it peaceful. - No men of ours had been killed there. No men of ours had yet entered it. - </p> - <p> - The boy who was to go forward with the leading cavalry patrol across the - Rothwasser that morning had “the needle” to the same degree. He leaned - sideways in his saddle and confided his fears to me with laughter which - did not conceal his apprehensions. - </p> - <p> - “Hope there’s no trouble.... Haven’t the ghost of| an idea what to do if - the Hun turns nasty. I don’t know a word of their beastly language either! - If I’m the boy who takes the wrong turning, don’t be too hard on me!” - </p> - <p> - It was a Sunday morning, with a cold white fog on the hill-tops, and white - frost on fir-trees and red bracken. Our cavalry and horse artillery, with - their transport drawn up on the Belgian side of the frontier before the - bugle sounded for the forward march, were standing by their horses, - clapping hands, beating chests, stamping feet. The men wore their steel - hats as though for an advance in the usual conditions of warfare, and the - troopers of the leading patrol rode forward with drawn swords. They rode - at the trot through pine forests along the edge of deep ravines in which - innumerable “Christmas-trees” were powdered with glistening frost. There - was the beat of horses’ hoofs on frozen roads, but the countryside was - intensely silent. The farmhouses we passed and cottages under the shelter - of the woods seemed abandoned. No flags hung out from them like those - millions of flags which had fluttered along all the miles of our way - through Belgium. Now and again, looking back at a farmhouse window, I saw - a face there, staring out, but it was quickly withdrawn. A dog came out - and barked at us savagely. - </p> - <p> - “First sign of hostility!” said the cavalry lieutenant, turning round in - his saddle and laughing boyishly. The troopers behind him grinned under - their steel hats and then looked stem again, glancing sideways into the - glades of those silent fir-woods. - </p> - <p> - “It would be easy to snipe us from those woods,” said Harding. “Too damned - easy!” - </p> - <p> - “And quite senseless,” said Brand. “What good would it do them?” - </p> - <p> - Harding was prepared to answer the question. He had been thinking it out. - </p> - <p> - “The Hun never did have any sense. He’s not likely to get it now. Nothing - will ever change him. He is a bad, treacherous, evil swine. We must be - prepared for the worst, and if it comes——” - </p> - <p> - “What?” asked Brand. - </p> - <p> - Harding had a grim look, and his mouth was hard. - </p> - <p> - “We must act without mercy, as they did in Louvain.” - </p> - <p> - “Wholesale murder, you mean?” said Brand harshly. - </p> - <p> - “A free hand for machine-guns,” said Harding, “if they ask for it.” - </p> - <p> - Brand gave his usual groan. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Lord!... Haven’t we finished with blood?” - </p> - <p> - We dipped down towards Malmédy. There was a hairpin turn in the road and - we could see the town below us in the valley—a German town. - </p> - <p> - “Pretty good map-reading!” shouted the cavalry kid. He was pleased with - himself for having led his troop on the right road, but I guessed that he - would be glad to halt this side of the mystery that lay in that town where - Sunday bells were ringing. - </p> - <p> - A queer thing happened then. Up a steep bank was a party of girls. German - girls, of course, and the first civilians we had seen. A flutter of white - handkerchiefs came from them. They were waving to us. - </p> - <p> - “Well, I’m damned!” said Harding. - </p> - <p> - “Not yet,” answered Brand ironically, but he was as much astonished as all - of us. - </p> - <p> - When we came into Malmédy the cavalry patrol halted in the market square - and dismounted. It was about midday and the German people were coming out - of church. Numbers of them surrounded us, staring at the horses, whose - sleek look seemed to amaze them, and at the men who lit up cigarettes and - loosened the straps of their steel hats. Some girls patted the necks of - the horses and said: “<i>Wundershon!</i>” - </p> - <p> - A young man in the crowd in black civilian clothes with a bowler hat spoke - in perfect English to the sergeant-major: “Your horses are looking fine! - Ours are skin and bones. When will the infantry be here?” - </p> - <p> - “Haven’t an idea,” said the sergeant-major gruffly. - </p> - <p> - Another young man addressed himself to me in French, which he spoke as - though it were his native tongue. - </p> - <p> - “Is this the first time you have been in Germany, monsieur?” - </p> - <p> - I told him I had visited Germany before the war. - </p> - <p> - “You will find us changed,” he said. “We have suffered very much, and the - spirit of the people is broken. You see, they have been hungry so long.” - </p> - <p> - I looked round at the crowd and saw some bonny-faced girls among them and - children who looked well-fed. It was only the younger men who had a - pinched look. - </p> - <p> - “The people here do not seem hungry,” I said. - </p> - <p> - He explained that the state of Malmédy was not so bad. It was only a - big-sized village and they could get produce from the farms about. All the - same, they were on short commons and were underfed. Never any meat. No - fats. “<i>Ersatz</i>” coffee. In the bigger towns there was real hunger, - or, at least, an <i>unternahrung</i> or malnutrition, which was causing - disease in all classes, and great mortality among the children. - </p> - <p> - “You speak French well,” I told him, and he said that many people in - Malmédy spoke French and German in a bi-lingual way. It was so close to - the Belgian frontier. - </p> - <p> - “That is why the people here had no heart in the war, even in the - beginning. My wife was a Belgian girl. When I was mobilised she said, ‘You - are going to kill my brothers,’ and wept very much. I think that killed - her. She died in ‘16.” - </p> - <p> - The young man spoke gravely but without any show of emotion. He narrated - his personal history in the war. He had been in the first and second - battles of Ypres, then badly wounded and put down at the base as a clerk - for nearly two years. After that, when German man-power was running short, - he had been pushed into the ranks again and had fought in Flanders, - Cambrai, and Valenciennes. Now he had demobilised himself. - </p> - <p> - “I am very glad the war is over, monsieur. It was a great stupidity from - the beginning. Now Germany is ruined.” - </p> - <p> - He spoke in a simple, matter-of-fact way, as though describing natural - disturbances of life, regrettable, but inevitable. - </p> - <p> - I asked him whether the people farther from the frontier would be hostile - to the English, troops, and he seemed surprised at my question. - </p> - <p> - “Hostile! Why, sir?.... The war is over, and we can now be friends again. - Besides, the respectable people and the middle classes”—he used the - French word <i>bourgeoisie</i>—“will be glad of your coming. It is a - protection against the evil elements who are destroying property and - behaving in a criminal way—the sailors of the fleet and the low - ruffians.” - </p> - <p> - <i>The war is over, and we can be friends again!</i> That sentence in the - young man’s speech astonished me by its directness and simplicity. Was - that the mental attitude of the German people? Did they think that England - would forget and shake hands? Did they not realise the passion of hatred - that had been aroused in England by the invasion of Belgium, the early - atrocities, the submarine war, the sinking of the <i>Lusitania</i>, the - execution of Nurse Çavell, the air-raids over London—all the range - and sweep of German frightfulness? - </p> - <p> - Then I looked at our troopers. Some of them were chatting with the Germans - in a friendly way. One of them close to me gave a cigarette to a boy in a - college cap who was talking to him in schoolboy English. Another was in - conversation with two German girls who were patting his horse. We had been - in the German village ten minutes. There was no sign of hatred here, on - one side or the other. Already something had happened which in England, if - they knew, would seem monstrous and incredible. A spell had been broken, - the spell which for four years had dominated the souls of men and women. - At least, it seemed to have been broken in the village where for the first - time English soldiers met the people of the nation they had fought and - beaten. These men of the first cavalry patrol did not seem to be - nourishing thoughts of hatred and vengeance. They were not, it seemed, - remembering atrocities. They were meeting fellow-mortals with human - friendliness, and seemed inclined to talk to them and pass the time of - day. Astounding! - </p> - <p> - I saw Wickham Brand talking to a group of German children—boys in - sailor caps with the words <i>Hindenburg, Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, - Unterseeboot</i>, printed in gold letters on the cap-bands, and girls with - yellow pigtails and coloured frocks. He pulled out a packet of chocolate - from a deep pocket of his British warm and broke it into small pieces. - </p> - <p> - “Who would like a bit?” he asked in German, and there was a chorus of “<i>Bitte!... - Bitte schön!</i>” He held out a piece to the prettiest child, a tiny - fairy-like thing with gold-spun hair, and she blushed very vividly and - curtseyed when she took the chocolate, and then kissed Brand’s long lean - hand. Young Harding was standing near. He had an utterly bewildered - expression, as a man who sees the groundwork of his faith slipping beneath - him. He turned to me as I strolled his way and looked at me with wide - astonished eyes. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t understand!” he stammered. “Haven’t these people any pride? This - show of friendliness—what does it mean? I’d rather they scowled and - showed their hatred than stand round fawning on us.... And our men! They - don’t seem to bear any malice. Look at that fellow gossiping with those - two girls! It’s shameful.... What have we been fighting for if it ends in - this sort of thing? It makes it all a farce!” - </p> - <p> - He was so disturbed, so unnerved, by the shock of his surprise that there - were tears of vexation in his eyes. - </p> - <p> - I could not argue with him or explain things to him. - </p> - <p> - I was astonished myself, quite baffled by a German friendliness that was - certainly sincere and not a mask hiding either hatred or humiliation. - Those people of Malmédy were pleased to see us. As yet I could not get the - drift of their psychology, in spite of what the young French-speaking - German had told me. I gave Harding the benefit of that talk. - </p> - <p> - “This is a frontier town,” I said. “These people are not real Germans in - their sympathies and ideas.” - </p> - <p> - That seemed to comfort Harding a little. He clung on to the thought that - when we had got beyond the frontier we should meet the hatred he expected - to see. He wanted to meet it. He wanted to see scowling looks, deep - humiliation, a shameful recognition of defeat, the evil nature of the - people we had been fighting. Otherwise, to him, the war was all a lie. For - four years he had been inspired, strengthened, and upheld by hatred of the - Germans. He believed not only in every atrocity story that appeared in - English newspapers, but also, in accordance with all else he read, that - every German was essentially and unutterably vile, brutal, treacherous, - and evil. The German people were to him a race apart—the Huns. They - had nothing in common with ordinary human nature, with its kindliness and - weakness. They were physically, mentally, and morally debased. They were a - race of devils, and they could not be allowed to live. Civilisation could - only be saved by their extermination, or if that were impossible, by their - utter subjection. All the piled-up slaughter of British youth and French - youth was to him justified by the conviction that the last man of ours - must die if need be in order to crush Germany and kill Germans. It is true - that he had not died, nor even had been wounded, but that was his - ill-luck. He had been in the cavalry, and had not been given many chances - of fighting. Before the last phase, when the cavalry came into their own, - he had been transferred to the Intelligence (though he did not speak a - word of German) in order to organise their dispatch-rider service. He knew - nothing about dispatch-riding, but his cousin was the brother-in-law of a - general’s nephew, and he had been highly recommended for this appointment, - which had surprised and annoyed him. Still, as a young man who believed in - obedience to authority and in all old traditional systems such as - patronage and privilege, he had accepted the post without protest. It had - made no difference to his consuming hatred of the Hun. When all his - companions were pessimistic about final victory he had remained an - optimist, because of his faith that the Huns must be destroyed or God - would be betrayed. When some of his colleagues who had lived in Germany - before the war praised the German as a soldier and exonerated the German - people from part at least of the guilt of their war lords, he tried to - conceal his contempt for this folly (due to the mistaken generosity of the - English character) and repeated his own creed of abhorrence for their race - and character. “The only good German is a dead German,” he said, a - thousand times, to one’s arguments pleading extenuating circumstances for - German peasants, German women, German children.... But now in this village - of Malmédy on our first morning across the frontier, within three minutes - of our coming, English troopers were chatting with Germans as though - nothing had happened to create ill-feeling on either side. Brand was - giving chocolate to German children, and German girls were patting the - necks of English horses. - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” he said, after my attempted explanation. “We’re too close to the - frontier. These people are different. Wait till we get on a bit. I’m - convinced we shall have trouble, and at the slightest sign of it we shall - sweep the streets with machine-gun fire. I’ve got my own revolver handy, - and I mean to use it without mercy if there’s any treachery.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - III - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>arding had no need - to use his revolver on the way to the Rhine or in Cologne, where he stayed - for some months after Armistice. We went on with the cavalry into many - villages and small towns, by slow stages, the infantry following behind in - strength, with guns and transport. The girls outside Malmédy were not the - only ones who waved handkerchiefs at us. Now and then, it is true, there - were scowling looks from men who had obviously been German officers until - a few weeks ago. Sometimes in village inns the German inn-keeper would be - sullen and silent, leaving his wife or his maidservant to wait upon us. - But even that was rare. More often there was frank curiosity in the eyes - of the people who stared at us, and often unconcealed admiration at the - smart appearance of our troops. Often German inn-keepers welcomed our - officers with bows and smiles and prepared meat meals for us (in the - country districts), while explaining that meat was scarce and hardly - tasted by ordinary folk. Their wives and their maidservants praised God - that the war was over. - </p> - <p> - “It lasted too long!” they said. “Oh, the misery of it! It was madness to - slaughter each other like that!” - </p> - <p> - Brand and I went into a little shop to buy a toothbrush. - </p> - <p> - The woman behind the counter talked about the war. - </p> - <p> - “It was due to the wickedness of great people,” she said. “There are many - people who grew rich out of the war. They wanted it to go on and on so - that they could get more rich. They gorged themselves while the poor - starved. It was the poor who were robbed of their life-blood.” - </p> - <p> - She did not speak passionately, but with a dull kind of anger. - </p> - <p> - “My own life-blood was taken,”, she said presently, after wrapping up the - tooth-brush. “First they took Hans, my eldest. He was killed almost at - once—at Liège. Then they took my second-born, Friedrich. He was - killed at Ypres. Next, Wilhelm died—in hospital at Brussels. He had - both his legs blown off. Last they took little Karl, my youngest. He was - killed by an air-bomb, far behind the lines, near Valenciennes.” - </p> - <p> - A tear splashed on the bit of paper in which she had wrapped the - tooth-brush. She wiped it away with her apron. - </p> - <p> - “My man and I are now alone,” she said, handing us the packet. “We are too - old to have more children. We sit and talk of our sons who are dead, and - wonder why God did not stop the war.” - </p> - <p> - “It is sad,” said Brand. He could find nothing else to say. Not with this - woman could he argue about German guilt. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Ja, es ist traurig</i>.” - </p> - <p> - She took the money with a “<i>Danke schön</i>.” - </p> - <p> - In the town of Mürren I spent some time with Brand and others in. the - barracks where a number of trench-mortars and machine-guns were being - handed over by German officers according to the terms of the Armistice. - The officers were mostly young men, extremely polite, anxious to save us - any kind of trouble, marvellous in their concealment of any kind of - humiliation they may have felt—<i>must</i> have felt—in this - delivery of arms. They were confused only for one moment, and that was - when a boy with a wheelbarrow trundled by with a load of German swords—elaborate - parade swords with gold hilts. - </p> - <p> - One of them laughed and passed it off with a few words in English. - </p> - <p> - “There goes the old pomp and glory—-to the rubbish-heap!” - </p> - <p> - Brand made things easier by a tactful sentence. - </p> - <p> - “The world will be happier when we are all disarmed.” - </p> - <p> - A non-commissioned officer talked to me. He had been a hairdresser in - Bayswater and a machine-gunner in Flanders. He was a little fellow with a - queer cockney accent. - </p> - <p> - “Germany is <i>kaput</i>. We shall have a bad time in front of us. No - money. No trade. All the same, it will be better in the long run. No more - conscription; no more filthy war. We’re all looking to President Wilson - and his ‘Fourteen Points.’ There is the hope of the world. We can hope for - a good peace—fair all round. Of course we’ll have to pay, but we - shall get liberty, like in England.” - </p> - <p> - Was the man sincere? Were any of these people sincere? Or were they - crawling, fawning, hiding their hatred, ready for any treachery? I could - not make up my mind.... - </p> - <p> - We went into Cologne some days before our programme at the urgent request - of the <i>Burgermeister</i>. We were invited in! The German seamen of the - Grand Fleet had played the devil, as in all the towns they had passed - through. They had established a Soldiers’ and Workmen’s Council on the - Russian system, raised the Red Flag, liberated the criminals from the - prisons. Shops had been sacked, houses looted. The <i>Burgermeister</i> - desired British troops to ensure law and order. - </p> - <p> - There was no disorder visible when we entered Cologne. The revolutionaries - had disappeared. The streets were thronged with middle-class folk, among - whom were thousands of men who had taken off their uniforms a few days - before our coming, or had “civilised” themselves by tearing off their - shoulder-straps and badges. As our first squadron rode into the great - cathedral square on the way to the Hohenzollem Bridge many people in the - crowds turned their heads away and did not glance at the British cavalry. - We were deliberately ignored, and I thought that for the Germans it was - the best attitude, with most dignity. Others stared gravely at the passing - cavalcade, showing no excitement, no hostility, no friendliness, no - emotion of any kind. Here and there I met eyes which were regarding me - with a dark, brooding look, and others in which there was profound - melancholy. That night, when I wandered out alone and lost my way, and - asked for direction, two young men, obviously officers until a few days - back, walked part of the way to put me right and said “<i>Bitte schön! - Bitte!</i>” when I thanked them, and saluted with the utmost courtesy.... - I wondered what would have happened in London if we had been defeated and - if German officers had walked out alone at night and lost themselves in - by-streets and asked the way. Imagination fails before such a thought. - Certainly our civility would not have been so easy. We could not have - hidden our hatred like that, if these were hiding hatred. - </p> - <p> - Somehow, I could not find even the smouldering fires of hate in any German - with whom I spoke that day. I could find only a kind of dazed and - stupor-like recognition of defeat, a deep sadness among humble people, a - profound anxiety as to the future fate of a ruined Germany, and a hope in - the justice of England and America. - </p> - <p> - A score of us had luncheon at the Domhof Hotel, opposite the cathedral - which Harding had hoped to see in flames. The manager bowed us in as if we - had been distinguished visitors in time of peace. The head-waiter handed - us the menu and regretted that there was not much choice of food, though - they had scoured the country to provide for us. He and six other waiters - spoke good English, learnt in London, and seemed to have had no - interruption in their way of life, in spite of war. They were not rusty in - their art, but masters of its service according to tradition. Yet they had - all been in the fighting-ranks until the day of Armistice, and the - head-waiter, a man of forty, with hair growing grey and the look of one - who had spent years in a study rather than in front-line trenches after - table management, told me that he had been three times wounded in - Flanders, and in the last phase had been a machine-gunner in the rearguard - actions round Grevilliers and Bapaume. He revealed his mind to me between - the soup and the stew—strange talk from a German waiter. - </p> - <p> - “I used to ask myself a hundred thousand times, ‘Why am I here—in - this mud—fighting against the English whom I know and like? What - devil’s meaning is there in all this? What are the evil powers that have - forced us to this insane massacre?’ I thought I should go mad, and I - desired death.” - </p> - <p> - I did not argue with him, for the same reason that Brand and I did not - argue with the woman behind the counter who had lost four sons. I did not - say, “Your war lords were guilty of this war. The evil passion and - philosophy of you German people brought this upon the world—your - frightfulness.” I listened to a man who had been stricken by tragedy, who - had passed through its horrors and was now immensely sad. - </p> - <p> - At a small table next to us were the boy who had led the first cavalry - patrol and two fellow-officers. They were not eating their soup. They were - talking to the waiter, a young fellow who was making a map with knives and - spoons. - </p> - <p> - “This is the village of Fontaine Notre Dame,” he said. “I was just here - with my machine-gun when you attacked.” - </p> - <p> - “Extraordinary!” said one of the young cavalry officers. “I was here, at - the corner of this spoon, lying on my belly with my nose in the mud—scared - stiff.” - </p> - <p> - The German waiter and the three officers laughed together. Something had - happened which had taken away from them the desire to kill each other. Our - officers did not suspect there might be poison in their soup. The young - waiter was not nervous lest one of the knives he laid should be thrust - into his heart.... - </p> - <p> - Some nights later I met Wickham Brand in the Hohestrasse. He took me by - the arm and laughed in a strange, ironical way. - </p> - <p> - “What do you think of it all?” he asked. - </p> - <p> - I told him that if old men from St. James’s Street clubs in London, and - young women in the suburbs clamouring for the Kaiser’s head, could be - transported straight to Cologne without previous warning of the things - they would see, they would go raving mad. - </p> - <p> - Brand agreed. - </p> - <p> - “It knocks one edgewise—even those of us who understand.” - </p> - <p> - We stood on one side, by a shop window filled with beautiful - porcelain-ware, and watched the passing crowd. It was a crowd of German - middle-class, well dressed, apparently well fed. The girls wore heavy - furs. The men were in black coats and bowler hats, or in military - overcoats and felt hats. Among them, not aloof, but mingling with them, - laughing with them, were English and Canadian soldiers. Many of them were - arm-in-arm with German girls. Others were surrounded by groups of young - Germans who had been, unmistakably, soldiers until a few weeks earlier. - English-speaking Germans were acting as interpreters in the exchange of - experiences, gossip, opinions. The German girls needed no interpreters. - Their eyes spoke, and their laughter. - </p> - <p> - Brand and I went into an immense <i>café</i> called the “Germania,” so - densely crowded that we had to wander round to find a place, foggy with - tobacco-smoke through which electric light blazed, noisy with the music of - a loud, unceasing orchestra, which, as we entered, was playing selections - from “Patience.” Here also were many English and Canadian officers and - men, sitting at the same tables with Germans, who laughed and nodded at - them, clinked their mugs or wine-glasses with them, and raised bowler hats - to British Tommies when they left the tables with friendly greetings on - both sides. There was no orgy here, no impropriety. Some of the soldiers - were becoming slightly fuddled with Rhine wine, but not noisily. “Glad - eyes” were passing between them and German girls, or conversations made up - by winks and signs and oft-repeated words, but all quietly and - respectfully in outward behaviour. - </p> - <p> - Brand and I were wedged close to a table at which sat one of our - sergeant-majors, a corporal, a middle-aged German woman, and two German - girls. One of the girls spoke English remarkably well, and the - conversation of our two men was directed to her, and through her to the - others. Brand and I were eavesdroppers. - </p> - <p> - “Tell your ma,” said the sergeant-major, “that I shouldn’t have been so - keen to fight Germans if I had known they were such pleasant, decent - people, as far as I find ‘em at present, and I take people as I find ‘em.” - </p> - <p> - The girl translated to her mother and sister and then answered: “My mother - says the war was prepared by the rich people in Europe, who made the - people mad by lies.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah,” said the sergeant-major, “I shouldn’t wonder! I know some of them - swine. All the same, of course, you began it, you know.” - </p> - <p> - There was another translation, and the girl answered again: “My mother - says the Germans didn’t begin it. The Russians began it by moving their - armies. The Russians hated us and wanted war.” - </p> - <p> - The sergeant-major gave a snort of laughter. - </p> - <p> - “The Russians?... They soon tired of it, anyhow. Let us all down, eh?” - </p> - <p> - “What about atrocities?’’ said the corporal, who was a cockney. - </p> - <p> - “Atrocities?” said the English-speaking girl. “Oh, yes, there were many. - The Russians were very cruel.” - </p> - <p> - “Come oft it,” said the corporal. “I mean German atrocities.” - </p> - <p> - “German?” said the girl. “No, our soldiers were well behaved—always! - There were many lies told in the English papers.” * - </p> - <p> - “That’s true enough,” said the sergeant-major. “Lies? Why, they fed us up - with lies. ‘The Germans are starving. The Germans are on their last legs.’ - ‘The great victory at Neuve Chapelle.’ God! I was in that great victory. - The whole battalion cut to pieces and not an officer left. A bloody - shambles—and no sense in it.... Another drop of wine, my dear?” - </p> - <p> - “Seems to me,” said the cockney corporal, “that there was a deal of dirty - work on both sides. I’m not going to say there wasn’t no German atrocities—lies - or no lies—becos saw a few of ‘em myself, an’ no mistake. But what I - says now is what I says when I lay in the lousy trenches with - five-point-nines busting down the parapets. The old devil ‘as got us all - by the legs!’ I said, and ‘ad a fellow-feelin’ for the poor blighters on - the other side of the barbed wire lying in the same old mud. Now I’m - beginning to think the Germans are the same as us, no better nor no worse, - I reckon. Any ‘ow, you can tell your sister, miss, that I like the way she - does ‘er ‘air. It reminds me of my Liz.” - </p> - <p> - The English-speaking German girl did not understand this speech. She - appealed to the sergeant-major. - </p> - <p> - “What does your friend say?” - </p> - <p> - The sergeant-major roared with laughter.. - </p> - <p> - “My chum says that a pretty face cures a lot of ill-feeling. Your sister - is a sweet little thing, he says. <i>Comprenney?</i> Perhaps you had - better not translate that part to your ma. Have another drop of wine, my - dear.” - </p> - <p> - Presently the party rose from the table and went out, the sergeant-major - paying for the drinks in a lordly way and saying, “After you, ma’am,” to - the mother of the two girls. - </p> - <p> - “All this,” said Brand when they had gone, “is very instructive.... And - I’ve been making discoveries.” - </p> - <p> - “What kind?” - </p> - <p> - Brand looked away into the vista of the room, and his eyes roved about the - tables where other soldiers of ours sat with other Germans. - </p> - <p> - “I’ve found out,” he said, “that the British hatred of a nation breaks - down in the presence of its individuals. I’ve discovered that it is not in - the character of English fighting-men—Canadian, too, by the look of - it—to demand vengeance from the innocent for the sins of the guilty. - I’m seeing that human nature, ours anyhow, swings back to the normal as - soon as an abnormal strain is released. It is normal in human nature to be - friendly towards its kind, in spite of five years’ education in savagery.” - </p> - <p> - I doubted that, and told him so, remembering scenes in Ghent and Lille, - and that girl Marthe, and the woman of Venders. That shook Brand a little - from his new point of view, and he shifted his ground with the words: - “Perhaps I’m wrong there.” - </p> - <p> - ‘He told me of other “discoveries” of his, after conversation with many - German people, explaining perhaps the lack of hostility and humiliation - which had surprised us all. They were glad to see the English because they - were afraid of the French and Belgians, with their desire for vengeance. - They believed in English fair-play in spite of all the wild propaganda of - the war. Now that the Kaiser had fled and Germany was a Republic, they - believed that, in spite of defeat and great ruin, there would be a peace - which would give them a chance of recovery, and a new era of liberty, - according to the pledges of President Wilson and the terms of the - “Fourteen Points.” They believed they had been beaten by the hunger - blockade, and not by the failure of the German Armies in the field, and - they would not admit that as a people they were more guilty in the war - than any others of the fighting nations. - </p> - <p> - “It is a sense of guilt,” said Brand, “that must be brought home to them. - They must be convinced of that before they can get clean again and gain - the world’s forgiveness.” - </p> - <p> - He leaned over the table with his square face in the palms of his hands. - </p> - <p> - “God knows,” he said, “that there was evil on both sides. We have our - Junkerdom, too. The philosophy of our old men was not shining in its - Christian charity. We share the guilt of the war. Still, the Germans the - aggressors. They must acknowledge that.” - </p> - <p> - “The German war lords and militarists,” I suggested. “Not that woman who - lost her four sons, nor peasants dragged from their ploughs, ignorant of - <i>Welt-politik</i>.” - </p> - <p> - “It’s all a muddle,” said Brand. “I can’t sort it out. I’m full of - bewilderment and contradictions. Sometimes when I look at these Germans in - the streets, some of them so smug, I shudder and say, ‘These are the - people who killed my pals,’ and I’m filled with cold rage. But when they - tell me all they suffered, and their loathing of the war, I pity them and - say, ‘They were trapped, like we were, by false ideas, and false systems, - and the foul lies of politicians, and the dirtiness of old diplomacy, and - the philosophy of Europe leading up to that.” - </p> - <p> - Then he told me something which interested me more at the time than his - groping to find truth, because a touch of personal drama is always more - striking to the mind than general aspects and ideas. - </p> - <p> - “I’m billeted at the house of Franz von Kreuzenach. You remember?—Eileen’s - friend.” - </p> - <p> - I was astounded at that. - </p> - <p> - “What an amazing coincidence!” - </p> - <p> - “It was no coincidence,” he said. “I arranged it. I had that letter to - deliver, and I wanted to meet the fellow. As yet, however, I have only - seen his mother and sister. They are very civil.” - </p> - <p> - So did Wickham Brand “ask for trouble,” as soldiers say, and certainly he - found it before long. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - IV - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he first meeting - between Wickham Brand and young Franz von Kreuzenach had been rather - dramatic, according to my friend’s account of it, and he did not dramatise - his stories much, in spite of being (before the war) an unsuccessful - novelist. It had happened on the third night after his presentation of the - billeting-paper which by military right of occupation ordered the owners - of the house to provide a bedroom and sitting-room for an officer. There - had been no trouble about that. The <i>Madchen</i> who had answered the - door of the big white house in a side street off the Kaiserring had - dropped a curtsey, and in answer to Brand’s fluent and polite German said - at once, “<i>Kommmen Sie herein, bitte</i>,” and took him into a - drawing-room to the right of the hall, leaving him there while she went to - fetch “<i>die gnadige Baronin</i>,” that is to say, the Baroness von - Kreuzenach. Brand remained standing, and studied the German drawing-room - to read its character as a key to that of the family under whose roof he - was coming by right of conquest, for that, in plain words, was the meaning - of his presence. - </p> - <p> - It was a large square room, handsomely and heavily furnished in an - old-fashioned style, belonging perhaps to the Germany of Bismarck, but - with here and there in its adornment a lighter and more modern touch. On - one wall, in a gilt frame to which fat gilt cupids clung, was a large - portrait of William I. of Prussia, and on the wall opposite, in a similar - frame, a portrait of the ex-Kaiser William II. Brand saw also, with an - instant thrill of remembrance, two large steel engravings from - Winterhalter’s portraits of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He had seen - them, as a child, in his grandfather’s house at Kew, and in the houses of - schoolfellows’ grandfathers, who cherished these representations of - Victoria and Albert with almost religious loyalty. The large square of - Turkey carpet on polished boards, a mahogany sideboard, and some stiff big - armchairs of clumsily carved oak, were reminiscent of German furniture and - taste in the period of the mid-nineteenth century, when ours was equally - atrocious. The later period had obtruded itself into that background. - There was a piano in white wood at one end of the room, and here and there - light chairs in the “New Art” style of Germany, with thin legs and - straight uncomfortable backs. The most pleasing things in the room were - some porcelain figures of Saxon and Hanover ware, little German ladies - with pleated gowns and low-necked bodices, and, on the walls, a number of - water-colour drawings, mostly of English scenes, delicately done, with - vision and a nice sense of atmosphere. - </p> - <p> - “The younger generation thrusting out the old,” thought Brand, “and the - spirit of both of them destroyed by what has happened in five years.” - </p> - <p> - The door opened, he told me, when he had taken stock of his surroundings, - and there came in two women, one middle-aged the other young. He guessed - that he was in the presence of Frau von Kreuzenach and her daughter, and - made his bow, with an apology for intruding upon them. He hoped that they - would not be in the least degree disturbed by his billeting-order. He - would need only a bedroom and his breakfast. - </p> - <p> - The Baroness was courteous but rather cold in her dignity. She was a - handsome woman of about forty-eight, with very fair hair streaked with - grey, and a thin, aristocratic type of face, with thin lips. She wore a - black silk dress with some fur round her shoulders. - </p> - <p> - “It will be no inconvenience to us, sir,” she answered in good English, a - little hard and over-emphasised. “Although the English people are pleased - to call us Huns”—here she laughed good-humouredly—“I trust - that you will not be too uncomfortable in a German house, in spite of the - privations due to our misfortunes and the severity of your blockade.” - </p> - <p> - In that short speech there was a hint of hostility—masked under a - graciousness of manner—which Wickham Brand did not fail to perceive. - </p> - <p> - “As long as it is not inconvenient——” he said awkwardly. - </p> - <p> - It was the daughter who now spoke, and Brand was grateful for her friendly - words and impressed by her undeniable and exceptional good looks. That she - was the daughter of the older woman was clear at a glance. She had the - same thin face and fair hair, but youth was on her side, and her - finely-chiselled features had no hardness of line that comes from age or - bitterness. Her hair was like spun gold, as one sees it in Prussia more, I - fancy, than in southern Germany, and her complexion was that perfect - rose-red and lily-white which often belongs to German girls, and is - doll-like if they are soft and plump, as many are. This girl’s fault was - thinness, but to Brand, not a sentimentalist nor quickly touched by - feminine influence (I have written that, but on second thoughts believe - that under Brand’s ruggedness there was a deep strain of sentiment, - approaching weakness), she seemed flower-like and spiritual. So he told me - after his early acquaintance with her. - </p> - <p> - Her first words to him were charming. - </p> - <p> - “We have suffered very much from the war, sir, but we welcome you to our - house, not as an enemy, because the war finished with the Armistice, but - as an Englishman who may come to be our friend.” - </p> - <p> - “Thanks,” said Brand. - </p> - <p> - He could find nothing else to say at the moment, but spoke that one word - gratefully. - </p> - <p> - The mother added something to her daughter’s speech. - </p> - <p> - “We believed the English were our friends before they declared war upon - us. We were deeply saddened by our mistake.” - </p> - <p> - “It was inevitable,” said Brand, “after what had happened.” - </p> - <p> - The daughter—her name was Elsa—put her hand on her mother’s - arm with a quick gesture of protest against any other words about the war. - </p> - <p> - “I will show Captain Brand to his rooms.” - </p> - <p> - Brand wondered at her quickness in knowing his name after one glance at - his billeting-paper, and said, “Please do not trouble, <i>gnàdiges - Fraulein</i>,” when he saw a look of disapproval, almost of alarm, on the - mother’s face. - </p> - <p> - “It will be better for Truda to show the gentleman to his rooms. I will - ring for her.” - </p> - <p> - Elsa von Kreuzenach challenged her mother’s authority by a smile of - amusement, and there was a slight deepening of that delicate colour in her - face. “Truda is boiling the usual cabbage for the usual <i>Mittagessen.</i> - I will go, mother.” - </p> - <p> - She turned to Brand with a smile and bowed to him. - </p> - <p> - “I will act as your guide upstairs, Captain Brand. After that you may find - your own way. It is not difficult.” - </p> - <p> - Brand, who described the scene to me, told me that the girl went very - quickly up a wide flight of stairs so that in his big riding boots he - found it difficult to keep pace with her. She went down a long corridor - lined with etchings on the walls, and opened a white door leading into a - big room furnished as a library. There was a wood fire burning there, and - at a glance Brand noticed one or two decorations on the walls—a pair - of foils with a fencing-mask and gauntlets, some charcoal drawings—one - of a girl’s head, which was this girl’s when that gold hair of hers hung - in two Gretchen pig-tails—and some antlers. - </p> - <p> - “Here you can sit and smoke your pipe,” said Elsa von Kreuzenach. “Also, - if you are bored, you can read those books. You see we have many English - authors—Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, G. K. Chesterton, Kipling—heaps. - My brother and I used to read all we could get of English books.” - </p> - <p> - Brand remembered that Franz von Kreuzenach had read Kipling. He had quoted - “Puck of Pook’s Hill” to Eileen O’Connor. - </p> - <p> - “Now and then,” he said, “I may read a little German.” - </p> - <p> - “Pooh!” said the girl. “It is so dull, most of it. Not exciting, like - yours.” - </p> - <p> - She opened another door. - </p> - <p> - “Here is your bedroom. It used to belong to my brother Heinrich.” - </p> - <p> - “Won’t he want it?” asked Brand. - </p> - <p> - He could have bitten his tongue out for that question when the girl - answered it. - </p> - <p> - “He was killed in Flanders.” - </p> - <p> - A sudden sadness took possession of her eyes and Brand said, “I’m sorry.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes. I was sorry, too, and wept for weeks. He was a nice boy, so jolly, - as you say. He would have been an artist if he had lived. All those - charcoal sketches are by him.” - </p> - <p> - She pointed to the drawing of a young man’s head over the dressing-table. - </p> - <p> - “That is my brother Franz. He is home again, <i>Gott sei dank!</i> - Heinrich worshipped him.” - </p> - <p> - Brand looked at the portrait of the man who had saved Eileen O’Connor. He - had Eileen’s letter to him in his pocket. It was a good-looking head, - clean-cut, with frank eyes, rather noble. - </p> - <p> - “I hope we shall meet one day,” said Brand. - </p> - <p> - Elsa von Kreuzenach seemed pleased with those words. - </p> - <p> - “He will like to meet you—ever so much. You see, he was educated at - Oxford, and does not forget his love for England.” - </p> - <p> - “In spite of the war?” asked Brand. - </p> - <p> - The girl put both her hands to her breast. - </p> - <p> - “The war!” she said. “Let us forget the years when we all went mad. It was - a madness of hate and of lies and of ignorance—on both sides. The - poor people in all countries suffered for the sins of the wicked men who - made this war against our will and called out our evil passions. The - wicked men in England were as bad as those in Germany. Now it is for good - people to build up a new world out of the ruins that war made, the ruin of - hearts.” - </p> - <p> - She asked a direct question of Brand, earnestly. - </p> - <p> - “Are you one of those who will go on hating?” - </p> - <p> - Brand hesitated. He could not forget many things. He knew, so he told me, - that he had not yet killed the old hatred that had made him a sniper in No - Man’s Land. Many times it surged up again. He could not forgive the - Germans for many cruelties. To this girl, then, he hedged a little. - </p> - <p> - “The future must wipe out the past. The peace must not be for vengeance.” - </p> - <p> - At those last words the blue eyes of Elsa von Kreuzenach lighted up - gladly. - </p> - <p> - “That is the old English spirit! I have said to my mother and father a - thousand times, ‘England is generous at heart. She loves fair play. Now - that victory is hers she will put away base passions and make a noble - peace that will help us out of our agony and ruin. All our hope is with - England, and with the American President, who is the noblest man on - earth.’” - </p> - <p> - “And your father and mother?” asked Brand. “What do they say?” - </p> - <p> - The girl smiled rather miserably. - </p> - <p> - “They belong to the old school. Franz and I are of the younger - generation... My father denounces England as the demon behind all the - war-devils, and little mother finds it hard to forgive England for joining - the war against us, and because the English Army killed Heinrich. You must - be patient with them.” - </p> - <p> - She spoke as though Brand belonged already to their family life and would - need great tact. - </p> - <p> - She moved towards the door, and stood framed there in its white woodwork, - a pretty figure. - </p> - <p> - “We have two maidservants for this great house,” she said. “The war has - made us poor. Truda and Gretchen they are called. They are both - quarrelling for the pleasure of waiting on you. They are both frightfully - excited to have an English officer in the house.” - </p> - <p> - “Queer!” said Brand, laughing. - </p> - <p> - “Why queer?” asked Elsa von Kreuzenach. “I am a little excited, too.” - </p> - <p> - She made a half-curtsey, like an early Victorian girl; and then closed his - door, and Brand was sorry, as he told me quite frankly, that he was left - alone. - </p> - <p> - “The girl’s a pretty piece of Dresden china,” he said. - </p> - <p> - When I chaffed him with a “Take care, old lad!” he only growled and - muttered, “Oh, to hell with that! I suppose I can admire a pretty thing, - even if it’s made in Germany?” - </p> - <p> - Brand told me that he met Elsa’s father and brother on the third evening - that he slept in the Kreuzenachs’ house. When he arrived that evening at - about five o’clock, the maid-servant, Truda, who “did” his bedroom and - dusted his sitting-room with a German passion for cleanliness and with - many conversational advances, informed him with a look of mysterious - importance that the “Old Man” wanted to see him in the drawing-room. - </p> - <p> - “What old man?” asked Brand, at which Truda giggled and said, “The old - Herr Baron.” - </p> - <p> - “He hates the English like ten thousand devils,” added Truda - confidentially. - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps I had better not go then,” was Brand’s answer. - </p> - <p> - Truda told him that he would have to go. When the old Herr Baron asked for - a thing it had to be given him. The only person who dared to disobey him - was Frâulein Elsa, who was very brave and a “<i>hubsches Madchen.</i>” - </p> - <p> - Brand braced himself for the interview, but felt extremely nervous when - Truda rapped at the drawingroom door, opened it, and announced in German: - “The English officer!” - </p> - <p> - The family von Kreuzenach was in full strength, obviously waiting for his - arrival. The Baroness was in an evening gown, of black silk showing her - bare neck and arms. She was sitting stiffly in a high-backed chair by the - piano, and was very handsome in her cold way. - </p> - <p> - Her husband, General von Kreuzenach, was pretending to read a book by the - fireside. He was a tall, bald-headed, heavy-jowled man with a short white - moustache. The ribbon of the Iron Cross was fastened to the top buttonhole - of his frock-coat. - </p> - <p> - Elsa was sitting on a stool by his side, and on a low seat, with his back - to the fire, was a tall young man with his left arm in a sling, whom Brand - knew at once to be Franz von Kreuzenach, Eileen O’Connor’s friend. - </p> - <p> - When Brand came into the room everybody rose in a formal, frightening way, - and Elsa’s mother rose very graciously and spoke to her husband. - </p> - <p> - “This, Baron, is Captain Brand, the English officer who is billeted in our - house.” - </p> - <p> - The Baron bowed stiffly to Brand. - </p> - <p> - “I hope, sir, that my servants are attending to your needs in every way. I - beg of you to believe that as an old soldier I wish to fulfil my duty as - an officer and a gentleman, however painful the circumstances in which you - find us.” - </p> - <p> - Brand replied with equal gravity, regretting his intrusion, and expressing - his gratitude for the great courtesy that had been shown to him. - Curiously, he told me, he had a strong temptation to laugh. The enormous - formality of the reception touched some sense of absurdity so that he - wanted to laugh loudly and wildly. Probably that was sheer nervousness. - </p> - <p> - “Permit me to present my son,” said the lady. “Lieutenant Franz von - Kreuzenach.” - </p> - <p> - The young man came forward and clicked heels in the German fashion, but - his way of shaking hands and his easy “How do you do?” were perfectly - English. For a moment Brand met his eyes, and found them frank and - friendly. He had a vision of this man sitting in Eileen O’Connor’s room, - gazing at her with love in his eyes, and, afterwards, embarrassed, - shameful, and immensely sad in that trial scene. - </p> - <p> - Elsa also shook hands with him and helped to break the hard ice of - ceremony. - </p> - <p> - “My brother is very glad to meet you. He was at Oxford, you know. Come and - sit here. You will take tea, I am sure.” - </p> - <p> - They had prepared tea for him specially, and Elsa served it like an - English girl, charmingly. - </p> - <p> - Brand was not an easy conversationalist. His drawingroom manners were <i>gauche</i> - always, and that evening in the German drawing-room he felt, he told me, - “a perfect fool,” and could think of no small talk. Franz von Kreuzenach - helped him out by talking about Oxford, and Brand felt more at ease when - he found that the young German officer knew some of his old college - friends and described a “rag” in his own third year. The old Baron sat - stiffly, listening with mask-like gravity to this conversation. Elsa - laughed without embarrassment at her brother’s description of à - “debagging” incident, when the trousers of a proctor had been removed in - “the High,” and the Frau von Kreuzenach permitted herself a wintry smile. - </p> - <p> - “Before the war,” she said, “we wished our children to get an English - education. Elsa went to a school at Brighton. We were very fond of - England.” - </p> - <p> - The general joined in the conversation for the first time. - </p> - <p> - “It was a weakness. Without offence, sir, I think that our German youth - would have been better employed at German universities, where education is - more seriously regarded, and where the national spirit is fostered and - strengthened.” - </p> - <p> - Brand announced that he had been to Heidelberg University, and agreed that - German students take their studies more seriously than English. - </p> - <p> - “We go to our universities for character more than for knowledge.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” said the elder von Kreuzenach. “It is there the English learn their - Imperialism and political ambitions. From their point of view they are - right. English pride—so arrogant—is a great strength.” - </p> - <p> - Franz von Kreuzenach toned down his father’s remark. - </p> - <p> - “My father uses the word pride in its best sense—pride of race and - tradition. Personally, what struck me most at Oxford was the absence of - all deliberate philosophical influence. The men were very free in their - opinions. Most of those in my set were anti-imperialists and advanced - Liberals, in a light-hearted way. But I fancy most of them did not worry - very much about political ideas. They were up for ‘a good time,’ and made - the most of youth, in sport and companionship. They laughed enormously. I - think the Germans laugh too little. We are lacking in a national sense of - humour, except of a coarse and rustic type.” - </p> - <p> - “I entirely disagree with you, Franz,” said the elder man sternly. “I find - my own sense of humour sufficiently developed. You are biassed by your - pro-English sympathy, which I find extraordinary and regrettable after - what has happened.” - </p> - <p> - He turned to Brand and said that as a soldier he would understand that - courtesy to individuals did not abolish the sacred duty of hating a - country which was essentially hostile to his own in spirit and in act. - </p> - <p> - “England,” he added, “has behaved in an unforgivable way. For many years - before the war she plotted the ruin of Germany in alliance with Russia and - France. She challenged Germany’s trade interests and national development - in every part of the globe, and built a great fleet for the sole purpose - of preventing Germany’s colonial expansion. England has always been our - enemy since she became aware of our increasing strength, for she will - brook no rival. I do not blame her, for that is the right of her national - egotism. But as a true German I have always recognised the inevitability - of our conflict.” - </p> - <p> - Brand had no need to answer this denunciation, for Elsa von Kreuzenach - broke into her father’s speech impatiently. - </p> - <p> - “You are too bad, father! Captain Brand does not wish to spend the evening - in political argument. You know what Franz and I think. We believe that - all the evil of the war was caused by silly old hatred and greedy - rivalries. Isn’t the world big enough for the free development of all its - peoples? If not, then life is not worth living, and the human race must go - on killing each other until the world is a wilderness.” - </p> - <p> - “I agree,” said Brand, looking at Elsa. “The peoples of Europe must resist - all further incitements to make war on each other. Surely the American - President has given us all a new philosophy by his call for a League of - Nations, and his promise of peace without vengeance, with the - self-determination of peoples.” - </p> - <p> - “That is true,” said Franz von Kreuzenach. “The Allies are bound by - Wilson’s ‘Fourteen Points.’ We agreed to the Armistice on that basis, and - it is because of the promise that lies in those clauses—the charter - of a New World—that the German people, and the Austrians, accept - their defeat with resignation, and look forward with hope—in spite - of our present ruin—to a greater liberty and to a more beautiful - democracy.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” said Elsa, “what my brother says, Captain Brand, explains the - spirit with which your English soldiers have been received on the Rhine. - Perhaps you expected hostility, hatred, black looks? No, the German people - welcome you, and your American comrades, because the bitterness of defeat - is softened by the knowledge that there is to be no more bloodshed—alas, - we are drained of blood!—and that the peace will begin a nobler age - in history for all of us.” - </p> - <p> - The general shifted in his chair so that it scraped the polished boards. A - deep wave of colour swept up to his bald head. - </p> - <p> - “Defeat?” he said. “My son and daughter talk of defeat!... There was no - defeat. The German Armies were invincible to the last. They never lost a - battle. They fell back, not because of their own failure but because the - heart of the German people was sapped by the weakness of hunger, caused by - the infamous English blockade, which starved our women and children. <i>Ja</i>, - even our manhood was weakened by starvation. Still more, our civilians - were poisoned by a pestilential heresy learnt in Russia, a most damnable - pacifism, which destroyed their will to win. Our glorious armies were - stabbed in the back by anarchy and treachery.” - </p> - <p> - “It is defeat, sir, all the same,” said Franz von Kreuze-nach, with grim - deference, to his father. “Let us face the tragedy of the facts. As an - officer of the rearguard defence, I have to admit, too, that the German - Armies were beaten in the field. Our war machine was worn out and - disintegrated by the repeated blows that struck us. Our man-power was - exhausted, and we could no longer resist the weight of the Allied Armies. - The Americans had immense reserves of men to throw in against us. We could - only save ourselves by retreat. Field Marshal von Hindenburg himself has - admitted that.” - </p> - <p> - The general’s face was no longer flushed with angry colour. He was very - white, with a kind of dead look, except for the smouldering fire of his - eyes. He spoke in a low, choking voice, in German. - </p> - <p> - “If I had known that a son of mine, bearing the name of Franz von - Kreuzenach, would have admitted the defeat of the German Army before an - officer of an enemy power I would have strangled him at birth.” - </p> - <p> - He grasped the arms of his chair and made one or two efforts to rise, but - could not do so. - </p> - <p> - “Anna!” he commanded harshly, to his wife, “give me your arm. This officer - will excuse me, I trust. I feel unwell.” - </p> - <p> - Franz von Kreuzenach went quickly over to his father, before his mother - could rise. - </p> - <p> - “Father, I deeply regret having pained you. The truth is tragic enough——” - </p> - <p> - The old man answered him ferociously. - </p> - <p> - “You have not spoken truth, but lies. You are a disgrace to the rank of a - German officer and to my name. You have been infected by the poison of - socialism and anarchy. Anna—your arm!” - </p> - <p> - Elsa’s mother stooped over her husband and lifted his hand to her lips. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Mein lieber Mann</i>,” she said very softly. - </p> - <p> - The old man rose stiffly, leaning on his wife’s arm, and bowed to Brand. - </p> - <p> - “I beg you to excuse me, sir. As a German soldier I do not admit the words - ‘defeat’ or ‘retreat,’ even when spoken within my own household. The - ever-glorious German Army has never been defeated, and has never retreated—except - according to plan. I wish you goodnight.” - </p> - <p> - Brand was standing, and bowed to the general in silence. - </p> - <p> - It was a silence which lasted after the husband and wife had left the - room. The girl Elsa was mopping her eyes. Franz von Kreuzenach stood, very - pale, by the empty chair in which his father had sat. He was the first to - speak. - </p> - <p> - “I’m awfully sorry. I ought not to have spoken like that before my father. - He belongs to the old school.” - </p> - <p> - Brand told me that he felt abominably uncomfortable, and wished with all - his heart that he had not been billeted in this German house. - </p> - <p> - Elsa rose quickly and put her hand on her brother’s arm. - </p> - <p> - “I am glad you spoke as you did, Franz. It is hateful to hurt our dear - father, but it is necessary to tell the truth now, or we cannot save - ourselves, and there will be no new era in the world. It is the younger - generation that must re-shape the world, and that cannot be done if we - yield to old falsehoods and go the way of old traditions.” - </p> - <p> - Franz raised his sister’s hand to his lips, and Brand told me that his - heart softened at the sight of that caress, as it had when Elsa’s mother - kissed the hand of her old husband. It seemed to him symbolical of the two - generations, standing together, the old against the young, the young - against the old. - </p> - <p> - “In England, also,” he said, “we have those who stand by hate, and those - who would break with the old traditions and forget, as soon as possible, - old enmities.” - </p> - <p> - “It is the new conflict,” said Franz von Kreuzenach solemnly. “It will - divide the world and many houses, as Christ’s gospel divided father from - son and blood-brothers. It is the new agony.” - </p> - <p> - “The new hope,” said Elsa passionately. - </p> - <p> - Brand made an early excuse to retire to his room, and Franz von Kreuzenach - conducted him upstairs and carried his candlestick. - </p> - <p> - “Thanks,” said Brand, in the doorway of his room. Then suddenly he - remembered Eileen O’Connor’s letter, and put his hand into his - breast-pocket for his case. - </p> - <p> - “I have a letter for you,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “So?” The young German was surprised. - </p> - <p> - “From a lady in Lille,” said Brand. “Miss Eileen O’Connor.” - </p> - <p> - Franz von Kreuzenach started violently, and for a moment or two he was - incapable of speech. When he took the letter from Brand his hand trembled. - </p> - <p> - “You know her?” he said at last. - </p> - <p> - “I knew her in old days and met her in Lille,” answered - </p> - <p> - Brand. “She told me of your kindness to her. I promised to thank you when - I met you. I do so now.” - </p> - <p> - He held out his hand and Franz von Kreuzenach grasped it in a hard grip. - </p> - <p> - “She is well?” he asked, with deep emotion. - </p> - <p> - “Well and happy,” said Brand. - </p> - <p> - “That is good.” - </p> - <p> - The young German was immensely embarrassed, absurdly self-conscious and - shy. - </p> - <p> - “In Lille,” he said, “I had the honour of her friendship.” - </p> - <p> - “She told me,” answered Brand. “I saw some of your songs in her room.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I sang to her.” - </p> - <p> - Franz von Kreuzenach laughed awkwardly. Then suddenly a look of something - like fear—certainly alarm—changed his expression. - </p> - <p> - “I must beg of you to keep secret any knowledge of my—my friendship—with - that lady. She acted—rashly. If it were known, even by my father, - that I did—what I did—my honour, perhaps even my life, would - be unsafe. You understand, I am sure.” - </p> - <p> - “Perfectly,” said Brand. - </p> - <p> - “As a German officer,” said Franz von Kreuzenach, “I took great risk.” - </p> - <p> - He emphasised his words. - </p> - <p> - “As a German officer I took liberties with my duty—because of a - higher law.” - </p> - <p> - “A higher law than discipline,” said Brand. “Perhaps a nobler duty than - the code of a German officer.” - </p> - <p> - He spoke with a touch of irony, but Franz von Kreuzenach was unconscious - of that. - </p> - <p> - “Our duty to God,” he said gravely. “Human pity. Love.” - </p> - <p> - An expression of immense sentiment filled his eyes An Englishman would - have masked it more guardedly. - </p> - <p> - “Good-night,” said Brand, “and thanks again.” - </p> - <p> - The young German clicked his heels and bowed. - </p> - <p> - “Good-night, sir.” - </p> - <p> - Brand went to bed in a leisurely way, and before sleeping heard a violin - being played in the room above his own. By the tune he remembered the - words of an old song, as Eileen O’Connor had sung it in Lille, and as he - had learnt it in his own home before the war. - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - “There’s one that is pure as an angel, - </p> - <p class="indent20"> - And fair as the flowers of May, - </p> - <p class="indent15"> - They call her the gentle maiden - </p> - <p class="indent20"> - Wherever she takes her way.” - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p> - Franz von Kreuzenach was having an orgy of sentiment, and Brand, somehow, - envied him. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - V - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>ur entry into - Cologne and life among the people whom we had been fighting for four years - and more was an amazing psychological experience, and not one of us there - on the Rhine could escape its subtle influence upon our opinions and - subconscious state of mind. Some of our officers, I am sure, were utterly - unaware of the change being wrought in them by daily association with - German civilians. They did not realise how, day by day, their old beliefs - on the subject of “the Hun” were being broken down by contact with people - who behaved with dignity for the most part, and according to the ordinary - rules of human nature. Charles Fortune, our humorist, delighted to observe - these things, and his irony found ready targets in Cologne, both among - British officers and German civilians, neither of whom he spared. I - remember that I was walking one day down Hohestrasse with young Harding, - after the proclamation had been issued (and enforced with numerous arrests - and fines by the A.P.M. and the military police) that all German civilians - were to salute British officers by doffing their hats in the streets. The - absurdity of it was so great that in a crowded street..like the - Hohestrasse the civilian people would have had to remain bareheaded, owing - to the constant passing of our officers. - </p> - <p> - Fortune saluted Harding and myself not only with one hand but with two. He - wore his “heroic” face, wonderfully noble and mystical. - </p> - <p> - “How great and glorious is the British Army!” he said. “How immense are - the power and majesty of the temporary lieutenant! For four years and a - half have we fought to crush militarism. Nine hundred thousand men of ours - have died explosive deaths in order to abolish the philosophy of Zabernism—you - remember!—the claim of the military caste to the servility of - civilian salutes. Two million men of ours are blind, crippled, - shell-shocked, as martyrs for democracy made free of Junkerdom by the - crushing of the Hun. Now, by a slight error in logic (the beautiful - inconsistency of our English character), we arrest, fine, or imprison any - German man or child who does not bare his head before a little English - subaltern from Peckham Rye or Tooting in a ‘Gor’blimy’ cap! How great and - good we are! How free from hypocrisy! How splendid our victory for the - little peoples of the earth!” - </p> - <p> - Young Harding, who had been returning salutes solemnly and mechanically to - great numbers of Germans, flushed a little. - </p> - <p> - “I suppose it’s necessary to enforce respect. All the same, it’s a horrid - bore.” - </p> - <p> - Fortune wagged his hand behind his ear to an elderly German who took off - his bowler hat. The man stared at him in a frightened way, as though the - English officer had suddenly gone mad and might bite him. - </p> - <p> - “Strange!” said Fortune. “Not yet have they been taught the beauty of the - Guards’ salute. That man ought to be put into a dark cell, with bread and - water, and torture from 9 a.m. till mid-day on Wednesdays and Fridays.” - </p> - <p> - Fortune was vastly entertained by the sight of British soldiers walking - about with German families in whose houses they were billeted. Some of - them were arm-inarm with German girls, a sergeant-major was carrying a - small flaxen-haired boy on whose sailor’s cap was the word “<i>Vaterland</i>.” - </p> - <p> - “Disgraceful!” said Fortune, looking sternly at Harding. “In spite of all - our atrocity tales, our propaganda of righteous hate, our training of the - young idea that a Hun must be killed at sight—‘the only good German - is a dead German,’ as you remember, Harding—these soldiers of ours - are fraternising with the enemy and flirting with the enemy’s fair-haired - daughters, and carrying infant Huns shoulder-high. Look at that - sergeant-major forgetting all my propaganda. Surely he ought to cut the - throat of that baby Hindenburg! My heart aches for Blear-eyed Bill, the - Butcher of the Boche. All his work undone. All his fury fizzled. Sad! - sad!” Harding looked profoundly uncomfortable at this sarcasm. He was - billeted with a German family who treated him as an honoured friend. The - mother, a dear old soul, as he reluctantly admitted, brought him an early - cup of tea in the morning, with his shaving-water. Three times he had - refused it, remembering his oath never to accept a favour from male or - female Hun. On the fourth time his will-power weakened under the old - lady’s anxious solicitations and his desire for the luxury of tea before - dressing. He said “<i>Danke schön</i>,” and afterwards reproached himself - bitterly for his feeble resistance. He was alarmed at his own change of - heart towards these people. It was impossible for him to draw back - solemnly or with pompous and aloof dignity when the old lady’s grandchild, - a little girl of six, waylaid him in the hall dropped a curtsey in the - pretty German style, and then ran forward to kiss his hand and say, “<i>Guten - Tag, Herr Offizier!</i>” - </p> - <p> - He bought a box of chocolate for her in the Hohestrasse and then walked - with it irresolutely, tempted to throw it into the Rhine, or to give it to - a passing Tommy. Half-an-hour later he presented it to little Elizabeth, - who received it with a cry of delight, and, jumping on to his knee, kissed - him effusively on both cheeks. Young Harding adored children, but felt as - guilty at these German kisses as though he had betrayed his country and - his faith. - </p> - <p> - One thing which acted in favour of the Germans was the lack of manners - displayed by some young English officers in the hotels, restaurants, and - shops. In all armies there are cads, and ours was not without them, though - they were rare. The conditions of our military occupation with absolute - authority over the civilian people provided a unique opportunity for the - caddish instincts of “half-baked” youth. They came swaggering into Cologne - determined to “put it across the Hun” and “to stand no nonsense.” So they - bullied frightened waiters, rapped their sticks on shop-counters, insulted - German shop-girls, and talked loudly about “Hunnish behaviour” in - restaurants where many Germans could hear and understand. - </p> - <p> - Harding, Fortune and I were in the Domhof Hotel when one such scene - occurred. A group of noisy subalterns were disputing the cost of their - meal and refusing to pay for the wine. - </p> - <p> - “You stole all the wine in Lille,” shouted one lieutenant of ours. “I’m - damned if I’ll pay for wine in Cologne.” - </p> - <p> - “I stole no wine in Lille, sir,” said the waiter politely. “I was never - there.” - </p> - <p> - “Don’t you insult English officers,” said one of the other subalterns. “We - are here to tread on your necks.” - </p> - <p> - Fortune looked at me and raised his eye-brows. - </p> - <p> - “It isn’t a good imitation,” he said. “If they want to play the game of - frightfulness, they really ought to do better than that. They don’t even - make the right kind of face.” - </p> - <p> - Harding spoke bitterly. - </p> - <p> - “Cads!... Cads!... Somebody ought to put them under arrest.” - </p> - <p> - “It doesn’t really impress the Germans,” said Fortune. “They know it’s - only make-believe. You see, the foolish boys are paying their bill. Now, - if I, or Blear-eyed Bill, were to do the Junker stunt, we should at least - look the real ogres.” - </p> - <p> - He frowned horribly, puffed out his cheeks, and growled and grumbled with - an air of senile ferocity—to the great delight of a young German - waiter watching him from a corner of the room, and already aware that - Fortune was a humorist. - </p> - <p> - The few cads among us caused a reaction in the minds of all men of good - manners, so that they took the part of the Germans. Even various - regulations and restrictions ordered by the military governor during the - first few months of our occupation were resented more by British officers - and men than by the Germans themselves. The opera was closed, and British - officers said, “What preposterous nonsense! How are the poor devils going - to earn their living, and how are we going to amuse ourselves?” - </p> - <p> - The wine-concerts and restaurants were ordered to shut down at ten - o’clock, and again the British Army of Occupation “groused” exceedingly - and said, “We thought this war had been fought for liberty. Why all this - petty tyranny?” Presently these places were allowed to stay open till - eleven, and all the way down the Hohestrasse, as eleven o’clock struck, - one saw groups of British officers and men, and French and American - officers, pouring out of a <i>Wein-stube, Kunstler Conzert or Bier-halle</i>, - with farewell greetings or promises of further rendezvous with laughing - German girls, who seemed to learn English by magic. - </p> - <p> - “Disgraceful!” said young Harding, who was a married man with a pretty - wife in England for whom he yearned with a home-sickness which he revealed - to me boyishly when we became closer friends in this German city. - </p> - <p> - “Not disgraceful,” said the little American doctor, who had joined us in - Cologne, “but only the fulfilment of nature’s law, which makes man desire - woman. Allah is great!... But juxtaposition is greater.” - </p> - <p> - Dr. Small was friends with all of us, and there was not one among our - crowd who had not an affection and admiration for this little man whose - honesty was transparent, and whose vital nervous energy was like a fresh - wind to any company in which he found himself. It was Wickham Brand, - however, who had captured the doctor’s heart most of all, and I think I - was his “second best.” Anyhow, it was to me that he revealed his opinion - of Brand, and some of his most intimate thoughts. - </p> - <p> - “Wickham has the quality of greatness,” he said. “I don’t mean to say he’s - great now. Not at all. I think he’s fumbling and groping, not sure of - himself, afraid of his best instincts, thinking his worst may be right. - But one day he will straighten all that out and have a call as loud as a - trumpet. What I like is his moodiness and bad temper.” - </p> - <p> - “Queer taste, doctor!” I remarked. “When old Brand is in the sulks there’s - nothing doing with him. He’s like a bear with a sore ear.” - </p> - <p> - “Sure!” said Dr. Small. “That’s exactly it. He is biting his own sore ear. - I guess with him, though, it’s a sore heart. He keeps moping and fretting - and won’t let his wounds heal. That’s what makes him different from most - others, especially you English. You go through frightful experiences and - then forget them and say, ‘Funny old world, young fellah! Come and have a - drink.’ You see civilisation rocking like a boat in a storm, but you say, - in your English way, ‘Why worry?’... Wickham worries. He wants to put - things right, and make the world safer for the next crowd. He thinks of - the boys who will have to fight in the next war—wants to save them - from his agonies.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, he’s frightfully sensitive underneath his mask of ruggedness,” I - said. - </p> - <p> - “And romantic,” said the doctor. - </p> - <p> - “Romantic?” - </p> - <p> - “Why, yes. That girl, Eileen O’Connor, churned up his heart all right. - Didn’t you see the worship in his eyes? It made me feel good.” - </p> - <p> - I laughed at the little doctor, and accused him of romanticism. - </p> - <p> - “Anyhow,” I said, more seriously. “Eileen O’Connor is not without romance - herself, and I don’t know what she wrote in that letter to Franz von - Kreuzenach, but I suspect she re-opened an episode which had best be - closed.... As for Brand, I think he’s asking for trouble of the same kind. - If he sees much of that girl Elsa I won’t answer for him. She’s amazingly - pretty, and full of charm from what Brand tells me.” - </p> - <p> - “I guess he’ll be a darned fool if he fixes up with that girl,” growled - the doctor. - </p> - <p> - “You’re inconsistent,” I said. “Are you shocked that Wickham Brand should - fall in love with a German girl?” - </p> - <p> - “Not at all, sonny,” said Dr. Small. “As a biologist I know you can’t - interfere with natural selection, and a pretty girl is an alluring - creature, whether she speaks German or Icelandic. But this girl, Elsa von - Kreuzenach, is not up to a high standard of eugenics.” - </p> - <p> - I was amused by the doctor’s scientific disapproval. - </p> - <p> - “What’s wrong with her?” I asked. “And when did you meet her?” - </p> - <p> - “Sonny,” said the doctor, “what do you think I’ve been doing all these - weeks in Cologne? Drinking coffee at the Domhof Hotel with the A.P.M. and - his soldier-policemen? Watching the dancing-girls every evening in - wine-rooms like this?” - </p> - <p> - We sat in a <i>Wein-stube</i> as we talked, for the sake of light and a - little music. It was typical of a score of others in Cologne, with settees - of oak divided from each other in “cosy corners” hung with draperies of - green and red silk; and little tables to which waiters brought relays of - Rhine wines in tall thin bottles for the thirstiness of German civilians - and British officers. At one end of the room was a small stage, and an - orchestra composed of a pianist who seemed to be suffering from a mild - form of shell-shock (judging from a convulsive twitch), a young - German-Jew, who played the fiddle squeakily, and a thin, sad-faced girl - behind a ‘cello. Every now and then a bald-headed man in evening clothes - mounted the stage and begged the attention of the company for a dance by - the well-known artist Fraulein So-and-so. From behind a curtain near the - wine-bar came a dancing-girl, in the usual ballet dress and the usual - fixed and senseless smile, who proceeded to perform Pavlova effects on a - stage two yards square, while the young Jew fiddler flattened himself - against the side curtain with a restricted use of his bow, and the pianist - with the shell-shock lurched sideways as he played to avoid her floppy - skirts, and the girl behind the ‘cello drew deep chords with a look of - misery. - </p> - <p> - “These are pretty dull spots,” I said to the little doctor, “but where - have you been spending your time? And when did you meet Elsa von - Kreuzenach?” - </p> - <p> - Dr. Small told me that he had been seeking knowledge in the only place - where he could study social health and social disease—hospitals, - work-shops, babies’ <i>crèches</i>, slum tenements. He was scornful of - English officers and correspondents who summed up the social state of - Germany after a stroll down the Hohestrasse, a gorge of <i>ersatz</i> - pastry (“Filth” he said) in the tea-shops, and a dinner of four courses in - a big hotel on smuggled food at fantastic prices. - </p> - <p> - “You might as well judge Germany by the guzzling swine in this place as - England by a party of profiteers at Brighton. The poor middle-classes and - the labourers stay indoors after their day’s job and do not exhibit their - misery in the public ways.” - </p> - <p> - “Real misery?” I asked. “Hunger?” - </p> - <p> - Dr. Small glowered at me through his goggles. - </p> - <p> - “Come and see. Come and see the mothers who have no milk for their babes, - and the babes who are bulbousheaded, with rickets. Come and see the - tenement lodgings where working families sit round cabbage soup as their - chief meal, with bread that ties their entrails into knots but gives ‘em a - sense of fulness not enjoyed by those who have no bread. Man, it’s awful. - It tears at one’s heart. But you needn’t go into the slums to find hunger—four - years of under-nourishment which has weakened growing girls so that they - swoon at their work or fall asleep through weakness in the tram cars. In - many of the big houses where life looks so comfortable, from which women - come out in furs, looking so rich, these German people have not enough to - eat, and what they eat is manufactured in the chemist’s shop and the <i>ersatz</i> - factories. I found that out from that girl, Elsa von Kreuzenach.” - </p> - <p> - “How?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - “She is a nurse in a babies’ <i>crèche</i>, poor child. Showed me round - with a mother-look in her eyes, while all the scrofulous kiddies cried, ‘<i>Guten - Tag! Guten Tag!</i>’ like the quacking of ducks. ‘After to-morrow,’ she - said, ‘there will be no more milk for them. What can we do for them then, - doctor? They will wither and die.’ Those were her words, and I saw her - sadness. I saw something else presently. I saw her sway a little, and she - fell like that girl Marthe on the doorstep at Lille. ‘For the love of - Mike!’ I said, and when she pulled round bullied her. - </p> - <p> - “‘What did you have for breakfast?’ I asked. - </p> - <p> - “‘<i>Ersatz</i> coffee,’ she said, laughing, ‘and a bit of bread. A good - <i>fruhstuck</i>, doctor.’ - </p> - <p> - “‘Good be hanged!’ I said. ‘What did you have for lunch?’ - </p> - <p> - “‘Cabbage soup and <i>ein kleines brodchen</i>,’ she says. ‘After four - years one gets used to it.’ - </p> - <p> - “‘What will you have for dinner?’ said I, not liking the look of things. - </p> - <p> - “She laughed, as though she saw a funny joke. - </p> - <p> - “‘Cabbage soup and turnips,’ she said, ‘and a regular feast.’ - </p> - <p> - “‘I thought your father was a Baron,’ I remarked in my sarcastic way. - </p> - <p> - “‘That’s true,’ she says, ‘and an honest man he is, and therefore poor. It - is only the profiteers who feed well in Germany. All through the war they - waxed fat on the flesh-and-blood of the men who fought and died. Now they - steal the food of the poor by bribing the peasants to sell their produce - at any price.’ <i>Schleichandlung</i> is the word she used. That means - ‘smuggling.’ It also means hell’s torture, I hope, for those who do it.... - So there you are. If Wickham Brand marries Elsa von Kreuze-nach, he - marries a girl whose health has been undermined by four years’ - semi-starvation. What do you think their children will be? Rickety, - tuberculous, undersized, weak-framed. Wickham Brand deserves better luck - than that, sonny.” - </p> - <p> - I roared with laughter at the little doctor, and told him he was looking - too far ahead, as far as Brand and the German girl were concerned. This - made him angry, in his humorous way, and he told me that those who don’t - look ahead fail to see the trouble under their nose until they fall over - it. - </p> - <p> - We left the <i>Wein-stube</i> through a fog of smoke. Another dancing girl - was on the tiny stage, waving her arms and legs. An English officer, - slightly fuddled, was writing a cheque for his bill and persuading the - German manager to accept it. Two young French officers were staring at the - dancing-girl with hostile eyes. Five young Germans were noisy round six - tall bottles of <i>Liebfraumilch</i>. The doctor and I walked down to the - bank of the Rhine below the Hohenzollern bridge. Our sentries were there, - guarding heavy guns which thrust their snouts up from tarpaulin covers. - </p> - <p> - Two German women passed, with dragging footsteps, and one said wearily, “<i>Ach, - lieber Gott!</i>” - </p> - <p> - The doctor was silent for some time after his long monologue. He stared - across the Rhine, on whose black surface lights glimmered with a milky - radiance. Presently he spoke again, and I remember his words, which were, - in a way, prophetic. - </p> - <p> - “These German people are broken. They <i>had</i> to be broken. They are - punished. They <i>had</i> to be punished. Because they obeyed the call of - their leaders, which was to evil, their power has been overthrown and - their race made weak. You and I, an Englishman, an American, stand here, - by right of victory, overlooking this river which has flowed through two - thousand years of German history. It has seen the building-up of the - German people, their industry, their genius, their racial consciousness. - It has been in the rhythm of their poetry and has made the melody of their - songs. On its banks lived the little people of German fairy-tales, and the - heroes of their legends. Now there are English guns ready to fire across - the water and English, French and American soldiers pacing this road along - the Rhine, as victors and guards of victory. What hurt to the pride of - this people! What a downfall! We must be glad of that because the German - challenge to the world was not to be endured by free peoples. That is - true, and nothing can ever alter its truth or make it seem false. I stand - firm by that faith. But I see also, what before I did not see, that many - of these Germans were but slaves of a system which they could not change, - and spellbound by old traditions, old watch-words, belonging to the soul - of their race, so that when they were spoken they had to offer their lives - in sacrifice. High powers above them arranged their destiny, and the - manner and measure of their sacrifice, and they had no voice, or strength, - or knowledge, to protest—these German peasants, these boys who - fought, these women and children who suffered and starved. Now it is they, - the ignorant and the innocent, who must go on suffering, paying in peace - for what their rulers did in war. Men will say that is the Justice of God. - I can see no loving God’s work in the starvation of babes, nor in the - weakening of women so that mothers have no milk. I see only the cruelty of - men. It is certain now that, having won the war, we must be merciful in - peace. We must relieve the blockade, which is still starving these people. - We must not go out for vengeance but rather to rescue. For this war has - involved the civilian populations of Europe and is not limited to armies. - A treaty of peace will be with Famine and Plague rather than with defeated - generals and humiliated diplomats. If we make a military peace, without - regard to the agonies of peoples, there will be a tragic price to pay by - victors as well as by vanquished. For the victors are weak too. Their - strength was nearly spent. They—except my people—were panting - to the last gasp when their enemy fell at last. They need a peace of - reconciliation for their own sakes, because no new frontiers may save them - from sharing the ruin of those they destroy, nor the disease of those they - starve. America alone comes out of the war strong and rich. For that - reason we have the power to shape the destiny of the human race, and to - heal, as far as may be, the wounds of the world. It is our chance in - history. The most supreme chance that any race has had since the beginning - of the world. All nations are looking to President Wilson to help them out - of the abyss and to make a peace which shall lead the people out of the - dark jungle of Europe. My God!... If Wilson will be noble and wise and - strong, he may alter the face of the world, and win such victory as no - mortal leader ever gained. If not—if not—there will be anguish - unspeakable, and a worse darkness, and a welter of anarchy out of whose - madness new wars will be bred, until civilisation drops back to savagery, - or disappears. <i>I am afraid!</i>” - </p> - <p> - He spoke those last words with a terrible thrill in his rather high, harsh - voice, and I, too, standing there in the darkness, by the Rhine, had a - sense of mighty powers at work with the destiny of many peoples, and of - risks and chances and hatreds and stupidities thwarting the purpose of - noble minds and humble hearts after this four years’ massacre.... And I - was afraid. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - VI - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>ymptoms of - restless impatience which had appeared almost as soon as the signing of - the Armistice began to grow with intensity among all soldiers who had been - long in the zone of war. Their patience, so enduring through the bad - years, broke at last. They wanted to go home, desperately. They wanted to - get back to civil life, in civil clothes. With the Armistice all meaning - had gone out of their khaki uniform, out of military discipline, out of - distinctions of rank, and out of the whole system of their soldiers’ life. - They had done the dirty job, they had faced all its risks, and they had - gained what glory there might be in human courage. Now they desired to get - back to their own people, and their own places, and the old ways of life - and liberty. - </p> - <p> - They remembered the terms of their service—these amateurs who had - answered the call in early days. “For the duration of the war.” Well, the - war was finished. There was to be no more fighting—and the wife - wanted her man, and the mother her son. “Demobilisation” became the word - of hope, and many men were sullen at the delays which kept them in exile - and in servitude. The men sent deputations to their officers. The officers - pulled wires for themselves which tinkled little bells as far away as the - War Office, Whitehall, if they had a strong enough pull. One by one, - friends of mine slipped away after a word of farewell and a cheerful grin. - </p> - <p> - “Demobbed!... Back to civvies!... Home!” - </p> - <p> - Harding was one of those who agonised for civil liberty and release from - military restraint, and the reason of it lay in his pocket-book, where - there was the photograph of a pretty girl—his wife. - </p> - <p> - We had become good friends, and he confided to me many things about his - state of mind with a simplicity and a sincerity which made me like him. I - never met a man more English in all his characteristics, or more typical - of the quality which belongs to our strength and our weakness. As a Harrow - boy his manners were perfect, according to the English code—quiet, - unemotional, easy, unobtrusively thoughtful of other people’s comfort in - little things. According to the French code, he would have been considered - cold, arrogant, conceited and stupid. Certainly he had that touch of - arrogance which is in all Englishmen of the old tradition. All his - education and environment had taught him to believe that English - civilisation—especially in the hunting set—was perfect and - supreme. He had a pity rather than contempt for those unlucky enough to be - born Frenchmen, Italians, or of any other race. He was not stupid by - nature—on the contrary, he had sound judgment on matters within his - range of knowledge and a rapid grasp of detail, but his vision was shut in - by those frontiers of thought which limit public-school life in England - and certain sets at Oxford who do not break free, and do not wish to break - free, from the conventional formula of “good form,” which regulates every - movement of their brain as well as every action of their lives. It is in - its way a noble formula, and makes for aristocracy. My country, right or - wrong; loyalty to King and State; the divine right of the British race to - rule uncivilised peoples for their own good; the undoubted fact that an - English gentleman is the noblest work of God; the duties of “<i>noblesse - oblige</i>,” in courage, in sacrifice, in good maimers, and in playing the - game, whatever the game may be, in a sporting spirit. - </p> - <p> - When I was in Harding’s company I knew that it was ridiculous to discuss - any subject which lay beyond that formula. It was impossible to suggest - that England had ever been guilty of the slightest injustice, a touch of - greed, or a tinge of hypocrisy, or something less than wisdom. - </p> - <p> - To him that was just traitor’s talk. A plea for the better understanding - of Ireland, for a generous measure of “self-determination” would have - roused him to a hot outburst of anger. The Irish to him were all - treacherous, disloyal blackguards, and the only remedy of the Irish - problem was, he thought, martial law and machine-gun demonstrations, stern - and, if need be, terrible. I did not argue with him, or chaff him as some - of his comrades did, and keeping within the prescribed limits of - conversation set by his code, we got on together admirably. Once only in - those days on the Rhine did Harding show an emotion which would have been - condemned by his code. It was due, no doubt, to that nervous fever which - made some wag change the word “demobilisation” into “demoralisation.” - </p> - <p> - He had a room in the Domhof Hotel, and invited me to drink a whiskey with - him there one evening. When I sat on the edge of the bed while he - dispensed the drink, I noticed on his dressing-table a large photograph of - a girl in evening dress—a wonderfully pretty girl, I thought. - </p> - <p> - He caught my glance, and after a moment’s hesitation and a visible blush, - said: “My wife.... We were married before I came out, two years ago - exactly.” - </p> - <p> - He put his hand into the breast-pocket of his tunic and pulling out a - pocket-book, opened it with a snap, and showed me another photograph. - </p> - <p> - “That’s a better one of her.” - </p> - <p> - I congratulated him, but without listening to my words he asked me rather - awkwardly whether I could pull any strings for him to get “demobbed.” - </p> - <p> - “It’s all a question of ‘pull,’” he said, “and I’m not good at that kind - of thing. But I want to get home.” - </p> - <p> - “Everybody does,” I said. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I know, and of course I want to play the game, and all that. But the - fact is, my wife—she’s only a kid, you know—is rather hipped - with my long absence. She’s been trying to keep herself merry and bright, - and all that, with the usual kind of war-work. You know—charity - bazaars, fancy-dress balls for the wounded, Red Cross work, and all that. - Very plucky, too. But the fact is, some of her letters lately have been - rather—well—rather below par—you know—rather - chippy and all that. The fact is, old man, she’s been too much alone, and - anything you can do in the way of a pull at the War Office——” - </p> - <p> - I told him bluntly that I had as much influence at the War Office as the - charwoman in Room M.I. 8, or any other old room—not so much—and - he was damped, and apologised for troubling me. However, I promised to - write to the one High Bird with whom I had a slight acquaintance, and this - cheered him up considerably. - </p> - <p> - I stayed chatting for some time—the usual small-talk—and it - was only when I said good-night that he broached another subject which - interested me a good deal. - </p> - <p> - “I’m getting a bit worried about Wickham Brand,” he remarked in a casual - kind of way. - </p> - <p> - “How’s that?” - </p> - <p> - I gathered from Harding’s vague, disjointed sentences that Brand was - falling into the clutches of a German hussy. He had seen them together at - the Opera—they had met as if by accident—and one evening he - had seen them together down by the Rhine outside Cologne. He was bound to - admit the girl was remarkably good-looking, and that made her all the more - dangerous. He hated to mention this, as it seemed like scandal-mongering - about “one of the best,” but he was frightfully disturbed by the thought - that Brand, of all men, should fall a victim to the wiles of a “lady Hun.” - He knew Brand’s people at home—Sir Amyas Brand, the Member of - Parliament, and his mother, who was a daughter of the Harringtons. - </p> - <p> - They would be enormously “hipped” if Wickham were to do anything foolish. - It was only because he knew that I was Wickham’s best chum that he told me - these things, in the strictest confidence. A word of warning from me might - save old Brand from getting into a horrible mess—“and all that.” - </p> - <p> - I pooh-poohed Harding’s fears, but when I left him to go to my own billet - I pondered over his words, and knew that there was truth in them. - </p> - <p> - There was no doubt to my mind that Brand was in love with Elsa von - Kreuzenach. At least, he was going through some queer emotional phase - connected with her entry into his life, and he was not happy about it, - though it excited him. The very day after Harding spoke to me on the - subject I was, involuntarily, a spy upon Brand and Fraülein Elsa on a - journey when we were fellow-travellers, though they were utterly unaware - of my presence. It was in one of the long electric trams which go without - a stop from Cologne to Bonn. I did not see Brand until I had taken my seat - in the small first-class smoking car. Several middle-class Germans were - there, and I was wedged between two of them in a corner. Brand and a girl, - whom I guessed to be Elsa von Kreuzenach, were on the opposite seat, but - farthest away from me and screened a little by a German lady with a large - feathered hat. If Brand had looked round the compartment he would have - seen me at once, and I waited to nod to him, but never once did he glance - my way, but turned slightly sideways towards the girl, so that I only saw - his profile. Her face was, in the same way, turned a little to him, and I - could see every shade of expression which revealed her moods as she - talked, and the varying light in her eyes. She was certainly a pretty - thing, exquisite, even, in delicacy of colour and fineness of feature, - with that “spun-gold” hair of hers; though I thought (remembering Dr. - Small’s words) that she had a worn and fragile look which robbed her of - the final touch of beauty. For some time they exchanged only a few words - now and then, which I could not hear, and I was reading a book when I - heard Brand say in his clear, rather harsh voice: “Will your people be - anxious about you?” - </p> - <p> - The girl answered in a low voice. I glanced up and saw that she was - smiling, not at Brand, but at the countryside which seemed to travel past - us as the tram went on its way. It was the smile of a girl to whom life - meant something good just then. - </p> - <p> - Brand spoke again. - </p> - <p> - “I should hate to let your mother think that I have been disloyal to her - confidence. Don’t let this friendship of ours be spoilt by secrecy. I am - not afraid of it!” - </p> - <p> - He laughed in a way that was strange to me. There was a note of joy in it. - It was a boy’s laugh, and Brand had gone beyond boyhood in the war. I saw - one or two of the Germans look up at him curiously, and then stare at the - girl, not in a friendly way. She was unconscious of their gaze, though a - wave of colour swept her face. For a second she laid her hand on Brand’s - brown fist, and it was a quick caress. - </p> - <p> - “Our friendship is good!” she said. - </p> - <p> - She spoke these words very softly, in almost a whisper, but I heard them - in spite of the rattle of the tram-car and the gutteral argument of two - Germans next to me. Those were the only words I heard her say on that - journey to Bonn, and after that Brand talked very little, and then only - commonplace remarks about the time and the scenery. But what I had heard - was revealing, and I was disturbed, for Brand’s sake. - </p> - <p> - His eyes met mine as I passed out of the car, but they were unseeing eyes. - He stared straight through me to some vision beyond. He gave his hand to - Elsa von Kreuzenach, and they walked slowly up from the station and then - went inside the cathedral. I had business in Bonn with officers at our - headquarters in the hotel “Der Goldene Stern.” Afterwards I had lunch with - them, and then, with one, went to Beethoven’s house—a little shrine - in which the spirit of the master still lives, with his old instruments, - his manuscript sheets of music, and many relics of his life and work. - </p> - <p> - It was at about four o’clock in the afternoon that I saw Brand and the - German girl again. There was a beautiful dusk in the gardens beyond the - University, with a ruddy glow through the trees when the sun went down, - and then a purple twilight. Some German boys were playing leapfrog there, - watched by British soldiers, and townsfolk passed on their way home. I - strolled the length of the gardens, and at the end which is near the old - front of the University buildings I saw Brand and Elsa von Kreuzenach - together on a wooden seat. It was almost dark where they sat under the - trees, but I knew Brand by his figure and by the tilt of his field-cap, - and the girl by the white fur round her neck. They were holding hands like - lovers in a London park, and when I passed them I heard Brand speak. - </p> - <p> - “I suppose this was meant to be. Fate leads us...” - </p> - <p> - When I went back to Cologne by tram that evening I wondered whether Brand - would confide his secret to me. We had been so much together during the - last phase of the war and had talked so much in intimate friendship that I - guessed he would come one day and let me know this new adventure of his - soul. - </p> - <p> - Several weeks passed and he said no word of this,-although we went for - walks together and sat smoking sometimes in <i>cafés</i> after dinner. It - had always been his habit to drop into deep silences, and now they lasted - longer than before. Now and then, however, he would be talkative, - argumentative, and passionate. At times there was a new light in his eyes, - as though lit by some inward fire. And he would smile unconsciously as he - blew out clouds of smoke, but more often he looked worried, nervous, and - irritable, as though passing through some new mental crisis. - </p> - <p> - He spoke a good deal about German psychology and the German point of view, - illustrating his remarks sometimes by references to conversations with - Franz von Kreuzenach, with whom he often talked. He had come to the - conclusion that it was quite hopeless to convince even the broadest-minded - Germans that they were guilty of the war. They admitted freely enough that - their military party had used the Serbian assassination and Austrian fury - as the fuel for starting the blaze in Europe. Even then they believed that - the Chancellor and the civil Ministry of State had struggled for peace - until the Russian movements of troops put the military party into the - saddle so that they might ride to hell. But in any case it was, Brand - said, an unalterable conviction of most Germans that sooner or later the - war had been bound to come, as they were surrounded by a ring of enemies - conspiring to thwart their free development and to overthrow their power. - They attacked first as a means of self-defence. It was an article of faith - with them that they had fought a defensive warfare from the start. - </p> - <p> - “That is sheer lunacy!” I said. Brand laughed, and agreed. - </p> - <p> - “Idiotic in the face of plain facts, but that only shows how strong is the - belief of people in their own righteousness. I suppose even now most - English people think the Boer War was just and holy. Certainly at the time - we stoned all who thought otherwise. Yet the verdict of the whole world - was against us. They regarded that war as the brutal aggression of a great - power upon a small and heroic people.” - </p> - <p> - “But surely,” I said, “a man like Franz von Kreu-zenach admits the - brutality of Germany in Belgium—the shooting of. priests and - civilians—the forced labour of girls—the smashing of machinery—and - all the rest of it?” - </p> - <p> - Brand said that Franz von Kreuzenach deplored the “severity” of German - acts, but blamed the code of war which justified such acts. It was not his - view that Germans had behaved with exceptional brutality, but that war - itself is a brutal way of argument. “We must abolish war,” he says, “not - pretend to make it kind.” As far as that goes, I agree with him. - </p> - <p> - “How about poison gas, the <i>Lusitania</i>, the sinking of hospital - ships, submarine warfare?” - </p> - <p> - Brand shrugged his shoulders. - </p> - <p> - “The German answer is always the same. War is war, and they were hard - pressed by our superiority in material, man-power and sea-power. We were - starving them to death with our blockade. They saw their children dying - and diseased, their old people carried to the grave, their men weakened. - They had to break through somehow, anyhow, to save their race. I don’t - think we should have stopped at much if England had been ringed round with - enemy ships and the kids were starving in Mayfair and Maida Vale, and - every town and hamlet.” - </p> - <p> - He laughed, with a shrug of his shoulders, as he lit his pipe for about - the fifteenth time. - </p> - <p> - “Argument is no good,” he said. “I’ve argued into the early hours of the - morning with that fellow Franz von Kreuzenach, who is a fine fellow and - the whitest man I’ve met in Germany. Nothing will convince him that his - people were, more guilty than ourselves. Perhaps he’s right. History will - decide. Now we must start afresh—wipe out the black past, confess - that though the Germans started the war we were all possessed by the devil—and - exorcise ourselves. I believe the German people are ready to turn over a - new leaf and start a fresh chapter of history if we will help them and - give them a chance. They have an immense hope that England and America - will not push them over into the bottomless abyss, now that they have - fulfilled Wilson’s demand to get rid of their old rulers and fall into - line with the world’s democracy. If that hope fails them they will fall - back to the old philosophy of hatred, with vengeance as its goal—and - the damned thing will happen again in fifteen—twenty—thirty - years.” - </p> - <p> - Brand made one remark that evening which referred, I fancy, to his love - affair with Elsa von Kreuzenach. - </p> - <p> - “There is so much folly in the crowd that one despairs of reaching a - higher stage of civilisation. I am falling back on individualism. The - individual must follow his own ideals, strive for his own happiness, find - friendship and a little love where he can, and stand apart from world - problems, racial rivalries, international prejudices, as far as he may - without being drawn into the vortex. Nothing that he can do will alter - human destiny, or the forces of evolution, or the cycles of history, which - make all striving futile. Let him get out of the rain and comfort himself - with any human warmth he can find. Two souls in contact are company - enough.” - </p> - <p> - “Sometimes,” I said, “mob passion tears them asunder and protests against - their union with stones or outlaw judgment. Taboo will exist for ever in - human society, and it is devilish unpleasant for individuals who violate - the rules.” - </p> - <p> - “It needs courage,” said my friend. “The risk is sometimes worth taking.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - VII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>rand decided to - take the risk, and though he asked my advice beforehand, as a matter of - friendship, I knew my warnings were useless. It was about a month after - that train journey to Bonn that he came into my room at the Domhof, - looking rather pale but with a kind of glitter in his eyes. - </p> - <p> - “I may as well tell you,” he said abruptly, “that I am going to marry a - German girl.” - </p> - <p> - “Elsa von Kreuzenach?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes. How did you know?” - </p> - <p> - “Just a guess.” - </p> - <p> - “It’s against her parents’ wish,” he said, “to say nothing of my parents, - who think I have gone mad. Elsa and I will have to play a lone hand.” - </p> - <p> - “‘Lone’ is not the word,” I suggested. “You are breaking that taboo we - talked of. You will be shunned by every friend you have in the world—except - one or two queer people like myself”—(here he said, “Thanks,” and - grinned rather gratefully)—“and both you and she will be pariahs in - England, Germany, and anywhere on the wide earth where there are English, - Germans, French, Americans and others who fought the war. I suppose you - know that?” - </p> - <p> - “Perfectly,” he answered gravely. - </p> - <p> - I told him that I was amazed that he of all men should fall in love with a - German girl—he who had seen all the abomination of the war, and had - come out to it with a flaming idealism. To that he answered savagely: - “Flaming idealism be blowed! I came out with blood-lust in my heart, and - having killed until I was sick of killing—German boys who popped - their heads over the parapet—I saw that the whole scheme of things - was wrong, and that the grey men had no more power of escape than the - brown men. We had to go on killing each other because we were both under - the same law, thrust upon us by those directing the infernal machinery of - world-politics. But that’s not the point, and it’s old and stale, anyhow.” - </p> - <p> - “The point is,” I said, “that you will be looked upon as a traitor by many - of your best pals, that you will smash your father and mother, and that - this girl Elsa and you will be profoundly miserable.” - </p> - <p> - “We shall be enormously and immensely happy,” he answered, “and that - outweighs everything.” - </p> - <p> - He told me that he needed happiness. For more than four years he had - suffered agony of mind in the filth and mud of war. He craved for beauty, - and Elsa fulfilled his ideal. He had been a lonely devil, and Elsa had - offered him the only cure for the worst disease in life, intimate and - eternal love. - </p> - <p> - Something prompted me to say words which I deeply regretted as soon as - they were spoken. It was the utterance of a subconscious thought. - </p> - <p> - “There is a girl, not German, who might have cured your loneliness. You - and Eileen O’Connor would have made good mates.” - </p> - <p> - For some reason he was hit rather hard by that remark. He became - exceedingly pale, and for a moment or two did not answer me. I thought he - would blurt out some angry reply, damning my impudence, but when he spoke - it was in a grave, gentle way which seemed to me more puzzling. - </p> - <p> - “Eileen would make a fine wife for any man she liked. But she’s above most - of us.” - </p> - <p> - We stayed up talking nearly all that night, and Wickham Brand described - one scene within his recent experiences which must have been sensational. - It was when he announced to the family von Kreuzenach that he loved Elsa - and desired her hand in marriage. - </p> - <p> - Brand’s sense of humour came back to him when he told me of this episode, - and he laughed now at the frightfulness of his ordeal. It was he who had - insisted upon announcing the news to Elsa’s parents, to avoid any charge - of dishonesty. Elsa herself was in favour of hiding their love until peace - was declared, when, perhaps, the passionate hostility of her parents to - England might be abated. For Brand’s sake, also, she thought it would be - better. But she yielded to his argument that secrecy might spoil the - beauty of their friendship, and give it an ugly taint. - </p> - <p> - “We’ll go through with it straight from the start,” he had cried. - </p> - <p> - Elsa’s answer was quick and glad. - </p> - <p> - “I have no fear now of anything in the world except the loss of you!” - </p> - <p> - Franz von Kreuzenach was the first to know, and Elsa told him. He seemed - stunned with surprise, and then immensely glad, as he took his sister in - his arms and kissed her. - </p> - <p> - “Your marriage with an English officer,” he said, “will be the symbol of - reconciliation between England and Germany.” - </p> - <p> - After that he remembered his father and mother, and was a coward at the - thought of their hostility. The idea of telling his father, as Elsa asked - him to do, put him into what Brand called “the bluest of blue funk.” He - had the German reverence for parental authority, and though he went as far - as the door-handle of his father’s study he retreated, and said in a - boyish way, speaking in English, as usual, with Brand and his sister: “I - haven’t the pluck! I would rather face shell-fire than my father’s wrath.” - </p> - <p> - It was Brand who “went over the top.” - </p> - <p> - He made his announcement formally, in the drawingroom after dinner, in the - curiously casual way which proved him a true Englishman. He cleared his - throat (he told me, grinning at his own mannerism), and during a gap in - the conversation said to the General: “By the way, sir, I have something - rather special to mention to-night.” - </p> - <p> - “<i>Bitte?</i>” said the old General, with his hard, deliberate courtesy. - </p> - <p> - “Your daughter and I,” said Brand, “wish to be married as soon as - possible. I have the honour to ask your consent.” - </p> - <p> - Brand told me of the awful silence which followed his statement. It seemed - interminable. Franz von Kreuze-nach, who was present, was as white as - though he had been condemned to death by court-martial. Elsa was - speechless, but came over to Brand’s side and held his hand. Her mother - had the appearance of a lady startled by the sudden appearance of a - poisonous snake. The General sat back in his chair, grasping its arms and - gasping for breath as though Brand had hit him in the stomach. - </p> - <p> - It was the mother who spoke first, and ignoring Brand completely, she - addressed her daughter harshly. - </p> - <p> - “You are mad, Elsa!” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, mother,” said the girl. “I am mad with joy.” - </p> - <p> - “This English officer insults us intolerably,” said the mother, still - ignoring Brand by any glance. “We were forced to receive him into our - house. At least he might have behaved with decency and respect.” - </p> - <p> - “Mother,” said Elsa, “this gentleman has given me the great honour of his - love.” - </p> - <p> - “To accept it,” said the lady, “would be a dishonour so dreadful for a - good German girl that I refuse to believe it possible.” - </p> - <p> - “It is true, mother, and I am wonderfully happy.” - </p> - <p> - Elsa went over to her mother, sinking down on her knees, and kissing the - lady’s hand. But Frau von Kreu-zenach withdrew her hand quickly, and then - rose from her chair and stood behind her husband, with one hand on his - shoulder. - </p> - <p> - The old man had found his means of speech at last. - </p> - <p> - He spoke in a low, stern voice to his daughter. Brand was ignored by him - as by the mother. They did not recognise his presence. - </p> - <p> - “My daughter,” he said (if Brand remembered his words) “the German people - have been brought to ruin and humiliated by one nation in Europe who was - jealous of our power and genius. That nation was England, our treacherous, - hypocritical enemy. Without England, France would have been smashed. - Without England, our Emperor would have prevailed over all his enemies. - Without the English blockade we should not have been weakened by hunger, - deprived of the raw material necessary to victory, starved so that our - children died and our will to win was sapped. They were English soldiers - who killed my dear son Heinrich, and your brother. The flower of German - manhood was slain by the English in Flanders and on the Somme.” - </p> - <p> - The General spoke very quietly, with an intensity of effort to be calm. - But suddenly his voice rose, said Brand, to a kind of harsh shout. - </p> - <p> - “Any German girl who permits herself to love an Englishman is a traitorous - hussy. I would have her stripped and flogged. The curse of our old German - God shall follow her.” - </p> - <p> - Another silence, in which there was no sound except the noisy breathing of - the old man, was broken by the hard voice of Frau von Kreuzenach. - </p> - <p> - “Your father has spoken, Elsa. There is no more to say.” - </p> - <p> - Elsa had become very pale, but she was smiling at Brand, he told me, and - still held his hand in a tight grip. - </p> - <p> - “There is something more to say, my dear father and mother,” she answered. - “It is that I love Captain Brand, and that I will follow him anywhere in - the world if he will take me. For love is stronger than hate, and above - all nationality.” - </p> - <p> - It was Franz von Kreuzenach who spoke now. He was standing at the table, - facing his father, and it was to his father that he talked. He said that - Elsa was right about love. In spite of the war, the souls of men and women - were not separated by racial boundaries. When two souls touched and - mingled, no hatred of peoples, no patriotic passion, could intervene. - Elsa’s love for an English gentleman was but a symbol of the peace that - was coming, when all countries would be united in a Society of Nations - with equal rights and equal duties, and a common brotherhood. They saw in - the streets of Cologne that there was no natural, inevitable hatred - between English and Germans. The Army of Occupation had proved itself to - be an instrument of goodwill between those who had tried to kill each - other during four years of slaughter. Captain Brand had behaved with the - most charming courtesy and chivalry, according to the traditions of an - English gentleman, and he, Franz von Kreuzenach, was glad and honoured - because this officer desired to take Elsa for his wife. Their marriage - would be a consecration of the new peace. - </p> - <p> - The father listened to him silently, except for that hard noise of - breathing. When his son uttered those last words, the old man leaned - forward in his chair, and his eyes glittered. - </p> - <p> - “Get out of my house, <i>Schweinhund!</i> Do not come near me again, or I - will denounce you as a traitor and shoot you like a dog.” - </p> - <p> - He turned to Elsa with outstretched hand. - </p> - <p> - “Go up to bed, girl. If you were younger I would flog you with my - hunting-whip.” - </p> - <p> - For the first time he spoke to Brand, controlling his rage with a - convulsive effort. - </p> - <p> - “I have not the power to evict you from the house. For the time being the - German people of the Rhineland are under hostile orders. Perhaps you will - find another billet more to your convenience, and more agreeable to - myself.” - </p> - <p> - “To-night, sir,” said Brand, and he told me that he admired the old man’s - self-control and his studied dignity. - </p> - <p> - Elsa still clasped his hand, and before her family he kissed her. - </p> - <p> - “With your leave, or without leave,” he said, “your daughter and I will be - man and wife, for you have no right to stand between our love.” - </p> - <p> - He bowed and left the room, and, in an hour, the house. - </p> - <p> - Franz von Kreuzenach came into his room before he left, and wrung his - hand. - </p> - <p> - “I must go, too,” he said. “My father is very much enraged with me. It is - the break between the young and the old—the new conflict, as we were - saying one day.” - </p> - <p> - He was near weeping, and Brand apologised for being the cause of so much - trouble. - </p> - <p> - In the hall Elsa came to Brand as the orderly carried out his bags. - </p> - <p> - “To-morrow,” she said, “we will meet at Elizabeth von Detmold’s—my - true friend.” - </p> - <p> - Her eyes were wet with tears, but she was smiling, and there was, said - Brand, a fine courage shining in her face. - </p> - <p> - She put her hands on Brand’s shoulders and kissed him, to the deep - astonishment and embarrassment of the orderly, who stood by. It was from - this man, Brock, that the news of Brand’s “entanglement” spread, through - other orderlies, to officers of his mess, as he knew by the cold shoulder - that some of them turned to him. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0029" id="link2H_4_0029"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - VIII. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> met Elsa and - Franz von Kreuzenach at the house of Elizabeth von Detmold in the - Hohenzollernring, which became a meeting-place for Brand and the girl to - whom he was now betrothed. Dr. Small and I went round there to tea at - Brand’s invitation, and I spent several evenings there owing to the - friendship of Elizabeth von Detmold, who seemed to like my company. That - lady was in many ways remarkable, and I am bound to say that in spite of - my repugnance to many qualities of the German character I found her - charming. The tragedy of the war had hit her with an almost particular - malignancy. Married in 1914 to a young officer of the Prussian Guard, she - was widowed at the first battle of Ypres. Her three brothers had been - killed in 1915, ‘16 and ‘17. Both her parents had died during the war, - owing to its accumulating horror. At twenty-six years of age she was left - alone in her big house with hardly enough money for its upkeep, and not - enough to supplement the rigid war rations which were barely sufficient - for life. I suppose there were thousands of young women in Germany—hundreds - of thousands—who had the same cause for sorrow (we do not realise - how German families were massacred in that blood-bath of war, so that even - French and British losses pale in tragedy before their piled dead), but - there were few, I am sure, who faced their grief with such high courage - and such unembittered charity. Like Elsa von Kreuzenach, she devoted her - days to suffering childhood in the <i>crèches</i> and feeding-centres - which she had helped to organise, and she spent many of her evenings in - working-women’s clubs, and sometimes in working-men’s clubs, where she - read and lectured to them on social problems. The war had made her an - ardent pacifist, and, to some extent, a revolutionary of the Liebknecht - school. She saw no hope for civilisation so long as the junker caste - remained in Europe, and the philosophy of militarism, which she believed - stood fast not only in Germany but in France and England, and other - nations. She had a passionate belief, like many other German people at - that time, in President Wilson and his League of Nations, and put all her - hopes in the United States as the one power in the world who could make a - peace of reconciliation and establish a new brotherhood of peoples. After - that she looked to a social revolution throughout the world by which the - working classes should obtain full control of their own destiny and - labour. - </p> - <p> - I found it strange to hear that patrician girl, for she was one of the - aristocratic caste, with an elegance that came from long breeding, - adopting the extreme views of revolutionary socialism, not as a pretty - intellectual theory, but with a pasisonate courage that might lead her to - prison or to death in the conflict between the old powers and the new. - </p> - <p> - To Elsa von Kreuzenach she behaved in a protective and mothering way, and - it seemed to me that “Brand’s girl,” as Dr. Small called her, was the - spiritual child of this stronger and more vital character. Elsa, was, I - fancy, timid of those political and pacifist ideas which Elizabeth von - Detmold stated with such frank audacity. She cherished the spirit of the - human charity which gave them their motive power, but shrank from the - thought of the social strife and change which must precede them. Yet there - was nothing doll-like in her character. There were moments when I saw her - face illumined by a kind of mediaeval mysticism which was the light of a - spirit revealed perhaps by the physical casket which held it, insecurely. - Truly she was as pretty and delicate as a piece of Dresden china, but for - Brand’s sake I did not like the fragile look which hinted at a quick - fading of her flower-like beauty. Her adoration for Brand was, in my - opinion, rather pitiful. It was very German, too, in its meek reverence, - as of a mediaeval maid to knighthood. I prefer the way of French - womanhood, convinced of intellectual equality with men, and with their - abiding sense of humour; or the arrogance of the English girl, who makes - her lover prove his mettle by quiet obedience. Elsa followed Brand with - her eyes wherever he moved, touched his hard, tanned hand with little - secret caresses, and whenever he spoke her eyes shone with gladness at the - sound of his voice. I liked her better when she was talking to our little - doctor or to myself, and, therefore, not absorbed in sentiment. At these - times she was frank and vivacious, and, indeed, had an English way with - her which no doubt she had learnt in her Brighton school. - </p> - <p> - Brand interested me intensely at these times. Sometimes I found myself - doubting whether he was really so much in love with his German girl as he - imagined himself to be. I noticed that he was embarrassed by Elsa’s public - demonstrations of love—that way she had of touching his hand, and - another trick of leaning her head against his shoulder. As a typical - Englishman, in some parts of his brain at least, he shrank from exposing - his affection. It seemed to me also that he was more interested in - political and psychological problems than in the by-play of love’s glances - and revealings. He argued long and deeply with Elizabeth von Detmold on - the philosophy of Karl Marx, the anarchist movement in Berlin, and on the - possibility of a Rhineland republic, which was then being advocated by a - party in Cologne and Mainz whose watchword was “<i>Los von Berlin!</i>” - and freedom from Prussian domination for the Rhine provinces. Even with - Elsa he led the conversation to discussions about German mentality, the - system of German education, and the possible terms of peace. Twice at - least, when I was present, he differed with her rather bluntly—a - little brutally, I thought—about the German administration of - Belgium. - </p> - <p> - “Our people did no more than was allowed by the necessities of war,” said - Elsa. “It was stern and tragic, but not more barbarous than what other - nations would have done.” - </p> - <p> - “It was horrible, bloody, and unjustified,” said Brand. - </p> - <p> - “All war,” said Elizabeth von Detmold, “is bloody and unjustified. - Directly war is declared the moral law is abrogated. It is simply the - reign of devildom. Why pretend otherwise—or weaken the devilish - logic by a few inconsistencies of sentiment?” - </p> - <p> - Brand’s answer to Elsa was not exactly lover-like. I saw the colour fade - from her face at the harshness of his answer, but she leaned her head - against his body (she was sitting by his side on a low stool), and was - silent until her friend Elizabeth had spoken. Then she laughed, bravely, I - thought. - </p> - <p> - “We differ in expression, but we all agree. What Wickham thinks is my - thought. I hate to remember how Belgium suffered.” - </p> - <p> - Brand was utterly unconscious of his harsh way of speech and of his - unconcealed acknowledgment of Elizabeth von Detmold’s intellectual - superiority in her own drawing-room, so that when she spoke his interest - was directed from Elsa to this lady. - </p> - <p> - “Daddy” Small was also immensely impressed by Frau von Detmold’s - character, and he confessed to me that he made notes of her conversation - every time he left her house. - </p> - <p> - “That woman,” he said, “will probably be a martyr for civilisation. I find - myself so cussedly in agreement with her that when I go back to New York I - shall probably hang a red flag out of my window and lose all my - respectable patients. She has the vision of the future.” - </p> - <p> - “What about Brand and Elsa?” I asked, dragging him down to personalities. - </p> - <p> - He put his arm through mine as we walked down the Hohestrasse. - </p> - <p> - “Brand,” he said, in his shrewd way, “is combining martyrdom with romance—an - unsafe combination. The pretty Elsa has lighted up his romantic heart - because of her adoration and her feminine sentiment. I don’t blame him. At - his age—after four years of war and exile—her gold-spun hair - would have woven a web round my heart. Youth is youth, and don’t you - forget it, my lad!” - </p> - <p> - “Where does the martyrdom come in?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - The little doctor blinked through his horn spectacles. - </p> - <p> - “Don’t you see it? Brand has been working out new ideals of life. After - killing a good many German boys, as sniper and chief assassin of the XI. - Corps, he wants to marry a German girl as a proclamation to the world that - he—Wickham Brand—has done with hatred and is out for the - brotherhood of man and the breaking down of the old frontiers. For that - ideal he is going to sacrifice his reputation and make a martyr of himself—not - forgetting that romance is pleasant and Elsa von Kreuzenach as pretty as a - peach! Bless his heart, I admire his courage and his boyishness.” - </p> - <p> - Any doubt I had about the reality of Brand’s passion for Elsa was at least - partly dispelled when he told me, a few nights later, of a tragic thing - that had happened to both of them. - </p> - <p> - He came into my room at the “Domhof” as though he had just seen a ghost. - And, indeed, it was a ghost that had frightened him and put a cold hand - between him and Elsa. - </p> - <p> - “My dear old man!” I cried at the sight of him. - </p> - <p> - “What on earth has happened?” - </p> - <p> - “A damnable and inconceivable thing!” - </p> - <p> - I poured him out some brandy, and he drank it in gulps. Then he did a - strange and startling thing. Fumbling in his breast-pocket, he pulled out - a silver cigarette-case, and going over to the fireplace, dropped it into - the blaze of the wood logs which I had had lighted because of the dampness - of the room. - </p> - <p> - “Why do you do that?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - He watched the metal box blacken and then begin to melt. Several times he - poked it so as to get it deeper into the red embers. - </p> - <p> - “My poor little Elsa!” he said in a pitiful way. “<i>Mein hussches Madel!</i>” - </p> - <p> - The story he told me later was astounding. Even now to people who were not - in the war, who do not know how many strange, fantastic things happened in - that wild nightmare, it will seem improbable and untrue. Indeed, I think - the central fact was untrue, except as a subjective reality in the minds - of Brand and Elsa. - </p> - <p> - It happened when they were sitting alone in Elizabeth von Detmold’s - drawing-room. I fancy they must have been embracing each other, though - Brand did not tell me that. Anyhow, Elsa put her hand into his - breast-pocket and in a playful way pulled out his cigarette-case. - </p> - <p> - “May I open it?” she asked. - </p> - <p> - But she did not open it. She stared at a little monogram on its cover, and - then began to tremble so that Brand was scared. - </p> - <p> - “What is the matter?” he said. - </p> - <p> - Elsa let the cigarette-case drop on to the carpet. - </p> - <p> - “That box!” she said, in an agonised voice. “Where did you find it?” - </p> - <p> - Brand remembered where he had found it, though he had not given a thought - to it for more than two years. He had found it on a night in No Man’s Land - out by the Bois Français, near Fricourt. He had been lying out there on - the lip of a mine crater below a hummock of white chalk. Just before dawn - a German patrol had crept out, and he had shot at them. One man dropped - quite close to where Brand lay. After an hour, when dawn came with a thick - white mist rising from the moist earth, Brand crawled over to the body and - cut off its shoulder-straps for identification. It was the body of a young - man, almost a boy, and Brand saw, with a thrill of satisfaction (it was - his “tiger” time), that he had shot him clean through the heart. A good - shot in the twilight of the dawn! He thrust his hands into the man’s - pockets for papers, and found his pay-book and some letters, and a - cigarette-case. With these he crawled back into his own trench. He - remembered reading the letters. One was from the boy’s sister, lamenting - the length of the war, describing the growing hunger of civilians in - Germany, and saying how she prayed every night for her brother’s safety, - and for peace. He had read thousands of German letters as an intelligence - officer afterwards, but he remembered those because of the night’s - adventure. He had handed them over to the adjutant, for headquarters, and - had kept the cigarette-case, having lost his own. It had the monogram of - “H. v. K.” He had never thought about it from that time to this. Now he - thought about it with an intensity of remembrance. - </p> - <p> - Brand told Elsa von Kreuzenach that he had found the box in No Man’s Land. - </p> - <p> - “It is my brother Heinrich’s,” she cried. “I gave it to him.” - </p> - <p> - She drew back, shivering, from the cigarette-case—or was it from - Brand? When she spoke next it was in a whisper: “Did you kill him?” - </p> - <p> - Brand lied to her, and she knew he was lying. She wept bitterly, and when - Brand kissed her she was cold, and fainted in his arms. - </p> - <p> - That was Brand’s story, and it was incredible. Even now I cannot help - thinking that such a coincidence could not have happened. There is plenty - of room for doubt about that cigarette-case. It was of a usual pattern, - plain, with a wreath engraved round a monogram. That monogram “H. v. K.” - was astonishing in relation to Elsa von Kreuzenach, but there are - thousands of Germans, I imagine, with the same initials. I know two, - Hermann von Kranitz and Hans von Kurtheim. In a German directory I have - found many other names with those initials. I refuse to believe that Brand - should have gone straight to the house of that boy whom he had killed in - No Man’s Land. - </p> - <p> - He believed it, and Elsa was sure of it. That was the tragedy, and the - ghost of the girl’s dead brother stood between them now. - </p> - <p> - For an hour or more he paced up and down my room in an agony of mind, and - none of my arguments would convince him or comfort him. - </p> - <p> - Several times he spoke one sentence which puzzled me. - </p> - <p> - “It makes no difference,” he said. “It makes no difference.” - </p> - <p> - I think he meant that it made no difference to his love or purpose. When - one thinks over this incident one is inclined to agree with that view. He - was no more guilty in killing Elsa’s brother, if he did, than in killing - any other German. If their love were strong enough to cross over fields of - dead, the fact that Elsa’s brother lay there, shot by Brand’s bullet, - made, as he said, “no difference.” It only brought home more closely to - two poor individuals the meaning of that world-tragedy. - </p> - <p> - Elsa, after her first shock of horror, argued that too, and at the - beginning of March Brand and she stood at the altar together in a church - at the end of the Hohenzollem Ring, and were made man and wife. - </p> - <p> - At the ceremony there were present Elizabeth von Detmold, Franz von - Kreuzenach, Dr. Small, and myself, as Brand’s best man. There was, I - think, another presence there, visible only to the minds of Brand and - Elsa, and, strangely enough, to mine. As the bride and bridegroom stood - together before the priest I had a most uncomfortable vision of the dead - body of a German boy lying on the altar beyond them, huddled up as I had - seen many grey figures in the mud of Flanders and Picardy. This idea was, - of course, due to that war-neurosis which, as Dr. Small said, was the - malady of the world. I think at one moment of the service Elsa and Brand - felt some cold touch upon them, for they both looked round in a startled - way. It may have been a draught stealing through the aisle. - </p> - <p> - We had tea at Elizabeth von Detmold’s house, and Brand and his wife were - wonderfully self-controlled. They could not be happy beyond the sense of a - spiritual union because Brand had been ordered by telegram to report at - the War Office in London, and was leaving Cologne at four o’clock that - afternoon, while Elsa was going home to her parents, who were ignorant of - her marriage. Brand’s recall, I am convinced, had been engineered by his - father, who was determined to take any step to prevent his son’s marriage - with a German girl. - </p> - <p> - Young Harding was going with him, having been given his demobilisation - papers, and being desperately anxious, as I have told, to get home. It was - curious that Brand should be his fellow-traveller that night, and I - thought of the contrast of their journey, one man going to his wife with - eager gladness, the other man leaving his wife after a few hours of - marriage. - </p> - <p> - At the end poor Elsa clung to her husband with most passionate grief and, - without any self-consciousness now, because of the depth of his emotion, - Brand, with tears in his eyes, tenderly embraced her. She walked back - bravely with her brother to her mother’s house, while Brand and I raced to - the station where his orderly was waiting with his kit. - </p> - <p> - “See you again soon,” said Brand, gripping my hand. - </p> - <p> - “Where?” I asked, and he answered gloomily: “God knows.” - </p> - <p> - It was not on the Rhine. There was a general exodus of all officers who - could get “demobbed” on any claim or pretext, the small Army of Occupation - settled down to a routine life without adventure, and the world’s interest - shifted to Paris, where the fate of Europe was being settled by a company - of men with the greatest chance in history. I became a wanderer in a sick - world. - </p> - <h3> - END OF BOOK II. - </h3> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0030" id="link2H_4_0030"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - BOOK III—BUILDERS OF PEACE - </h2> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0031" id="link2H_4_0031"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - I - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>hose of us who had - been in exile during the years of war and now returned to peace found that - England had changed in our absence. We did not know this new England. We - did not understand its spirit or its people. Nor did they understand the - men who came back from the many fronts of war, by hundreds of thousands, - now that demobilisation had become a spate after murmurings that were loud - with the menace of revolt from men who had been long patient. - </p> - <p> - These “<i>revenants,</i>” the men who came back out of the terror, were so - many Rip van Winkles (of a youthful kind), looking round for the - companions of their boyhood, going to old places, touching old stones, - sitting by the same fireside, but with a sense of ghostliness. A new - generation had arrived since 1914. The children had become boys and girls; - the girls had grown into womanhood precociously. There were legions of - “flappers” in London and other big cities, earning good wages in - Government offices and factories, spending most of their money on the - adornment of their prettiness, self-reliant, audacious, out for the fun of - life, and finding it. The tragedy of the war had not touched them. It had - been a great “lark” to them. They accepted the slaughter of their brothers - or their fathers light-heartedly, after a few bursts of tears and a period - of sentiment in which pride was strongest. They had grown up to the belief - that a soldier is generally killed or wounded, and that he is glad to take - the risk, or, if not, ought to be, as part of the most exciting and - enjoyable game of war. Women had filled many of the jobs which formerly - were the exclusive possession of men, and the men coming back looked at - these legions of women clerks, tram conductors, ticket collectors, - munition workers, plough-girls, and motor drivers with the brooding - thought that they, the men, had been ousted from their places. A new class - had arisen out of the whirlpool of social upheaval. The profiteers, in a - large way of business, had prospered exceedingly out of the supply and - demand of massacre. The profiteer’s wife clothed herself in furs and - jewels. The profiteer’s daughters were dancing by night and sleeping by - day. The farmers and the shopkeepers had made a good thing out of war. - They liked war so long as they were untouched by air-raids or not - afflicted by boys who came back blind or crippled. They had always been - optimists. They were optimists now, and claimed a share in the merit of - the victory that had been won by the glorious watchword of “business as - usual.” They hoped the terms of peace would be merciless upon the enemy, - and they demanded the Kaiser’s head as a pleasant sacrifice adding spice - to the great banquet of victory celebrations. - </p> - <p> - Outwardly, England was gay and prosperous and light-spirited. It was only - by getting away from the seething crowds in the streets, from the dancing - crowds, and the theatre crowds, and the shopping crowds, that men came - face to face with private and hidden tragedy. In small houses or big, - there were women who had lost their men and were listless and joyless, the - mothers of only sons who did not come back with the demobilised tide, and - the sweethearts of boys who would never fulfil the promise that had given - hope in life to lonely girlhood. There was a new rich, but there was also - a new poor, and people on small fixed incomes or with little nest-eggs of - capital on which they scraped out life found themselves reduced to - desperate straits by the soaring of prices and the burden of taxation. - Underneath the surface joy of a victorious people there was bitterness to - which victory was a mockery and a haggard grief at the cost of war in - precious blood. But the bitterness smouldered without any flame of - passion, and grief nagged at people’s hearts silently. - </p> - <p> - Many of the men who came back were in a strange mood—restless, - morbid, neurotic. Their own people did not understand them. They could not - understand themselves. They had hated war, most of them, but this peace - seemed flat and unprofitable to their souls. All purpose and meaning - seemed suddenly to have gone out of life. Perhaps it was the narrowness of - English home-life. Men who had travelled to far places of the world, who - had seen the ways of foreign people, and had been part of a great drama, - found themselves back again in a little house, closed in and isolated by - the traditions of English individualism, so that often the next-door - neighbour is a stranger. They had a sense of being suffocated. They could - not stay indoors with the old pleasure in a pipe or a book by the fireside - or a chat with mother or wife. Often they would wander out on the chance - of meeting some of the “old pals,” or, after a heavy sigh, say, “Oh, - God!... let’s go to a theatre or a ‘movie’ show!” The theatres were - crammed with men seeking distraction, yet bored with their pleasures and - relapsing into a deeper moodiness afterwards. Wives complained that their - husbands had “changed.” Their characters had hardened and their tempers - were frayed, so that they were strangely irritable and given to storms of - rage about nothing at all. It was frightening.... There was an epidemic of - violence and of horrible sensual crimes with women victims, ending often - in suicide. There were mob riots by demobilised soldiers or soldiers still - waiting in camps for demobilisation. Police stations were stormed and - wrecked and policemen killed by bodies of men who had been heroes in the - war and now fought like savages against their fellow-citizens. Some of - them pleaded guilty in court and made queer statements about an utter - ignorance of their own actions after the disorder had begun. It seemed as - though they had returned to the psychology of that war when men, doped - with rum, or drunk with excitement, had leapt over the parapet and - remembered nothing more of a battle until they found themselves panting in - an enemy trench or lying wounded on a stretcher. It was a dangerous kind - of psychology in civil life. - </p> - <p> - Labourers back at work in factories or mines or railway stations or - dockyards, after months or years of the soldier-life, did not return to - their old conditions or their old pay with diligence and thankfulness. - They demanded higher wages to meet the higher cost of life and after that - a margin for pleasure, and after that shorter hours for higher pay and - less work in shorter hours. If their demands were not granted they downed - tools and said: “What about it?” Strikes became frequent and general, and - at a time when the cost of war was being added up to frightful totals of - debt which could only be reduced by immense production the worker slacked - off, or suspended his labours, and said: “Who gets the profits of my - sweat?... I want a larger share.” He was not frightened of a spectre that - was scaring all people of property and morality in the Western world. The - spectre of Bolshevism, red-eyed, dripping with blood, proclaiming anarchy - as the new gospel, did not cause a shiver to the English working man. He - said, “What has Russia to do with me? I’m English. I have fought this war - to save England, I have done the job; now then, where’s my reward?” - </p> - <p> - Men who looked round for a living while they lived on an unemployment dole - that was not good enough for their new desires became sullen when they - returned home night after night with the same old story of “Nothing - doing.” The women were still clinging to their jobs. They had earned their - independence by good work in war-time. They hated the thought of going - back to little homes to be household drudges, dependent for pocket-money - on father and brothers. They had not only tasted liberty; they had made - themselves free of the large world. They had proved their quality and - strength. They were as good as men, and mostly better. Why should they - slink back to the little narrow rut of life? But the men said, “Get out. - Give us back our jobs.” - </p> - <p> - It was hard on the officer boys—hardest of all on them. They had - gone straight from school to the war, and had commanded men twice as old - as themselves and drawn good pay for pocket-money as first lieutenants, - captains, even majors of air squadrons and tank battalions. They had - gained immense experience in the arts and crafts of war, and that - experience was utterly useless in peace. - </p> - <p> - “My dear young man,” said the heads of prosperous businesses who had been - out to “beat the Boche,” even though they sacrificed their only sons or - all their sons (with heroic courage!), “you have been wasting your time. - You have no qualifications whatever for a junior clerkship in this office. - On the contrary, you have probably contracted habits of idleness and - inaccuracy which would cause a lot of trouble. This vacancy is being - filled by a lad who has not been vitiated by military life, and has - nothing to unlearn. Good-morning!” - </p> - <p> - And the young officers, after a statement like that, went home with - swear-words learnt in Flanders, and said: “That’s the reward of - patriotism, eh? Well, we seem to have been fooled pretty badly. Next time - we shan’t be so keen to strew the fields of death with our fresh little - corpses.” - </p> - <p> - These words, all this murmur from below, did not reach those who sat in - high places. They were wonderfully complacent, except when outbreaks of - violence or the cessation of labour shocked them with a sense of danger. - They arranged peace celebrations before the peace, victory marches when - the fruits of victory were as bitter as Dead Sea fruit in the mouths of - those who saw the ruin of the world; and round a council table in Paris - statesmen of Europe abandoned all the ideals for which the war had been - fought by humble men and killed the hopes of all those who had looked to - them as the founders of a new era of humanity and common sense. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0032" id="link2H_4_0032"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - II - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was when the - Peace Treaty had been signed, but not ratified by the representatives of - Germany and Austria, that I met some of the friends with whom I had - travelled along many roads of war or had met in scenes which already - seemed far back in history. In London, after a journey to America, I came - again in touch with young Harding, whom I had seen last on his way home to - his pretty wife, who had fretted at his long absence, and Charles Fortune, - whose sense of humour had made me laugh so often in the time of tragedy. - Those were chance meetings in the eddies of the great whirlpool of London - life, as I saw other faces, strange for a moment or two, until the - difference between a field-cap and a bowler hat, a uniform and civil - clothes, was wiped out by a look of recognition and the sound of a - remembered voice. - </p> - <p> - Not by chance but by a friendship which had followed me across the world - with written words, I found myself once more in the company of Wickham - Brand, and with him went again to spend some evenings with Eileen - O’Connor, who was now home in Kensington, after that grim drama which she - had played so long in Lille. - </p> - <p> - With “Daddy” Small I had been linked up by a lucky chain of coincidences - which had taken us both to New York at the same time and brought us back - to Europe on the same boat, which was the White Star liner <i>Lapland</i>. - </p> - <p> - My chance meeting with Harding led to a renewal of friendship which was - more of his seeking than mine, though I liked him a good deal. But he - seemed to need me, craving sympathy, which I gave with sincerity, and - companionship, which I could not give so easily, being a busy man. - </p> - <p> - It was on the night when London went mad because of peace, though not so - mad, I was told, as on the night of armistice. It all seemed mad to me - when I was carried like a straw in a raging torrent of life which poured - down the Strand, swirled round Trafalgar Square, and choked all channels - westwards and eastwards of Piccadilly Circus. The spirit of London had - broken bounds. It came wildly from mean streets in the slum quarters to - the heart of the West End. The worst elements had surged up and mingled - with the middle-class folk and those who claim exclusiveness by the power - of wealth. In ignorance that all barriers of caste were to be broken that - night, “society” women, as they are called, rather insolent in their - public display of white shoulders and diamonds and furs, set out in motor - cars for hotels and restaurants which had arranged peace dinners and peace - dances. Some of them, I saw, were unaccompanied by their own men, whom - they were to meet later, but the vacant seats in their open cars were - quickly filled by soldiers, seamen, or merry devils in civil clothes who - climbed over the backs of the cars when they were brought to a standstill - in the crush of vast crowds. Those uninvited guests, some of them wearing - women’s bonnets, most of them fluttering with flags pinned to their coats, - all of them provided with noisemaking instruments, behaved with ironical - humour to the pretty ladies, touched their coiled hair with “ticklers,” - blew loud blasts on their toy trumpets, delivered cockney orations to them - for the enjoyment of the crowds below. Some of the pretty ladies accepted - the situation with courage and good humour, laughing with shrill mirth at - their grotesque companions. Others were frightened and angry. I saw one - girl try to beat off the hands of men clambering about her car. They - swarmed into it and paid no heed to her cries of protest.... - </p> - <p> - All the flappers were out in the Strand and in Trafalgar Square and many - streets. They were factory girls, shop girls, office girls, and their eyes - were alight with adventure and a pagan ecstasy. Men teased them as they - passed with the long “ticklers,” and they, armed with the same weapon, - fought duels with these aggressors, and then fled, and were pursued into - the darkness of side-streets, where they were caught and kissed. Soldiers - in uniform, English, Scots, Canadians, Australians, came lurching along in - gangs, arm in arm, then mingled with the girls, changed headgear with - them, struggled and danced and stampeded with them. Seamen, three sheets - in the wind, steered an uneven course through this turbulent sea of life, - roaring out choruses, until each man had found a maid for the dance of - joy. - </p> - <p> - London was a dark forest with nymphs and satyrs at play in the glades and - Pan stamping his hoofs like a giddy goat. All the passions let loose by - war, the breaking down of old restraints, the gladness of youth at escape - from death, provided the motive-power, unconscious and primitive, behind - this carnival of the London crowds. From some church a procession came - into Trafalgar Square, trying to make a pathway through the multitude. A - golden cross was raised high, and clergymen in surplices, with acolytes - and faithful women, came chanting solemn words. The crowd closed about - them. A mirthful sailor teased the singing women with his “tickler.” Loud - guffaws, shrill laughter, were in the wake of the procession, though some - men stood to attention as the cross passed, and others bared their heads, - and something hushed the pagan riot a moment. - </p> - <p> - At the windows in Pall Mall men in evening clothes who had been officers - in the world-war sat by the pretty women who had driven through the - crowds, looking out on the noisy pageant of the street. A piano-organ was - playing, and two young soldiers danced with ridiculous grace, imitating - the elegance and languorous ecstasy of society dancers. One of them wore a - woman’s hat and skirt, and was wonderfully comic. - </p> - <p> - I stood watching them, a little stupefied by all the noise and tumult of - this “Peace” night, and with a sense of tragic irony, remembering millions - of boys who lay dead in quiet fields and the agony of many peoples in - Europe. It was then that I saw young Harding. He was sitting in his club - window just above the dancing soldiers and looking out with a grave and - rather woe-begone face, remarkable in contrast with the laughing faces of - fellow-clubmen and their women. I recognised him after a moment’s query in - my mind, and said: “Hulloa, Harding!” - </p> - <p> - He stared at me, and I saw the sudden dawning of remembrance. - </p> - <p> - “Come in,” he answered. “I had no idea you were back again!” - </p> - <p> - So I went into his club and sat by his side at the open window, glad of - this retreat from the pressure and tumult of the mob below. - </p> - <p> - He talked conventionally for a little while, and asked me whether I had - had “a good time” in the States, and whether I was busy, and why the - Americans seemed so hostile to President Wilson. I understood from him - that he approved of the Peace Treaty and was glad that Germany and Austria - had been “wiped off the map” as far as it was humanly possible. - </p> - <p> - We chatted like that for what I suppose was something more than half an - hour, while we looked out upon the seething multitude in the street below, - when suddenly the boy’s mask fell from him, so abruptly and with such a - naked revelation of a soul in anguish that concealment was impossible. - </p> - <p> - I saw him lean forward with his elbows on the windowsill and his hands - clenching an iron bar. His face had become like his shirt front, almost as - white as that. A kind of groan came from him, like that of a man badly - wounded. The people on either side of him turned to look at him, but he - was unconscious of them, as he stared at something in the street. I - followed the direction of his eyes and guessed that he was looking at a - motor-car which had been stopped by the crowd, who were surging about it. - It was an open car, and inside were a young man and woman in fancy dress - as Pierrot and Columbine. They were standing up and pelting the crowd with - long coloured streamers, which the mob caught and tossed back again with - shouts of laughter. The girl was very pretty, with an audacious little - face beneath the white sugar-loaf cap, and her eyes were on fire. Her - companion was a merry-eyed fellow, dean-shaven and ruddy-faced (for he had - not chalked it to Pierrot’s whiteness), and looked to me typical of a - naval officer or one of our young airmen. I could see nothing to groan - about in such a sight. - </p> - <p> - “What’s wrong, Harding?” - </p> - <p> - I touched him on the elbow, for I did not like him to give himself away - before the other company in the window-seat. - </p> - <p> - He rose at once, and walked in a stumbling way across the room, while I - followed. The room was empty where we stood. - </p> - <p> - “Aren’t you well?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - He laughed in a most tragic way. - </p> - <p> - “Did you see those two in the car, Pierrot and Columbine?” - </p> - <p> - I nodded. - </p> - <p> - “Columbine was my wife. Pierrot is now her husband. Funny, isn’t it?” - </p> - <p> - My memory went back to that night in Cologne, less than six months before, - when Harding had asked me to use my influence to get him demobilised, and - as an explanation of his motive opened his pocket-book and showed me the - photograph of a pretty girl, and said, “That’s my wife;... she is hipped - because I have been away so long.” I felt enormously sorry for him. - </p> - <p> - “Come and have a whisky in the smoke-room,” said Harding. “I’d like a - yarn, and we shall be alone.” - </p> - <p> - I did not want him to tell me his tale. I was tired of tragic history. But - I could not refuse. The boy wanted to unburden himself. I could see that, - though for quite a time after we had sat on each side of the wood fire he - hesitated in getting to the point and indulged in small talk about his - favourite brand of cigars and my evil habit of smoking the worst kind of - cigarettes. - </p> - <p> - Suddenly we plunged into what were the icy waters of his real thoughts. - </p> - <p> - “About my wife... I’d like you to know. Others will tell you, and you’d - have heard already if you hadn’t been away so long. But I think you would - get a wrong notion from others. The fact is, I don’t blame Evelyn. I would - like you to understand that. I blame the Germans for everything.” - </p> - <p> - “The Germans?” - </p> - <p> - That was a strange statement, and I could not see the drift of it until he - explained his meaning. - </p> - <p> - “The Germans made the war, and the war took me away from Evelyn just after - our marriage.... Imagine the situation, a kid of a girl, wanting to be - merry and bright, eager for the fun of life, and all that, left alone in a - big old house in the country, or when she got fed up with that in a big - gloomy house in town. She got fed up with both pretty quick. I used to get - letters from her—every day for a while—and she used to say in - every one of them, ‘I’m fed up like Billy-O.’ That was her way of putting - it, don’t you know, and I got scared. But what could I do out there except - write and tell her to try and get busy with something? Well, she got busy - all right!” - </p> - <p> - Harding laughed again in his woeful way, which was not good to hear. Then - he became angry and passionate, and told me it was all the fault of “those - damned women.” - </p> - <p> - I asked him what “damned women,” and he launched into a wild denunciation - of a certain set of women—most of the names he mentioned were - familiar to me from full-length portraits in the <i>Sketch</i> and <i>Tatler</i>—who - had spent the years of war in organising fancy bazaars, charity matinées, - private theatricals for Red Cross funds, “and all that,” as Harding - remarked in his familiar phrase. He said they were rotten all through, - utterly immoral, perfectly callous of all the death and tragedy about - them, except in a false, hysterical way at times. - </p> - <p> - “They were ghouls,” he said. - </p> - <p> - Many of them had married twice, three times, even more than that, before - the boys who were killed were cold in their graves. Yet those were the - best, with a certain respect for convention. Others had just let - themselves go. They had played the devil with any fellow who came within - their circle of enticement, if he had a bit of money, or could dance well, - or oiled his hair in the right way. - </p> - <p> - “They corrupted English society,” said Harding, “while they smiled and - danced, and dressed in fancy clothes, and posed for their photos in the - papers. It was they who corrupted Evelyn when the poor kid was fighting up - against her loneliness and very hipped, and all that.” - </p> - <p> - “Who was the man?” I asked, and Harding hesitated before he told me. It - was with frightful irony that he answered: “The usual man in most of these - cases, the man who is often one’s best pal. Damn him!” - </p> - <p> - Harding, seemed to repent of that curse; at least, his next words were - strangely inconsistent. - </p> - <p> - “Mind you, I don’t blame him, either. It was I who sent him to Evelyn. He - was in the Dragoons with me, and when he went home on leave I said, ‘Go - and cheer up my little wife, old man. Take her to a theatre or two, and - all that. She’s devilishly lonely.’ Needless to say, he fell in love with - her. I might have known it. As for Evelyn, she was immensely taken with - young Dick. He was a bit of a humorist and made her laugh. Laughter was a - devilish good thing in war-time. That was where Dick had his pull. I might - have known <i>that!</i> I was a chuckle-headed idiot.” - </p> - <p> - The end of the story was abrupt, and at the time I found it hard to find - extenuating circumstances in the guilt of the girl who had smashed this - boy Harding. She lied to him up to the very moment of his demobilisation; - at least, she gave him no clue to her purpose until she hit him, as it - were, full in the face with a mortal blow to his happiness. - </p> - <p> - He had sent her a wire with the one word “Demobilised,” and then had taken - the next train back and a cab from Charing Cross to that house of his at - Rutland Gate. - </p> - <p> - “Is the mistress well?” he had asked one of the maids when his kit was - handled in the hall. - </p> - <p> - “The mistress is out, sir,” said the maid, and he remembered afterwards - that she looked queerly at him, with a kind of pity. - </p> - <p> - There was the usual note waiting for him. Evelyn was “very sorry.” She - hated causing her husband the grief she knew he would feel, but she and - Dick could not do without each other. The war had altered everything, and - many wives to many husbands. She hoped Harding would be happy after a - bit.... - </p> - <p> - Harding was not happy. When he read that note he went a little mad, and - roamed round London with an automatic pistol, determined to kill his - former friend if he could set eyes on him. Fortunately, he did not find - him. Evelyn and Dick had gone off to a village in Devonshire, and after - three days with murder in his heart Harding had been very ill and had gone - into a nursing-home. There, in his weakness, he had, he told me, “thought - things out.” The result of his meditations amounted to no more than the - watchword of many people in years of misery: “<i>C’est la guerre!</i>” - </p> - <p> - It was the war which had caused his tragedy. It had put too great a strain - on human nature, or at least on human nerves and morals. It had broken - down the conventions and traditions of civilised life. The Germans had not - only destroyed many towns and villages, but many homes and hearts far from - the firing-line. They had let the devil loose. - </p> - <p> - “Quite a number of my pals,” said Harding, “are in the same boat with me. - They either couldn’t stick their wives, or their wives couldn’t stick - them. It gives one a sense of companionship!” - </p> - <p> - He smiled in a melancholy way, but then confessed to loneliness—so - many of his real pals had gone west—and asked whether he could call - on me now and then. It was for that reason that he came to my house fairly - often, and sometimes Fortune, who came too at times, made him laugh, as in - the old days. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0033" id="link2H_4_0033"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - III - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>ortune and I met - also in a crowd, but indoors. Brand and Eileen O’Connor were both to be at - one of the evening parties which assembled every now and then in a flat at - Chelsea belonging to Susy Whincop, designer of stained glass, driver of - ambulances for the Scottish Women’s Convoy, and sympathetic friend before - the war of any ardent soul who grew long hair if a man, short hair if a - woman, and had some special scheme, philosophy, or inspiration for the - welfare of humanity. - </p> - <p> - I had known Susy and her set in the old days. They were the minor - intellectuals of London, and I had portrayed some of them in a novel - called “Intellectual Mansions,” which they did not like, though I loved - them all. They wrote little poems, painted little pictures, produced - little plays, and talked about all subjects under heaven with - light-hearted humour, an arrogance towards popular ideas, and a quick - acceptance of the new, the unusual and the revolutionary in art and - thought. Into their way of life war crashed suddenly with its thunder - notes of terror. All that they had lived for seemed to be destroyed, and - all their ideals overthrown. They had believed in beauty, and it was flung - into the mud, and bespattered with blood, and buried beneath the ugly - monsters of war’s idolatry. - </p> - <p> - They had been devotees of liberty, and were made slaves of the drill - sergeant and other instruments of martial law. They had been enemies of - brutality, cruelty, violence, but all human effort now was for the - slaughter of men, and the hero was he who killed most with bayonet or - bomb. Their pretty verses were made of no account. Their impressionistic - paintings were not so useful as the camouflage of tin huts. Their little - plays were but feeble drama to that which now was played out on the - world’s stage to the roar of guns and the march of armies. They went into - the tumult and fury of it all, and were lost. I met some of them, like - Fortune and Brand, in odd places. Many of them died in the dirty ditches. - Some of them wrote poems before they died, stronger than their work before - the war, with a noble despair or the exaltation of sacrifice. Others gave - no sign of their previous life, and were just absorbed into the ranks—ants - in these legions of soldier-ants. Now those who had escaped with life were - coming back to their old haunts, trying to pick up old threads, getting - back, if they could, to the old ways of work, hoping for a new inspiration - out of immense experience, but not yet finding it. - </p> - <p> - In Susy Whincop’s flat some of them had gathered when I went there, and - when I looked round upon them, seeing here and there vaguely-remembered - faces, I was conscious of a change that had overtaken them, and, with a - shock, wondered whether I too had altered so much in those five years. I - recognised Peter Hallam, whom I had known as a boy just down from Oxford, - with a genius (in a small way) for satirical verse and a talent for - passionate lyrics of a morbid and erotic type. Yes, it was certainly - Peter, though his face had hardened and he had cropped his hair short and - walked with one leg stiff. - </p> - <p> - He was talking to a girl with bobbed hair. It was Jennie Southcombe, who - had been one of the heroines of the Serbian retreat, according to accounts - of newspaper correspondents. - </p> - <p> - “My battery,” said Peter, “plugged into old Fritz with open sights for - four horns. We just mowed ‘em down.” - </p> - <p> - Another face rang a little bell in my memory. Surely that was Alfred Lyon, - the Futurist painter? No, it could not be, for Lyon had dressed like an - Apache, and this man was in conventional evening clothes and looked like a - Brigadier in mufti. Alfred Lyon?... Yes, there he was, though he had lost - his pose—cribbed from Murger’s <i>Vie de Bohème</i>—and his - half-starved look, and the wildness in his eyes. As he passed Susy Whincop - he spoke a few words, which I overheard. - </p> - <p> - “I’ve abandoned Futurism. The present knocked that silly. Our little - violence, which shocked Suburbia, was made ridiculous by the enormous - thing that smashed every convention into a cocked hat.’ I’m just going to - put down some war scenes—I made notes in the trenches—with - that simplicity of the primitive soul to which we went back in that way of - life. The soldier’s point of view, his vision, is what I shall try for.” - </p> - <p> - “Splendid!” said Susy. “Only, don’t shrink from the abomination. We’ve got - to make the world understand—and remember.” - </p> - <p> - I felt a touch on my sleeve, and a voice said, “Hulloa!... Back again?” - </p> - <p> - I turned and saw an oldish-young man, with white hair above a lean, - clean-shaven face and sombre eyes. I stared, but could not fix him. - </p> - <p> - “Don’t you remember?” he said. “Wetherall, of the Stage Society!” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Lord, yes!” - </p> - <p> - I grasped his hand, and tried to keep the startled look out of my eyes. - But he saw it, and smiled. - </p> - <p> - “Four years as a prisoner of the Turk have altered me a bit. This white - hair, eh? And I feel like Rip van Winkle.” - </p> - <p> - He put into words something which I had been thinking since my arrival in - Susy’s rooms. - </p> - <p> - “We are the <i>revenants</i>, the ghosts who have come back to their old - haunts. We are pretending that everything is the same as before, and that - we are the same. But it’s all different, and we have changed most of all. - Five years of war have dug their hoofs into the faces of most people in - this crowd. Some of them look fifteen, twenty, years older, and I expect - they’ve been through a century of experience and emotion.” - </p> - <p> - “What’s coming out of it?” I asked. “Anything big?” - </p> - <p> - “Not from us,” said Wetherall. “Most of us are finished. Our nerves have - gone to pieces, and our vitality has been sapped. We shall put down a few - notes of things seen and understood. But it’s the next generation that - will get the big vision, or the one after next.” - </p> - <p> - Then I was able to shake hands with Susy Whincop, and, as I have said, she - left me in no doubt about the change that four years of war had made to - me. - </p> - <p> - She held me at arm’s length, studying my face. - </p> - <p> - “Soul alive!” she said. “You’ve been through it all right! Hell’s - branding-irons have been busy with a fair-faced man.” - </p> - <p> - “As bad as that?” I asked, and she answered very gravely, “As bad as - that.” - </p> - <p> - She had hardly changed, except for a few streaks of grey in her brown - hair. Her low, broad forehead was as smooth as before; her brown eyes - shone with their old steady light. She had not lost her sense of humour, - though she had seen a good deal of blood and agony and death. - </p> - <p> - “How’s humanity?” I asked, and she laughed and Shrugged her shoulders. - </p> - <p> - “What can one do with it? I thought we were going to catch the old devil - by the tail and hold him fast, but he’s broken loose again. This peace! - Dear God!... And all the cruelty and hatred that have survived the - massacre! But I don’t despair even now. In this room there is enough - good-will and human kindness to create a new world. We’re going to have a - good try to make things better by-and-by.” - </p> - <p> - “Who’s your star to-night?” I asked. “Who is the particular Hot-Gospeller - with a mission to convert mankind?” - </p> - <p> - “I’ve several,” said Susy. - </p> - <p> - She glanced round the room, and her eyes rested on a little man with - goggles and a goatee beard, none other than my good friend Dr. Small, with - whom I had travelled down many roads. I had no notion that he knew Susy or - was to be here to-night. - </p> - <p> - “There’s one great soul—a little American doctor whose heart is as - big as humanity itself, and whose head is filled with the wisdom of the - wise.” - </p> - <p> - “I know him,” I said, “and I agree with you.” - </p> - <p> - He caught our eyes fixed on him, and blinked through his goggles, and then - waved his hand, and made his way to us. - </p> - <p> - “Hulloa, doc.!” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew Susy Whincop?” - </p> - <p> - “No need,” he answered. “Miss Whincop is the golden link between all men - of good-will.” - </p> - <p> - Susy was pleased with that. She patted the little doctor’s hand and said, - “Bully for you, doctor! and may the Stars and Stripes wave over the League - of Nations!” - </p> - <p> - Then she was assailed by other guests, and the doctor and I took refuge in - a corner. - </p> - <p> - “How’s everything?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - The doctor was profoundly dejected, and did not hide the gloom that - possessed his soul. - </p> - <p> - “Sonny,” he answered, “we shall have to fight with our backs to the wall, - because the enemy—the old devil—is prevailing against us. I - have just come over from Paris, and I don’t mind telling you that what I - saw during the Peace Conference has made me doubt the power of goodness - over evil.” - </p> - <p> - “Tell me,” I said. - </p> - <p> - “Daddy” Small’s story was not pleasant to hear. It was the story of the - betrayal, one by one, of every ideal for which simple men had fought and - died, a story of broken pledges, of hero-worship dethroned, and of great - peoples condemned to lingering death. The Peace Treaty, he said, would - break the heart of the world and prepare the way for new, more dreadful, - warfare. - </p> - <p> - “How about Wilson?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - The little doctor raised his hands like a German crying, “<i>Kamerad!</i>” - </p> - <p> - “Wilson was not big enough. He had the future of civilisation in his - hands, but his power was filched from him, and he never knew until the end - that he had lost it. He was like a simple Gulliver among the Liliputians. - They tied him down with innumerable threads of cotton while he slept in - self-complacency with a sense of righteousness. He was slow-thinking among - quick-witted people. He stated a general principle, and they drafted out - clauses which seemed to fulfil the principle while violating it in every - detail. They juggled with facts and figures so that black seemed white - through his moral spectacles, and he said Amen to their villainy, - believing that God had been served by righteousness. Bit by bit they broke - his pledges and made a jigsaw puzzle of them so artfully that he believed - they were uncracked. Little by little they robbed him of his honour, and - he was unaware of the theft. In preambles and clause headings and - interpretations they gave lip-service to the fourteen points upon which - the armistice was granted, and to which the allied nations were utterly - pledged, not only to the Germans and all enemies, but to their own people. - Not one of those fourteen points is in the reality of the Treaty. There - has been no self-determination of peoples. Millions have been transferred - into unnatural boundaries. There have been no open covenants openly - arrived at. The Conference was within closed doors. The clauses of the - Peace Treaty were kept secret from the world until an American journalist - got hold of a copy and sent it to his paper. What has become of the - equality of trade conditions and the removal of economic barriers among - all nations consenting to peace? Sonny, Europe has been carved up by the - spirit of vengeance, and multitudes of men, women and children have been - sentenced to death by starvation. Another militarism is enthroned above - the ruin of German militarism. Wilson was hoodwinked into putting his - signature to a peace of injustice which will lead by desperation to world - anarchy and strife. When he understands what thing he has done he will be - stricken by a mortal blow to his conscience and his pride.” - </p> - <p> - “Doctor,” I said, “there is still hope in the League of Nations. We must - all back that.” - </p> - <p> - He shook his head. - </p> - <p> - “The spirit has gone out of it. It was born without a soul. I believe now - that the future welfare of the world depends upon a change of heart among - the peoples, inspired by individuals in all nations who will work for good - and give a call to humanity, indifferent to statesmen, treaties and - Governments.” - </p> - <p> - “The International League of Good-will?” - </p> - <p> - He nodded and smiled. - </p> - <p> - “Something like that.” - </p> - <p> - I remembered a dinner-party in New York after the armistice. I had been - lecturing on the League of Nations at a time when the Peace Treaty was - still unsigned, but when already there was a growing hostility against - President Wilson, startling in its intensity. The people of the United - States were still moved by the emotion and idealism with which they had - roused great armies and sent them to the fields of France. Some of the men - were returning home again. I stood outside a club in New York when a - darkie regiment returned its colours, and I heard the roars of cheering - that followed the march of the negro troops. I saw Fifth Avenue filled - with triumphal arches, strung across with jewelled chains, festooned with - flags and trophies of the home-coming of the New York Division. The heart - of the American people was stirred by the pride of its achievement on the - way to victory and by a new sense of power over the destiny of mankind. - But already there was a sense of anxiety about the responsibilities to - which Wilson in Europe was pledging them without their full and free - consent. They were conscious that their old isolation was being broken - down, and that by ignorance or rash promise they might be drawn into other - European adventures which were no concern of theirs. They knew how little - was their knowledge of European peoples, with their rivalries, and racial - hatreds, and secret intrigues. Their own destiny as a free people might be - thwarted by being dragged into the jungle of that unknown world. In any - case Wilson was playing a lone hand, pledging them without their advice or - agreement, subordinating them, it seemed, to the British Empire, with six - votes on the Council of the League to their poor one. What did he mean? By - what right did he do so? - </p> - <p> - At every dinner-table these questions were asked before the soup was - drunk; at the coffee end of the meal every dinner-party was a debating - club, and the women joined with the men in hot discussion; until some - tactful soul laughed loudly, and some hostess led the way to music or a - dance. - </p> - <p> - The ladies had just gone after one of these debates, leaving us to our - cigars and coffee, when “Daddy” Small made a proposition which startled me - at the time. - </p> - <p> - “See here,” he said to his host and the other men. “Out of this discussion - one thing stands clear and straight. It is that in this room, now, at this - table, are men of intellect—American and English—men of - goodwill towards mankind, men of power in one way or another, who agree - that whatever happens there must be eternal friendship between England and - the United States.” - </p> - <p> - “Sure!” said a chorus of voices. - </p> - <p> - “In other countries there are men with the same ideals as, ourselves—peace, - justice between men and nations, a hatred of cruelty, pity for women and - children, charity and truth. Is that agreed?” - </p> - <p> - “Sure!” said the other guests. - </p> - <p> - They were mostly business men, well-to-do, but not of the “millionaire” - class, with here and there a writing-man, an artist and, as I remember, a - clergyman. - </p> - <p> - “I am going to be a commercial traveller in charity,” said the little - doctor. “I am going across the frontiers to collect clients for an - international society of goodwill. I propose to establish a branch at this - table.” - </p> - <p> - The suggestion was received with laughter by some of the men, but, as I - saw, with gravity by others. - </p> - <p> - “What would be the responsibilities, doctor. Do you want money?” - </p> - <p> - This was from the manager of an American railroad. - </p> - <p> - “We shall want a bit,” said the doctor. “Not much. Enough for stamps and - occasional booklets and typewriting. The chief responsibility would be to - spot lies leading to national antagonism, and to kill them by exposure to - cold truth; also, to put in friendly words, privately and publicly, on - behalf of human kindness across the barriers of hate and malignity. Any - names for the New York branch?” - </p> - <p> - The doctor took down twelve names, pledged solemnly to his programmes.... - </p> - <p> - I remembered that scene in New York when I stood with the little man in - Susy Whincop’s drawing-room. - </p> - <p> - “What about this crowd?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - “Sonny,” he said, “this place is reeking with humanity. The real stuff. - Idealists who have seen hell pretty close, most of them. Why, in this room - there’s enough goodwill to move mountains of cruelty, if we could get a - move on all together.” - </p> - <p> - It was then that I saw Charles Fortune, though I was looking for Brand. - </p> - <p> - Fortune was wearing one of his special “faces.” I interpreted it as his - soulful and mystical face. It broke a little as he winked at me. - </p> - <p> - “Remarkable gathering,” he said. “The Intellectuals come back to their - lair. Some of them like little Bo-Peep who lost her sheep and left their - tails behind them.” - </p> - <p> - “What does that mean?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - “Nothing,” he answered. “We used to talk like that. I’m trying to grope - back.” - </p> - <p> - He put his hand over his forehead wearily. - </p> - <p> - “God!” he said. “How terrible was war in a Nissen hut! I cannot even now - forget that I was every yard a soldier!” - </p> - <p> - He began to hum his well-remembered anthem, “Blear-eyed Bill the Butcher - of the Boche,” and then checked himself. - </p> - <p> - “Nay, let us forget that melody of blood. Let us rather sing of fragrant - things of peace.” He hummed the nursery ballad of “Twinkle, twinkle, - little star, How I wonder what you are!” - </p> - <p> - Susy Whincop seized him by the wrist. - </p> - <p> - “So the Fat Boy has escaped the massacre? Come and make us laugh. We are - getting too serious at the piano end of the room.” - </p> - <p> - “Lady,” said Fortune, “tempt me not to mirth-making. My irony is terrible - when roused.” - </p> - <p> - As he went to the piano I caught sight of Brand just making his way - through a group by the door. - </p> - <p> - I had never seen him in civil clothes, but he looked as I had imagined - him, in an old pre-war dinner-jacket and baggy trousers, and a shirt that - bulged abominably. A tuft of hair stuck up behind—the tuft that - Eileen O’Connor, had pulled for Auld Lang Syne. But he looked fine and - distinguished, with his hard, lean face and strong jaw and melancholy - eyes. - </p> - <p> - He caught sight of me and gripped my hand, painfully. - </p> - <p> - “Hullo, old man! Welcome back. I have heaps to tell you.” - </p> - <p> - “Good things?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - He shook his head. - </p> - <p> - “Not good.... Damned bad, alas!” - </p> - <p> - He did not continue the conversation. He stared across my shoulder at the - door as though he saw an apparition. I turned to see the object of his - gaze. It was Eileen O’Connor, whom I had first met in Lille. - </p> - <p> - She was in an evening frock cut low at the neck, and her arms were bare. - There was a smile in her dark Irish eyes, and about her long humorous - mouth. The girl I had seen in Lille was not so elegant as this, not so - pretty. The lifting of care, perhaps, had made the change. - </p> - <p> - Susy Whincop gave a cry of “Is that Eileen?” and darted to her. - </p> - <p> - “It’s myself,” said Eileen, releasing herself from an ardent embrace, “and - all the better for seeing you. Who’s who in this distinguished crowd?” - </p> - <p> - “Old friends,” I said, being nearest to her. “Four men who walked one day - of history up a street in Lille, and met an Irish girl who had the worship - of the crowd.” - </p> - <p> - She took my hand and I was glad of her look of friendship. - </p> - <p> - “Four?” she said. “That’s too good to be true. All safe and home again?” - </p> - <p> - It was astonishing that four of us should be there in a room in London - with the girl who had been the heroine of Lille. But there was Fortune and - “Daddy” Small and Brand and myself. - </p> - <p> - The crowd gave us elbow-room while we stood round Eileen. To each she gave - her hands—both hands—and merry words of greeting. It was only - I, and she, perhaps, who saw the gloom on Brand’s face when she greeted - him last and said: “Is it well with you, Wickham?” - </p> - <p> - Her colour rose a little at the sight of him, and he was paler than when I - saw him first that night. - </p> - <p> - “Pretty well,” he said. “One still needs courage—even in peace.” - </p> - <p> - He laughed a little as he spoke, but I knew that his laughter was the - camouflage of hidden trouble, at which he had hinted in his letters to me. - </p> - <p> - We could not have much talk that evening. The groups shifted and - re-shifted. The best thing was when Eileen sang “The Gentle Maiden” as on - a night in Lille. Brand, standing near the door, listened, strangely - unconscious of the people about him. - </p> - <p> - “It’s good to hear that song again,” I said. - </p> - <p> - He started, as though suddenly awakened. - </p> - <p> - “It stirs queer old memories.” - </p> - <p> - It was in Eileen’s own house that Brand and I renewed a friendship which - had been made in a rescued city where we had heard the adventure of this - girl’s life. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0034" id="link2H_4_0034"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - IV - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>s Brand admitted - to me, and as he had outlined the trouble in his letters, he was having “a - bad time.” Since his marriage with Elsa von Kreuzenach he had not had much - peace of mind nor any kind of luck. After leaving Cologne the War Office, - prompted by some unknown influence—he suspected his father, who knew - the Secretary for War—had sent him off on a special mission to Italy - and had delayed his demobilisation until a month before this meeting of - ours. That had prevented his plan of bringing Elsa to England, and now, - when he was free and her journey possible, he was seriously embarrassed - with regard to a home for her. There was plenty of room in his father’s - house at Cheyne Walk, Chelsea—too big a house for his father and - mother and younger sister, now that the eldest girl had married and his - younger brother lay dead on the Somme. It had been his idea that he and - Elsa would live in the upper rooms—it made a kind of flat—while - he got back to novel-writing until he earned enough to provide a home of - his own. It was still his idea, as the only possible place for the - immediate future, but the family was dead against it and expressed the - utmost aversion, amounting almost to horror, at the idea of receiving his - German wife. By violent argument, by appeals to reason and charity, most - of all by the firm conviction of his father that he was suffering from - shell-shock and would go over the borderline of sanity if thwarted too - much, a grudging consent had been obtained from them to give Elsa - house-room. Yet he dreaded the coldness of her welcome, and the hostility - not only of his own people but of any English society in which she might - find herself. - </p> - <p> - “I shouldn’t have believed,” said Brand, “that such vindictive hatred - could have outlasted the war, in England. The people here at home, who - have never seen war closer than an air-raid, are poisoned, twisted and - envenomed with hate. And the women are worst. My own mother—so sweet - and gentle in the old days—would see every German baby starve rather - than subscribe to a single drop of milk. My own sister—twenty years - of age, add as holy as an angel—would scratch out the eyes of every - German girl. She reads the papers every day with a feverish desire for the - Kaiser’s trial. She licks her lips at the stories of starvation in - Austria. ‘They are getting punished,’ she says. ‘Who?’ I ask her. - ‘Austrian babies?’ And she says, ‘The people who killed my brother and - yours.’ What’s the good of telling her that I have killed <i>their</i> - brothers—many of them—even the brother of my wife——” - </p> - <p> - I shook my head at that, but Brand was insistent. - </p> - <p> - “I’m sure of it.... It is useless telling her that the innocent are being - punished for the guilty, and that all Europe was involved in the same - guilt. She says, ‘You have altered your ideas. The strain of war has been - too much for you.’ She means I’m mad or bad.... Sometimes I think I may - be, but when I think of those scenes in Cologne, the friendly way of our - fighting men with their former enemy, the charity of our Tommies, their - lack of hatred now the job is done, I look at these people in England, the - stay-at-homes, and believe it is they who are warped.” - </p> - <p> - The news of Brand’s marriage with a German girl had leaked out, though his - people tried to hush it up. It came to me now and then as a tit-bit of - scandal from men who had been up at Oxford with him in the old days. - </p> - <p> - “You know that fellow Wickham Brand?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes.” - </p> - <p> - “Heard the rumour about him?” - </p> - <p> - “No.” - </p> - <p> - “They say he’s got a German wife. Married her after the armistice.” - </p> - <p> - “Why not?” - </p> - <p> - That question of mine made them stare as though I had uttered some - blasphemy. Generally they did not attempt to answer it, but shrugged their - shoulders with a look of unutterable disgust, or said, “Disgraceful!” They - were men, invariably, who had done <i>embusqué</i> work in the war, in - Government offices and soft jobs. Soldiers who had fought their way to - Cologne were more lenient. One of them said, “Some of the German girls are - devilish pretty. Not my style, perhaps, but kissable.” - </p> - <p> - I saw something of Brand’s trouble when I walked down Knightsbridge with - him one day on the way to his home in Chelsea. Horace Chipchase, the - novelist, came face to face with us and gave a whoop of pleasure when he - saw us. Then suddenly, after shaking hand? with me and greeting Brand - warmly, he remembered the rumour that had reached him. Embarrassment - overcame him, and ignoring Brand he confined his remarks to me, awkwardly, - and made an excuse for getting on. He did not look at Brand, again. - </p> - <p> - “Bit strained in his manner,” I remarked, glancing sideways at Wickham. - </p> - <p> - He strode on with tightened lips. - </p> - <p> - “Shared rooms with me once, and I helped him when he was badly in need of - it.... He’s heard about Elsa. Silly blighter!” - </p> - <p> - But it hurt the man, who was very sensitive under his hard crust. - </p> - <p> - It was on the way to his house that he told me he had made arrangements at - last for Elsa to join him in England. One of his friends at headquarters - in Cologne was providing her with a passport and had agreed to let her - travel with him to Paris where he was to give evidence before a committee - of the Peace Conference. Brand could fetch her from there, in a week’s - time. - </p> - <p> - “I am going to Paris next week,” I told him, and he gave a grunt of - pleasure, and said, “Splendid! We can both meet Elsa.” - </p> - <p> - I thought it curious then, and afterwards, that he was anxious for my - company when he met his wife and when she was with him. I think the - presence of a third person helped him to throw off a little of the - melancholy into which he relapsed when alone. - </p> - <p> - I asked him if Elsa’s family knew of her marriage and were reconciled to - it, and he told me that they knew, but were less reconciled now than when - she had first broken the news to her father and mother on the day of her - wedding. Then there had been a family “scene.” The General had raged and - stormed, and his wife had wept, but after that outburst had decided to - forgive her, in order to avoid a family scandal. There had been a - formidable assembly of uncles, aunts and cousins of the von Kreuzenach - family to sit in judgment upon this affair which, as they said, “touched - their honour,” and Elsa’s description of it, and of her terror and sense - of guilt (it is not easy to break with racial traditions), was very - humorous, though at the same time rather pathetic. They had graciously - decided, after prolonged discussions in which they treated Elsa exactly as - though she were the prisoner at a court-martial, to acknowledge and accept - her marriage with Captain Brand. They had been led to this decision mainly - owing to the information given by Franz von Kreuzenach that Captain Brand - belonged to the English aristocracy, his father being Sir Amyas Brand, and - a member of the English House of Parliament. They were willing to admit - that, inferior as Captain Brand’s family might be to that of von - Kreuzenach—so old and honoured in German history—it was yet - respectable and not unworthy of alliance with them. Possibly—it was - an idea suggested with enormous solemnity by Onkel von Kreuzenach—Elsa’s - marriage with the son of an English Member of Parliament might be of - service to the Father-land in obtaining some amelioration of the Peace - Terms (the Treaty was not yet signed), and in counteracting the harsh - malignity of France. They must endeavour to use this opportunity provided - by Elsa in every possible way as a patriotic duty.... So at the end of the - family conclave Elsa was not only forgiven but was, to some extent, - exalted as an instrument of God for the rescue of their beloved Germany. - </p> - <p> - That position of hers lasted in her family until the terms of the Peace - Treaty leaked out, and then were published in full. A storm of indignation - rose in Germany, and Elsa was a private victim of its violence in her own - house. The combined clauses of the Treaty were read as a sentence of death - by the German people. Clause by clause, they believed it fastened a doom - upon them, and insured their ruin. It condemned them to the payment of - indemnities which would demand all the produce of their industry for many - and uncertain years. It reduced them to the position of a slave state, - without an army, without a fleet, without colonies, without the right to - develop industries in foreign countries, without ships to carry their - merchandise, without coal to supply their factories or raw material for - their manufactures. To enforce the payment of these indemnities foreign - commissions would seize all German capital invested in former enemy or - neutral states, and would keep armed forces on the Rhine ready to march at - any time, years after the conclusion of peace, into the heart of Germany. - The German people might work, but not for themselves. They had freed - themselves of their own tyrants, but were to be subject to an - international tyranny depriving them of all hope of gradual recovery from - the ruin of defeat. On the West and on the East, Austria was to be hemmed - in by new states formed out of her own flesh-and-blood under the - domination of hostile races. She was to be maimed and strangled. The - Fourteen Points to which the allies had pledged themselves before the - armistice had been abandoned utterly, and Wilson’s promise of a peace - which would heal the wounds of the world had been replaced by a peace of - vengeance which would plunge Central Europe into deep gulfs of misery, - despair, and disease. That, at least, was the German point of view. - </p> - <p> - “They’re stunned,” said Brand. “They knew they were to be punished, and - they were willing to pay a vast price of defeat. But they believed that - under a republican Government they would be left with a future hope of - progress, a decent hope of life, based upon their industry. Now they have - no hope, for we have given them a thin chance of reconstruction. They are - falling back upon the hope of vengeance and revolt. We have prepared - another inevitable war when the Germans, with the help of Russia, will - strive to break the fetters we have fastened on them. So goes the only - purpose for which most of us fought this war, and all our pals have died - in vain.” - </p> - <p> - He stopped in the street and beat the pavement with his stick. - </p> - <p> - “The damned stupidity of it all!” he said. “The infernal wickedness of - those old men who have arranged this thing!” - </p> - <p> - Three small boys came galloping up Cheyne Walk with toy reins and tinkling - bells. - </p> - <p> - “Those children,” said Brand, “will see the things that we have seen and - go into the ditches of death before their manhood has been fulfilled. We - fought to save them, and have failed.” - </p> - <p> - He told me that even Elsa had been aghast at the Peace Terms. - </p> - <p> - “I hoped more from the generous soul of England,” she had written to him. - </p> - <p> - Franz von Kreuzenach had written more bitterly than that. - </p> - <p> - “We have been betrayed. There were millions of young men in Germany who - would have worked loyally to fulfil Wilson’s conditions of peace as they - were pledged in his Fourteen Points. They would have taken their - punishment with patience and courage, knowing the penalty of defeat. They - would have worked for the new ideals of a new age, which were to be - greater liberty and the brotherhood of man in a League of Nations. But - what is that league? It is a combination of enemies, associated for the - purpose of crushing the German people and keeping her crushed. I, who - loved England and had no emnity against her even in war, cannot forgive - her now for her share in this peace. As a German I find it unforgivable, - because it perpetuates the spirit of hatred and thrusts us back into the - darkness where evil is bred.” - </p> - <p> - “Do you agree with that?” I asked Brand. - </p> - <p> - “On the whole, yes,” he said, gravely. “Mind you, I’m not against - punishing Germany. She had to be punished. But we are substituting slow - torture for just retribution, and like Franz I’m thinking of the effect on - the future. By generosity we should have made the world safe. By vengeance - we have prepared new strife. Europe will be given up to anarchy and - deluged in the blood of the boys who are now babes.” - </p> - <p> - I had dinner with Brand’s people and found them “difficult.” Sir Amyas - Brand had Wickham’s outward hardness and none of his inner sensibility. He - was a stiff, pompous man who had done extremely well out of the war, I - guessed, by the manufacture of wooden huts, to which he attached a - patriotic significance, apart from his profits. He alluded to the death of - his younger son as his “sacrifice for the Empire,” though it seemed to me - that the boy Jack had been the real victim of sacrifice.. To Wickham he - behaved with an exasperating air of forgiveness, as to one who had sinned - and was physically and morally sick. - </p> - <p> - “How do you think Wickham is looking?” he asked me at table, and when I - said, “Very well,” he sighed and shook his head. - </p> - <p> - “The war was a severe nervous strain upon Mm. It has changed him sadly. We - try to be patient with him, poor lad.” - </p> - <p> - Brand overheard his speech and flushed angrily. - </p> - <p> - “I’m sorry I try your patience so severely, sir,” he said in a bitter, - ironical way. - </p> - <p> - “Don’t let’s argue about it, dear lad,” said Sir Amyas Brand suavely. - </p> - <p> - “No,” said Lady Brand plaintively, “you know argument is bad for you, - Wickham. You become so violent, dear.” - </p> - <p> - “Besides,” said Ethel Brand, the daughter, in a low and resigned voice, - “what’s done can’t be undone.” - </p> - <p> - “Meaning Elsa?” asked Wickham savagely. I could see that but for my - restraining presence as a stranger there was all the inflammable stuff - here for a first-class domestic “flare-up.” - </p> - <p> - “What else?” asked Ethel coldly, and meeting her brother’s challenging - eyes with a perfectly steady gaze. She was a handsome girl with regular, - classical features and tight lips, as narrow-minded, I imagined, as a - mid-Victorian spinster in a cathedral town, and as hard as granite in - principle and prejudice. - </p> - <p> - Wickham weakened after signs of an explosion of rage. He spoke gently, and - revealed a hope to which I think he clung desperately. - </p> - <p> - “When Elsa comes you will all fall in love with her.” - </p> - <p> - It was the worst thing he could have said, though he was unconscious of - his “gaffe.” - </p> - <p> - His sister Ethel reddened, and I could see her mouth harden. - </p> - <p> - “So far I have remarkably little love for Germans, male or female.” - </p> - <p> - “I hope we shall behave with Christian charity,” said Lady Brand. - </p> - <p> - Sir Amyas Brand coughed uneasily, and then tried to laugh off his - embarrassment for my benefit. - </p> - <p> - “There will be considerable scandal in my constituency!” - </p> - <p> - “To hell with that!” said Brand, irritably. “It’s about time the British - public returned to sanity.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah!” said Sir Amyas, “there’s a narrow border-line between sanity, and - shell-shock. Really, it is distressing what a number of men seem to come - back with disordered nerves. All these crimes, all these cases of violence——” - </p> - <p> - It gave him a chance of repeating a leading article which he had read that - morning in <i>The Times</i>. It provided a conversation without - controversy until the end of dinner. - </p> - <p> - In the hall, before I left, Wickham Brand laughed, rather miserably. - </p> - <p> - “It’s not going to be easy! Elsa will find the climate rather cold here, - eh?” - </p> - <p> - “She will win them over,” I said hopefully, and these words cheered him. - </p> - <p> - “Why, yes, they’re bound to like her.” - </p> - <p> - We arranged for the Paris trip two weeks later, but before then we were - sure to meet at Eileen O’Connor’s. As a matter of fact, we dined together - with “Daddy” Small next day, and Eileen was with him. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0035" id="link2H_4_0035"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - V - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> found Eileen - O’Connor refreshing and invigorating, so that it was good to be in her - company. Most people in England at that time, at least those I met, were - “nervy,” depressed, and apprehensive of evil to come. There was hardly a - family I knew who had not one vacant chair wherein a boy had sat when he - had come home from school or office, and afterwards on leave. Their ghosts - haunted these homes and were present in any company where people gathered - for conversation or distraction. The wound to England’s soul was unhealed, - and the men who came back had received grave hurt, many of them, to their - nervous and moral health. - </p> - <p> - This Irish girl was beautifully gay, not with that deliberate and - artificial gaiety which filled London theatres and dancing halls, but with - ah inner flame of happiness. It was difficult to account for that. She had - seen much tragedy in Lille. Death and the agony of men had been familiar - to her. She had faced death herself, very closely, escaping, as she said, - by a narrow “squeak.” She had seen the brutality of war and its welter of - misery for men and women, and now in time of peace she was conscious of - the sufferings of many people, and did not hide these things from her - mental vision or cry, “All’s right with the world!” when all was wrong. - But something in her character, something, perhaps, in her faith, enabled - her to resist the pressure of all this “morbid emotion” and to face it - squarely, with smiling eyes. Another thing that attracted one was her - fearlessness of truth. At a time when most people shrank from truth her - candour was marvellous, with the simplicity of childhood joined to the - wisdom of womanhood. - </p> - <p> - I saw this at the dinner-party for four arranged in her honour by “Daddy” - Small. That was given, for cheapness’ sake, at a little old restaurant in - Whitehall which provided a good dinner for a few shillings, and in an - “atmosphere” of old-fashioned respectability which appealed to the little - American. - </p> - <p> - Eileen knocked Brand edgewise at the beginning of his dinner by remarking - about his German marriage. - </p> - <p> - “The news came to me as a shock,” she said, and when Wickham raised his - eyebrows and looked both surprised and dismayed (he had counted on her - sympathy and help), she patted his hand as it played a devil’s tattoo on - the table-cloth, and launched into a series of indiscretions that fairly - made my hair curl. - </p> - <p> - “Theoretically,” she said, “I hadn’t the least objection to your marrying - a German girl. I have always believed that love is an instinct which is - beyond the control of diplomats who arrange frontiers and generals who - direct wars. I saw a lot of it in Lille—and there was Franz von - Kreuzenach, who fell in love with me, poor child. What really hurt me for - a while was green-eyed jealousy.” - </p> - <p> - “Daddy” Small laughed hilariously, and filled up Eileen’s glass with - Moselle wine. - </p> - <p> - Brand looked blank. - </p> - <p> - “Jealousy?” - </p> - <p> - “Why, yes,” said Eileen. “Imagine me, an Irish girl, all soppy with - emotion at the first sight of English khaki (that’s a fantastic situation - anyhow!), after four years with the grey men, and then finding that the - first khaki tunic she meets holds the body of a man she knew as a boy, - when she used to pull his hair! And such a grave heroic-looking man, - Wicky! Why, I felt like one of Tennyson’s ladies released from her dark - tower by a Knight of the Round Tower. Then you went away and married a - German Gretchen! And all my doing, because if I hadn’t given you a letter - to Franz you wouldn’t have met Elsa. So when I heard the news, I thought, - ‘There goes my romance!’” - </p> - <p> - “Daddy” Small laughed again, joyously. - </p> - <p> - “Say, my dear,” he said, “you’re making poor old Wickham blush like an - Englishman asked to tell the story of his V.C. in public.” - </p> - <p> - Brand laughed, too, in his harsh, deep voice. - </p> - <p> - “Why, Eileen, you ought to have told me before I moved out of Lille.” - </p> - <p> - “And where would maiden modesty have been?” asked Eileen, in her humorous - way. - </p> - <p> - “Where is it now?” asked the little doctor. - </p> - <p> - “Besides,” said Brand, “I had that letter to Franz von Kreuzenach in my - pocket. I don’t mind telling you I detested the fellow for his infernal - impudence in making love to you.” - </p> - <p> - “Sure now, it was a one-sided affair, entirely,” said Eileen, exaggerating - her Irish accent, “but one has to be polite to a gentleman that saves - one’s life on account of a romantic passion. Oh, Wickham, it’s very - English you are!” - </p> - <p> - Brand could find nothing to say for himself, and it was I who came to the - rescue of his embarrassment by dragging a red herring across the thread of - Eileen’s discourse. She had a wonderful way of saying things that on most - girls’ lips would have seemed audacious, or improper, or ‘high-falutin’, - but on hers were natural with a simplicity which shone through her. - </p> - <p> - Her sense of humour played like a light about her words, yet beneath her - wit was a tenderness and a knowledge of tragic things. I remember some of - her sayings that night at dinner, and they seemed to me very good then, - though when put down they lose the deep melody of her voice and the smile - or sadness of her dark eyes. - </p> - <p> - “England,” she said, “fought the war for liberty and the rights of small - nations, but said to Ireland, ‘Hush, keep quiet there, damn you, or you’ll - make us look ridiculous.’” - </p> - <p> - “Irish soldiers,” she said, “helped England to win all her wars, but - mostly in Scottish regiments. When the poor boys wanted to carry an Irish - flag, Kitchener said, ‘Go to hell,’ and some of them went to Flanders... - and recruiting stopped with a snap.” - </p> - <p> - “Now, how do you know these things?” asked “Daddy” Small. “Did Kitchener - go to Lille to tell you?” - </p> - <p> - “No,” said Eileen, “but I found some of the Dublin boys in the prison at - Lille, and they told the truth before they died, and perhaps it was that - which killed them. That and starvation and German brutality.” - </p> - <p> - “I believe you’re a Sinn Feiner,” said Dr. Small. “Why don’t you go to - Ireland and show your true colours, ma’am?” - </p> - <p> - “I’m Sinn Fein all right,” said Eileen, “but I hated the look of a white - wall in Lille, and there are so many white walls in the little green isle. - So I’m stopping in Kensington and trying to hate the English, but can’t - because I love them.” - </p> - <p> - She turned to Wickham and said: “Will you take me for a row in Kensington - Gardens the very next day the sun shines?” - </p> - <p> - “Rather!” said Wickham, “on one condition!’ - </p> - <p> - “And that?” - </p> - <p> - “That you’ll be kind to my little Elsa when she comes.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll be a mother to her,” said Eileen, “but she must come quick or I’ll - be gone.” - </p> - <p> - “Gone?” - </p> - <p> - Wickham spoke with dismay in his voice. I think he had counted on Eileen - as his stand-by when Elsa would need a friend in England. - </p> - <p> - “Hush now!” said “Daddy” Small. “It’s my secret, you wicked lady with - black eyes and a mystical manner.” - </p> - <p> - “Doctor,” said Eileen, “your own President rebukes you. ‘Open covenants - openly arrived at—weren’t those his words for the new diplomacy?” - </p> - <p> - “Would to God he had kept to them,” said the little doctor, bitterly, - launching into a denunciation of the Peace Conference until I cut him - short with a question. - </p> - <p> - “What’s this secret, Doctor?” - </p> - <p> - He pulled out his pocket-book with an air of mystery. - </p> - <p> - “We’re getting on with the International League of Goodwill,” he said. - “It’s making more progress than the League of Nations. There are names - here that are worth their weight in gold. There are golden promises which - by the grace of God——” - </p> - <p> - “Daddy” Small spoke solemnly—“will be fulfilled by golden deeds. - Anyhow, we’re going to get a move on—away from hatred towards - charity, not for the making of wounds but for the healing, not punishing - the innocent for the sins of the guilty, but saving the innocent—the - Holy Innocents—for the glory of life. Miss Eileen and others are - going to be the instruments of the machinery of mercy, rather, I should - say, the spirit of humanity.” - </p> - <p> - “With you as our gallant leader,” said Eileen, patting his hand. - </p> - <p> - “It sounds good,” said Brand. “Let’s hear some more.” - </p> - <p> - Dr. Small told us more in glowing language, and in Biblical utterance - mixed with American slang like Billy Sunday’s Bible. He was profoundly - moved. He was filled with hope and gladness, and with a humble pride - because his efforts had borne fruit. - </p> - <p> - The scheme was simple. From his friends in the United States he had - promises, as good as gold, of many millions of American dollars. From - English friends he had also considerable sums. With this treasure he was - going to Central Europe to organise relief on a big scale for the children - who were starving to death. Eileen O’Connor was to be his private - secretary and assistant-organiser. She would have heaps of work to do, and - she had graduated in the prisons and slums of Lille. They were starting in - a week’s time for Warsaw, Prague, Buda-Pesth and Vienna. - </p> - <p> - “Then,” said Brand, “Elsa will lose a friend.” - </p> - <p> - “Bring her, too,” said Eileen. “There’s work for all.” - </p> - <p> - Brand was startled by this, and a sudden light leapt into his eyes. - </p> - <p> - “By Jove!... But I’m afraid not. That’s impossible.” - </p> - <p> - So it was only a week we had with Eileen, but in that time we had some - good meetings and merry adventures. Brand and I rowed her on the lake in - Kensington Gardens, and she told us Irish fairy-tales as she sat in the - stem with her hat in her lap, and the wind playing in her brown hair. We - took her to the Russian Ballet and she wept a little at the beauty of it. - </p> - <p> - “After four years of war,” she said, “beauty is like water to a parched - soul. It’s so exquisite it hurts.” - </p> - <p> - She took us one day into the Carmelite Church at - </p> - <p> - Kensington, and Brand and I knelt each side of her, feeling sinners with a - saint between us. And then, less like a saint, she sang ribald little - songs on the way to her mother’s house in Holland Street, and said “Drat - the thing!” when she couldn’t find her key to unlock the door. - </p> - <p> - “Sorry, Biddy my dear,” she said to the little maidservant who opened the - door. “I shall forget my head one day.” - </p> - <p> - “Sure, Miss Eileen,” said the girl, “but never the dear heart of you, at - all, at all.” - </p> - <p> - Eileen’s mother was a buxom, cheery, smiling Irishwoman who did not worry, - I fancy, about anything in the world, and was sure of heaven. Her - drawing-room was littered with papers and novels, some of which she swept - off the sofa with a careless hand. - </p> - <p> - “Won’t you take a seat then?” - </p> - <p> - I asked her whether she had not been anxious about her daughter when - Eileen was all those years under German rule. - </p> - <p> - “Not at all,” said the lady. “I knew our dear Lord was as near to Lille as - to London.” - </p> - <p> - Two of her boys had been killed in the war, “fighting,” she said, “for an - ungrateful country which keeps its heel on the neck of Ireland,” and two - were in the United States, working for the honour of Ireland on American - newspapers. Eileen’s two sisters had married during the war and between - them had given birth to four Sinn Feiners. Eileen’s father had died a year - ago, and almost his last word had been her name. - </p> - <p> - “The dear man thought all the world of Eileen,” said Mrs. O’Connor. “I was - out of it entirely when he had, her by his side.” - </p> - <p> - “You’ll be lonely,” said Brand, “when your daughter goes abroad again.” - </p> - <p> - Eileen answered him. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, you can’t keep me back by insidious remarks like that! Mother spends - most of her days in church, and the rest of them reading naughty novels - which keep her from ascending straight to heaven without the necessity of - dying first. She is never lonely because her spirit is in touch with those - she loves, in this world or the other. And isn’t that the truth I’m after - talking, mother o’ mine!” - </p> - <p> - “I never knew more than one O’Connor who told the truth yet,” said the - lady, “and that’s yourself, my dear. And it’s a frightening way you have - with it that would scare the devil out of his skin.” - </p> - <p> - They were pleasant hours with Eileen, and when she went away from Charing - Cross one morning with Dr. Small, five hospital nurses and two Americans - of the Red Cross, I wished with all my heart that Wickham Brand had asked - her and not Elsa von Kreuzenach to be his wife. That was an idle wish, for - the next morning Brand and I crossed over to France, and on the way to - Paris my friend told me that the thought of meeting Elsa after those - months of separation excited him so that each minute seemed an hour. And - as he told me that he lit a cigarette and I saw that his hand was - trembling, because of this nervous strain. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0036" id="link2H_4_0036"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - VI - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e met Elsa at the - Gare de l’Est in Paris the evening after our arrival. Brand’s nervous - anxiety had increased as the hour drew near, and he smoked cigarette after - cigarette while he paced up and down the <i>Salle d’Attente</i> as far as - he could for the crowds which surged there. - </p> - <p> - Once he spoke to me about his apprehensions. - </p> - <p> - “I hope to God this will work out all right.... I’m only thinking of her - happiness.” - </p> - <p> - Another time he said: “This French crowd would tear her to pieces if they - knew she was German.” - </p> - <p> - While we were waiting we met a friend of old times. I was first to - recognise Pierre Nesle, who had been attached to us as interpreter and <i>liaison</i> - officer. He was in civil clothes and was wearing a bowler hat and a light - overcoat, so that his transformation was astonishing. I touched him on the - arm as he made his way quickly through the crowd, and he turned sharply - and stared at me as though he could not place me at all. Then a look of - recognition leapt into his eyes and he grasped both my hands delightedly. - He was still thin and pale, but some of his old melancholy had gone out of - his eyes and in its place there was an eager, purposeful look. - </p> - <p> - “Here’s Brand,” I said. “He’ll be glad to see you again.” - </p> - <p> - “<i>Quelle chance!</i>” exclaimed Pierre, and he made a dash for his - friend and before Brand could remonstrate kissed him on both cheeks. They - had been good comrades and after the rescue of Marthe from the mob in - Lille it was to Brand that Pierre Nesle had opened his heart and revealed - his agony. He could not stay long with us in the station as he was going - to some political meeting, and perhaps it was well, because Brand was - naturally anxious to escape from him before Elsa came. - </p> - <p> - “I am working hard—speaking, writing, organising—on behalf of - the <i>Ligue des Tranchées</i>,” said Pierre. “You must come and see me at - my office. It’s the headquarters of the new movement in France. - Anti-militarist, to fulfil the ideals of the men who fought to end war.” - </p> - <p> - “You’re going to fight against heavy odds,” said Brand. “Clemenceau won’t - love you, nor those who like his peace.” - </p> - <p> - Pierre laughed and used an old watchword of the war. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Nous les aurons!</i> Those old dead-heads belong to the past. Peace - has still to be made by the men who fought for a new world.” - </p> - <p> - He gave us his address, pledged us to call on him, and slipped into the - vortex of the crowd. - </p> - <p> - Brand and I waited another twenty minutes, and then in a tide of new - arrivals we saw Elsa. She was in the company of Major Quin, Brand’s friend - who had brought her from Cologne, a tall Irishman who stooped a little as - he gave his arm to the girl. She was dressed in a blue coat and skirt, - very neatly, and it was the glitter of her spun-gold hair that made me - catch sight of her quickly in the crowd. Her eyes had a frightened look as - she came forward, and she was white to the lips. Thinner, too, than when I - had seen her last, so that she looked older and not, perhaps, quite so - wonderfully pretty. But her face lighted up with intense gladness when - Brand stood in front of her, and then, under an electric lamp, with a - crowd surging around him, took her in his arms. - </p> - <p> - Major Quin and I stood aloof, chatting together. - </p> - <p> - “Good journey?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - “Excellent, but I’m glad it’s over. That little lady is too unmistakably - German. Everybody spotted her and looked unutterable things. She was - frightened, and I don’t wonder. Most of them thought the worst of me. I - had to threaten one fellow with a damned good hiding for an impertinent - remark I overheard.” - </p> - <p> - Brand thanked him for looking after his wife, and Elsa gave him her hand - and said, “<i>Danke schön</i>.” - </p> - <p> - Major Quin raised his finger and said, “Hush. Don’t forget you’re in Paris - now.” - </p> - <p> - Then he saluted with a click of spurs and took his leave. I put Brand and - his wife in a taxi and drove outside by the driver to a quiet old hotel in - the Rue St. Honoré, where we had booked rooms. - </p> - <p> - When we registered, the manager at the desk stared at Elsa curiously. She - spoke English, but with an unmistakable accent. The man’s courtesy to - Brand, which had been perfect, fell from him abruptly and he spoke with - icy insolence when he summoned one of the boys to take up the baggage. In - the dining-room that night all eyes turned to Elsa and Brand, with - inquisitive, hostile looks. I suppose her frock, simple and ordinary as it - seemed to me, proclaimed its German fashion. Or perhaps her face and hair - were not so English as I had imagined. It was a little while before the - girl herself was aware of those unpleasant glances about her. She was very - happy sitting next to Brand, whose hand she caressed once or twice, and - into whose face she looked with adoration. She was still very pale, and I - could see that she was immensely tired after her journey, but her eyes - shone wonderfully. Sometimes she looked about her and encountered the - stares of people—elderly French <i>bourgeois</i> and some English - nurses and a few French officers—dining at other tables in the great - room with gilt mirrors and painted ceiling. She spoke to Brand presently - in a low voice. - </p> - <p> - “I am afraid. These people stare at me so much. They guess what I am.” - </p> - <p> - “It’s only your fancy,” said Brand. “Besides, they would be fools not to - stare at a face like yours.” - </p> - <p> - She smiled and coloured up at that sweet flattery. - </p> - <p> - “I know when people like one’s looks. It is not for that reason they - stare.” - </p> - <p> - “Ignore them,” said Brand. “Tell me about Franz and Frau von Detmold.” - </p> - <p> - It was unwise of him to sprinkle his conversation with German names. The - waiter at our table was listening attentively. Presently I saw him - whispering behind the screen to one of his comrades and looking our way - sullenly. - </p> - <p> - He kept us waiting an unconscionable time for coffee, and when at last - Brand gave his arm to Elsa and led her from the room, he gave a harsh - laugh as they passed, and I heard the words, “<i>Sale Boche!</i>” spoken - in a low tone of voice, yet loud enough for all the room to hear. From all - the little tables there came titters of laughter and those words, “<i>Sale - Boche!</i>” were repeated by several voices. I hoped that Elsa and Brand - had not heard, but I saw Elsa sway a little on her husband’s arm as though - struck by an invisible blow, and Brand turned with a look of passion, as - though he would hit the waiter or challenge the whole room to warfare. But - Elsa whispered to him, and he went with her up the staircase to their - rooms. - </p> - <p> - The next morning when I met them at breakfast Elsa still looked - desperately tired, though very happy, and Brand had lost a little of his - haggard look and his nerve was steadier. But it was an uncomfortable - moment for all of us when the manager came to the table and regretted with - icy courtesy that their rooms would not be available another night owing - to a previous arrangement which he had unfortunately overlooked. - </p> - <p> - “Nonsense!” said Brand, shortly. “I have taken these rooms for three - nights, and I intend to stay in them.” - </p> - <p> - “It is impossible,” said the manager. “I must ask you to have your baggage - packed by twelve o’clock.” - </p> - <p> - Brand dealt with him firmly. - </p> - <p> - “I am an English officer. If I hear another word from you I will call on - the Provost Marshal and get him to deal with you.” - </p> - <p> - The manager bowed. This threat cowed him, and he said no more about a - change of rooms. But Brand and his wife, and I, as their friend, suffered - from a policy of passive resistance to our presence. The chambermaid did - not answer their bell, having become strangely deaf. - </p> - <p> - The waiter was generally engaged at other tables whenever we wanted him. - The hall porter turned his back upon us. The page-boys made grimaces - behind our backs, as I saw very well in the gilt mirror, and as Elsa saw. - </p> - <p> - They took to having their meals out, Brand insisting always that I should - join them, and we drove out to the Bois and had tea there in the <i>Chalet - des Iles</i>. It was a beautiful afternoon in September, and the leaves - were just turning to crinkled gold and the lake was as blue as the - cloudless sky above. Across the ferry came boatloads of young Frenchmen - with their girls, singing, laughing, on this day of peace. Some of the men - limped as they came up the steps from the landing-stage. One walked on - crutches. Another had an empty sleeve. Under the trees they made love to - their girls and fed them with rose-tinted ices. - </p> - <p> - “These people are happy,” said Elsa. “They have forgotten already the - agony of war. Victory is healing. In Germany there is only misery.” - </p> - <p> - A little later she talked about the peace. - </p> - <p> - “If only the <i>Entente</i> had been more generous in victory our despair - would not be so great. Many of us, great multitudes, believed that the - price of defeat would be worth paying because Germany would take a place - among free nations and share in the creation of a nobler world. Now we are - crushed by the militarism of nations who have used our downfall to - increase their own power. The light of a new ideal which rose above the - darkness has gone out.” - </p> - <p> - Brand took his wife’s hand and stroked it in his big paw. - </p> - <p> - “All this is temporary and the work of the old men steeped in the old - traditions which led to war. We must wait for them to die. Then out of the - agony of the world’s boyhood will come the new revelation.” - </p> - <p> - Elsa clasped her hands and leaned forward, looking across the lake in the - Bois de Boulogne. - </p> - <p> - “I would like to live long enough to be sure of that,” she said, eagerly. - “If we have children, my husband, perhaps they will listen to our tales of - the war as Franz and I read about wolves and goblins in our fairy-tales. - The fearfulness of them was not frightening, for we knew we were safe.” - </p> - <p> - “God grant that,” said Brand, gravely. - </p> - <p> - “But I am afraid!” said Elsa. She looked again across the lake, so blue - under the sky, so golden in sunlight; and shivered a little. - </p> - <p> - “You are cold!” said Brand. - </p> - <p> - He put his arms about her as they sat side by side, and her head drooped - upon his shoulder and she closed her eyes like a tired child. - </p> - <p> - They went to the opera that night and I refused their invitation to join - them, protesting that they would never learn to know each other if a third - person were always present. I slipped away to see Pierre Nesle, and found - him at an office in a street somewhere off the Rue du Louvre, which was - filled with young men whose faces I seemed to have seen before under blue - shrapnel helmets above blue tunics. They were typewriting as though - serving machine-guns, and folding up papers while they whistled the tune - of “<i>Madelon</i>.” Pierre was in his shirtsleeves, dictating letters to - a <i>poilu</i> in civil clothes. - </p> - <p> - “Considerable activity on the western front, eh?” he said when he saw me. - </p> - <p> - “Tell me all about it, Pierre.” - </p> - <p> - He told me something about it in a restaurant where we dined in the Rue du - Marché St. Honoré. He was one of the organising secretaries of a society - made up exclusively of young soldiers who had fought in the trenches. - There was a sprinkling of intellectuals among them—painters, poets, - novelists, journalists—but the main body were simple soldiers - animated by one idea—to prevent another war by substituting the - common-sense and brotherhood of peoples for the old diplomacy of secret - alliances and the old tradition of powerful armies. - </p> - <p> - “How about the Peace Treaty and the League of Nations?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - Pierre Nesle shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. - </p> - <p> - “The Peace Treaty belongs to the Napoleonic tradition. We’ve got beyond - that now. It is the programme that has carefully arranged another and - inevitable war. Look at the world now! Look at France, Italy, Germany, - Austria! We are all ruined together, and those most ruined will, by their - disease and death, drag down Europe into general misery. <i>Mon vieux</i>, - what has victory given to France! A great belt of devastated country, - cemeteries crowded with dead youth, bankruptcy, and everything five times - the cost of pre-war rates. Another such victory will wipe us off the map. - We have smashed Germany, it is true, for a time. We have punished her - women and children for the crimes of their war lords, but can we keep her - crushed? Are our frontiers impregnable against the time when her people - come back for revenge, smashing the fetters we have placed on them, and - rising again in strength? For ten years, for twenty years, for thirty - years perhaps, we shall be safe. And after that, if the heart of Europe - does not change, if we do not learn wisdom from the horror that has - passed, France will be ravaged again, and all that we have seen our - children will see, and their suffering will be greater than ours, and they - will not have the hope we had.” - </p> - <p> - He stared back into the past, not a very distant past, and I fancy that - among the figures he saw was Marthe, his sister. - </p> - <p> - “What’s the remedy?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - “A union of democracy across the frontiers of hate,” he answered, and I - think it was a phrase that he had written and learnt by heart. - </p> - <p> - “A fine phrase!” I said, laughing a little. - </p> - <p> - He flared up at me. - </p> - <p> - “It’s more than a phrase. It’s the heart-beat of millions in Europe.” - </p> - <p> - “In France?” I asked pointedly. “In the France of Clemenceau?” - </p> - <p> - “More than you imagine,” he answered, boldly. “Beneath our present - Chauvinism, our natural exultation in victory, our inevitable hatred of - the enemy, common-sense is at work, and an idealism higher than that. At - present its voice is not heard. The old men are having their day. - Presently the new men will arrive with the new ideas. They are here, but - do not speak yet.” - </p> - <p> - “The old men again!” I said. “It is strange. In Germany, in France, in - England, even in America, people are talking strangely about the old men - as though they were guilty of all this agony. That is remarkable.” - </p> - <p> - “They were guilty,” said Pierre Nesle. “It is against the old men in all - countries of Europe that youth will declare war. For it was their ideas - which brought us to our ruin.” - </p> - <p> - He spoke so loudly that people in the restaurant turned to look at him. He - paid his bill and spoke in a lower voice. - </p> - <p> - “It is dangerous to talk like this in public. Let us walk up the Champs - Elysées, where I am visiting some friends.” - </p> - <p> - Suddenly a remembrance came back to him. - </p> - <p> - “Your friends, too,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “My friends?” - </p> - <p> - “But yes; Madame Chéri and Hélène. After Edouard’s death they could not - bear to live in Lille.” - </p> - <p> - “Edouard, that poor boy who came back? He is dead?” - </p> - <p> - “He was broken by the prison life,” said Pierre. “He died within a month - of armistice, and Hélène wept her heart out. He confided a secret to me. - Hélène and he had come to love each other, and would marry when they could - get her mother’s consent—or, one day, if not.” - </p> - <p> - “What’s her objection?” I asked. “Why, it’s splendid to think that Hélène - and you will be man and wife. The thought of it makes me feel good.” - </p> - <p> - He pressed my arm and said, “<i>Merci, mille fois, mon cher</i>.” - </p> - <p> - Madame Chéri objected to his political opinions. She regarded them as - poisonous treachery. - </p> - <p> - “And Hélène?” - </p> - <p> - I remembered that outburst, months back, when Hélène had desired the death - of many German babies. - </p> - <p> - “Hélène loves me,” said Pierre simply. “We do not talk politics.” - </p> - <p> - On our way to the Avenue Victor Hugo I ventured to ask him a question - which had been a long time in my mind “Your sister, Marthe? She is well?” - </p> - <p> - Even in the pearly twilight of the Champs Elysées I was aware of Pierre’s - sudden change of colour. I had touched a nerve that still jumped. - </p> - <p> - “She is well and happy,” he answered gravely. “She is now a <i>religieuse</i>, - a nun, in the convent at Lille. They tell me she is a saint. Her name in - religion is <i>Sour Angélique.</i>” - </p> - <p> - I called on Madame Chéri and her daughter with Pierre Nesle. They seemed - delighted to see me, and Hélène greeted me like an old and trusted friend, - giving me the privilege of kissing her cheek. She had grown taller and - beautiful, and there was a softness in her eyes when she looked at Pierre - which made me sure of his splendid luck. - </p> - <p> - Madame Chéri had aged, and some of her fire had burnt out. I guessed that - it was due to Edouard’s death. She spoke of that, and wept a little, and - deplored the mildness of the Peace Treaty which had not punished the evil - race who had killed her husband and her boy and the flower of France. - </p> - <p> - “There are many German dead,” said Pierre. “They have been punished.” - </p> - <p> - “Not enough!” cried Madame Chéri. “They should all be dead.” - </p> - <p> - Hélène kissed her hand and snuggled down to her as once I had seen in - Lille. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Petite maman</i>,” she said, “let us talk of happy things to-night. - Pierre has brought us a good friend.” - </p> - <p> - Later in the evening, when Pierre and Hélène had gone into another room to - find some biscuits for our wine, Madame Chéri spoke to me about their - betrothal. - </p> - <p> - “Pierre is full of strange and terrible ideas,” she said. “They are shared - by other young men who fought bravely for France. To me they seem wicked, - and the talk of cowards, except that their medals tell of courage. But the - light in Hélène’s eyes weakens me. I’m too much of a Frenchwoman to be - stern with love.” - </p> - <p> - By those words of hers I was able to give Pierre a message of good-cheer - when he walked back with me that night, and he went away with gladness. - </p> - <p> - With gladness also did Elsa Brand set out next day for England where, as a - girl, she had known happy days, and where now her dream lived with the man - who stood beside her. Together we watched for the white cliffs, and when - suddenly the sun glinted on them she gave a little cry, and putting her - hand through Brand’s arm, said, “Our home!” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0037" id="link2H_4_0037"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - VII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> saw very little - of Brand in London after Elsa’s arrival in his parent’s house at Chelsea. - I was busy, as usual, watching the way of the world and putting my nose - down to bits of blank paper which I proceeded to spoil with futile words. - Brand was doing the same thing in his study on the top floor of the house - in Cheyne Walk, while Elsa, in true German style, was working embroidery - or reading English literature to improve her mind and her knowledge of the - language. - </p> - <p> - Brand was endeavouring strenuously to earn money enough to make him free - of his father’s house. He failed, on the whole, rather miserably. He began - a novel on the war, became excited with it for the first six chapters, - then stuck hopelessly and abandoned it. - </p> - <p> - “I find it impossible,” he wrote to me, “to get the real thing into my - narrative. It is all wooden, unnatural, and wrong. I can’t get the right - perspective on paper, although I think I see it clear enough when I’m not - writing. The thing is too enormous, the psychology too complicated for my - power of expression. A thousand characters, four years of experience, come - crowding into my mind, and I can’t eliminate the unessential and stick the - point of my pen into the heart of truth. Besides, the present state of the - world, to say nothing of domestic trouble, prevents anything like - concentration... And my nerves have gone to hell.” - </p> - <p> - After the abandonment of his novel he took to writing articles for - magazines and newspapers, some of which appeared, thereby producing some - useful guineas. I read them and liked their strength of style and - intensity of emotion. But they were profoundly pessimistic, and “the - gloomy Dean,” who was prophesying woe, had an able seconder in Wickham - Brand, who foresaw the ruin of civilisation and the downfall of the - British Empire because of the stupidity of the world’s leaders and the - careless ignorance of the multitudes. He harped too much on the same - string, and I fancied that editors would soon begin to tire of his - melancholy tune. I was right. - </p> - <p> - “I have had six articles rejected in three weeks,” wrote Brand. “People - don’t want the truth. They want cheery insincerity. Well, they won’t get - it from me, though I starve to death.... But it’s hard on Elsa. She’s - having a horrible time, and her nerve is breaking. I wish to God I could - afford to take her down to the country somewhere, away from spiteful - females and their cunning cruelty. Have you seen any Christian charity - about in this most Christian country? If so, send me word, and I’ll walk - to it on my knees, from Chelsea.” - </p> - <p> - It was in a postscript to a letter about a short story he was writing that - he wrote an alarming sentence. - </p> - <p> - “I think Elsa is dying. She gets weaker every day.” Those words sent me to - Chelsea in a hurry. I had been too careless of Brand’s troubles, owing to - my own pressure of work and my own fight with a nervous depression which - was a general malady, I found, with most men back from the war. - </p> - <p> - When I rapped the brass knocker on the house in Cheyne Walk the door was - opened by a different maid from the one I had seen on my first visit - there. The other one, as Brand told me afterwards, had given notice - because “she couldn’t abide them Huns” (meaning Elsa), and with her had - gone the cook, who had been with Wickham’s mother for twenty years. - </p> - <p> - Brand was writing in his study upstairs when the new maid showed me in. - Or, rather, he was leaning over a writing-block, with his elbows dug into - the table and his face in his hands, while an unlighted pipe—his old - trench pipe—lay across the inkpot. - </p> - <p> - “Thinking out a new plot, old man?” I asked cheerily. - </p> - <p> - “It doesn’t come,” he said. “My own plot cuts across my line of thought.” - </p> - <p> - “How’s Elsa?” - </p> - <p> - He pointed with the stem of his pipe to the door leading from his room. - </p> - <p> - “Sleeping, I hope.... Sit down and let’s have a yarn.” - </p> - <p> - We talked about things in general for a time. They were not very cheerful, - anyhow. Brand and I were both gloomy souls just then, and knew each other - too well to camouflage our views about the state of Europe and the - “unrest” (as it was called) in England. - </p> - <p> - Then he told me about Elsa, and it was a tragic tale From the very first - his people had treated her with a studied unkindness which had broken her - nerve and spirit. She had come to England with a joyous hope of finding - happiness and friendship with her husband’s family, and glad to escape - from the sadness of Germany and the solemn disapproval of her own people, - apart from Franz, who was devoted to her. - </p> - <p> - Her first dismay came when she kissed the hand of her mother-in-law, who - drew it away as though she had been stung by a wasp, and when her movement - to kiss her husband’s sister Ethel was repulsed by a girl who drew back - icily and said, “How do you do?” - </p> - <p> - Even then she comforted herself a little with the thought that this coldness - was due to English reserve, and that in a little while English kindness - would be revealed. But the days passed with only unkindness. - </p> - <p> - At first Lady Brand and her daughter maintained a chilly silence towards - Elsa, at breakfast, luncheon, and other meals, talking to each other - brightly, as though she did not exist, and referring constantly to Wickham - as “poor Wicky.” Ethel had a habit of reading out morsels from the penny - illustrated papers, and often they referred to “another trick of the Huns” - or “fresh revelations of Hun treachery.” At these times Sir Amyas Brand - said “Ah!” in a portentous voice, but, privately, with some consciousness - of decency, begged Ethel to desist from “controversial topics.” She - “desisted” in the presence of her brother, whose violence of speech scared - her into silence. - </p> - <p> - A later phase of Ethel’s hostility to Elsa was in the style of amiable - enquiry. In a simple, childlike way, as though eager for knowledge, she - would ask Elsa such questions as “Why the Germans boiled down their dead?” - </p> - <p> - “Why they crucified Canadian prisoners?” - </p> - <p> - “Was it true that German school children sang the Hymn of Hate before - morning lessons?” - </p> - <p> - “Was it by order of the Kaiser that English prisoners were starved to - death?” - </p> - <p> - Elsa answered all these questions by passionate denials. It was a terrible - falsehood, she said, that the Germans had boiled down bodies for fats. On - the contrary, they paid the greatest reverence to their dead, as her - brother had seen in many cemeteries on the Western front. The story of the - “crucified Canadians” had been disproved by the English intelligence - officers after a special enquiry, as Wickham had told her. She had never - heard the Hymn of Hate. Some of the English prisoners had been harshly - treated—there were brutal commandants—but not deliberately - starved. Not starved more than German soldiers, who had very little food - during the last years of the war. - </p> - <p> - “But surely,” said Lady Brand, “you must admit, my dear, that Germany - conducted this war with the greatest possible barbarity? Otherwise, why - should the world call them Huns?” - </p> - <p> - Elsa said it was only the English who called the Germans - </p> - <p> - Huns, and that was for a propaganda of hatred which was very wicked. - </p> - <p> - “Do <i>I</i> look like a Hun?” she asked, and then burst into tears. - </p> - <p> - Lady Brand was disconcerted by that sign of weakness. - </p> - <p> - “You mustn’t think us unkind, Elsa, but, of course, we have to uphold the - truth.” - </p> - <p> - Ethel was utterly unmoved by Elsa’s tears, and, indeed, found a holy - satisfaction in them. - </p> - <p> - “When the German people confess their guilt with weeping and lamentation - the English will be first to forgive. Never till then.” - </p> - <p> - The presence of a German girl in the house seemed to act as a blight upon - all domestic happiness. It was the cook who first “gave notice.” Elsa had - never so much as set eyes upon that cross-eyed woman below-stairs who had - prepared the family food since Wickham had sat in a high chair with a bib - round his neck. But Mary, in a private interview with Lady Brand, stormy - in its character, as Elsa could hear through the folding doors, vowed that - she would not live in the same house with “one of those damned Germings.” - </p> - <p> - Lady Brand’s tearful protestations that Elsa was no longer German, being - “Mr. Wickham’s wife,” and that she had repented sincerely of all the wrong - done by the country in which she had unfortunately been born, did not - weaken the resolution of Mary Grubb, whose patriotism had always been - “above suspicion,” “which,” as she said, “I hope to remain so.” She went - next morning, after a great noise of breathing and the descent of tin - boxes, while Lady Brand and Ethel looked with reproachful eyes at Elsa as - the cause of this irreparable blow. - </p> - <p> - The parlour-maid followed in a week’s time, on the advice of her young - man, who had worked in a canteen of the Y.M.C.A. at Boulogne and knew all - about German spies. - </p> - <p> - It was very awkward for Lady Brand, who assumed an expression of Christian - martyrdom, and told Wickham that his rash act was bearing sad fruit, a - mixed metaphor which increased his anger, as he told me, to a ridiculous - degree. - </p> - <p> - He could see that Elsa was very miserable. Many times she wept when alone - with him, and begged him to take her away to a little home of their own, - even if it were only one room in the poorest neighbourhood. But Wickham - was almost penniless, and begged her to be patient a little longer, until - he had saved enough to fulfil their hope. There I think he was unwise. It - would have been better for him to borrow money—he had good friends—rather - than keep his wife in such a hostile atmosphere. She was weak and ill. He - was alarmed at her increasing weakness. Once she fainted in his arms, and - even to go upstairs to their rooms at the top of the house tired her so - much that afterwards she would lie back in a chair, with her eyes closed, - looking very white and worn. She tried to hide her ill-health from her - husband, and when they were alone together she seemed gay and happy, and - would have deceived him but for those fits of weeping at the unkindness of - his mother and sister, and those sudden attacks of “tiredness” when all - physical strength departed from her. - </p> - <p> - Her love for him seemed to grow with the weakness of her body. She could - not bear him to leave her alone for any length of time, and while he was - writing, sat near him, so that she might have her head against his - shoulder or touch his hand, or kiss it. It was not conducive to easy - writing or the invention of plots. - </p> - <p> - Something like a crisis happened after a painful scene in the drawing-room - downstairs on a day when Brand had gone out to walk off a sense of deadly - depression which prevented all literary effort. - </p> - <p> - Several ladies had come to tea with Lady Brand and Ethel, and they gazed - at Elsa as though she were a strange and dangerous animal. - </p> - <p> - One of them, a thin and elderly schoolmistress, cross-questioned Elsa as - to her nationality. - </p> - <p> - “I suppose you are Swedish, my dear?” she said sweetly. - </p> - <p> - “No,” said Elsa. - </p> - <p> - “Danish, then, no doubt?” continued Miss Clutter. - </p> - <p> - “I am German,” said Elsa. - </p> - <p> - That announcement had caused consternation among Lady Brand’s guests. Two - of the ladies departed almost immediately. The others stayed to see how - Miss Clutter would deal with this amazing situation. - </p> - <p> - She dealt with it firmly, and with the cold intelligence of a high - schoolmistress. - </p> - <p> - “How <i>very</i> interesting!” she said, turning to Lady Brand. “Perhaps - your daughter-in-law will enlighten us a little about German psychology - which we have found so puzzling. I should be so glad if she could explain - to us how the German people reconcile the sinking of merchant ships, the - unspeakable crime of the <i>Lusitania</i> with any belief in God, or even - with the principles of our common humanity. It is a mystery to me how the - drowning of babies could be regarded as legitimate warfare by a people - proud of their civilisation.” - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps it would be better to avoid controversy, dear Miss Clutter,” said - Lady Brand, alarmed at the prospect of an “unpleasant” scene which would - be described in other drawing-rooms next day. - </p> - <p> - But Miss Clutter had adopted Ethel’s method of enquiry. She so much wanted - to know the German point of view. Certainly they must have a point of - view. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, it would be so interesting to know!” said another lady. - </p> - <p> - “Especially if we could believe it,” said another. - </p> - <p> - Elsa had been twisting and re-twisting a little lace handkerchief in her - lap. She was very pale, and tried to conceal a painful agitation from all - these hostile and enquiring ladies. - </p> - <p> - Then she spoke to them in a low, strained voice. - </p> - <p> - “You will never understand,” she said. “You look out from England with - eyes of hate, and without pity in your hearts. The submarine warfare was - shameful. There were little children drowned on the <i>Lusitania</i>, and - women. I wept for them and prayed the dear God to stop the war. Did you - weep for our little children and our women? They, too, were killed by sea - warfare, not only a few, as on the <i>Lusitania</i>, but thousands and - tens of thousands. Your blockade closed us in with an iron ring. No ship - could bring us food. For two years we starved on short rations and - chemical foods. We were without fats and milk. Our mothers watched their - children weaken and wither and die, because of the English blockade. Their - own milk dried up within their breasts. Little coffins were carried down - our streets day after day, week after week. Fathers and mothers were mad - at the loss of their little ones. ‘We must smash our way through the - English blockade!’ they said. The U-boat warfare gladdened them. It seemed - a chance of rescue for the children of Germany. It was wicked. But all the - war was wickedness. It was wicked of you English to keep up your blockade - so long after Armistice, so that more children died and more women were - consumptive, and men fainted at their work. Do you reconcile that with - God’s good love? Oh, I find more hatred here in England than I knew even - in Germany. It is cruel, unforgiving, unfair! You, are proud of your own - virtue and hypocritical. God will be kinder to my people than to you, - because now we cry out for His mercy, and you are still arrogant, with the - name of God on your lips but a devil of pride in your hearts. I came here - with my dear husband believing that many English would be like him, - forgiving, hating cruelty, eager to heal the world’s broken heart. You are - not like him. You are cruel and lovers of cruelty, even to one poor German - girl who came to you for shelter with her English man. I am sorry for you. - I pity you because of your narrowness. I do not want to know you.” - </p> - <p> - She stood up, swaying a little, with one hand on the mantelpiece, as - afterwards she told her husband. She did not believe that she could cross - the floor without falling. There was a strange dizziness in her head, and - a mist before her eyes. But she held her head high and walked out of the - drawing-room, and then upstairs. When Wickham Brand came back she was - lying on her bed very ill. He sent for a doctor who was with her for - half-an-hour. - </p> - <p> - “She is very weak,” he said. “No pulse to speak of. You will have to be - careful of her—deuced careful.” - </p> - <p> - He gave no name to her illness. “Just weakness,” he said. “Run down like a - worn-out clock. Nerves all wrong, and no vitality.” - </p> - <p> - He sent round a tonic which Elsa took like a child, and for a little while - it seemed to do her good. But Brand was frightened because her weakness - had come back. - </p> - <p> - I am glad now that I had an idea which helped Brand in this time of - trouble and gave Elsa some weeks of happiness and peace. It occurred to me - that young Harding was living alone in his big old country house near - Weybridge, and would be glad and grateful, because of his loneliness, to - give house-room to Brand and his wife. He had a great liking for Brand, as - most of us had, and his hatred of Germany had not been so violent since - his days in Cologne. His good nature, anyhow, and the fine courtesy which - was the essential quality of his character, would make him kind to Elsa, - so ill and so desperately in need of kindness. I was not disappointed. - When I spoke to him over the telephone he said, “It will be splendid for - me. This lonely house is getting on my nerves badly. Bring them down.” - </p> - <p> - I took them down in a car two days later. It was a fine autumn day with a - sparkle in the air and a touch of frost on the hedgerows. Elsa, wrapped up - in heavy rugs, lay back next to Brand, and a little colour crept back into - her cheeks and brought back her beauty. I think a shadow lifted from her - as she drove away from that house in Chelsea where she had dwelt with - enmity among her husband’s people. - </p> - <p> - Harding’s house in Surrey was at the end of a fine avenue of beeches, - glorious in their autumn foliage of crinkled gold. A rabbit scuttled - across the drive as we came, and bobbed beneath the red bracken of the - undergrowth. - </p> - <p> - “Oh,” said Elsa, like a child, “there is Peterkin! What a rogue he looks!” - </p> - <p> - Her eyes were bright when she caught sight of Harding’s house in the - Elizabethan style of post-and-plaster splashed with scarlet where the - Virginia creeper straggled on its walls. - </p> - <p> - “It is wonderfully English,” she said. “How Franz would love this place!” - </p> - <p> - Harding came down from the steps to greet us, and I thought it noble of - him that he should kiss the girl’s hand when Brand said, “This is Elsa.” - For Harding had been a Hun-hater—you remember his much-repeated - phrase, “No good German but a dead German!”—and that little act was - real chivalry to a woman of the enemy. - </p> - <p> - There was a great fire of logs burning in the open hearth in the hall, - flinging a ruddy glare on the panelled walls and glinting on bits of - armour and hunting trophies. Upstairs, also, Brand told me, there was a - splendid fire in Elsa’s room, which had once been the room of Harding’s - wife. It wanned Elsa not only in body but in soul. Here was an English - welcome and kindness of thought. On her dressing-table there were flowers - from Harding’s hot-houses, and she gave a little cry of pleasure at the - sight of them for there had been no flowers in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. That - night she was strong enough to come down to dinner, and looked very - charming there at the polished board, fit only by candlelight, whose soft - rays touched the gold of her hair. - </p> - <p> - “It is a true English home,” she said, glancing up at the panelled walls - and at portraits of Harding’s people in old-fashioned costumes which hung - there. - </p> - <p> - “A lonely one when no friends are here,” said Harding, and that was the - only time he referred in any way to the wife who had left him. - </p> - <p> - That dinner was the last one which Elsa had sitting at table with us. She - became very tired again. So tired that Brand had to carry her upstairs and - downstairs, which he did as though she weighed no more than a child. - During the day she lay on a sofa in the drawing-room, and Brand did no - writing now nor any kind of work, but stayed always with his wife. For - hours together he sat by her side, and she held his hand and touched his - face and hair, and was happy in her love. - </p> - <p> - A good friend came to stay with them and brought unfailing cheerfulness. - It was Charles Fortune who had come down at Harding’s invitation. He was - as comical as ever, and made Elsa laugh with ripples of merriment while he - satirised the world as he knew it, with shrewd and penetrating wit. He - played the jester industriously to get that laughter from her, though - sometimes she had to beg of him not to make her laugh so much because it - hurt her. Then he played the piano late into the afternoon, until the - twilight in the room faded into darkness except for the ruddy glow of the - log fire, or after dinner in the evenings until Brand carried his wife to - bed. He played Chopin best, with a magic touch, but Elsa liked him to play - Bach and Schumann, and sometimes Mozart, because that brought back her - girlhood in the days before the war. - </p> - <p> - So it was one evening when Brand sat on a low stool by the sofa on which - Elsa lay, with her fingers playing in his hair or resting on his shoulder, - while Fortune filled the room with melody. - </p> - <p> - Once or twice Elsa spoke to Brand in a low voice. I heard some of her - words as I lay on a bearskin by the fire. - </p> - <p> - “I am wonderfully happy, my dear,” she said once, and Brand pulled her - hand down and kissed it. - </p> - <p> - A little later she spoke again. - </p> - <p> - “Love is so much better than hate. Then why should people go to war?” - </p> - <p> - “God knows, my dear,” said Brand. - </p> - <p> - It was some time after that, when Fortune was playing softly, that I heard - Elsa give a big, tired sigh and say the word “Peace!” - </p> - <p> - Charles Fortune played something of Beethoven’s now, with grand crashing - chords which throbbed through the room as the last glow of the sunset - flushed through the windows. - </p> - <p> - Suddenly Brand stirred on his stool, made an abrupt movement, then rose - and gave a loud, agonising cry. Fortune stopped playing with a slur of - notes. Harding leapt up from his chair in a dark corner and said, - “Brand!... what’s the matter?” - </p> - <p> - Brand had dropped to his knees and was weeping with, his arms about his - dead wife. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0038" id="link2H_4_0038"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - VIII - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> was again a - wanderer in the land, and going from country to country in Europe saw the - disillusionment that had followed victory, and the despair that had - followed defeat, and the ravages that were bequeathed by war to peace, not - only in devastated earth and stricken towns, but in the souls of men and - women. - </p> - <p> - The victors had made great promises to their people, but for the most part - they were still unredeemed. They had promised them rich fruits of victory - to be paid out of the ruin of their enemies. But little fruit of gold or - treasure could be gathered from the utter bankruptcy of Germany and - Austria, whose factories stayed idle for lack of raw material and whose - money was waste paper in value of exchange. “Reconstruction” was the - watchword of statesmen, uttered as a kind of magic spell, but when I went - over the old battlefields in France I found no sign of reconstruction, but - only the vast belt of desolation which in war I had seen swept by fire. No - spell-word had built up those towns and villages which had been blown into - dust and ashes, nor had given life to riven trees and earth choked and - deadened by high explosives. Here and there poor families had crept back - to the place where their old homes had stood, grubbing in the ruins for - some relic of their former habitations and building wooden shanties in the - desert as frail shelters against the wind and the rain. In Ypres—the - city of Great Death—there were wooden <i>estaminets</i> for the - refreshment of tourists who came from Paris to see the graveyard of youth, - and girls sold picture-postcards where boys of ours had gone marching up - the Menin Road under storms of shell-fire which took daily toll of them. - No French statesman by optimistic words could resurrect in a little while - the beauty that had been in Artois and Picardy and the fields of - Champagne. - </p> - <p> - On days of national thanksgiving the spirit of France was exalted by the - joy of victory. In Paris it was a feverish joy, wild-eyed, with laughing - ecstasy, with troops of dancing girls and a carnival that broke all bounds - between Montmartre and Montparnasse. France had saved herself from death. - She had revenged herself for 1870 and the years just passed. She had - crushed the enemy that had always been a brutal menace across the - frontier. She had her sword deep in the heart of Germany which lay - bleeding at her feet. - </p> - <p> - I who love France with a kind of passion, and had seen during the years of - war the agony and the heroism of her people, did not begrudge them their - ecstasy, and it touched my spirit with its fire so that in France I could - see and understand the French point of view, of ruthlessness towards the - beaten foe. But I saw also what many people of France saw slowly, but with - a sense of fear, that the treaty made by Clemenceau did not make them safe - except for a little while. This had not been, after all, “the war to end - war.” There was no guarantee of world-peace. Their frontiers were not made - impregnable against the time when the Germans might grow strong again and - come back for vengeance. They could not stand alone, but must make new - alliances, new secret treaties, new armies, new armaments, because hate - survived, and the League of Nations was a farce, as it had come from the - table at Versailles. - </p> - <p> - They looked round and counted their cost—a million and a half dead. - A multitude of maimed and blind and nerve-shocked men. A birth-rate that - had sunk to zero. A staggering debt which they could not pay. A cost of - living which mounted higher and ever higher. A sense of revolt among the - soldiers who had come back because their reward for four years of misery - was no more than miserable. - </p> - <p> - So it was in Italy, stricken by a more desperate poverty, disappointed by - a lack of spoil, angry with a sense of “betrayal,” afraid of revolution, - exultant when a mad poet seized the port of Fiume which had been denied to - her by President Wilson and his conscience. - </p> - <p> - Across the glittering waters of the Adriatic I went to Trieste and found - it a dead port with Italian officers in possession of its deserted docks - and abandoned warehouses and Austrians dying of typhus in the back - streets, and starving to death in tenement houses. - </p> - <p> - And then, across the new State of Jugo-Slavia, cut out of the body of the - old Austrian Empire now lying dismembered, I came to Vienna, which once I - had known as the gayest capital of Europe, where charming people played - the pleasant game of life with music and love and laughter. - </p> - <p> - In Vienna there was music still, but it played a <i>danse macabre</i>, a - dance of death, which struck one with a sense of horror. The orchestras - still fiddled in the restaurants. At night the opera-house was crowded. In - <i>cafés</i> bright with gilt and glass, in restaurants rich in marble - walls, crowds of people listened to the waltzes of Strauss, ate smuggled - food at monstrous prices, laughed, flirted, and drank. They were the - profiteers of war, spending paper money with the knowledge that it had no - value outside Vienna, no value here except in stacks to buy warmth for - their stomachs, a little warmth for their souk, while their stock of - kronen lasted. They were the vultures from Jugo-Slavia and Czecho-Slovakia - come to feed on the corpse of Austria while it still had flesh on its - bones, and while Austrian kronen still had some kind of purchase power... - And outside, two million people were starving slowly but very surely to - death. - </p> - <p> - The children were starving quickly to death. Their coffins passed me in - the streets. Ten—twelve—fifteen—in one half-hour between - San Stefan’s Chinch and the Favoritenstrasse. Small living skeletons - padded after one with naked feet, thrusting out little claw-like hands, - begging for charity. In the great hospital of Vienna children lay in - crowded wards, with twisted limbs and bulbous heads, diseased from birth, - because of their mother’s hunger and a life without milk and any kind of - fat. - </p> - <p> - Vienna, the capital of a great empire, had been sentenced to death by the - Treaty of Peace which had so carved up her former territory that she was - cut off from all her natural resources and from all means of industry, - commerce and life. - </p> - <p> - It was Dr. Small, dear “Daddy” Small, who gave me an intimate knowledge of - what was happening in Vienna a year after Armistice, and it was Eileen - O’Connor who still further enlightened me by taking me into the babies’ <i>crèches</i>, - the <i>Kinderspital</i> and the working people’s homes, where disease and - death found their victims. She took me to these places until I sickened - and said, “I can bear no more.” - </p> - <p> - Dr. Small had a small office in the Kârtnerstrasse, where Eileen worked - with him, and it was here that I found them both a day after my arrival in - Vienna. Eileen was on her knees making a wood fire and puffing it into a - blaze for the purpose of boiling a tin kettle which stood on a trivet, and - after that, as I found, for making tea. Outside there was a raw, horrible - day, with a white mist in which those coffins were going by and with those - barefoot children with pallid faces and gaunt cheeks padding by one’s - side, so that I was glad to see the flames in the hearth and to hear the - cheerful dink of tea-cups which the doctor was getting out. Better still, - was I glad to see these two good friends, so sane, so vital, so - purposeful, as I found them, in a world of gloom and neurosis. - </p> - <p> - The doctor told me of their work. It was life-saving and increasing in - range of action. They had organised a number of feeding centres in Vienna, - and stores from which mothers could buy condensed milk and cocoa and - margarine, at next to nothing, for their starving babes. Austrian ladies - were doing most of the actual work apart from organisation at - headquarters, and doing it devotedly. From America and from England money - was flowing in. - </p> - <p> - “The tide of thought is turning,” said the doctor. “Every dollar we get, - and every shilling, is a proof that the call of humanity is being heard - above the old war cries.” - </p> - <p> - “And every dollar and every shilling,” said Eileen, “is helping to save - the life of some poor woman or some little mite who had no guilt in the - war, but suffered from its cruelty.” - </p> - <p> - “This job,” said the doctor, “suits my peculiar philosophy. I am not out - so much to save these babies’ lives——” - </p> - <p> - Here Eileen threatened to throw the teapot at his head. - </p> - <p> - “Because,” he added, “some of them would be better dead, and anyhow, you - can’t save a nation by charity. But what I am out to do is to educate the - heart of the world above the baseness of the passions that caused the - massacre in Europe. We’re helping to do it by saving the children and by - appealing to the chivalry of men and women across the old frontiers. We’re - killers of cruelty, Miss Eileen and I. We’re rather puffed up with - ourselves, ain’t we, my dear?” - </p> - <p> - He grinned at Eileen in a whimsical way, and I could see that between this - little American and that Irish girl there was an understanding - comradeship. - </p> - <p> - So he told me when she left the room a minute to get another tea-cup or - wash one up. - </p> - <p> - “That girl!” he said. “Say, laddie, you couldn’t find a better head in all - Europe, including Hoover himself. She’s a Napoleon Bonaparte without his - blood-lust. She’s Horatio Nelson and Lord Northcliffe and Nurse Cavell all - rolled into one, to produce the organising genius of Eileen O’Connor. Only - you would have to add a few saints like Catherine of Sienna and Joan of - Arc to allow for her spirituality. She organises feeding-centres like you - would write a column article. She gets the confidence of Austrian women so - that they would kiss her feet if she’d allow it. She has a head for - figures that fairly puts me to shame, and as for her courage—well, I - don’t mind telling you that I’ve sworn to pack her back to England if she - doesn’t keep clear of typhus dens and other fever-stricken places. We - can’t afford to lose her by some dirty bug-bite.” - </p> - <p> - Eileen came into the room again with another tea-cup and saucer. I counted - those on the table and saw three already. - </p> - <p> - “Who is the other cup for?” I asked. “If you are expecting visitors I’ll - go, because I’m badly in need of a wash.” - </p> - <p> - “Don’t worry,” said Eileen. “We haven’t time to wash in Vienna, and, - anyhow, there’s no soap, for love or money. This is for Wickham, who is no - visitor but one of the staff.” - </p> - <p> - “Wickham?” I said. “Is Brand here?” - </p> - <p> - “Rather!” said “Daddy” Small. “He has been here a week and is doing good - work. Looks after the supplies, and puts his heart into the job.” - </p> - <p> - As he spoke the door opened and Brand strode into the room, with rain - dripping from his waterproof coat which he took off and flung into a - corner before he turned to the table. - </p> - <p> - “Lord! A cup of tea is what I want!” - </p> - <p> - “And what you shall have, my dear,” said Eileen. - </p> - <p> - “But don’t you know a friend when you see him?” - </p> - <p> - “By Jove!” - </p> - <p> - He held my hand in a hard grip and patted me on the shoulder. Our - friendship was beyond the need of words. - </p> - <p> - So there we three, who had seen many strange and tragic things in those - years of history, were together again in the city of Vienna, the city of - death, where the innocent were paying for the guilty, but where also, as - “Daddy” Small said, there was going out a call to charity which was being - heard by the heart of the world above the old war-cries of cruelty. - </p> - <p> - I stayed with them only a week. I had been long away from England and had - other work to do. But in that time I saw how these three friends, and - others in their service, were devoting themselves to the rescue of human - life, partly, I think, for their own sake, though without conscious - selfishness, and with a passionate pity for those who suffered. By this - service they were healing their own souls, sorely wounded in the war. That - was so, certainly, with Wickham Brand, and a little, I think, with Eileen - O’Connor. - </p> - <p> - Brand was rescued in the nick of time by the doctor’s call to him. Elsa’s - death had struck him a heavy blow when his nerves were already in rags and - tatters. Now by active service in this work of humanity and healing he was - getting back to normality, getting serene and steady. I saw the change in - him, revealed by the light in his eyes and by his quietude of speech and - the old sense of humour, which for a while he had lost. - </p> - <p> - “I see now,” he said one night, “that it’s no use fighting against the - injustice and brutality of life. I can’t re-make the world or change the - things that are written in history or alter in any big way the destiny of - peoples. Stupidity, ignorance, barbarity; will continue among the - multitude. All that any of us can do is to tackle some good job that lies - at hand, and keep his own soul bright and fearless if there is any chance - and use his little intellect in his little circle for kindness instead of - cruelty. I find that chance here, and I am grateful.” - </p> - <p> - The doctor had larger and bigger hopes, though his philosophy of life was - not much different from that of Brand’s. - </p> - <p> - “I want to fix up an intellectual company in this funny old universe,” he - said. “I want to establish an intellectual aristocracy on international - lines—the leaders of the new world. By intellectuals I don’t mean - high-brow fellows with letters after their names and encyclopaedias in - their brain-pans. I mean men and women who by moral character, kindness of - heart, freedom from narrow hatreds, tolerance of different creeds and - races, and love of humanity, will unite in a free, unfettered way, without - a label or a league, to get a move on towards a better system of human - society. No red Bolshevism, mind you, no heaven by way of hell, but a - striving for greater justice between classes and nations, and for peace - within the frontiers of Christendom, and beyond, if possible. It’s getting - back to the influence of the individual, the leadership of multitudes by - the power of the higher mind. I’m doing it by penny postcards to all my - friends. This work of ours in Vienna is a good proof of their response. - Let all the folk with good hearts behind their brains start writing - postcards to each other, with a plea for brotherhood, charity, peace, and - the new world would come... You laugh! Yes, I talk a little nonsense. It’s - not so easy as that. But see the idea? The leaders must keep in touch, and - the herds will follow.” - </p> - <p> - I turned to Eileen who was listening with a smile about her lips while she - pasted labels on to packets of cocoa. - </p> - <p> - “What’s your philosophy?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - She laughed, in that deep voice of hers. - </p> - <p> - “I’ve none; only the old faith, and a little hope, and a heart that’s - bustin’ with love.” - </p> - <p> - Brand was adding up figures in a book of accounts, and smiled across at - the girl whom he had known since boyhood, when she had pulled his hair. - </p> - <p> - His wounds were healing. - </p> - <div style="height: 6em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Back to Life, by Philip Gibbs - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACK TO LIFE *** - -***** This file should be named 50497-h.htm or 50497-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/0/4/9/50497/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by Google Books - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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- <title>
- Back to Life, by Philip Gibbs
- </title>
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-Title: Back to Life
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-Author: Philip Gibbs
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-</pre>
-
- <div style="height: 8em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h1>
- BACK TO LIFE
- </h1>
- <h2>
- By Philip Gibbs
- </h2>
- <h3>
- London: William Heinemann
- </h3>
- <h4>
- 1920
- </h4>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>BOOK I—THE END OF THE ADVENTURE</b>
- </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> IV </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> V </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VI </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> VIII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> IX </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> X </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> XI </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XIII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> XIV </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> XV </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> XVI </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> XVII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> XVIII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> XIX </a>
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> <b>BOOK II—THROUGH HOSTILE GATES</b> </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> I </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> II </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> III </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> IV </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> V </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> VI </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> VII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0029"> VIII. </a>
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0030"> <b>BOOK III—BUILDERS OF PEACE</b> </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0031"> I </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0032"> II </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0033"> III </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0034"> IV </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0035"> V </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0036"> VI </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0037"> VII </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0038"> VIII </a>
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- BOOK I—THE END OF THE ADVENTURE
- </h2>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- I
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t is hard to
- recapture the spirit of that day we entered Lille. Other things since have
- blurred its fine images.
- </p>
- <p>
- At the time I tried to put down in words the picture of that scene when,
- after four years’ slaughter of men, the city, which had seemed a world
- away, was open to us a few miles beyond the trench-lines; the riven trees,
- the shell-holes, and the stench of death, and we walked across the canal,
- over a broken bridge, into that large town where—how wonderful it
- seemed I—there were roofs on the houses and glass in the windows,
- and crowds of civilian people waiting for the first glimpse of British
- khaki.
- </p>
- <p>
- Even now remembrance brings back to me figures that I saw only for a
- moment or two, but remain sharply etched in my mind, and people I met in
- the streets who told me the story of four years in less than four minutes
- and enough to let me know their bitterness, hatred, humiliations, terrors,
- in the time of the German occupation.... I have re-read the words I wrote,
- hastily, on a truculent typewriter which I cursed for its twisted ribbon,
- while the vision of the day was in my eyes. They are true to the facts and
- to what we felt about them. Other men felt that sense of exaltation, a
- kind of mystical union with the spirit of many people who had been
- delivered from evil powers. It is of those other men that I am now
- writing, and especially of one who was my friend—Wickham Brand, with
- the troubled soul, whom I knew in the years of war and afterwards in the
- peace which was no peace to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- His, was one of the faces I remember that day, as I had a glimpse of it
- now and then, among crowds of men and women, young girls and children, who
- surged about him, kissing his hands and his face when he stooped a little
- (he was taller than most of them) to meet the wet lips of some
- half-starved baby held up by a pallid woman of Lille, or to receive the
- kiss of some old woman who clawed his khaki tunic, or of some girl who
- hung on to his belt. There was a shining wetness in his eyes, and the hard
- lines of his face had softened as he laughed at all this turmoil about
- him, at all these hands robbing him of shoulder-straps and badges, and at
- all these people telling him a hundred things together—their
- gratitude to the English, their hatred of the Germans, their abominable
- memories. His field-cap was pushed back from his high, furrowed forehead
- from which at the temples the hair had worn thin, owing to worry or a
- steel hat. His long, lean face, deeply tanned, but powdered with white
- dust, had an expression of tenderness which gave him a kind of priestly
- look, though others would have said “knightly” with, perhaps, equal truth.
- Anyhow, I could see that for a little while Brand was no longer worrying
- about the casualty lists and the doom of youth, and was giving himself up
- to an exaltation that was visible and spiritual in Lille in the day of
- liberation.
- </p>
- <p>
- The few of us who went first into Lille while our troops were in a wide
- are round the city, in touch, more or less, with the German rearguards,
- were quickly separated in the swirl of the crowd that surged about us,
- greeting us as conquering heroes, though none of us were actual fighting
- men, being war correspondents, intelligence officers (Wickham Brand and
- three other officers were there to establish an advanced headquarters),
- with an American doctor—that amazing fellow “Daddy” Small—and
- our French <i>liaison</i> officer, Pierre Nesle. Now and again we met in
- the streets and exchanged words.
- </p>
- <p>
- I remember the doctor and I drifted together at the end of the Boulevard
- de la Liberté. A French girl of the middle-class had tucked her hand
- through his right arm and was talking to him excitedly, volubly. On his
- other arm leaned an old dame in a black dress and bonnet who was also
- delivering her soul of its pent-up emotion to a man who did not understand
- more than a few words of her French. A small boy dressed as a Zouave was
- walking backwards, waving a long tricolour flag before the little
- American, and a crowd of people made a close circle about him, keeping
- pace.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Assassins, bandits, robbers!” gobbled the old woman. “They stole all our
- copper, monsieur. The very mattresses off our beds. The wine out of our
- cellars. They did abominations.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Month after month we waited,” said the girl, with her hand through the
- doctor’s right arm. “All that time the noise of the guns was loud in our
- ears. It never ceased, monsieur, until to-day. And we used to say:
- ‘To-morrow the English will come!’ until at last some of us lost heart—not
- I, no, always I believed in victory!—and said, ‘The English will
- never come!’ Now you are here, and our hearts are full of joy. It is like
- a dream. The Germans have gone!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The doctor patted the girl’s hand and addressed me across the tricolour
- waved by the small Zouave.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is the greatest day of my life! And I am perfectly ashamed of
- myself. In spite of my beard and my gig-lamps and my anarchical
- appearance, these dear people take me for an English officer and a
- fighting hero. And I feel like one. If I saw a German now I truly believe
- I should cut his throat. Me—a non-combatant and a man of peace! I’m
- horrified at my own blood-thirstiness. The worst of it is I’m enjoying it.
- I’m a primitive man for a time, and find it stimulating. To-morrow I shall
- repent. These people have suffered hell’s torments. I can’t understand a
- word the little old lady is telling me but I’m sure she’s been through
- infernal things. And this pretty girl. She’s a peach, though slightly
- tuberculous, poor child. My God—how they hate! There is a stored-up
- hatred in this town enough to burn up Germany by mental telepathy. It’s
- frightening. Hatred and joy, I feel these two passions like a flame about
- us. It’s spiritual. It’s transcendental. It’s the first time I’ve seen a
- hundred thousand people drunk with joy and hate. I’m against hate, and yet
- the sufferings of these people make me see red so that I want to cut a
- German throat!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’d stitch it up afterwards, doctor,” I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- He blinked at me through his spectacles and said: “I hope so. I hope my
- instinct would be as right as that. The world will never get forward till
- we have killed hatred. That’s my religion.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Bandits! Assassins!” grumbled the old lady. “Dirty people!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Vivent les Anglais!</i>” shouted the crowd, surging about the little
- man with the beard.
- </p>
- <p>
- The American doctor spoke in English in a large explanatory way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m American. Don’t you go making any mistake. I’m an Uncle Sam. The
- Yankee boys are further south and fighting like hell, poor lads. I don’t
- deserve any of this ovation, my dears.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then in French, with a strong American accent, he shouted: “<i>Vive la
- France!</i>’Rah! ‘Rah! ‘Rah!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Merci, merci, mon Général!</i>” said an old woman, making a grab at
- the little doctor’s Sam Brown belt and kissing him on the beard. The crowd
- closed round him and bore him away....
- </p>
- <p>
- I met another of our crowd when I went to a priest’s house in a turning
- off the Rue Royale. Pierre Nesle, our <i>liaison</i> officer—a nice
- simple fellow, who had always been very civil to me—was talking to
- the priest outside his door, and introduced me in a formal way to a tall,
- patrician-looking old man in a long black gown. It was the Abbé Bourdin,
- well known in Lille as a good priest and a patriot.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come indoors, gentlemen,” said the old man. “I will tell you what
- happened to us, though it would take four years to tell you all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Sitting there in the priest’s room, barely furnished, with a few oak
- chairs and a writing-desk littered with papers, and a table covered with a
- tattered cloth of red plush, we listened to a tragic tale, told finely and
- with emotion by the old man into whose soul it had burned. It was the
- history of a great population caught by the tide of war before many could
- escape, and placed under the military law of an enemy who tried to break
- its spirit. They failed to break it in spite of an iron discipline which
- denied them all liberty. For any trivial offence by individuals against
- German rule the whole population was fined or shut up in their houses at
- three in the afternoon. There were endless fines, unceasing and
- intolerable robberies under the name of “perquisitions.” That had not
- broken the people’s spirit. There were worse things to bear—the
- removal of machinery from the factories, the taking away of the young men
- and boys for forced labour, and then, the greater infancy of that night
- when machine-guns were placed at the street corners and German officers
- ordered each household to assemble at the front door and chose the
- healthy-looking girls by the pointing of a stick and the word, “You—you!”
- for slave-labour—it was that—in unknown fields far away.
- </p>
- <p>
- The priest’s face blanched at the remembrance of that scene. His voice
- quavered when he spoke of the girls’ screams—one of them had gone
- raving mad—and of the wailing that rose among their stricken
- families. For a while he was silent, with lowered head and brooding eyes
- which stared at a rent in the threadbare carpet, and I noticed the
- trembling of a pulse on his right temple above the deeply-graven wrinkles
- of his parchment skin. Then he raised his head and spoke harshly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not even that could break the spirit of my people. They only said, ‘We
- will never forget and never forgive!’ They were hungry—we did not
- get much food—but they said, ‘Our sons who are fighting for us are
- suffering worse things. It is for us to be patient.’ They were surrounded
- by German spies—the secret police—who listened to their words
- and haled them off to prison upon any pretext. There is hardly a man among
- us who has not been in prison. The women were made to do filthy work for
- German soldiers, to wash their lousy clothes, to scrub their dirty
- barracks, and they were insulted, humiliated, tempted, by brutal men.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Was there much of that brutality?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- The priest’s eyes grew sombre.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Many women suffered abominable things. I thank God that so many kept
- their pride and their honour. There were, no doubt, some bad men and women
- in the city—disloyal, venal, weak, sinful—may God have mercy
- on their souls; but I am proud of being a Frenchman when I think of how
- great was the courage, how patient was the suffering of the people of
- Lille.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Pierre Nesle had listened to that monologue with a visible and painful
- emotion. He became pale and flushed by turns, and when the priest spoke
- about the forcible recruitment of the women a sweat broke out on his
- forehead, and he wiped it away with a handkerchief.
- </p>
- <p>
- I see his face now in profile, sharply outlined against some yellowing
- folios in a bookcase behind him, a typical Parisian face in its sharpness
- of outline and pallid skin, with a little black moustache above a thin,
- sensitive mouth. Before I had seen him mostly in gay moods—though I
- had wondered sometimes at the sudden silences into which he fell and at a
- gloom which gave him a melancholy look when he was not talking, or
- singing, or reciting poetry, or railing against French politicians, or
- laughing almost hysterically at the satires of Charles Fortune—our
- “funny man”—when he came to our mess. Now he was suffering, as if
- the priest’s words had probed a wound—though not the physical wound
- which had nearly killed him in Souchez Wood.
- </p>
- <p>
- He stood up from the wooden chair with its widely-curved arms in which he
- had been sitting stiffly, and spoke to the priest.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is not amusing, <i>mon père</i>, what you tell us, and what we have
- all guessed. It is one more chapter of tragedy in the history of our poor
- France. Pray God the war will soon be over.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “With victory!” said the old priest. “With an enemy beaten and bleeding
- beneath our feet. The Germans must be punished for all their crimes, or
- the justice of God will not be satisfied.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a thrill of passion in the old man’s voice and his nostrils
- quivered.
- </p>
- <p>
- “To all Frenchmen that goes without saying,” said Pierre Nesle. “The
- Germans must be punished, and will be, though no vengeance will repay us
- for the suffering of our <i>poilus</i>—nor for the agony of our
- women behind the lines, which, perhaps, was the greatest of all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Abbé Bourdin put his claw-like old hands on the young man’s shoulders
- and drew him closer and kissed his Croix de Guerre.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have helped to give victory,” he said. “How many Germans have you
- killed? How many, eh?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He spoke eagerly, chuckling with a kind of childish eagerness for good
- news.
- </p>
- <p>
- Pierre Nesle drew back a little and a faint touch of colour crept into his
- face, and then left it whiter.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I did not count corpses,” he said. He touched his left side and laughed
- awkwardly. “I remember better that they nearly made a corpse of me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a moment’s silence, and then my friend spoke in a casual kind of
- way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose, <i>mon père</i>, you have not heard of my sister being in
- Lille by any chance? Her name was Marthe. Marthe Nesle.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Abbé Bourdin shook his head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I do not know the name. There are many young women in Lille. It is a
- great city.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is true,” said Pierre Nesle. “There are many.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He bowed over the priest’s hand, and then saluted.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Bon jour, mon père, et merci mille fois</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- So we left, and the Abbé Bourdin spoke his last words to me: “We owe our
- liberation to the English. We thank you. But why did you not come sooner?
- Two years sooner, three years. With your great army?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Many of our men died to get here,” I said. “Thousands.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is true. That is true. You failed many times, I know. But you were
- so close. One big push—eh? One mighty effort? No?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The priest spoke a thought which I had heard expressed in the crowds. They
- were grateful for our coming, immensely glad, but could not understand why
- we had tried their patience so many years. That had been their greatest
- misery, waiting, waiting.
- </p>
- <p>
- I spoke to Pierre Nesle on the doorstep of the priest’s house.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Have you an idea that your sister is in Lille?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” he said. “No. At least not more than the faintest hope. She is
- behind the lines somewhere—anywhere. She went away from home before
- the war—she was a singer—and was caught in the tide.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No news at all?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Her last letter was from Lille. Or rather a postcard with the Lille
- stamp. She said, I am amusing myself well, little brother.’ She and I were
- good comrades. I look for her face in the crowds. But she may be anywhere—Valenciennes,
- Maubeuge—God knows!”
- </p>
- <p>
- A shout of “<i>Vive la France!</i>” rose from a crowd of people surging up
- the street. Pierre Nesle was in the blue uniform of the <i>chasseurs à
- pied</i>, and the people in Lille guessed it was theirs because of its
- contrast to our khaki, though the “<i>horizon bleu</i>” was so different
- from the uniforms worn by the French army of ‘14. To them now, on the day
- of liberation, Pierre Nesle, our little <i>liaison</i> officer, stood for
- the armies of France, the glory of France. Even the sight of our khaki did
- not fill them with such wild enthusiasm. So I lost him again as I had lost
- the little American doctor in the surge and whirlpool of the crowd.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- II
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> was building up
- in my mind the historic meaning of the day. Before nightfall I should have
- to get it written—the spirit as well as the facts, if I could—in
- time for the censors and the despatch-riders. The facts? By many scraps of
- conversation with men and women in the streets I could already reconstruct
- pretty well the life of Lille in time of war. I found many of their
- complaints rather trivial. The Germans had wanted brass and had taken it,
- down to the taps in the washing-places. Well, I had seen worse horrors
- than that. They had wanted wool and had taken the mattresses. They had
- requisitioned all the wine but had paid for it at cheap rates. These were
- not atrocities. The people of Lille had been short of food, sometimes on
- the verge of starvation, but not really starved. They complained of having
- gone without butter, milk, sugar; but even in England these things were
- hard to get. No, the tragedy of Lille lay deeper than that. A sense of
- fear that was always with them. “Every time there was a knock at the
- door,” said one man, “we started up in alarm. It was a knock at our
- hearts.” At any time of the day or night they were subject to visits from
- German police, to searches, arrests, or orders to get out of their houses
- or rooms for German officers or troops. They were denounced by spies,
- Germans or debased people of their own city, for trying to smuggle letters
- to their folk in other towns in enemy occupation, for concealing copper in
- hiding-places, for words of contempt against the Kaiser or the
- Kommandatur, spoken at a street corner between one friend and another.
- That consciousness of being watched, overheard, reported and denounced
- poisoned the very atmosphere of their lives, and the sight of the
- field-grey men in the streets, the stench of them—the smell was
- horrible when German troops marched back from the battlefields—produced
- a soul-sickness worse than physical nausea. I could understand the
- constant fret at the nerves of these people, the nagging humiliation—they
- had to doff hats to every German officer who swaggered by—and the
- slow-burning passion of people, proud by virtue of their race, who found
- themselves controlled, ordered about, bullied, punished for trivial
- infractions of military regulations, by German officials of hard,
- unbending arrogance. That must have been abominable for so long a time;
- but as yet I heard no charges of definite brutality, or of atrocious
- actions by individual enemies. The worst I had heard was that levy of the
- women for forced labour in unknown places. One could imagine the horror of
- it, the cruelty of it to girls whose nerves were already unstrung by
- secret fears, dark and horrible imaginings, the beast-like look in the
- eyes of men who passed them in the streets. Then the long-delayed hope of
- liberation—year after year—the German boasts of victory, the
- strength of the German defence that never seemed to weaken, in spite of
- the desperate attacks of French and British, the preliminary success of
- their great offensive in March and April, when masses of English prisoners
- were herded through Lille, dejected, exhausted, hardly able to drag their
- feet along between their sullen guards—by heaven, these people of
- Lille had needed much faith to save them from despair! No wonder now that
- on the first day of liberation some, of them were wet-eyed with joy, and
- others were lightheaded with liberty.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the Grande Place below the old balustraded Town Hall I saw young Cyril
- Clatworthy, one of the Intelligence crowd, surrounded by a group of girls
- who were stroking his tunic, clasping his hands, pushing each other
- laughingly to get nearer to him. He was in lively conversation with the
- prettiest girl, whom he kept in front of him. It was obvious that he was
- enjoying himself as the central figure of this hero-worship, and as I
- passed the boy (twenty-four that birthday, he had told me a month before)
- I marvelled at his ceaseless capacity for amorous adventure, with or
- without a moment’s notice. A pretty girl, if possible, or a plain one if
- not, drew him like a magnet, excited all his boyish egotism, called to the
- faun-spirit that played the pipes of Pan in his heart. It was an amusing
- game for him, with his curly brown hair and Midshipman Easy type of face.
- For the French girls whom he had met on his way—little Marcelle on
- Cassel Hill, Christine at Corbie on the Somme, Marguérite in the hat-shop
- at Amiens (what became of her, poor kid?)—it was not so amusing when
- he “blew away,” as he called it, and had a look at life elsewhere.
- </p>
- <p>
- He winked at me, as I passed, over the heads of the girls.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The fruits of victory!” he called out. “There is a little Miss Brown-Eyes
- here who is quite enchanting.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was rather caddish of me to say: “Have you forgotten Marguérite
- Aubigny?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He thought so, too, and reddened angrily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Go to blazes!” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- His greatest chum, and one of mine—Charles Fortune—was
- standing outside a <i>café</i> in the big Place, not far from the Vieille
- Bourse, with its richly-carved Renaissance front. Here there was a dense
- crowd, but they kept at a respectful distance from Fortune, who, with his
- red tabs and red-and-blue arm-band and row of ribbons (all gained by
- heroic service over a blotting-pad in a Nissen hut) looked to them, no
- doubt, like a great general. He had his “heroic” face on, rather mystical
- and saintly. (He had a variety of faces for divers occasions—such as
- the “sheep’s face” in the presence of generals who disliked brilliant men,
- the “intelligent” facer-bright and inquiring—for senior officers who
- liked easy questions to which they could give portentous answers, the
- “noble” face for the benefit of military chaplains, foreign visitors to
- the war-zone, and batmen before they discovered his sense of humour; and
- the “old-English-gentleman” face at times for young Harding, who belonged
- to a county family with all its traditions, politics, and instincts, and
- permitted Fortune to pull his leg, to criticise generals, and denounce the
- British Empire as a licensed jester.)
- </p>
- <p>
- Fortune was addressing four gentlemen of the Town Council of Lille who
- stood before him, holding ancient top-hats.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Gentlemen,” said Charles Fortune in deliberate French, with an
- exaggerated accent, “I appreciate very much the honour you have just paid
- me by singing that heroic old song, ‘It’s a long, long way to Tipperary.’
- I desire, however, to explain to you that it is not as yet the National
- Anthem of the British people, and that, personally, I have never been to
- Tipperary, that I should find some difficulty in finding that place on the
- map, and that I never want to go there. This, however, is of small
- importance, except to British generals, to whom all small things are of
- great importance—revealing, therefore, their minute attention to
- details, even when it does not matter—which, I may say, is the true
- test of the military mind which is so gloriously winning the war, after
- many glorious defeats (I mean victories) and——” (Here Fortune
- became rather tangled in his French grammar, but rescued himself after a
- still more heroic look). “And it is with the deepest satisfaction, the
- most profound emotion, that I find myself in this great city of Lille on
- the day of liberation, and on behalf of the British Army, of which I am a
- humble representative, in spite of these ribbons which I wear on my
- somewhat expansive chest, I thank you from my heart, with the words, ‘<i>la
- France!</i>’”
- </p>
- <p>
- Here Fortune heaved a deep sigh, and looked like a field marshal while he
- waited for the roar of cheers which greeted his words. The mystical look
- on his face became intensified as he stood there, a fine heroic figure (a
- trifle stout for lack of exercise), until he suddenly caught sight of a
- nice-looking girl in the crowd nearest to him, and gave her an elaborate
- wink, as much as to say, “You and I understand each other, my pretty one!
- Beneath this heroic pose I am really human.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The effect of that wink was instantaneous. The girl blushed vividly and
- giggled, while the crowd shouted with laughter.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Quel numéro! Quel drôle de type!</i>” said a man by my side.
- </p>
- <p>
- Only the four gentlemen of the Town Hall, who had resumed their top-hats,
- looked perplexed at this grotesque contrast between the heroic speech (it
- had sounded heroic) and its anti-climax.
- </p>
- <p>
- Fortune took me by the arm as I edged my way close to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear fellow, it was unbelievable when those four old birds sang
- ‘Tipperary’ with bared heads. I had to stand at the salute while they sang
- three verses with tears in their eyes. They have been learning it during
- four years of war. Think of that! And think of what’s happening in Ireland—in
- Tipperary—now! There’s some paradox here which contains all the
- comedy and pathos of this war. I must think it out. I can’t quite get at
- it yet, but I feel it from afar.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is not a day for satire,” I said. “This is a day for sentiment.
- These people have escaped from frightful things——”
- </p>
- <p>
- Fortune looked at me with quizzical grey eyes out of his handsome,
- mask-like face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Et tu, Brute?</i> After all our midnight talks, our laughter at the
- mockery of the gods, our intellectual slaughter of the staff, our tearing
- down of all the pompous humbug which has bolstered up this silly old war.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know. But to-day we can enjoy the spirit of victory. It’s real, here.
- We have liberated all these people.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We? You mean the young Tommies who lie dead the other side of the canal?
- We come in and get the kudos. Presently the generals will come and say,
- ‘We did it! Regard our glory! Fling down your flowers! Cheer us, good
- people, before we go to lunch.’ They will not see behind them the legions
- they sent to slaughter by ghastly blunders, colossal stupidity, invincible
- pomposity.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Fortune broke into song. It was an old anthem of his:
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Blear-eyed Bill, the Butcher of the Boche</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He had composed it, after a fourth whisky, on a cottage piano in his
- Nissen hut. In crashing chords he had revealed the soul of a general
- preparing a plan of battle—over the telephone. It never failed to
- make me laugh, except that day in Lille when it was out of tune, I
- thought, with the spirit about us.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let’s put the bitter taste out of our mouth to-day,” I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- Fortune made his sheep-face, saluted behind his ear, and said, “Every inch
- a soldier—I don’t think!”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- III
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was then we
- bumped straight into Wickham Brand, who was between a small boy and girl,
- holding his hands, while a tall girl of sixteen or so, with a yellow
- pig-tail slung over her shoulder, walked alongside, talking vivaciously of
- family experiences under German rule. Pierre Nesle was on the other side
- of her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “In spite of all the fear we had—oh, how frightened we were
- sometimes!—we used to laugh very much. <i>Maman</i> made a joke of
- everything—it was the only way. <i>Maman</i> was wonderfully brave,
- except when she thought that father might have been killed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where was your father?” asked Brand. “On the French side of the lines?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, of course. He was an officer in the artillery. We said good-bye to
- him on August 2nd of the first year, when he went off to the dépôt at
- Belfort. We all cried except <i>maman</i>—father was crying, too,
- but <i>maman</i> did not wink away even the tiniest tear until father had
- gone. Then she broke down, so that we all howled at the sight of her. Even
- these babies joined in. They were only babies then.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Any news of him?” asked Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not a word. How could there be? Perhaps in a few days he will walk into
- Lille. So <i>maman</i> says.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That would be splendid!” said Brand. “What is his name?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Chéri, M. le Commandant Anatole Chéri, 59th Brigade, <i>artillerie
- lourde.</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl spoke her father’s name proudly.
- </p>
- <p>
- I saw a startled look come into the eyes of Pierre Nesle as he heard the
- name. In English he said to Brand: “I knew him at Verdun. He was killed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Wickham Brand drew a sharp breath, and his voice was husky when he spoke,
- in English, too.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What cruelty it all is!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl with the pig-tail—a tall young creature with a delicate
- face and big brown eyes—stared at Pierre Nesle and then at Wickham
- Brand. She asked an abrupt question of Pierre.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is my father dead?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Pierre Nesle stammered something. He was not sure. He had heard that the
- Commandant Chéri was wounded at Verdun.
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl understood perfectly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He is dead, then? <i>Maman</i> will be very sorry.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She did not cry. There was not even a quiver of her lips. She shook hands
- with Brand and said: “I must go and tell <i>maman</i>. Will you come and
- see us one day?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “With pleasure,” said Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Promise?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl laughed as she raised her finger.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I promise,” said Brand solemnly.
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl “collected” the small boy and girl, holding their heads close to
- her waist.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is father dead?” said the small boy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps. I believe so,” said the elder sister.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then we shan’t get the toys from Paris?” said the small girl.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am afraid not, <i>coquine?</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What a pity!” said the boy.
- </p>
- <p>
- Pierre Nesle took a step forward and saluted.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I will go with you, if you permit it, mademoiselle. It is perhaps in a
- little way my duty, as I met your father in the war.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Thanks a thousand times,” said the girl. “<i>Maman</i> will be glad to
- know all you can tell her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She waved to Brand a merry <i>au revoir</i>.
- </p>
- <p>
- We stood watching them cross the Grande Place, that tall girl and the two
- little ones, and Pierre.
- </p>
- <p>
- Fortune touched Brand on the arm.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Plucky, that girl,” he said. “Took it without a whimper. I wonder if she
- cared?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand turned on him rather savagely.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Cared? Of course she cared. But she had expected it for four years, grown
- up to the idea. These war children have no illusions about the business.
- They know that the odds are in favour of death.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He raised his hands above his head with a sudden passionate gesture.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Christ God!” he said. “The tragedy of those people! The monstrous cruelty
- of it all!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Fortune took his hand and patted it in a funny affectionate way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are too sensitive, Wicky. ‘A sensitive plant in a garden grew’—a
- war-garden, with its walls blown down, and dead bodies among the little
- daisies-o. I try to cultivate a sense of humour and a little irony. It’s a
- funny old war, Wicky, believe me, if you look at it in the right light.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Wickham groaned.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I see no humour in it, nor light anywhere.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Fortune chanted again the beginning of his anthem:
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Blear-eyed Bill, the Butcher of the Boche</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- As usual there was a crowd about us, smiling, waving handkerchiefs and
- small flags, pressing forward to shake hands and to say “<i>Vivent les
- Anglais!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was out of that crowd that a girl came and stood in front of us, with a
- wave of her hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good morning, British officers! I’m English—or Irish, which is good
- enough. Welcome to Lille.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Fortune shook hands with her first and said very formally, in his mocking
- way: “How do you do? Are you by chance my long-lost sister? Is there a
- strawberry-mark on your left arm?” She laughed with a big, open-mouthed
- laugh, on a contralto note that was good to hear.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m everybody’s sister who speaks the English tongue, which is fine to
- the ears of me after four years in Lille. Eileen O’Connor, by your leave,
- gentlemen.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not Eileen O’Connor of Tipperary?” asked Fortune gravely. “You know the
- Long Long Way, of course?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Once of Dublin,” said the girl, “and before the war, of Holland Street,
- Kensington, in the village of London. Oh, to hear the roar of ‘buses in
- the High Street and to see the glint of sunlight on the Round Pond!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She was a tall girl, shabbily dressed in an old coat and skirt with a bit
- of fur round her neck and hat, but with a certain look of elegance in the
- thin line of her figure and the poise of her head. Real Irish, by the look
- of her dark eyes and a rather irregular nose and humorous lips. Not pretty
- in the English way, but spirited, and with some queer charm in her.
- </p>
- <p>
- Wickham Brand was holding her hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good Lord! Eileen O’Connor? I used to meet you, years ago, at the Wilmots—those
- funny tea-parties in Chelsea.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “With farthing buns and cigarettes, and young boys with big ideas!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl laughed with a kind of wonderment, and stood close to Wickham
- Brand, holding his Sam Brown belt and staring up into his face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, you must be—you must be—— you are—the tall
- boy who used to grow out of his grey suits and wrote mystical verse and
- read Tolstoy, and growled at civilisation and smoked black pipes, and fell
- in love with elderly artists’ models. Wickham Brand!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s right,” said Brand, ignoring the laughter of Fortune and myself.
- “Then I went to Germany and studied their damned philosophy, and then I
- became a briefless barrister, and after that took to writing unsuccessful
- novels. Here I am, after four years of war, ashamed to be alive when all
- my pals are dead.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He glanced at Fortune and me, and said, “Or most of ‘em.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s the same Wicky I remember,” said the girl, “and at the sight of you
- I feel I’ve gone back to myself as a tousled-haired thing in a short frock
- and long black stockings. The good old days before the war. Before other
- things and all kinds of things.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why on earth were you in Lille when the war began?” asked Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It just happened. I taught painting here. Then I was caught with the
- others. We did not think They would come so soon.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She used the word “They” as we all did, meaning the grey men.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It must have been hell,” said Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mostly hell,” said Miss O’Connor brightly. “At least, one saw into the
- gulfs of hell, and devilishness was close at hand. But there were
- compensations, wee bits of heaven. On the whole I enjoyed myself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Enjoyed yourself?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand was startled by that phrase.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, it was an adventure. I took risks—and came through. I lived all
- of it—every minute. It was a touch-and-go game with the devil and
- death, and I dodged them both. <i>Dieu soit merci!</i>” She laughed with a
- little throw-back of the head, showing a white full throat above the
- ragged bit of fur. A number of French women pressed about her. Some of
- them patted her arms, fondled her hands. One woman bent down and kissed
- her shabby jacket.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Elle était merveilleuse, la demoiselle,</i>” said an old Frenchman by
- my side. “She was marvellous, sir. All that she did for the wounded, for
- your prisoners, for many men who owe their lives to her, cannot be told in
- a little while. They tried to catch her. She was nearly caught. It is a
- miracle that she was not shot. A miracle, monsieur!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Other people in the crowd spoke to me about “<i>la demoiselle</i>.” They
- were mysterious. Even now they could not tell me all she had done. But she
- had risked death every day for four years. Every day. Truly it was a
- miracle she was not caught.
- </p>
- <p>
- Listening to them, I missed some of Eileen O’Connor’s own words to Brand,
- and saw only the wave of her hand as she disappeared into the crowd.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was Brand who told me that he and I and Fortune had been invited to
- spend the evening with her, or an “hour or so. I saw that Wicky, as we
- called him, was startled by the meeting with her, and was glad of it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I knew her when we were kids,” he said. “Ten years ago—perhaps
- more. She used to pull my hair! Extraordinary, coming face to face with
- her in Lille, on this day of all days.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He turned to Fortune with a look of command.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We ought to get busy with that advanced headquarters. There are plenty of
- big houses in these streets.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Ce qu’on appelle un embarras de choix</i>,” said Fortune, with his
- rather comical exaggeration of accent. “And Blear-eyed Bill wants us to go
- on beating the Boche. I insist on a house with a good piano—German
- for choice.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They went off on their quest, and I to my billet, which had been found by
- the major of ours, where I wrote the story of how we entered Lille on a
- typewriter with a twisted ribbon, which would not write quickly enough all
- I wanted to tell the world about a day of history.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- IV
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> had the luck to
- be billeted in Lille at the house of Madame Chéri, in the Rue Esquermoise.
- </p>
- <p>
- This lady was the mother of the girl with the pig-tail and the two
- children with whom Wickham Brand had made friends on this morning of
- liberation—the wife of that military officer whom Pierre Nesle had
- known at Verdun and knew to be killed. It was my luck, because there were
- children in the house—the pig-tailed girl, Hélène, was more a woman
- than a child, though only sixteen—and I craved for a touch of home
- life and children’s company after so long an exile in the war-zone, always
- among men who talked of war, thought of it, dreamed of it, year in, year
- out.
- </p>
- <p>
- Madame Chéri was, I thought, when I saw her first, a beautiful woman, not
- physically—because she was too white and worn—but spiritually,
- in courage of soul. Pierre Nesle, our <i>liaison</i> officer, told me how
- she had received the news of her husband’s death—unflinchingly,
- without a cry. She knew, she said, in her heart that he was dead. Some
- queer message had reached her one night during the Verdun battles. It was
- no ghost, or voice, but only a sudden cold conviction that her man had
- been killed. For the children’s sake she had pretended that their father
- might come back. It gave them something to look forward to. The little
- ones were always harping on the hope that, when peace came, this
- mysterious and glorious man, whom they remembered only vaguely as one who
- had played bears with them and had been the provider of all good things,
- would return with rich presents from Paris—tin soldiers,
- queen-dolls, mechanical toys. Hélène, the elder girl, was different. She
- had looked curiously at her mother when the children prattled like that
- and Madame Chéri had pretended to believe in the father’s homecoming. Once
- or twice the girl had said, “Papa may be killed,” in a matter-of-fact way.
- Yet she had been his devoted comrade. They had been such lovers, the
- father and daughter, that sometimes the mother had been a little jealous,
- so she said, in her frank way, to Pierre Nesle, smiling as she spoke. The
- war had made Hélène a realist, like most French girls, to whom the idea of
- death became commonplace, almost inevitable, as the ceaseless slaughter of
- men went on. The German losses had taught them that.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had the colonel’s dressing-room—he had attained the grade of
- colonel before Verdun, so Pierre told me—and Madame Chéri came in
- while I was there to see that it was properly arranged for me. Over his
- iron bedstead (the Germans had taken the woollen mattress, so that it had
- been replaced by bags of straw) was his portrait as a lieutenant of
- artillery, as he had been at the time of his marriage. He was a handsome
- fellow, rather like Hélène, with her delicate profile and brown eyes,
- though more like, said Madame Chéri, their eldest boy, Edouard.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where is he?” I asked, and that was the only time I saw Madame Chéri
- break down utterly.
- </p>
- <p>
- She began to tell me that Edouard had been taken away by the Germans,
- among all the able-bodied men and boys who were sent away from Lille for
- digging trenches behind the lines, in Easter of ‘16, and that he had gone
- bravely, with his little pack of clothes over his shoulder, saying, “It is
- nothing, <i>maman</i>. My father taught me the word <i>courage</i>. In a
- little while we shall win, and I shall be back. <i>Courage, courage!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- Madame Chéri repeated her son’s words proudly, so that I seemed to see the
- boy with that pack on his shoulder and a smile on his face. Then,
- suddenly, she wept bitterly, wildly, her body shaken with a kind of ague,
- while she sat on the iron bedstead with her face in her hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- I repeated the boy’s words.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Courage, courage, madam!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Proudly she wailed out in broken sentences:—
- </p>
- <p>
- “He was such a child!... He caught cold so easily!... He was so
- delicate!... He needed mother-love so much!... For two years no word has
- come from him!” In a little while she controlled herself and begged me to
- excuse her. We went down together to the dining-room, where the children
- were playing and Hélène was reading; and she insisted upon my drinking a
- glass of wine from the store which she had kept hidden from the Germans in
- a pit which Edouard had dug in the garden in the first days of the
- occupation. The children were delighted with that trick, and roared with
- laughter.
- </p>
- <p>
- Hélène, with a curl of her lip, spoke bitterly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The Boche is a stupid animal. One can dupe him easily.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not always easily,” said Madame Chéri. She opened a secret cupboard
- behind a bookcase standing against the panelled wall.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hid all my brass and copper here. A German police officer came, and
- said, ‘Have you hidden any copper, madame?’ I said, ‘There is nothing
- hidden.’ ‘Do you swear it?’ he asked. ‘I swear it,’ I answered very
- haughtily. He went straight to the bookcase, pushed it on one side, tapped
- the wall, and opened the secret cupboard’, which was stuffed full of brass
- and copper. ‘You are a liar, madame,’ he said, ‘like all Frenchwomen.’
- ‘And you are an insolent pig, like all Germans,’ I remarked. That cost me
- a fine of ten thousand francs.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Madame Chéri saw nothing wrong in swearing falsely to a German. I think
- she held that nothing was wrong to deceive or to destroy any individual of
- the German race, and I could understand her point of view when Pierre
- Nesle told me of one thing that had happened which she never told to me.
- It was about Hélène.
- </p>
- <p>
- A German captain was billeted in the house. They ignored his presence,
- though he tried to ingratiate himself. Hélène hated him with a cold and
- deadly hatred. She trembled if he passed her on the stairs. His presence
- in the house, even if she did not see him but only heard him move in his
- room, made her feel ill. Yet he was very polite to her, and said, “<i>Guten
- gnadiges Fràulein</i>,” whenever they met. To Edouard, also, he was
- courteous and smiling, though Edouard was sullen. He was a stout little
- man, with a round rosy face and little bright eyes behind big black-rimmed
- glasses, an officer in the Kommandantur, and formerly a schoolmaster.
- Madame Chéri, was polite to him, but cold, cold as ice. After some months,
- she found him harmless, though objectionable, because German. It did not
- seem dangerous to leave him in the house one evening when she went to
- visit a dying friend—Madame Vailly. She was later than she meant to
- be—so late that she was liable to arrest by the military police if
- they saw her flit past in the darkness of the unlit streets. When she came
- home she slipped the latch-key into the door and went quietly into the
- hall. The children would be in bed and asleep. At the foot of the stairs a
- noise startled her. It was a curious creaking, shaking noise, as of a door
- being pushed by some heavy weight, then banged by it. It was the door at
- the top of the stairs, on the left—Helène’s room.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Qu’est-ce que tu fais là?</i>” said Madame Chéri.
- </p>
- <p>
- She was very frightened with some unknown fear, and held tight to the
- banister as she went upstairs. There was a glimmer of light on the
- landing. It was from a candle which had almost burnt out and was guttering
- in a candlestick placed on the topmost stair. A grotesque figure was
- revealed by the light—Schwarz, the German officer, in his pyjamas,
- with a helmet on his head and unlaced boots on his feet. The loose fat of
- the man, no longer girded by a belt, made him look like a mass of jelly as
- he had his shoulder to the door, shoving and grunting as he tried to force
- it open. He was swearing to himself in German, and, now and then, called
- out softly in French, in a kind of drunken German-French: “<i>Ouvrez,
- kleines Madchen, ma jolie Schatz. Ouvrez donc.</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- Madame Chéri was paralysed for a moment by a shock of horror; quite
- speechless and motionless. Then suddenly she moved forward and spoke in a
- fierce whisper.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What are you doing, beast?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Schwarz gave a queer snort of alarm.
- </p>
- <p>
- He stood swaying a little, with the helmet on the back of his head. The
- candlelight gleamed on its golden eagle. His face was hotly flushed and
- there was a ferocious look in his eyes. Madame Chéri saw that he was
- drunk.
- </p>
- <p>
- He spoke to her in horrible French, so Pierre Nesle told me, imitating it
- savagely, as Madame Chéri had done to him. The man was filthily drunk, and
- declared that he loved Hélène and would kill her if she did not let him
- love her. Why did she lock her door like that? He had been kind to her. He
- had smiled at her. A German officer was a human being, not a monster. Why
- did they treat him as a monster, draw themselves away when he passed,
- become silent when he wished to speak with them, stare at him with hate in
- their eyes? The French people were all devils, proud as devils.
- </p>
- <p>
- Another figure stood on the landing. It was Edouard—a tall, slim
- figure, with a white face and burning eyes, in which there was a look of
- fury.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What is happening, <i>maman?</i>” he said coldly. “What does this animal
- want?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Madame Chéri trembled with a new fear. If the boy were to kill that man,
- he would be shot. She had a vision of him standing against a wall....
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is nothing,” she said. “This gentleman is ill. Go back to bed,
- Edouard. I command you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The German laughed stupidly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “To bed, <i>shafskopf</i>. I am going to open your sister’s door. She
- loves me. She calls to me. I hear her whisper, ‘<i>Ich liebe dich!</i>’”
- </p>
- <p>
- Edouard had a stick in his hand. It was a heavy walking-stick which had
- belonged to his father. Without a word he sprang forward, raised his
- weapon, and smashed it down on the German’s head. It knocked off Schwarz’s
- helmet, which rolled from the top to the bottom of the staircase, and hit
- the man a glancing blow on the temple. He fell like a log. Edouard smiled,
- and said, “<i>Très bien.</i>” Then he rattled the lock of his sister’s
- door and called out to her: “Hélène.... Have no fear. He is dead. I have
- killed him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was then that Madame Chéri had her greatest fear. There was no sound
- from Hélène. She did not answer any of their cries. She did not open the
- door to them. They tried to force the lock, as Schwarz had done, but,
- though the lock gave at last, the door would not open, kept closed by some
- barricade behind it. Edouard and his mother went out into the yard, and
- the boy climbed up to his sister’s window and broke the glass to go
- through. Hélène was lying in her nightdress on the bedroom floor,
- unconscious. She had moved a heavy wardrobe in front of the door, by some
- supernatural strength which came from fear. Then she had fainted.... To
- his deep regret, Edouard had not killed the German.
- </p>
- <p>
- Schwarz had crawled back to his bedroom when they went back into the
- house, and next morning wept to Madame Chéri and implored forgiveness.
- There had been a little banquet, he said, and he had drunk too much.
- </p>
- <p>
- Madame Chéri did not forgive. She called at the Kommandantur, where the
- General saw her and listened to her gravely. He did not waste words.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The matter will be attended to,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Schwarz departed that day from the house in the Rue Esquermoise.
- He was sent to a battalion in the line and was killed somewhere near
- Ypres.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- V
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>ickham Brand paid
- his promised visit to the Chéri family, according to his pledge to Hélène,
- whom he had met in the street the previous day, and he had to drink some
- of the hidden wine, as I had done, and heard the story of its concealment
- and of Madame’s oath about the secret hoard of copper. I think he was more
- disconcerted than I had been by that avowal, and told me afterwards that
- he believed no Englishwoman would have sworn to so deliberate a lie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s because the English are not so logical,” I said, and he puzzled
- over that.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was greatly taken with Hélène, as she with him, but he risked their
- friendship in an awkward moment when he expressed the hope that the German
- offer of peace (the one before the final surrender) would be accepted.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was Madame Chéri who took him up on that, sharply, and with a kind of
- surprised anguish in her voice. She hoped, she said, that no peace would
- be made with Germany until French and British and American troops had
- smashed the German armies, crossed the German frontier, and destroyed many
- German towns and villages. She would not be satisfied with any peace that
- came before a full vengeance, so that German women would taste the
- bitterness of war as Frenchwomen had drunk deep of it, and until Germany
- was heaped with ruins as France had been.
- </p>
- <p>
- Wickham Brand was sitting with the small boy on his knees, and stroked his
- hair before answering.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Dites, donc!</i>” said Hélène, who was sitting on the hearthrug,
- looking up at his powerful profile, which reminded me always of a Norman
- knight, or, sometimes, of a young monk worried about his soul and the
- devil.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had that monkish look now when he answered.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t know,” he said. “I have felt like that often. But I have come to
- think that the sooner we get blood out of our eyes the better for all the
- world. I have seen enough dead Germans—and dead English and dead
- French—to last a lifetime. Many of the German soldiers hate the war,
- as I know, and curse the men who drove them on to it. They are trapped.
- They cannot escape from the thing they curse, because of their discipline,
- their patriotism——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Their patriotism!” said Madame Chéri.
- </p>
- <p>
- She was really angry with Brand, and I noticed that even Hélène drew back
- a little from her place on the rug and looked perplexed and disappointed.
- Madame Chéri ridiculed the idea of German patriotism. They were brutes who
- liked war except when they feared defeat. They had committed a thousand
- atrocities out of sheer joy in bestial cruelty. Their idea of patriotism
- was blood-lust and the oppression of people more civilised than
- themselves. They hated all people who were not savages like themselves.
- </p>
- <p>
- Wickham Brand shook his head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They’re not all as bad as that. I knew decent people among them before
- the war. For a time, of course, they went mad. They were poisoned by the
- damnable philosophy of their leaders and teachers.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They liked the poison,” said Madame Chéri. “They lapped it up. It is in
- their blood and spirits. They are foul through and through.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They are devils,” said Hélène. She shuddered as though she felt very
- cold.
- </p>
- <p>
- Even the small boy on Brand’s knees said: “<i>Sales Boches!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand groaned in a whimsical way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have said all those things a thousand times! They nearly drove me mad.
- But now it’s time to stop the river of blood—if the German army will
- acknowledge defeat. I would not go on a day after that, for our own sakes—for
- the sake of French boys and English. Every day more of war means more dead
- of ours, more blind, more crippled, and more agony of soul. I want some of
- our boyhood to be saved.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Madame Chéri answered coldly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not before the Germans have been punished. Not before that, if we all
- die.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Hélène sprang up with a passionate gesture.
- </p>
- <p>
- “All German babies ought to be strangled in their cradles! Before they
- grow up to be fat, beastly men.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She was thinking of Schwarz, I imagine. It was the horror of remembrance
- which made her so fierce. Then she laughed, and said: “Oh, <i>là là</i>,
- let us be glad because yesterday we were liberated. Do not quarrel with an
- English officer, <i>maman</i>. He helped to save us.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She put her hands on Wickham Brand’s shoulders and said: “<i>Merci, mon
- capitaine!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- So the conversation turned, and Wickham won them back by his courtesy, and
- by a tribute to the courage of French civilians behind the lines, of whom
- he told many haunting stories.
- </p>
- <p>
- But when I walked round with him to his mess—we were going round
- later to see Eileen O’Connor—he referred back to the incident.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Daddy Small is right.” (He referred to the little American doctor.) “The
- hatred of these people is transcendental. It is like a spiritual flame. It
- is above all self-interest, kindly, human instincts, life itself. That
- woman would sacrifice herself, and her children, as quietly as she heard
- the death of her husband, rather than grant the Germans peace without
- victory and vengeance. How can there be any peace, whatever treaty is
- signed? Can Europe ever get peace with all this hatred as a heritage?”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- VI
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e walked silently
- towards the Boulevard de la Liberté, where Brand’s little crowd had
- established their headquarters.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps they’re right,” he said presently. “Perhaps the hatred is
- divine.... I may be weakening, because of all the horror.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he was silent again, and while I walked by his side I thought back to
- his career as I had known it in the war, rather well. He had always been
- tortured by agonised perplexities. I had guessed that by the look of the
- man and some of his odd phrases, and his restlessness and foolhardiness.
- It was in the trenches by Fricourt that I had first seen him—long
- before the battles of the Somme. He was sitting motionless on a wooden
- box, staring through a periscope towards the mine craters and the Bois
- Français in No Man’s Land. The fine hardness of his profile, the strength
- of his jaw—not massive, but with one clean line from ear to chin—and
- something in the utter intensity of his attitude, attracted my attention,
- and I asked the colonel about him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who is that fellow—like a Norman knight?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The colonel of the K.R.R. laughed as we went round the next bay, ducking
- our heads where the sandbags had slipped down.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Further back than Norman,” he said. “He’s the primitive man.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He told me that Wickham Brand—a lieutenant then—was a young
- barrister who had joined the battalion at the beginning of ‘15. He had
- taken up sniping and made himself a dead shot. He had the hunter’s
- instinct and would wait hours behind the sandbags for the sight of a
- German head in the trendies opposite. He seldom missed his man, or that
- part of his body which showed for a second. Lately he had taken to the
- habit of crawling out into No Man’s Land and waiting in some shell-hole
- for the dawn, when Germans came out to mend their wire or drag in a dead
- body. He generally left another dead man as a bait for the living. Then he
- would come back with a grim smile and eat his breakfast wolfishly, after
- cutting a notch in one of the beams of his dug-out.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He’s a Hun-hater, body and soul,” said the colonel. “We want more of ‘em.
- All the same, Brand makes me feel queer by his ferocity. I like a humorous
- fellow who does his killing cheerfully.”
- </p>
- <p>
- After that I met Brand and took a drink with him in his dug-out. He
- answered my remarks gruffly for a time.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hear you go in for sniping a good deal,” I said, by way of
- conversation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes. It’s murder made easy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you get many targets?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s a waiting game. Sometimes they get careless.” He puffed at a black
- old pipe, quite silent for a time. Presently he told me about a “young
- ‘un” who popped his head over the parapet twice to stare at something on
- the edge of the mine crater.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I spared him twice. The third time I said, ‘Better dead,’ and let go at
- him. The kid was too easy to miss.” Something in the tone of his voice
- told me that he hated himself for that.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Rather a pity,” I mumbled.
- </p>
- <p>
- “War,” he said. “Bloody war.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a candle burning on the wooden bench on which he leaned his
- elbow, and by the light of it I saw that his eyes were bloodshot. There
- was a haggard look on his face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It must need some nerve,” I said awkwardly, “to go out so often in No
- Man’s Land. Real pluck.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He stared at me as though surprised, and then laughed harshly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Pluck? What’s that? I’m scared stiff half the time. Do you think I like
- it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He seemed to get angry, was angry, I think.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do any of us like it? These damn things that blow men to bits, make rags
- of them, tear their bowels out, and their eyes? Or to live on top of a
- mine crater, as we are now, never knowing when you’re going up in smoke
- and flame? If you like that sort of thing yourself you can take my share.
- I have never met a man who did.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Yet when Brand was taken out of the trenches—by a word spoken over
- the telephone from corps headquarters—because of his knowledge of
- German and his cousinship to a lady who was a friend of the corps
- commander’s niece, he was miserable and savage. I met him many times after
- that as an intelligence officer at the corps cages, examining prisoners on
- days of battle.
- </p>
- <p>
- “An <i>embusqué</i> job!” he said. “I’m saving my skin while the
- youngsters die.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He stood outside his hut one day on a morning of battle in the Somme
- fields—up by Pozières. No prisoners had yet come down. He forgot my
- presence and stood listening to the fury of gun-fire and watching the
- smoke and flame away there on the ridge.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Christ!” he cried. “Why am I here? Why aren’t I with my pals up there,
- getting blown to blood and pulp? Blood and pulp! Blood and pulp!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he remembered me, and turned in a shamefaced way and said, “Sorry!...
- I feel rather hipped to-day.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was present sometimes at his examination of prisoners—those poor,
- grey, muddy wretches who came dazed out of the slime and shambles.
- Sometimes he bullied them harshly, in fluent German, and they trembled at
- his ferocity of speech, even whimpered now and then. But once or twice he
- was in quite a different mood with them and spoke gently, assenting when
- they cursed the war and its misery and said that all they wanted was peace
- and home again.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Aren’t you fellows going to revolt?” he asked one man—a <i>Feldwebel.</i>
- “Aren’t you going to tell your war lords to go to hell and stop all this
- silly massacre before Germany is <i>kaput?</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- The German shrugged his shoulders.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We would if we could. It is impossible. Discipline is too strong for us.
- It has enslaved us.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s true,” said Brand. “You are slaves of a system.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He spoke a strange sentence in English as he glanced over to me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am beginning to think we are all slaves of a system. None of us can
- break the chains.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was after that day that Brand took a fancy to me, for some reason,
- inviting me to his mess, where I met Charles Fortune and others, and it
- was there that I heard amazing discussions about the philosophy of war,
- German psychology, the object of life, the relation of Christianity to
- war, and the decadence of Europe. Brand himself sometimes led these
- discussions, with a savage humour which delighted Charles Fortune, who
- egged him on. He was always pessimistic, sceptical, challenging, bitter,
- and now and then so violent in his criticisms of England, the Government,
- the Army Council, the Staff, and above all, the Press, that most of his
- fellow officers—apart from Fortune—thought he went “a bit too
- far.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Dear old Harding, who was Tory to the backbone, with a deep respect for
- all in authority, accused him of being a “damned revolutionary,” and for a
- moment it looked as though there would be hot words, until Brand laughed
- in a good-natured way and said, “My dear fellow, I’m only talking academic
- rot. I haven’t a conviction. Ever since the war began I have been trying
- to make head or tail of things in a sea-fog of doubt. All I know is that I
- want the bloody orgy to end, somehow and anyhow.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “With victory,” said Harding solemnly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “With the destruction of Prussian philosophy everywhere,” said Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- They agreed on that, but I could see that Brand was on shifting ground and
- I knew, as our friendship deepened; that he was getting beyond a religion
- of mere hate, and was looking for some other kind of faith. Occasionally
- he harked back, as on the day in Lille when I walked by his side.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- VII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> dined with him in
- his mess that evening, before going on with him to spend an hour or two
- with Eileen O’Connor, who had a room in some convent on the outskirts of
- Lille. The advanced headquarters of this little group of officers had been
- established in one of those big private houses which belong to the rich
- manufacturers and business people of Lille (rich before the war, but with
- desolate factories stripped of all machinery during the German occupation
- and afterwards), with large, heavily-furnished rooms built round a
- courtyard and barred off from the street by the big front door. There was
- a motor lorry inside the door, which was wide open, and some orderlies
- were unloading camp-beds, boxes of maps, officers’ kit, a mahogany
- gramophone, and other paraphernalia, under the direction of a young
- cockney sergeant, who wanted to know why the blazes they didn’t look
- slippy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t you know there’s a war on?” he asked a stolid old soldier—one
- of the heroes of Mons—who was sitting on a case of whisky, with a
- wistful look, as though reflecting on the unfair privileges of officers
- with so much wealth of drink.
- </p>
- <p>
- “War’s all right if you’re not too close to it,” said the Mons hero. “I’ve
- seen enough. I’ve done my bleeding bit for King and country. South Africa,
- Egypt——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Shut your jaw,” said the sergeant. “And down that blarsted gramophone.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah!” said the Mons hero. “We didn’t ‘ave no blarsted gramophones in South
- Africa. This is a different kind of war. More comfort about it, if you’re
- not in the trenches.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Wickham Brand took me through the courtyard and mentioned that the colonel
- had come up from St. Omer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now we’re sure to beat the Boche,” he said. “Listen!”
- </p>
- <p>
- From a room to the left of the courtyard came the sound of a flute playing
- one of Bach’s minuets, very sweetly, with an old-fashioned grace.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A wonderful army of ours!” said Brand. “I can’t imagine a German colonel
- of the Staff playing seventeenth century music on a bit of ivory while the
- enemy is fighting like a tiger at bay.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps that’s our strength,” I answered. “Our amateurs refuse to take
- the war too seriously. I know a young gunner major who travels a banjo in
- his limber, and at Cambrai I saw fellows playing chuck-penny within ten
- yards of their pals’ dead bodies—a pile of them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The colonel saw us through his window and waved his flute at us. When I
- went into the room, after a salute at the doorway, I saw that he had
- already littered it with artistic untidiness—sheets of torn music,
- water-colour sketches, books of poetry, and an array of splendid shining
- boots, of which a pair stood on the mahogany sideboard.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A beautiful little passage this,” said Colonel Lavington, smiling at me
- over the flute, which he put to his lips again. He played a bar or two of
- old-world melody, and said, “Isn’t that perfect? Can’t you see the little
- ladies in their ^puffed brocades and high-heeled shoes!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He had his faun-like look, his clean-shaven face with long nose and thin,
- humorous mouth, lighted up by his dark smiling eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not a bad headquarters,” he said, putting down the flute again. “If we
- can only stay here a little while, instead of having to jog on again.
- There’s an excellent piano in the dining-room, German, thank goodness—and
- Charles Fortune and I can really get down to some serious music.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How’s the war?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “War?” he said absent-mindedly. “Oh, yes, the war! That’s going on all
- right. They’d be out of Tournai in a few days. Perhaps out of Maubeuge and
- Mons. Oh, the game’s up! Very soon the intellectuals will be looking round
- for a living in dear old London. My goodness, some of us will find peace a
- difficult job! I can see Boredom approaching with its colossal shadow....
- After all, it has been a great game, on the whole.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I laughed, but something stuck in my throat. Colonel Lavington played the
- flute, but he knew his job, and was in touch with General Headquarters and
- all its secret information. It was obvious that he believed the war was
- going to end—soon. Soon, O Lord, after all the years of massacre.
- </p>
- <p>
- I blurted out a straight question.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you think there’s a real chance of peace?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The colonel was reading a piece of music, humming it with a la, la, la.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Another month and our job’s done,” he said. “Have you heard that bit of
- Gluck? It’s delicious.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I stayed with him a little while and did not follow a note of his music. I
- was excited by the supreme hope he had given me. So there was to be an end
- of massacre, and my own hopes had not been false.
- </p>
- <p>
- At the mess table that night Charles Fortune was in good form. We sat in a
- room which was rather handsomely furnished, in a heavy way, with big
- bronzes on the mantelpiece (ticketed for exemption from requisition as
- family heirlooms), and some rather good portraits of a French family—from
- the eighteenth century onwards—on the panelled walls. The <i>concierge</i>
- had told us that it had been the mess of a German headquarters and this
- gave Fortune his cue, and he entertained us with some caricatures of
- German generals and officers, amazingly comic. He drank his soup in the
- style of a German general and ate his potato pie as a German intelligence
- officer, who had once been a professor of psychology at Heidelberg.
- </p>
- <p>
- The little American doctor, “Daddy” Small, as we called him, had been made
- an honorary member of the mess, and he smiled at Fortune through his
- spectacles, with an air of delighted surprise that such things should be.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You English,” he said in his solemn way, “are the most baffling people in
- the world. I have been studying you since I came to France, and all my
- preconceived ideas have been knocked on the head. We Americans think you
- are a hard, arrogant, selfish people, without humour or sympathy, made in
- set moulds, turned out as types from your university and public schools.
- That is all wrong. I am beginning to see that you are more human, more
- various, more whimsical than any race in the world. You decline to take
- life seriously. You won’t take even death seriously. This war—you
- make a joke of it. The Germans—you kill them in great numbers, but
- you have a secret liking for them. Fortune’s caricatures are very comical—but
- not unkind. I believe Fortune is a pro-German. You cannot laugh at the
- people you hate. I believe England will forgive Germany quicker than any
- other nation—far quicker than the Americans. France, of course, will
- never forgive.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” said Pierre Nesle, who was at the end of the table. “France will
- never forgive.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We are an illogical people,” said the colonel. “It is only logical people
- who can go on hating. Besides, German music is so-good! So good!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Harding, who read no paper but the <i>Morning Post</i>, said that as far
- as he was concerned he would never speak to a German again in his life. He
- would like to see the whole race exterminated. But he was afraid of the
- Socialists with their pestilential doctrine of “brotherhood of man.” Lloyd
- George also filled him with the gravest misgivings.
- </p>
- <p>
- Dr. Small’s eyes twinkled at him: “There is the old caste that speaks.
- Tradition against the new world of ideas. Of course there will always be
- <i>that</i> conflict.... That is a wonderful phrase, ‘the pestilential
- doctrine of the brotherhood of man.’ I must make a note of it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Shame oh you, doctor,” said Fortune. “You are always jotting down notes
- about us. I shall find myself docketed as ‘English gentleman, grade 3;
- full-blooded, inclined to obesity, humorous, strain of insanity due to
- in-breeding, rare.’”
- </p>
- <p>
- Dr. Small laughed in a high treble, and then was serious.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m noting down everything. My own psychology, which alarms me; facts,
- anecdotes, scenes, words. I want to find a law somewhere, the essential
- thing in human nature. After the war—if there is any afterwards—I
- want to search for a way out of the jungle. This jungle civilisation.
- There must be daylight somewhere for the human race.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you find it,” said Brand earnestly, “tell me, doctor.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I will,” said Dr. Small, and I remembered that pledge afterwards, when he
- and Brand were together in a doomed city, trying to avert the doom,
- because of that impulse which urged them to find a little daylight beyond
- the darkness.
- </p>
- <p>
- Young Clatworthy jerked his chair on the polished boards and looked
- anxiously at the Colonel, who was discoursing on the origins of art,
- religion, sex, the perception of form.
- </p>
- <p>
- Colonel Lavington grinned at him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “All right, Cyril. I know you have got a rendezvous with some girl. Don’t
- let us keep you from your career of infamy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “As a matter of fact, sir, I met a sweet little thing yesterday——”
- Clatworthy knew that his reputation as an amorist did not displease the
- colonel, who was a romantic and loved youth.
- </p>
- <p>
- In a gust of laughter the mess broke up. Charles Fortune and the colonel
- prepared for an orgy of Bach over the piano in the drawing-room of that
- house in Lille. Those who cared to listen might—or not, as they
- pleased. Brand and I went out into the streets, pitch-dark now, unlit by
- any glimmer of gas, and made our way to the convent where the girl Eileen
- O’Connor lodged. We passed a number of British soldiers in the Boulevard
- de la Liberté, wearing their steel hats and carrying their packs.
- </p>
- <p>
- A group of them stopped under a doorway to light cigarettes. One of them
- spoke to his pals.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They tell me there’s some bonny wenches in this town.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ay,” said another, “an’ I could do wi’ some hugging in a cosy billet.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Cosy billet!” said the third, with a cockney voice. “Town or trenches,
- the poor bloody soldier gets it in the neck. Curse this pack! I’m fed up
- with the whole damn show. I want peace.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A hoarse laugh answered him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Peace! You don’t believe that fool’s talk in the papers, chum? It’s a
- hell of a long way to the Rhine, and you and I’ll be dead before we get
- there.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They slouched off into the darkness, three points of light where their
- cigarettes glowed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Poor lads!” said Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- VIII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e fumbled our way
- to a street on the edge of the canal, according to Brand’s uncanny sense
- of direction and his remembrance of what the Irish girl had told him.
- There we found the convent, a square box-like building behind big gates.
- We pulled a bell which jangled loudly, and presently the gate opened an
- inch, letting through the light of a lantern which revealed the
- black-and-white coif of a nun.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Qui va là?</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand told her that we had come to see Miss O’Connor, and the gate was
- opened wider and we went into the courtyard, where a young nun stood
- smiling. She spoke in English.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We were always frightened when the bell rang during the German
- occupation. One never knew what might happen. And we were afraid for Miss
- O’Connor’s sake.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why?” asked Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- The little nun laughed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She did dangerous work. They suspected her. She came here after her
- arrest. Before then she had rooms of her own. Oh, <i>messieurs</i>, her
- courage, her devotion! Truly, she was heroic!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She led us into a long corridor with doors on each side, and out of one
- door came a little group of nuns with Eileen O’Connor.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Irish girl came towards us with outstretched hands which she gave
- first to Brand. She seemed excited at our coming and explained that the
- Reverend Mother and all the nuns wanted to see us to thank England by
- means of us, to hear something about the war and the chance of victory
- from the first English officers they had seen.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand was presented to the Reverend Mother, a massive old lady with a
- slight moustache on the upper lip and dark luminous eyes, reminding me of
- the portrait of Savonarola at Florence. The other nuns crowded round us,
- eager to ask questions, still more eager to talk. Some of them were quite
- young and pretty, though all rather white and fragile, and they had a
- vivacious gaiety so that the building resounded with laughter. It was
- Eileen O’Connor who made them laugh by her reminiscences of girlhood when
- she and Brand were “<i>enfants terribles</i>,” when she used to pull
- Brand’s hair and hide the pipe he smoked too soon. She asked him to take
- off his field-cap so that she might see whether the same old unruly tuft
- still stuck up at the back of his head, and she and all the nuns clapped
- hands when she found it was so, in spite of war-worry and steel hats. All
- this had to be translated into French for the benefit of those who could
- not understand such rapid English.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I believe you would like to give it a tug now,” said Brand, bending his
- head down, and Eileen O’Connor agreed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And indeed I would, but for scandalising a whole community of nuns, to
- say nothing of Reverend Mother.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Reverend Mother laughed in a curiously deep voice, and a crowd of
- little wrinkles puckered at her eyes. She told Miss O’Connor that even her
- Irish audacity would not go as far as that, which was a challenge accepted
- on the instant.
- </p>
- <p>
- “One little tug, for old times’ sake,” said the girl, and Brand yelped
- with pretended pain at the vigour of her pull, while all the nuns screamed
- with delight.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then a clock struck and the Reverend Mother touched Eileen (as afterwards
- I called her) on the arm and said she would leave her with her friends.
- One by one the nuns bowed to us, all smiling under their white <i>bandeaux,</i>
- and then went down the corridor through an open door which led into a
- chapel, as we could see by twinkling candlelight. Presently the music of
- an organ and of women’s voices came through the closed doors.
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen O’Connor took us into a little parlour where there were just four
- rush chairs and a table, and on the clean whitewashed walls a crucifix.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand took a chair by the table, rather awkwardly, I thought.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How gay they are!” he said. “They do not seem to have been touched by the
- horrors of war.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is the gaiety of faith,” said Eileen. “How else could they have
- survived the work they have done, the things they have seen? This convent
- was a shambles for more than three years. These rooms were filled with
- wounded, German wounded, and often English wounded, who were prisoners.
- They were the worst cases for amputation and butcher’s work, and the nuns
- did all the nursing. They know all there is to know of suffering and
- death.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yet they have not forgotten how to laugh!” said Brand. “That is
- wonderful. It is a mystery to me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You must have seen bad things,” said Eileen. “Have you lost the gift of
- laughter?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Almost,” said Brand, “and once for a long time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen put her hands to her breast.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, learn it again,” she said. “If we cannot laugh we cannot work. Why, I
- owe my life to a sense of humour.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She spoke the last words with more than a trivial meaning. They seemed to
- tell of some singular episode, and Brand asked her to explain.
- </p>
- <p>
- She did not explain then. She only said some vague things about laughing
- herself out of prison and stopping a German bullet with a smile.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why did the devils put you in prison?” asked Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- She shrugged her shoulders.
- </p>
- <p>
- “In Lille it was bad form if one had not been arrested once at least. I
- was three weeks in a cell half the size of this, and twenty women were
- with me there. There was very little elbow-room!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She proved her sense of humour then by that deep-throated laugh of hers,
- but I noticed that just for a second behind the smile in her eyes there
- crept a shadow as at the remembrance of some horror, and that she shivered
- a little, as though some coldness had touched her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It must have been like the Black Hole of Calcutta,” said Brand, measuring
- the space with his eyes. “Twenty women herded in a room like that!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “With me for twenty-one,” said Eileen. “We had no means of washing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She used an awful phrase.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We were a living stench.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good God!” said Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen O’Connor waved back the remembrance. “Tell me of England and of
- Ireland. How’s the little Green Isle? Has it done well in the war?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The Irish troops fought like heroes,” said Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But there were not enough of them. Recruiting was slow, and there was—some
- trouble.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He did not speak about the Irish Rebellion.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I heard about it vaguely, from prisoners,” said the girl. “It was
- England’s fault, I expect. Dear old blundering, muddle-headed England, who
- is a tyrant through fear, and twists Irish loyalty into treason by ropes
- of red tape in which the Irish mind gets strangled and awry. Well, there’s
- another subject to avoid. I want to hear only good things to-night. Tell
- me of London, of Kensington Gardens, of the way from Strand to Temple Bar,
- of the lights that gleam along the Embankment when lovers go hand-in-hand
- and see stars in the old black river. Are they all there?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They are all changed,” said Brand. “It is a place of gloom. There are no
- lights along the embankment. They have dowsed their glims for fear of
- air-raids. There are few lovers hand-in-hand. Some of the boys lie dead
- round Ypres, or somewhere on the Somme, or weep out of blind eyes, or
- gibber in shell-shock homes, or try to hop on one leg—while waiting
- for artificial limbs—or trudge on, to-night, towards Maubeuge, where
- German machine-guns wait for them behind the ditches. Along the Strand
- goes the painted flapper, luring men to hell. In Kensington Gardens there
- are training camps for more boys ear-marked for the shambles, and here and
- there among the trees young mothers who are widows before they knew their
- wifehood. There is vice, the gaiety of madness, the unspeakable
- callousness of people who get rich on war, or earn fat wages, and in small
- stricken homes a world of secret grief. That is London in time of war. I
- hate it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand spoke with bitterness and a melancholy that startled the girl who
- sat with folded hands below the crucifix on the whitewashed wall behind
- her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dear God! Is it like that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She stared at the wall opposite as though it were a window through which
- she saw London.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, of course it is like that. Here in Lille we thought we were
- suffering more than anybody in the world. That was our egotism. We did not
- realise—not in our souls—that everywhere in the world of war
- there was equal suffering, the same cruelty, perhaps the same temptation
- to despair.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand repented, I think, of having led the conversation into such abysmal
- gloom. He switched off to more cheerful things and gave some elaborate
- sketches of soldiers he knew, to which Eileen played up with anecdotes of
- rare comedy about the nuns—the fat nun who under the rigour of war
- rations became as slim as a willow and was vain of her new grace; the
- little French mm who had no fear of German officers and dared their fury
- by prophecies of defeat—but was terrified of a mouse in the
- refectory; the Reverend Mother, who borrowed a safety-razor from an
- English Tommy—he had hidden it in his shirt—to shave her upper
- lip, lest the Germans should think her a French <i>poilu</i> in disguise.
- </p>
- <p>
- More interesting to me than anything that was said were the things
- unspoken by Eileen and Brand. In spite of the girl’s easy way of laughter,
- her quick wit, her avoidance, if possible, of any reference to her own
- suffering, I seemed to see in her eyes and in her face the strain of a
- long ordeal, some frightful adventure of life in which she had taken great
- hazards—the people had told me she had risked her life often—and
- a woman’s courage which had been tested by that experience and had not
- failed, though perhaps at breaking-point in the worst hours. I supposed
- her age was twenty-six or so (I guessed it right this side of a year), but
- there was already a streak of grey in her dark hair, and her eyes, so
- smiling as a rule, looked as if they had often wept. I think the presence
- of Brand was a great pleasure to her—bringing to Lille a link with
- her childhood—and I saw that she was studying the personality of
- this newly-found friend of hers, and the strong character of his face, not
- unscathed by the touch of war, with curious, penetrating interest. I felt
- in the way, and left them together with a fair excuse—I had always
- work to do—and I was pleased that I did so, they were so obviously
- glad to have a more intimate talk about old friends and old times.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- IX
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> gained by my
- unselfishness (I did not want to go), for the Reverend Mother met me in
- the corridor and stood talking, to me about Eileen O’Connor, and told me
- part of the girl’s story, which I found strange in its drama, though she
- left out the scene of greatest interest, as I heard later from Eileen
- herself.
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl had come to Lille just before the war, as an art mistress in an “<i>Ecole
- de Jeunes Filles</i>” (her parents in Kensington had too big a family to
- keep them all), with lessons twice a week at the convent, and private
- pupils in her own rooms. She learned to speak French quickly and
- charmingly, and her gift of humour, her Irish frankness and comradeship
- made her popular among her pupils, so that she had many invitations to
- their homes and became well known in the best houses of Lille—mostly
- belonging to rich manufacturers. A commonplace story till then. But when
- the Germans occupied Lille this Irish girl became one of the chief
- characters in a drama that was exciting and fantastic to the point of
- melodrama. It was she who organised the Lille branch of a secret society
- of women, with a network all over northern France and Belgium—the
- world remembers Nurse Cavell at Brussels—for the escape of young
- civilians of military age and prisoners of war, combining that work
- (frightfully perilous) with espionage on German movements of troops and
- other facts that might be of value to the Belgian Army, and through them
- to England and France. It was out of an old book of Jules Verne called
- “The Cryptogram” that she copied the cypher in which she wrote her
- messages (in invisible ink on linen handkerchiefs and rags), and she had
- an audacity of invention in numberless small tricks and plots which
- constantly broke through the meshes of the German network of military
- police.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She had a contempt for their stupidity,” said the Reverend Mother.
- “Called them dunderheads, and one strange word of which I do not know the
- meaning—‘yobs’—and I trembled at the risks she took.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She lived with one maid in two rooms on the ground floor of a house near
- the Jardin d’Eté, the rest of the house being used as the headquarters of
- the German Intelligence Section of the Northern District. All day long
- officers went in and out, and by day and night there were always sentries
- at the door. Yet it was there that was established also the headquarters
- of the Rescue Committee. It was on account of her Irish name and parentage
- that Eileen O’Connor was permitted to remain in the two rooms to the left
- of the courtyard, entered by a separate door. The German Kommandant was a
- man who firmly believed that the Irish nation was ready to break out into
- revolt against the English, and that all Irish—men and women—hated
- the British Empire as much as any Prussian. Eileen O’Connor played up to
- this <i>idée fixe</i>, saw the value of it as a wonderful means of
- camouflage, lent the Kommandant books on Irish history dealing with the
- injustice of England to Ireland (in which she firmly believed as a staunch
- Nationalist), and educated him so completely to the belief that she was
- anti-English (as she was in politics, though not in war) that he had no
- doubt of her.
- </p>
- <p>
- Here the Reverend Mother made a remark which seemed to illuminate Eileen
- O’Connor’s story, as well as her own knowledge of human nature.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The child has beautiful eyes and a most sweet grace. Irish history may
- not account for all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “This German Kommandant,” I asked, “what sort of a man was he?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “For a German not altogether bad,” said the Reverend Mother. “Severe and
- ruthless like them all, but polite when there was no occasion to be
- violent. He was of good family, as far as there are such things in
- Germany. A man of sixty.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen O’Connor, with German permission, continued her work as art
- mistress at the <i>Ecole de Jeunes Filles</i>. After six months she was
- permitted to receive private pupils in her two rooms on the ground floor
- of the Intelligence Headquarters, in the same courtyard, though not in the
- same building. Her pupils came with drawing-boards and paint-boxes. They
- were all girls with pigtails and short frocks—not so young as they
- looked, because three or four at least, including the Baronne de
- Villers-Auxicourt, were older than schoolgirls. They played the part
- perfectly, and the sentries smiled at them and said, “<i>Guten Tag,
- schönes Fraulein</i>,” as each one passed. They were the committee of the
- Rescue Society: Julienne de Quesnoy, Marcelle Barbier, Yvonne Marigny,
- Marguérite Cléry, and Alice de Taffin, de Villers-Auxicourt.
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen O’Connor was the director and leading spirit. It seems to me
- astonishing that they should have arranged the cypher, practised it,
- written down military information gathered from German conversations and
- reported to them by servants and agents under the very noses of the German
- intelligence officers, who could see into the sitting-room as they passed
- through French windows and saluted Eileen O’Connor and her young ladies if
- they happened to meet their eyes. It is more astonishing that, at
- different times, and one at a time, many fugitives (including five British
- soldiers who had escaped from the Citadel) slept in the cellar beneath
- that room, changed into German uniforms belonging to men who had died at
- the convent hospital—the Reverend Mother did that part of the plot—and
- walked quietly out in the morning by an underground passage leading to the
- Jardin d’Eté. The passage had been anciently built but was blocked up at
- one end by Eileen O’Connor’s cellar, and she and the other women broke the
- wall, one brick at a time, until after three months the hole was made.
- Their finger-nails suffered in the process, and they were afraid that the
- roughness of their hands might be noticed by the officers, but in spite of
- German spectacles they saw nothing of that. Eileen O’Connor and her
- friends were in constant touch with the prisoners of the Citadel and
- smuggled food to them. That was easy. It was done by bribing the German
- sentries with tobacco and meat-pies. They were also in communication with
- other branches of the work in Belgium, so that fugitives were passed on
- from town to town, and house to house. Their success made them confident,
- after many horrible fears, and for a time they were lulled into a sense of
- security. That was rudely crashed when Eileen O’Connor, the young Baronne
- de Villers-Auxicourt, and Marcelle Barbier were arrested one morning in
- September of ‘17 on a charge of espionage. They were put into separate
- cells of the civil prison, crowded with the vilest women of the slums and
- stews, and suffered something like torture because of the foul atmosphere,
- the lack of sanitation and unspeakable abomination.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Only the spirit of Christian martyrdom could remain cheerful in such
- terrible conditions,” said the Reverend Mother. “Our dear Eileen was
- sustained by a great faith and wonderful gaiety. Her laughter, her jokes,
- her patience, her courage, were an inspiration even to the poor degraded
- women who were prisoners with her. They worshipped her. We, her friends,
- gave her up for lost, though we prayed unceasingly that she might escape
- death. Then she was brought to trial.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She stood alone in the court. The young Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt had
- died in prison owing to the shock of her arrest and a weak heart. A weak
- heart, though so brave. Eileen was not allowed to see her on her deathbed,
- but she sent a message almost with her last breath. It was the one word
- “courage!” Mlle. Marcelle Barbier was released before the trial for lack
- of direct evidence.
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen’s trial was famous in Lille. The court was crowded and the German
- military tribunal could not suppress the loud expressions of sympathy and
- admiration which greeted her, nor the angry murmurs which interrupted the
- prosecuting officer. She stood there, wonderfully calm, between two
- soldiers with fixed bayonets. She looked very young and innocent between
- her guards, and it is evident that her appearance made a favourable
- impression on the court. The President, after peering at her through his
- horn spectacles, was not so ferocious in his manner as usual when he bade
- her be seated.
- </p>
- <p>
- The evidence seemed very strong against her. “She is lost” was the belief
- of all her friends in court. One of the sentries at the Citadel, jealously
- savage because another man had received more tobacco than himself—on
- such a trivial thing did this girl’s life hang—betrayed the system
- by which the women’s committee sent food to the French and English
- prisoners. He gave the names of three of the ladies and described Eileen
- O’Connor as the ringleader. The secret police watched her, and searched
- her rooms at night. They discovered the cypher and the key, a list of men
- who had escaped, and three German uniforms in a secret cupboard. They had
- been aided in their search by Lieutenant Franz von Kreuzenach, of the
- Intelligence Bureau, who was the chief witness for the prosecution, and
- whose name was recommended to the court for the vigilance and zeal he had
- shown in the detection of the conspiracy against the Army and the
- Fatherland. It was he who had found the secret cupboard and had solved the
- key to the cypher.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We will take the lieutenant’s evidence in due course,” said the
- President. “Does that complete the indictment against this prisoner?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Apart from a savage elaboration of evidence based upon the facts presented
- and a demand that the woman’s guilt, if the court were satisfied thereof,
- should be punished by death, the preliminary indictment by the prosecution
- ended.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a terrible case, and during its revelations the people in court
- were stricken with dread and pity for the girl who was now sitting between
- the two soldiers. They were all staring at her, and some at least—the
- Reverend Mother among them—noticed with surprise that when the
- officer for the prosecution ended his speech she drew a deep breath,
- raised her head, as though some weight of fear had been lifted from her,
- and—laughed.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was quite a merry laugh, with that full blackbird note of hers, and the
- sound of it caused a strange sensation in the court. The President blinked
- repeatedly, like an owl blinded by a ray of sunlight. He addressed the
- prisoner in heavy, barbarous French.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are charged with conspiracy against our German martial law. The
- punishment is death. It is no laughing matter, Fraulein.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They were stem words, but there was a touch of pity in that last sentence.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Ce riest pas une affaire pour rire, Fràulein.</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen O’Connor, said the Reverend Mother, who was to be called as a
- witness on her behalf, bowed in a gracious way to the President, but with
- a look of amusement that was amazing to the German officers assembled for
- her trial. Some of them scowled, but there were others, the younger men,
- who whispered, and smiled also with no attempt to disguise their
- admiration of such courage.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps it was only I,” said the Reverend Mother, “who understood the
- child’s joyous relief which gave her this courage. I had waited with
- terrible dread for the announcement of the discovery of the secret
- passage. That it had been discovered I knew, for the German Lieutenant,
- Franz von Kreuzenach, had come round to me and very sternly questioned me
- about a case of medicine which he had found there, stamped with the name
- of our convent.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then,” I said, “this Franz von Kreuzenach must have suppressed some of
- the evidence. By what motive——”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Reverend Mother interrupted me, putting her hand on my sleeve with a
- touch of protest.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The good God works through strange instruments, and may touch the hardest
- heart with His grace. It was indeed a miracle.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I would give much to have been in that Court at Lille when Eileen O’Connor
- was permitted to question the German lieutenant, who was the chief witness
- against her.
- </p>
- <p>
- From what I have heard, not only from the Reverend Mother, but from other
- people of Lille who were present at the trial, she played with this German
- officer, making him look very foolish, ridiculing him in a merry,
- contemptuous way before the court. Indeed, he seemed strangely abashed
- before her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The cypher!... Have you ever been a schoolboy, or were you born a
- lieutenant in the German Army?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Franz von Kreuzenach admitted that he had once been a boy—to the
- amusement of his brother officers.
- </p>
- <p>
- Had he ever read stories of adventure, fairy tales, romances, or did he
- spend his childhood in the study of Nietzsche, Haegel, Schopenhauer, Kant,
- Goethe, von Bemhardi, Karl Marx———-
- </p>
- <p>
- When she strung off these names—so incongruous in association—even
- the President permitted a slight smile to twist his thin hard mouth.
- </p>
- <p>
- Franz von Kreuzenach said that he had read some fairy tales and stories of
- adventure. Might he ask the <i>gnadiges Fraulein</i>——
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” said the President, “what has this to do with your case, Fràulein?
- I desire to give you full liberty in your defence, but this is entirely
- irrelevant to the evidence.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is my case!” cried Miss O’Connor. “Listen to the next question, Herr
- President. It is the key of my defence.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her next question caused laughter in court.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I ask the Herr Lieutenant whether, as a boy, or a young man, he has read
- the romances of the French writer, Jules Verne?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Franz von Kreuzenach looked abashed, and blushed like a schoolboy. His
- eyes fell before the challenging look of the Irish girl.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have read some novels by Jules Verne, in German translations.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, in German translations—of course!” said Miss O’Connor. “German
- boys do not learn French very well.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Keep to the case,” said the President. “In heaven’s name, Fraulein, what
- has this to do with your defence?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She raised her hand, for patience, and said, “Herr President, my innocence
- will soon be clear.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She demanded of the witness for the prosecution whether he had ever read
- the novel by Jules Verne called “The Cryptogram.” He said that he had read
- it only a few days ago. He had discovered it in her room.
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen O’Connor turned round eagerly to the President.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I demand the production of that book.”
- </p>
- <p>
- An orderly was sent to the lieutenant’s rooms to fetch it. It was clear
- that the President of the Court made a black mark against Franz von
- Kreuzenach for not having mentioned its discovery to the Court. As yet,
- however, he could not see the bearing of it on the case.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, with the book in her hand, Eileen O’Connor turned to the famous
- cryptogram, showed how it corresponded exactly with her own cypher, proved
- that the pieces of paper found in her rooms were copies of the Jules Verne
- cypher in the handwriting of her pupils.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You see, Herr President!” she cried eagerly.
- </p>
- <p>
- The President admitted that this was proved, but, as he asked, leaning
- forward in his chair, for what purpose had they copied out that cypher?
- Cyphers were dangerous things to write in time of war. Deadly things. Why
- did these ladies want to learn the cypher?
- </p>
- <p>
- It was then that Eileen O’Connor was most brilliant. She described in a
- simple and girlish way how she and her pupils worked in their little room.
- While they copied freehand models, one of them read out to the others,
- books of romance, love, adventure, to forget the gloom of life and the
- tragedy of war. One of those books was Jules Verne’s “Cryptogram.” It had
- fascinated them. It had made them forget the misery of war. They were
- romantic girls, imaginative girls. Out of sheer merriment, to pass the
- hours, they had tried to work out the cypher. They had written
- love-letters to imaginary young men in those secret numbers. Here Eileen,
- smiling ironically, read out specimens of the letters that had been found.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come to the corner of the Rue Esquermoise at 9.45. You will know me
- because I shall be wearing a blue bow in a black hat.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That was the romantic imagination of the Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt.
- </p>
- <p>
- “When you see a lady standing outside the Jardin d’Eté, with a little
- brown dog, speak to her in French and say, ‘<i>Comme il fait froid
- aujourd’hui, mademoiselle</i>.’ If she answers, ‘<i>Je ne vous comprends
- pas, monsieur</i>,’ you will understand that she is to be trusted, and you
- must follow her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That was a romantic idea to which Eileen herself pleaded guilty.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Herr President,” said Eileen, “you cannot put old heads on young
- shoulders, even in time of war. A party of girls will let their foolish
- little minds run upon ideas of love, even when the sound of guns is not
- far away. You, Herr President, will understand that perfectly.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Perhaps there was something in the character of the President that made
- this a chance hit. All the German officers laughed, and the President
- shifted in his seat and flushed to the top of his bald, vulture-like head.
- </p>
- <p>
- The possession of those German uniforms was also explained in the
- prettiest way by Eileen O’Connor. They were uniforms belonging to three
- handsome young German soldiers who had died in hospital. They had kept
- them to return to their mothers after the war, those poor German mothers
- who were weeping for their sons. This part of her defence touched the
- German officers deeply. One of them had tears in his eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- The list of escaped fugitives was harder to explain, but again an Irish
- imagination succeeded in giving it an innocent significance. It had been
- compiled by a prisoner in the Citadel and given to Eileen as a proof that
- his own hope of escape was not in vain, though she had warned him of the
- fearful risk. “The poor man gave me the list in sheer simplicity, and in
- innocence I kept it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Simply and touchingly she admitted her guilt in smuggling food to French
- and British prisoners, and to German sentries, and claimed that her fault
- was only against military regulations, but in humanity was justified.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am Irish,” she said. “I have in my heart the remembrance of English
- crimes to Ireland—old, unforgettable crimes that still cry out for
- the justice and the liberty which are denied my country.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Some of the younger German officers shook their heads approvingly. They
- liked this Irish hatred of England. It was according to their text-books.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But,” said the Irish girl, “the sufferings of English prisoners—you
- know here of their misery, their hunger, their weakness in that Citadel
- where many have died and are dying—stirred my compassion as a woman
- to whom all cruelty is tragic, and all suffering of men a call to that
- mother-love which is in the spirit of all their womanhood, as you know by
- your German women—as I hope you know. Because they were starved I
- tried to get them food, as I would to starving dogs or any poor creatures
- caught in the trap of war or of men’s sport. To that I confess guilty,
- with gladness in my guilt.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Reverend Mother, standing there in the whitewashed corridor of the
- convent, in the flickering light of an oil lantern, which gleamed on the
- white ruff round her neck and the silver cross on her breast, though her
- face was shadowed in the cavern of her black headdress, repeated this
- speech of Eileen O’Connor as though in hearing it first she had learnt it
- by heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The child was divinely inspired, monsieur. Our Lady stood by her side,
- prompting her. I am sure of that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The trial lengthened out, until it was late in the evening when the judge
- summed up. He spoke again of the gravity of the accusation, the dread
- punishment that must befall the prisoner if her guilt were proved, the
- weight of evidence against her. For a time he seemed to press her guilt
- heavily, and the court was gloomy. The German officers looked grave. One
- thing happened in the course of his speech which affected the audience
- profoundly. It was when he spoke of the romantic explanation that had been
- offered by the prisoner regarding the secret cypher.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This lady,” he said, “asks me to believe that she and her companions were
- playing a simple girlish game of make-believe. Writing imaginary letters
- to mythical persons. Were these young ladies—nay, is she, herself—so
- lacking in woman’s charm that she has no living man to love her, and needs
- must write fictitious notes to nonexistent men?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The President said these words with portentous solemnity. Perhaps only a
- German could have spoken them. He paused and blinked at the German
- officers below him. Suddenly into the silence of the court came a ripple
- of laughter, clear and full of most mirthful significance.
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen O’Connor’s laugh bewitched the crowded court, and there was a roar
- of laughter, in which all the officers joined. By that laugh more even
- than by her general gaiety, her courage and eloquence, she won her life.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I said a decade of the rosary to our Blessed Lady,” said the Reverend
- Mother, “and thanked God that this dear child’s life would not be taken. I
- was certain that those men would not condemn her to death. She was
- acquitted on the charge of espionage, and sentenced to two weeks’
- imprisonment for smuggling food to prisoners, by a verdict of seven
- against three. Only when she left the court did she fall into so deep a
- swoon that for a little while we thought her dead.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Reverend Mother had told her story well. She held me in a deep
- strained interest. It was rather to myself than to her that I spoke the
- words which were my comment at the end of this narrative.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How splendid!... But I am puzzled about that German lieutenant, Franz von
- Kreuzenach. He kept the real evidence back.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That,” said the Reverend Mother solemnly, “was a great mystery, and a
- miracle.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Wickham Brand joined us in the passage, with Eileen O’Connor by his side.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not gone yet?” said Wickham.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have been listening to the tale of a woman’s courage,” I said, and when
- Eileen gave me her hand, I raised it to my lips, in the French style,
- though not in gallantry.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Reverend Mother,” she said, “has been exalting me to the seventh heaven
- of her dear heart.”
- </p>
- <p>
- On my way back to Brand’s mess I told him all I had heard about Eileen’s
- trial, and I remember his enthusiasm.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Fine! Thank heaven there are women like that in this blood-soaked world.
- It saves one from absolute despair.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He made no comment about the suppression of evidence, which was a puzzle
- to me.
- </p>
- <p>
- We parted with a “So long, old man,” outside his headquarters, and I did
- not see him until a few days later.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- X
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was Frederick E.
- Small, the American doctor attached to Brand’s crowd, who was with me on a
- night in Lille, before the armistice, when by news from the colonel we
- were stirred by the tremendous hope—almost a certainty—that
- the end of the war was near. I had been into Courtrai, which the enemy had
- first evacuated and then was shelling. It was not a joyous entry like that
- into Lille. Most of the people were still down in their cellars, where for
- several days they had been herded together until the air became foul. On
- the outskirts I had passed many groups of peasants with their babies and
- old people, trudging past our guns, trekking from one village to another
- in search of greater safety, or standing in the fields where our artillery
- was getting into action, and where new shell craters should have warned
- them away, if they had had more knowledge of war. For more than four years
- I had seen, at different periods, crowds like that, after the first flight
- of fugitives in August of ‘14, when the world seemed to have been tilted
- up and great populations in France and Belgium were in panic-stricken
- retreat from the advancing edge of war. I knew the types, the attitudes,
- the very shape of the bundles, in these refugee processions, the haggard
- look of the mothers pushing their perambulators, the bewildered look of
- old men and women, the tired sleepy look of small boys and girls, the
- stumbling dead-beat look of old farm horses dragging carts piled high with
- cottage furniture. As it was at the beginning so it was at the end—for
- civilians caught in the fires of war. With two other men I went into the
- heart of Courtrai and found it desolate, and knew the reason why, when, at
- the corner of the Grande Place, a heavy shell came howling and burst
- inside a house with frightful explosive noise, followed by a crash of
- masonry. The people were wise to keep to their cellars. Two girls, not so
- wise, made a dash from one house to another, and were caught by chunks of
- steel and killed close to the church of St. Martin, where they lay all
- crumpled up in a clotted pool of blood. A man came up to me, utterly
- careless of such risks, and I hated to stand talking to him with the
- shells coming every half-minute overhead.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a fire of passion in his eyes, and at every sentence he spoke to
- me his voice rose and thrilled as he denounced the German race for all
- they had done in Courtrai, for their robberies, their imprisonments, their
- destruction of machinery, their brutality. The last Kommandant of Courtrai
- was von Richthofen, father of the German aviator, and he was a hard,
- ruthless man, and kept the city under an iron rule.
- </p>
- <p>
- “All that, thank God, is finished now,” said the man. “The English have
- delivered us from the beast!” As he spoke, another monstrous shell came
- overhead, but he took no notice of it, and said, “We are safe now from the
- enemy’s evil power!” It seemed to me a comparative kind of safety. I had
- no confidence in it when I sat in the parlour of an old lady who, like
- Eileen O’Connor, in Lille, had been an Irish governess in Courtrai, and
- who now, living in miserable poverty, sat in a bed-sitting-room whose
- windows and woodwork had been broken by shell-splinters. “Do you mind
- shutting the door, my dear?” she said. “I can’t bear those nasty bombs.” I
- realised with a large, experienced knowledge that we might be torn to
- fragments of flesh at any moment by one of those nasty “bombs,” which were
- really eight-inch shells; but the old lady did not worry, and felt safe
- when the door was shut.
- </p>
- <p>
- Outside Courtrai, when I left, lay some khaki figures in a mush of blood.
- They were lads whom I had seen unloading ammunition that morning on the
- bank of the canal. One had asked me for a light, and said, “What’s all
- this peace talk?... Any chance?” A big chance, I had told him. Home for
- Christmas, certain sure this time. The boy’s eyes had lighted up for a
- moment, quicker than the match which he held in the cup of his hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Jesus! Back for good, eh?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then the light went out of his eyes as the match flared up.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We’ve heard that tale a score of times. ‘The Germans are weakening. The
- Huns ‘ave ‘ad enough!...’ Newspaper talk. A man would be a mug——”
- </p>
- <p>
- Now the boy lay in the mud, with half his body blown away.... I was glad
- to get back to Lille for a spell, where there were no dead bodies in the
- roads. And the colonel’s news, straight from G.H.Q.—which, surely,
- were not playing up the old false optimism again!—helped one to hope
- that, perhaps, in a week or two the last boys of our race, the lucky ones,
- would be reprieved from that kind of bloody death which I had seen so
- often, so long, so heaped up, in many fields of France and Flanders, where
- the flower of our youth was killed.
- </p>
- <p>
- Dr. Small was excited by the hope brought back by Colonel Lavington. He
- sought me out in my billet, <i>Madame Chéri</i>, and begged me to take a
- walk with him. (It was a moonlight night, but no double throb of a German
- air-engine came booming over Lille.) He walked at a hard pace, with the
- collar of his “British warm” tucked up to his ears, and talked in a queer
- disjointed monologue, emotionally, whimsically. I remember some of his
- words, more or less—anyhow, the gist of his thoughts, “I’m not
- worrying any more about how the war will end. We’ve won! Remarkable, that,
- when one thinks back to the time, less than a year ago, when the best
- thing seemed a draw. I’m thinking about the future. What’s the world going
- to be afterwards? That’s my American mind—the next job, so to
- speak.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He thought hard while we paced round our side of the Jardin d’Eté, where
- the moonlight made the bushes glamorous and streaked the tree trunks with
- a silver line.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This war is going to have prodigious effects on nations; on individuals,
- too. I’m scared. We’ve all been screwed up to an intense pitch—every
- nerve in us is beyond the normal stretch of nature. After the war there
- will be a sudden relaxing. We shall be like bits of chewed elastic. Rather
- like people who have drugged themselves to get through some big ordeal.
- After the ordeal their nerves are all ragged. They crave the old stimulus,
- though they dread it. They’re depressed—don’t know what’s the matter—get
- into sudden rages—hysterical—can’t settle to work—go out
- for gaiety and get bored. I’ve seen it many times in bad cases. Europe—yes,
- and America, too—is going to be a bad case. A neurotic world—Lord,
- it’ll take some healing!”
- </p>
- <p>
- For a time his thoughts wandered round the possible terms of peace and the
- abasement of Germany. He prophesied the break-up of Germany, the downfall
- of the Emperor and of other thrones.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Crowns will be as cheap as twenty cents,” he said. He hoped for the
- complete overthrow of Junkerdom—“all the dirty dogs,” as he called
- the Prussian war lords and politicians. But he hoped the Allies would be
- generous with the enemy peoples—“magnanimous” was the word he used.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We must help the spirit of democracy to rise among them,” he said. “We
- must make it easy for them to exorcise the devil. If we press them too
- hard, put the screw on to the torture of their souls (defeat will be
- torture to a proud people), they will nourish a hope of vengeance and go
- back to their devil for hope.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I asked him whether he thought his President would lead the world to a
- nobler stage of history.
- </p>
- <p>
- He hesitated at that, groped a little, I thought, among old memories and
- prejudices.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why,” he said, “Wilson has the biggest chance that ever came to a human
- being—the biggest chance and the biggest duty. We are rich (too
- darned rich) and enormously powerful when most other peoples are poor and
- weak—drained of wealth and blood. That’s our luck, and a little bit,
- perhaps, our shame, though our boys have done their bit all right and are
- ready to do more; and it’s not their fault they weren’t here before—but
- we’re hardly touched by this war as a people, except spiritually. There
- we’ve been touched by the finger of Fate. (God, if you like that better!)
- So, with that strength behind him, the President is in a big way of
- business. He can make his voice heard, stand for a big idea. God, sonny, I
- hope he’ll do it! For the world’s sake, for the sake of all these
- suffering people, here in this city of Lille, and in a million little
- towns where people have been bashed by war.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I asked him if he doubted Wilson’s greatness, and the question embarrassed
- him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m loyal to the man,” he said. “I’ll back him if he plays straight and
- big. Bigness, that’s what we want. Bigness of heart as well as bigness of
- brain. Oh, he’s clever, though not wise in making so many enemies. He has
- fine ideas and can write real words. Things which speak. True things. I’d
- like to be sure of his character—its breadth and strength, I mean.
- The world wants a nobleman, bigger than the little gentlemen of politics;
- a leader calling to the great human heart of our tribes and lifting them,
- with one grand gesture, out of the mire of old passions and vendettas and
- jealousies to a higher plane of—common sense. Out of the jungle to
- the daylight of fellowship. Out of the jungle.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He repeated those words twice, with a reverent solemnity. He believed that
- so much emotion had been created in the heart of the world that, when the
- war ended, anything might happen if a leader came—a new religion of
- civilisation, any kind of spiritual and social revolution.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We might kill cruelty,” he said. “My word, what a victory that would be!”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XI
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>ur conversation
- was interrupted by a figure that slipped out of the darkness of some
- doorway, hesitated before us, and then spoke in French.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are English officers? May I speak with you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a girl, whom I could see only vaguely in the darkness—she
- stood in the shadow of a doorway beyond the moonlight—and I answered
- her that I was English and my friend American.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is there any way,” she asked, “of travelling from Lille, perhaps to
- Paris? In a motor car, for example? To-night?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I laughed at this startling request, put so abruptly. It was already nine
- o’clock at night!
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not the smallest chance in the world, mademoiselle! Paris is far from
- Lille.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was stupid,” said the girl. “Not all the way to Paris, but to some town
- outside Lille. Any town. There are motor cars always passing through the
- streets. I thought if I could get a little place in one——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is difficult,” I said. “As a matter of fact, it is forbidden for
- officers to take civilians except in case of saving them from danger—in
- shelled places.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She came suddenly out of the shadow into the moonlight, and I saw that she
- was a girl with red hair and a face strangely white. I knew by the way she
- spoke—the accent—as well as by the neatness of her dress, that
- she was not a working-girl. She was trembling painfully, and took hold of
- my arm with both her hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Monsieur, I beg of you to help me. I beseech you to think of some way in
- which I may get away from Lille to-night. It is a matter of extreme
- importance to me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A group of young men and women came up the street arm-in-arm, shouting,
- laughing, singing the “Marseillaise.” They were civilians, with two of our
- soldiers among them, wearing women’s hats.
- </p>
- <p>
- Before I could answer the girl’s last words, she made a sudden retreat
- into the dark doorway, and I could see dimly that she was cowering back.
- </p>
- <p>
- Dr. Small spoke to me. “That girl is scared of something. The poor child
- has got the jim-jams.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I went closer to her and heard her breathing. It was quite loud. It was as
- though she were panting after hard running.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are you ill?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- She did not answer until the group of civilians had passed. They did not
- pass at once, but stood for a moment looking up at a light burning in an
- upper window. One of the men shouted something in a loud voice—some
- word in <i>argot</i>—which I did not understand, and the women
- screeched with laughter. Then they went on, dancing with linked arms, and
- our two soldiers in the women’s hats lurched along with them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am afraid!” said the girl.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Afraid of what?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- I repeated the question—“Why are you afraid, mademoiselle?”—and
- she answered by words which I had heard a million times since the war
- began as an explanation of all trouble, tears, ruin, misery.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>C’est la guerre!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look out!” said the little doctor. “She’s fainting.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had risen from her cowering position and stood upright for a moment,
- with her hand against the doorpost. Then she swayed, and would have fallen
- if the doctor had not caught her. Even then she fell, indeed, though
- without hurt, because he could not support her sudden weight—though
- she was of slight build—and they sank together in a kind of huddle
- on the doorstep.
- </p>
- <p>
- “For the love of Mike!” said Dr. Small. He was on his knees before her
- now, chafing her cold hands. She came to in about a minute, and I leaned
- over her and asked her where she lived, and made out from her faint
- whisper that she lived in the house to which this doorway belonged, in the
- upper room where the light was burning. With numbed fingers—“cold as
- a toad,” said “Daddy” Small—she fumbled at her bodice and drew out a
- latchkey.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We had better carry her up,” I said, and the doctor nodded.
- </p>
- <p>
- The front door opened into a dimly-lit passage, uncarpeted, and with
- leprous-looking walls. At one end was a staircase with heavy banisters.
- The doctor and I supported the girl, who was able to walk a little now,
- and managed to get her to the first landing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where?” I asked, and she said, “Opposite.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was the front room looking on to the street. A lamp was burning on the
- round table in the centre of the room, and I saw by the light of it the
- poverty of the furniture and its untidiness. At one end of the room was a
- big iron bedstead with curtains of torn lace, and on the wooden chairs
- hung some soiled petticoats and blouses. There was a small cooking-stove
- in a corner, but no charcoal burned in it, and I remember an ebony-framed
- mirror over the mantelpiece. I remember that mirror vividly. I remember,
- for instance, that a bit of the ebony had broken off, showing the white
- plaster underneath, and a crack in the right-hand corner of the
- looking-glass.
- </p>
- <p>
- Probably my eyes were attracted to it because of a number of photographs
- stuck into the framework. They were photographs of a girl in a variety of
- stage costumes; and glancing at the girl, whom the doctor had put into a
- low arm-chair, I saw that they were of her. But with all the tragic
- difference between happiness and misery; worse than that—between
- unscathed girlhood and haggard womanhood. This girl with red hair and a
- white waxen face was pretty still. There was something more than
- prettiness in the broadness of her brow and the long tawny lashes that
- were now veiling her closed eyes as she sat with her head back against the
- chair, showing a long white throat. But her face was lined with an imprint
- of pain, and her mouth, rather long and bow-like, was drawn with a look of
- misery.
- </p>
- <p>
- The doctor spoke to me—in English, of course.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Half-starved, I should say. Or starved.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He sniffed at the stove and the room generally.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No sign of recent cooking.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He opened a cupboard and looked in.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nothing in the pantry, sonny. I guess the girl would do with a meal.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I did not answer him. I was staring at the photographs stuck into the
- mirror, and saw one that was not a girl’s portrait. It was the photograph
- of a young French lieutenant. I crossed the room and looked at it closer,
- and then spoke to the little doctor in a curiously unexcited voice, as one
- does in moments of living drama.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This girl is Pierre Nesle’s sister.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “For the love of Mike!” said the little doctor, for the second time that
- night.
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl heard the name of Pierre Nesle and opened her eyes wide, with a
- wondering look.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Pierre Nesle? That is my brother. Do you know him?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I told her that I knew him well and had seen him in Lille, where he was
- looking for her, two days ago. He was now in the direction of Courtrai.
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl was painfully agitated and uttered pitiful words.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, my little brother!” she murmured. “My dear little comrade!” She rose
- from her chair, steadying herself with one hand on the back of it, and
- with feverish anxiety said that she must go at once. She must leave Lille.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why?” I asked. “Why do you want to leave Lille?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am afraid!” she answered again, and burst into tears.
- </p>
- <p>
- I turned to the doctor and translated her words.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can’t understand this fear of hers—this desire to leave Lille.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Dr. Small had taken something off the mantelpiece—a glass tube with
- some tablets—which he put in his pocket.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hysteria,” he said. “Starvation, war-strain, and—drugs. There’s a
- jolly combination for a young lady’s nerves! She’s afraid of herself, old
- ghosts, the horrors. Wants to run away from it all, forgetting that she
- carries her poor body and brain with her. I know the symptoms—even
- in little old New York in time of peace.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He had his professional manner. I saw the doctor through his soldier’s
- uniform. He spoke with the authority of the medical man in a patient’s
- bedroom. He ordered me to go round to my mess and bring back some food,
- while he boiled up a kettle and got busy. When I returned, after
- half-an-hour, the girl was more cheerful. Some of the horrors had passed
- from her in the doctor’s company. She ate some of the food I had brought
- in a famished way, but after a few mouthfuls sickened at it and would eat
- no more. But a faint colour had come into her cheeks and gave her face a
- touch of real beauty. She must have been extraordinarily attractive before
- the war—as those photographs showed. She spoke of Pierre with
- adoration. He had been all that was good to her before she left home (she
- hated her mother!) to sing in cabarets and café concerts.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I cannot imagine Pierre as a lieutenant!” she remarked, with a queer
- little laugh.
- </p>
- <p>
- Dr. Small said he would get some women in the house to look after her in
- the night, but she seemed hostile to that idea.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The people here are unkind. They are bad women here. If I died they would
- not care.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She promised to stay in the house until we could arrange for Pierre to
- meet her and take her away to Paris. But I felt the greatest pity for the
- girl when we left her alone in her miserable room. The scared look had
- come back to her face. I could see that she was in terror of being alone
- again.
- </p>
- <p>
- When we walked back to our billets the doctor spoke of the extraordinary
- chance of meeting the girl like that—the sister of our <i>liaison</i>
- officer. The odds were a million to one against such a thing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I always feel there’s a direction in these cases,” said Daddy Small.
- “Some Hand that guides. Maybe you and I were being led to-night. I’d like
- to save that girl, Marthe.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is that her name?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Marthe de Méricourt, she calls herself, as a singing-girl. I guess that’s
- why Pierre could not hear of her in this town.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Later on the doctor spoke again.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That girl is as much a war victim as if she had been shell-shocked on the
- field of battle. The casualty lists don’t say anything about civilians,
- not a darned thing about broken hearts, stricken women, diseased babies,
- infant mortality—all the hell of suffering behind the lines. May God
- curse all war devils!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He put his hand on my shoulder and said in a very solemn way: “After this
- thing is finished—this grisly business—you and I, and all men
- of goodwill, must put our heads together to prevent it happening again. I
- dedicate whatever life I have to that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He seemed to have a vision of hope.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There are lots of good fellows in the world. Wickham Brand is one of ‘em.
- Charles Fortune is another. One finds them everywhere on your side and
- mine. Surely we can get together when peace comes and make a better System
- somehow!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not easy, doctor.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He laughed at me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hate your pessimism!... We must get a message to Pierre Nesle....
- Good-night, sonny!”
- </p>
- <p>
- On the way back to my billet I passed young Clatworthy.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was too engrossed to see me, having his arm round a girl who was
- standing with him under an unlighted lamp-post. She was looking up into
- his face on which the moonlight shone—a pretty creature, I thought.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Je t’adore!</i>” she murmured, as I passed quite close; and Clatworthy
- kissed her.
- </p>
- <p>
- I knew the boy’s mother and sisters, and wondered what they would think of
- him if they saw him now with this little street-walker. To them Cyril was
- a white knight <i>sans peur et sans reproche</i>. The war had not improved
- him. He was no longer the healthy lad who had been captain of his school,
- with all his ambition in sport, as I had known him five years before.
- Sometimes, in spite of his swagger and gallantry, I saw something sinister
- in his face, the look of a soiled soul. Poor kid! He, too, would have his
- excuse for all things:
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>C’est la guerre!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was five o’clock
- on the following evening that I saw the girl Marthe again. The doctor and
- I had arranged to go round to her lodging after dinner, by which time we
- hoped to have a letter for her from Pierre, by despatch-rider. But Brand
- was with me in the afternoon, having looked into my billet with an English
- conversation-book for Hélène, who was anxious to study our way of speech.
- Madame Chéri insisted upon giving him a glass of wine, and we stood
- talking in her drawing-room a while about the certain hope of victory, and
- then trivial things. Hélène was delighted with her book and Brand had a
- merry five minutes with her, teaching her to pronounce the words.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>C’est effroyable!</i>” cried Hélène. “‘Through’... ‘Tough’ ‘Cough ‘...
- <i>Mon Dieu, comme c’est difficile!</i> There is no rule in your tongue.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Madame Chéri spoke of Edouard, her eldest boy, who had disappeared into
- the great silence, and gave me a photograph of him, in case I should meet
- him in our advance towards the Rhine. She kissed the photograph before
- giving it to me, and said a few words which revealed her strong character,
- her passionate patriotism.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If he had been four years older he would have been a soldier of France. I
- should have been happy if he could have fought for his country, and died
- for it, like my husband.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand and I left the house and went up towards the Grande Place. I was
- telling him about Pierre Nesle’s sister and our strange meeting with her
- the night before.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m precious glad,” said Brand, “that no sister of mine was behind German
- lines. God knows how much they had to endure. Imagine their risks! It was
- a lucky escape for that girl Hélène. Supposing she had failed to barricade
- her door?”
- </p>
- <p>
- When we came into the Grande Place we saw that something was happening. It
- was almost dark after a shadowy twilight, but we could see a crowd of
- people surging round some central point of interest. Many of them were
- laughing loudly. There was some joke in progress. The women’s tongues
- sounded most loud and shrill.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They’re getting back to gaiety,” said Brand. “What’s the jest, I wonder?”
- </p>
- <p>
- A gust of laughter came across the square. Above it was another sound, not
- so pleasant. It was a woman’s shrieks—shriek after shriek, most
- blood-curdling, and then becoming faint.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What the devil——!” said Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- We were on the edge of the crowd and I spoke to a man there.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What’s happening?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He laughed in a grim way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s the <i>coiffure</i> of a lady.. They are cutting her hair.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was mystified.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Cutting her hair?”
- </p>
- <p>
- A woman spoke to me, by way of explanation, laughing like the man.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Shaving her head, monsieur. She was one of those who were too complaisant
- with German officers. You understand? There were many of them. They ought
- to have their heads cut off as well as their hair.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Another man spoke gruffly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There would be a good many headless corpses if that were so. To their
- shame be it said. It was abominable. No pride. No decency.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But the worst will escape,” said another. “In private houses. The
- well-dressed demoiselles!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Tuez-les!</i>” cried a woman. “<i>Tuez-les!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a cry for killing, such as women had screamed when pretty
- aristocrats were caught by the mobs of the French Revolution.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My God!” said Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- He shouldered his way through the crowd, and I followed him. The people
- made a gap for us, seeing our uniforms, and desired us to enjoy the joke.
- What I saw when I came closer was a group of young men holding a limp
- figure. One of them was brandishing a large pair of scissors, as large as
- shears. Another held up a tangled mass of red hair.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Regardez!</i>” he shouted to the crowd, and they cheered and laughed.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had seen the hair before, as I knew when I saw a girl’s face,
- dead-white, lifeless, as it seemed, and limp against a man’s shoulder.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is Marthe!” I said to Brand. “Pierre Nesle’s sister.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A curious sense of faintness overcame me, and I felt sick.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand did not answer me, but I saw his face pale under its tan. He pushed
- forward through the crowd and I lost sight of him for a few moments. After
- that I saw him carrying the girl; above the heads of the people, I saw her
- head flopping from side to side horribly, a head with close-cropped hair.
- They had torn her clothes off her shoulders, which were bleeding.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Help me,” said Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- I am not quite clear what happened. I have only a vague remembrance of the
- crowd making way for us, with murmurs of surprise and some hostile cries
- of women. I remember helping Brand to carry the girl—enormously
- heavy she seemed with her dead weight—but how we managed to get her
- into Dr. Small’s car is to this day a blank in my mind. We must have seen
- and hailed him at the corner of the Grande Place as he was going back to
- his billet. I have a distinct recollection of taking off my Burberry and
- laying it over the girl, who was huddled in the back of the car, and of
- Brand saying, “Where can we take her?” I also remember trying to light a
- cigarette and using many matches which went out in the wind. It was
- Brand’s idea that we should go to Madame Chéri’s house for sanctuary, and
- by the time we had driven to that place we had left the crowd behind and
- were not followed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You go in and explain things,” said Brand. “Ask Madame to give the girl a
- refuge.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I think Madame Chéri was startled by the sight of the car, and perhaps by
- some queer look I had. I told her what had happened. This girl was the
- sister of Pierre Nesle, whom Madame Chéri had met. The crowd, for some
- reason, had cut off her hair. Would Madame save the poor child, who was
- unconscious?
- </p>
- <p>
- I shall never forget the face or speech of that lady, whom I had found so
- kind. She drew herself up very stiffly and a relentless expression
- hardened her face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you were not English I should say you desired to insult me, sir. The
- people have cut off the creature’s hair. ‘For some reason,’ you say. There
- is only one reason. Because she was faithless to her country and to her
- sex, and was familiar with men who were the enemies of France, the
- murderers of our men, robbers and assassins. She has been well punished. I
- would rather burn down my house than give her shelter. If they gave her to
- the dogs to tear in pieces I would not lift my little finger to save her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Hélène came in, and was surprised at the emotion of her mother’s voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What is it, little <i>maman?</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- Madame Chéri regained control of herself, which for a moment she had lost
- in a passion that shook her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is a little matter. This officer and I have been talking about vile
- people who sold themselves to our enemy. He understands perfectly.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I understand,” I said gravely. “There is a great deal of cruelty in the
- world, madame, and less charity than I had hoped.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There is, praise be to God, a little justice,” said Madame Chéri very
- calmly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Au revoir, madame!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Au revoir, monsieur!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Au revoir, mademoiselle!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was shocked then at the callousness of the lady. It seemed to me
- incredible. Now I am no longer shocked, but understand the horror that was
- hers, the loathing for a daughter of France who had—if the mob were
- not mistaken—violated the code of honour which enabled the French
- people to resist German brutality, even German kindness, which they hated
- worse, with a most proud disdain. That girl outside, bleeding and
- senseless in the car, had been friendly with German officers, notorious in
- her company with them. Otherwise she would not have been seized by the
- crowd and branded for shame. There was a fierce protective instinct which
- hardened Madame Chéri against charity. Only those who have seen what war
- means to women close to it, in enemy hands, may truly understand, and,
- understanding, curse war again for all its destruction of souls and
- bodies.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XIII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>rand and Dr. Small
- were both astonished and indignant.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you mean to say she shuts her door against this poor bleeding girl?”
- said Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- The American doctor did not waste words. He only used words when there was
- no action on hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The next place?” he said. “A hospital?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I had the idea of the convent where Eileen O’Connor lodged. There was a
- sanctuary. Those nuns were vowed to Christian charity. They would
- understand and have pity.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” said Brand, and he called to the driver.
- </p>
- <p>
- We drove hard to the convent, and Brand was out of the car before it
- stopped, and rang the bell with such a tug that we heard it jangling
- loudly in the courtyard.
- </p>
- <p>
- It seemed long before the little wicket opened and a woman’s voice said, “<i>Qui
- est la?</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand gave his name and said, “Open quickly, <i>ma sour</i>. We have a
- woman here who is ill.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The gate was opened, and Brand and I lifted out the girl, who was still
- unconscious, but moaning slightly, and carried her into the courtyard, and
- thence inside the convent to the whitewashed passage where I had listened
- so long to the Reverend Mother telling me of the trial scene.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was the Reverend Mother who came now, with two of her nuns, while the
- little portress stood by, clasping her hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- “An accident?” said the Reverend Mother. “How was the poor child hurt?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She bent over the girl, Marthe—Pierre Nesle’s sister, as I
- remembered with an added pity—pulled my Burberry from her face and
- shoulders and glanced at the bedraggled figure there.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Her hair has been cut off,” said the old nun. “That is strange! There are
- the marks of finger-nails on her shoulder. What violence was it, then?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand described the rescue of the girl from the mob, who would have torn
- her to pieces, and as he spoke I saw a terrible look come into the
- Reverend Mother’s face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I remember—1870,” she said harshly. “They cut the hair of women who
- had disgraced themselves—and France—by their behaviour with
- German soldiers. We thought then that it was a light punishment... we
- think so now, monsieur!”
- </p>
- <p>
- One of the nuns, a young woman who had been touching the girl’s head,
- smoothing back her tousled, close-cropped hair, sprang up as though she
- had touched an evil thing and shrank back.
- </p>
- <p>
- Another nun spoke to the Reverend Mother.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This house would be defiled if we took in a creature like that. God
- forbid, Reverend Mother——”
- </p>
- <p>
- The old Superior turned to Brand, and I saw how her breast was heaving
- with emotion.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It would have been better, sir, if you had left this wretched woman to
- the people. The voice of the people is sometimes the voice of God. If they
- knew her guilt their punishment was just. Reflect what it means to us—to
- all our womanhood. Husbands, fathers, brothers were being killed by these
- Germans. Our dear France was bleeding to death. Was there any greater
- crime than that a Frenchwoman should show any weakness, any favour, to one
- of those men who were helping to cause the agony of France, the martyrdom
- of our youth?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand stammered out a few words. I remember only two: “Christian charity!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The American doctor and I stood by silently. Dr. Small was listening with
- the deepest attention, as though some new truth about human nature were
- being revealed to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was then that a new voice was raised in that whitewashed corridor. It
- was Eileen O’Connor’s Irish contralto, and it vibrated with extraordinary
- passion as she spoke in French.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Reverend Mother!... I am dismayed by the words you have spoken. I do not
- believe, though my ears have heard them. No, they are unbelievable! I have
- seen your holiness, your charity, every day for four years, nursing German
- prisoners, and English, with equal tenderness, with a great pity. Not
- shrinking from any horror or the daily sight of death, but offering it all
- as a sacrifice to God. And now, after our liberation, when we ought to be
- uplifted by the Divine favour that has come to us, you would turn away
- that poor child who lies bleeding at our feet, another victim of war’s
- cruelty. Was it not war that struck her down? This war which has been
- declared against souls as well as bodies! This war on women, as well as on
- fighting-men who had less need of courage than some of us! What did our
- Lord say to a woman who was taken by the mob? ‘He that is without sin
- among you, let him cast the first stone!’ It was Mary Magdalen who kissed
- His feet, and wiped them with her hair. This girl has lost her hair, but
- perhaps Christ has taken it as a precious napkin for His wounds. We who
- have been lucky in escape from evil—shall we cast her out of the
- house which has a cross above its roof? I have been lucky above most women
- in Lille. If all things were known, I might be lying there in that girl’s
- place, bleeding and senseless, without this hair of mine. Reverend Mother—<i>remember
- Franz von Kreuzenach!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- We—Dr. Small, Brand, and I—were dumbfounded by Eileen
- O’Connor’s passionate outcry. She was utterly unconscious of us and looked
- only at the Reverend Mother, with a light in her eyes that was more
- intensely spiritual than I had seen before in any woman’s face.
- </p>
- <p>
- The old nun seemed stricken by Eileen’s words. Into her rugged old face,
- all wrinkled about the eyes, crept an expression of remorse and shame.
- Once she raised her hands, slowly, as though beseeching the girl to spare
- her. Then her hands came down again and clasped each other at her breast,
- and her head bowed so that her chin was dug into her white bib. Tears came
- into her eyes and fell unheeded down her withered cheeks. I can see now
- the picture of us all standing there in the whitewashed corridor of the
- convent, in the dim light of a hanging lantern—we three officers
- standing together, the huddled figure of Marthe Nesle lying at our feet,
- half covered with my trench-coat, but with her face lying sideways, white
- as death under her cropped red hair, and her bare shoulders stained with a
- streak of blood; opposite, the old Mother, with bowed head and clasped
- hands; the two young nuns, rigid, motionless, silent; and Eileen O’Connor,
- with that queer light on her face and her hands stretched out with a
- gesture of passionate appeal.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Reverend Mother raised her head and spoke—after what seemed like
- a long silence, but was only a second or two, I suppose.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My child, I am an old woman, and have said many prayers. But you have
- taught me the lesson, which I thought I knew, that the devil does not
- depart from us until our souls have found eternal peace. I am a wicked old
- woman, and until you opened my eyes I was forgetful of charity and of our
- Lord’s most sweet commands.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She turned to us now with an air of wonderful dignity and graciousness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Gentlemen, I pray you to carry this wounded girl to my own cell. To-night
- I will sleep on bare boards.”
- </p>
- <p>
- One of the young nuns was weeping bitterly.
- </p>
- <p>
- So we lifted up Marthe Nesle, and, following the Reverend Mother, carried
- her to a little white room and laid her on an iron bedstead under a
- picture of the Madonna below which burned an oil lamp on a wooden table.
- The American doctor asked Eileen O’Connor to bring him some hot water.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand and I went back in the car, and I dined at his mess again.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XIV
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>olonel Lavington
- was discussing the art of the sonnet and the influence of Italian culture
- in Elizabethan England. From that subject he travelled to the psychology
- of courage, which in his opinion, for the moment, was founded on vanity.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Courage,” he said, with that gallant look of his which I had seen with
- admiration when he walked up the old duckboards beyond Ypres, with a
- whimsical smile at “crumps” bursting abominably near—he had done
- bravely in the old days as a battalion commander. “Courage is merely a
- pose before the mirror of one’s own soul and one’s neighbours. We are all
- horribly afraid in moments of danger, but some of us have the gift of
- pretending that we don’t mind. That is vanity. We like to look heroes,
- even to ourselves. It is good to die with a <i>beau geste</i>, though
- death is damnably unpleasant.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I agree, colonel,” said Charles Fortune. “Always the right face for the
- proper occasion. But it wants a lot of practice.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He put on his gallant, devil-may-care face, and there was appreciative
- laughter from his fellow officers.
- </p>
- <p>
- Harding, the young landowner, was of opinion that courage depended
- entirely on the liver.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is a matter of physical health,” he said. “If I am out-of-sorts, my <i>moral</i>
- goes down to zero. Not that I’m ever really brave. Anyhow, I hate things
- that go off. Those loud noises of bursting shells are very objectionable.
- I shall protest against Christmas crackers after the war.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Young Clatworthy was in the sulks, and sat very silent during all this
- badinage.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What’s the matter?” I asked, and he confided to me his conviction, while
- he passed the salt, that “life was a rummy game.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hipped?” I said, and his answer was, “Fed up to the back teeth!”
- </p>
- <p>
- That seemed to me curious, after the glimpse I had had of him with a
- little lady of Lille. The boy explained himself somewhat under cover of
- the colonel’s conversation, which was holding the interest of the mess.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We’re living unnaturally,” he said. “It’s all an abnormal show, and we
- pretend to be natural and normal when everything that happens round us is
- fantastic and disorderly.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What’s your idea?” I enquired. It was the first time I had heard the boy
- talk seriously, or with any touch of gravity.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hard to explain,” he said. “But, take my case to-day. This morning I went
- up the line to interrogate the latest batch of P.O.W.‘s.” (He meant
- prisoners of war.) “A five-point-nine burst within ten yards of my car,
- the other side of Courtrai, killed my driver and missed me by a couple of
- inches. I felt as sick as a dog when I saw Saunders crumpled over his
- steering-wheel with blood pouring down his neck. Not that it’s the first
- time I’ve seen blood!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He laughed as he gave a glance at his wound-stripe, and I remembered the
- way in which he had gained his M.C. at Gommecourt—one of three left
- alive in his company.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We had been talking, three minutes before, about his next leave. He had
- been married in ‘16, after the Somme, and hadn’t seen his wife since. Said
- her letters made him ‘uneasy.’ Thought she was drinking because of the
- loneliness. Well, there he was—finished—and a nasty sight. I
- went off to the P.O.W. cage and examined the beggars—one of them, as
- usual, had been a waiter at the ‘Cecil,’ and said, ‘How’s dear old
- London?’—and passed the time of day with Bob Mellett—you know,
- the one-armed lad. He laughed no end when he heard of my narrow squeak. So
- did I—though it’s hard to see the joke. He lent me his car on the
- way back, and somewhere outside Courtrai we bumped over a dead body with a
- queer soft squelch. It was a German—a young ‘un—and Bob
- Mellett said, ‘<i>He</i> won’t be home for Christmas!’ Do you know Bob?—he
- used to cry at school when a rat was caught. Queer, isn’t it? Now here I
- am, sitting at a white table-cloth, listening to the colonel’s talk, and
- pretending to be interested. I’m not a bit, really. I’m wondering why that
- bit of shell hit Saunders and not me. Or why I’m not lying in a muddy road
- as a bit of soft squelch for staff cars to bump over. And on top of that
- I’m wondering how it will feel to hang up a bowler hat again in a house at
- Wimbledon, and say, ‘Cheerio, mother!’ to the mater (who will be knitting
- in the same armchair—chintz-covered—by the piano) and read the
- evening paper until dinner’s ready, take Ethel to a local dance, and get
- back into the old rut of home life in a nice family, don’t you know? With
- all my memories! With the ghosts of <i>this</i> life crowding up! Ugly
- ghosts, some of ‘em! Dirty ghosts!... It’s inconceivable that we can ever
- go back to the funny old humdrum! I’m not sure that I want to.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re hipped,” I told him. “You’ll be glad to get back all right.
- Wimbledon will be Paradise after what you’ve been through.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, Lord, <i>I’ve</i> done nothing,” said the boy. “Fact is, I’ve been
- talking tripe. Forget it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- But I did not forget, and remembered every word later, when I heard his
- laughter on Armistice night.
- </p>
- <p>
- A despatch-rider stood outside the door in his muddy overalls and Brand
- went to get his message. It was from Pierre Nesle.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am mad with joy that you have found Marthe! Alas! I cannot get back for
- a week. Tell her that I am still her devoted comrade and loving brother.—Pierre.”
- Brand handed me the slip and said, “Poor devil!” I went back to my billet
- in Madame Chéri’s house, and she made no allusion to our conversation in
- the afternoon, but was anxious, I thought, to assure me of her friendship
- by special little courtesies, as when she lighted my candle and carried it
- upstairs before saying good-night. Hélène was learning English fast and
- furiously, and with her arm round her mother’s waist said, “Sleep well,
- sir, and very good dreams to you!” which I imagine was a sentence out of
- her text-book.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XV
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>hey were great
- days—in the last two weeks before the Armistice! For me, and for
- many men, they were days of exultation, wild adventure, pity, immense
- hope, tremendous scenes uplifted by a sense of victory; though for others,
- the soldiers who did the dirty work, brought up lorry columns through the
- mud of the old battlefields far behind our new front line, carried on
- still with the hard old drudgery of war, they were days not marked out by
- any special jubilation, or variety, or hope, but just like all the others
- that had gone before since first they came to France.
- </p>
- <p>
- I remember little scenes and pictures of those last two weeks as they pass
- through my mind like a him drama; episodes of tragedy or triumph which
- startled my imagination, a pageantry of men who had victory in their eyes,
- single figures who spoke to me, told me unforgettable things, and the last
- dead bodies who fell at the very gate of peace.
- </p>
- <p>
- One of the last dead bodies I saw in the war was in the city of
- Valenciennes, which we entered on the morning of November 3rd. Our guns
- had spared the city which was full of people, but the railway station was
- an elaborate ruin of twisted iron and broken glass. Rails were torn up and
- sleepers burnt. Our airmen, flying low day after day during the German
- retreat, had flung down bombs, which had torn the fronts off the
- booking-offices and made match-wood of the signal-boxes and sheds. For
- German soldiers detraining here it had been a hellish place, and the fire
- of our flying-men had been deadly accurate. I walked through the ruin out
- into the station square. It was empty of all life, but one human figure
- was there all alone. It was the dead body of a young German soldier, lying
- with outstretched arms, on his back, in a pool of blood. His figure formed
- a cross there on the cobblestones, and seemed to me a symbol of all that
- youth which had been sacrificed by powers of monstrous evil. His face was
- still handsome in death, the square, rough-hewn face of a young peasant.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was the tap-tap-tap of a German machine-gun somewhere on the right
- of the square. As I walked forward all my senses were alert to the menace
- of death. It would be foolish, I thought, to be killed at the end of the
- war—for surely the end was very near? And then I had a sudden sharp
- thought that perhaps it would be well if this happened. Why should I live
- when so many had died? The awful job was done, and my small part in it. I
- had seen it through from start to finish, for it was finished but for a
- few days of waiting. It might be better to end with it, for all that came
- afterwards would be anticlimax. I remember raising my head and looking
- squarely round at that staccato hammering of the German machine-gun, with
- an intense desire that a bullet might come my way. But I went on untouched
- into the town.... As in Courtrai, a fury of gun-fire overhead kept the
- people in their houses. Our field batteries were firing over the city and
- the enemy was answering. Here and there I saw a face peering out of a
- broken window, and then a door opened, and a man and woman appeared behind
- it with two thin children. The woman thrust out a skinny hand and grasped
- mine, and began to weep. She talked passionately, with a strange mingling
- of rage and grief.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, my God!” she said, “those devils have gone at last! What have they
- not made us suffer! My husband and I had four little houses—we were
- innkeepers—and last night they sent us to this part of the town and
- burnt all of them.” She used a queer word in French. “Last night,” she
- said, “they made a devil’s <i>charivari</i> and set many houses on fire.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her husband spoke to me over his wife’s shoulder.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sir, they have stolen everything, broken everything, ground us down for
- four years. They are bandits and robbers.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We are hungry,” said the thin girl.
- </p>
- <p>
- By her side the boy, with a white pinched face, echoed her plaint.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We have eaten our bread and I am hungry.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They had some coffee left, and asked me to go inside and drink it with
- them, but I could not wait.
- </p>
- <p>
- The woman held my wrist tight in her skinny hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You will come back?” she asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I will try,” I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then she wept again and said: “We are grateful to the English soldiers. It
- is they who saved us.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That is one out of a hundred little scenes that I remember in those last
- two weeks when, not without hard fighting, for the German machine-gun
- rearguards fought bravely to the end, our troops entered many towns and
- villages, and liberated many thousands of poor people. I remember the
- girls of a little town called Bohain who put on their best frocks and
- clean pinafores to welcome us. It was not until a little while that we
- found they were starving and had not even a crust of bread in all the
- town. Then the enemy started shelling, and some of the girls were killed,
- and many were suffocated by gas shells. That was worse in St. Amand, by
- Valenciennes, where all the women and children took refuge in the cellars.
- The German batteries opened fire with yellow cross shell as our guns
- passed through. Some of our men, and many of their horses, lay dead in the
- streets as I passed through; but worse things happened in the cellars
- below the houses. The heavy gas of the yellow cross shells filtered down
- to where the women and their babies cowered on their mattresses. They
- began to choke and gasp, and babies died in the arms of dying mothers....
- Dr. Small, our American, went with a body of English doctors and nurses to
- the rescue of St. Amand. “I’ve seen bad things,” he told me. “I am not
- weak in the stomach—but I saw things in those cellars which nearly
- made me vomit.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He put a hand on my shoulder and blinked at me through his glasses.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s no good cursing the Germans. As soon as your troops entered the
- village they had a right to shell. That’s war. We should do the same.
- War’s war. I’ve been cursing the Germans in elaborate and eccentric
- language. It did me good. I feel all the better for it. But all the same I
- was wrong. It’s war we ought to curse. War which makes these things
- possible among civilised peoples. It’s just devilry. Civilised people must
- give up the habit. They must get cured of it. You have heard of
- typhoid-carriers? They are people infected with the typhoid microbe who
- spread the disease. When peace comes we must hunt down the war-carriers,
- isolate them, and, if necessary, kill them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He waved his hand to me and went off in an ambulance filled with
- suffocated women.
- </p>
- <p>
- I met Brand in Valenciennes five days after our liberation of the city,
- when our troops were making their formal entry with band and banners. He
- came up to me and said, “Have you heard the news?” I saw by his face that
- it was good news, and I felt my heart give a lurch when I answered him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tell me the best.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Germany is sending plenipotentiaries, under a white flag, to Foch. They
- know it is unconditional surrender.... And the Kaiser has abdicated.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I drew a deep breath. Something seemed to lift from my soul. The sky
- seemed to become brighter, as though a shadow had passed from the face of
- the sun.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then it’s the end?... The last battle has been fought!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand was staring at a column of troops—all young fellows of the 4th
- Division. His eyes were glistening, with moisture in them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Reprieved!” he said. “The last of our youth is saved!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He turned to me suddenly, and spoke in the deepest melancholy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You and I ought to be dead. So many kids were killed. We’ve no right to
- be alive.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps there is other work to do,” I answered him, weakly, because I had
- the same thought.
- </p>
- <p>
- He did not seem sure of that.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wonder!... If we could help to save the next generation.”
- </p>
- <p>
- In the Place d’Armes of Valenciennes there was a great crowd, and many of
- our generals and staff officers on the steps and below the steps of the
- Hôtel de Ville. Brand and I caught a glimpse of Colonel Lavington, looking
- very gallant and debonair, as usual. Beside him was Charles Fortune, with
- his air of a staff officer dreadfully overworked in the arrangement of
- victory, modest in spite of his great achievements, deprecating any public
- homage that might be paid him. This careful mask of his was slightly
- disarranged for a moment when he winked at me under the very nose of the
- great general whom he had set to music—“Blear-eyed Bill, the Butcher
- of the Boche,” who stood magnificent with his great chest emblazoned with
- ribbons. The Prince of Wales was there, shifting from one leg to another,
- chatting gaily with a group of staff officers. A bevy of French girls
- advanced with enormous bouquets and presented them to the Prince and his
- fellow officers. The Prince laughed and blushed like a schoolboy, sniffed
- at the flowers, did not know what to do with them. The other officers held
- the bouquets with equal embarrassment, with that strange English shyness
- which not even war could cure.
- </p>
- <p>
- Some officers close to me were talking of the German plea for armistice.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s abject surrender!” said one of them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The end!” said another, very solemnly. “Thank God!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The end of a dirty business!” said a young machine-gun officer. I noticed
- that he had three wound-stripes.
- </p>
- <p>
- One of them, holding a big bouquet, began to dance, pointing his toes,
- cutting abbreviated capers in a small space among his comrades.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not too quick for me, old dears! Back to peace again!... Back to life!
- Hooray!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The colours of many flags fluttered upon the gables of the Place d’Armes,
- and the balconies were draped with the Tricolour, the Union Jack, and the
- Stars and Stripes. Old citizens wore tall hats saved up for this day, and
- girls had taken their lace from hiding-places where the Germans had not
- found it, and wore it round their necks and wrists for the honour of this
- day. Old women in black bonnets sat in the centre of window-places and
- clapped their hands—their wrinkled, hard-working old hands—to
- every British soldier who passed, and thousands were passing. Nobody heard
- a word of the speeches spoken from the Town Hall steps, the tribute of the
- councillors of Valenciennes to the glory of the troops who had rescued
- their people from servitude under a ruthless enemy, nor the answer of Sir
- Henry Home, the Army Commander, expressing the pride of his soldiers in
- the rescue of that fair old city, and their admiration for the courage of
- its people. Every word was overwhelmed by cheering. Then the pipers of a
- Highland Division, whose fighting I had recorded through their years of
- heroic endurance, played a march tune, and the music of those pipes was
- loud in the square of Valenciennes and in the hearts of its people. The
- troops marched past, and thousands of bayonets shone above their steel
- helmets....
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XVI
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> was in Mons on
- the day of Armistice, and on the roads outside when I heard the news that
- the Germans had surrendered to all our terms, and that the “Cease fire”
- would sound at eleven o’clock. It was a misty morning, with sunlight
- glinting through the mist and sparkling in the coppery leaves of autumn
- trees. There was no heavy bombardment in progress round Mons—only
- now and then the sullen bark of a gun. The roads were crowded with the
- usual transport of war—endless columns of motor-lorries and
- horse-wagons, and mule-teams, crawling slowly forward, and infantry
- battalions trudging alongside with their heavy packs. I stared into the
- faces of the marching men, expecting to see joy in their eyes, wondering
- why they were not singing—because to-day the guns would be silent
- and the fighting finished. Their packs weighed heavy. The mud from passing
- lorries splashed them with great gobs of filth. Under their steel hats the
- sweat ran down. They looked dead-beat, and marched in a grim fine of tired
- men. But I noticed that the transport wagons were decorated with small
- flags, and these bits of fluttering colour were stuck into the harness of
- gun horses and mules. From the other way came another tide of traffic—crowds
- of civilians, who were middle-aged men and boys, and here and there women
- pushing hand-carts, and straining forward with an eager, homing look. The
- men and boys were carrying bundles, too heavy for many of them, so that
- they were bent under their burdens. But each one had added the last straw
- but one to his weight by fastening a flag to his bundle or his cap. I
- spoke to some of them, and they told me that they were the civilians from
- Lille, Valenciennes, and other towns, who had been taken away by the
- Germans for forced labour behind the lines. Two days ago the Germans had
- said, “We’ve no more use for you. Get back to your own people. The war is
- over.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They looked worn and haggard, like men who had been shipwrecked. Some of
- the boys were weak and sat down on the roadside with their bundles and
- could go no farther. Others trudged on gamely, with crooks which they had
- cut from the hedges, and only stopped to cry, “<i>Vivent les Anglais!</i>”
- as our soldiers passed. I looked into many of their faces, remembering the
- photograph of Edouard Chéri which had been given to me by his mother.
- Perhaps he was Somewhere in those troops of homing exiles. But he might
- have been any one of those lanky boys in ragged jackets and broken boots,
- and cloth caps pulled down over the ears.
- </p>
- <p>
- Just outside Mons, at one minute to eleven o’clock, there was a little
- desultory firing. Then a bugle blew, somewhere in a distant field, one
- long note. It was the “Cease fire”! A cheer coming faintly over the fields
- followed the bugle-call. Then there was no other sound where I stood but
- the scrunching of wheels of gun limbers and transport wagons, the squelch
- of mud in which horses and mules trudged, and the hard breathing of tired
- men marching by under their packs. So, with a curious lack of drama, the
- Great Adventure ended! That bugle had blown the “Cease fire” of a strife
- which had filled the world with agony and massacre; destroyed millions of
- men; broken millions of lives; ruined many great cities and thousands of
- hamlets, and left a long wide belt of country across Europe where no tree
- remained alive and all the earth was ravaged; crowded the world with
- maimed men, blind men, mad men, diseased men; flung Empires into anarchy,
- where hunger killed the children and women had no milk to feed their
- babies; and bequeathed to all fighting nations a heritage of debt beneath
- which many would stagger and fall. It was the “Cease fire” of all that
- reign of death, but sounded very faintly across the fields of France.
- </p>
- <p>
- In Mons Canadian soldiers were being kissed by French girls. Women were
- giving them wine in the doorways, and these hard-bitten fellows, tough as
- leather, reckless of all risk, plastered with mud which had worn into
- their skins and souls, drank the wine and kissed the women, and lurched
- laughing down the streets. There would be no strict discipline in Mons
- that night. They had had enough of discipline in the dirty days. Let it go
- on the night of Armistice! Already at mid-day some of these soldiers were
- unable to walk except with an arm round a comrade’s neck, or round the
- neck of strong peasant girls who screeched with laughter when they
- side-slipped or staggered. They had been through hell, those men. They had
- lain in ditches, under frightful fire, among dead men and bleeding men.
- Who would grudge them their bit of fun on Armistice night? Who would
- expect saintship of men who had been taught in the school of war, taught
- to kill quick lest they be killed, to see the worst horrors of the
- battlefield without going weak, to educate themselves out of the
- refinements of peaceful life where Christian virtues are easy and not
- meant for war?
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come here, lassie. None of your French tricks for me. I’m Canadian-born.
- It’s a kiss or a clout from me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The man grabbed the girl by the arm and drew her into a barn.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the night of Armistice in Mons, where, at the beginning of the war, the
- Old Contemptibles had first withstood the shock of German arms (I saw
- their ghosts there in the market place), there would be the devil to pay—the
- devil of war, who plays on the passions of men, and sets his trap for
- women’s souls. But I went away from Mons before nightfall, and travelled
- back to Lille, in the little old car which had gone to many strange places
- with me.
- </p>
- <p>
- How quiet it was in the open countryside when darkness fell! The guns were
- quiet at last, after four years and more of labour. There were no fires in
- the sky, no ruddy glow of death. I listened to the silence which followed
- the going down of the sun, and heard the rustling of the russet leaves and
- the little sounds of night in peace, and it seemed as though God gave a
- benediction to the wounded soul of the world. ‘Other sounds rose from the
- towns and fields in the deepening shadow-world of the day of Armistice.
- They were sounds of human joy. Men were singing somewhere on the roads,
- and their voices rang out gladly. Bugles were playing. In villages from
- which the enemy had gone out that morning round about Mons crowds of
- figures surged in the narrow streets, and English laughter rose above the
- chatter of women and children.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XVII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen I came into
- Lille rockets were rising above the city. English soldiers were firing off
- Verey lights. Above the houses of the city in darkness rose also gusts of
- cheering. It is strange that when I heard them I felt like weeping. They
- sounded rather ghostly, like the voices of all the dead who had fallen
- before this night of Armistice.
- </p>
- <p>
- I went to my billet at Madame Chéri’s house, from which I had been absent
- some days. I had the key of the front door now and let myself into the
- hall. The diningroom door was open, and I heard the voices of the little
- French family, laughing, crying, hysterical. Surely hysterical!
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>O mon Dieu! O mon petit Toto! Comme tu es grandi! Comme tu es maigre!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- I stood outside the door, understanding the thing that had happened.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the centre of the room stood a tall, gaunt boy in ragged clothes, in
- the embrace of Madame Chéri, and with one hand clutched by Hélène and the
- other by the little Madeleine, her sister. It was Edouard who had come
- back.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had unloosed a pack from his shoulder, and it lay on the carpet beside
- him, with a little flag on a broken stick. He was haggard, with high
- cheek-bones prominent through his white, tightly-drawn skin, and his eyes
- were sunk in deep sockets. His hair was in a wild mop of black, disordered
- locks. He stood there, with tears streaming from his eyes, and the only
- words he said were:
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Maman! O maman! maman!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- I went quietly upstairs and changed my clothes, which were all muddy.
- Presently there was a tap at my door and Hélène stood there, transfigured
- with joy. She spoke in French.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Edouard has come back—my brother! He travelled on an English
- lorry.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Thank God for that,” I said. “What gladness for you all!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He has grown tall,” said Hélène. She mopped her eyes and laughed and
- cried at the same time. “Tall as a giant, but oh! so thin! They starved
- him all the time. He fed only on cabbages. They put him to work digging
- trenches behind the line—under fire. The brutes! The devils!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her eyes were lit up by passion at the thought of this cruelty and her
- brother’s suffering. Then her expression changed to a look of pride.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He says he is glad to have been under fire—like father. He hated
- it, though, at the time, and said he was frightened! I can’t believe that.
- Edouard was always brave.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There’s no courage that takes away the fear of shellfire—as far as
- I’m concerned,” I told her, but she only laughed and said, “You men make a
- pose of being afraid.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She spoke of Edouard again, hugging the “thought of his return.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If only he were not so thin and so tired! I find him changed. The poor
- boy cries at the sight of <i>maman</i>—like a baby.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t wonder,” I said. “I should feel like that if I had been a
- prisoner of war and was now home again.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Madame Chéri’s voice called from downstairs: “Hélène! <i>Où es-tu? Edouard
- veut te voir!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Edouard wants me,” said Hélène.
- </p>
- <p>
- She seemed rejoiced at the thought that Edouard had missed her, even for
- this minute. She took my hand and kissed it, as though wishing me to share
- her joy and to be part of it, and then ran downstairs.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XVIII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> went out to the
- officers’ club which had been established in Lille, and found Brand there,
- and Fortune, and young Clatworthy, who made a place for me at their table.
- </p>
- <p>
- Two large rooms which had been the dining and drawingrooms of a private
- mansion were crowded with officers, mostly English, but with here and
- there a few Americans and French, seated at small tables, waited on by the
- girls we called Waacs (of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps). Two
- old-fashioned candelabra of cut-glass gave light to each room, and I
- remember that the walls were panelled with wood painted a greyish-white
- below a moulding of fruit and flowers. Above the table where my friends
- sat was the portrait of a French lady of the eighteenth century, in an
- oval frame of tarnished gilt.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was late for the meal on Armistice night, and many bottles of champagne
- had already been opened and drunk. The atmosphere reeked with the smell of
- food, the fumes of wine and cigarette smoke, and there was the noise of
- many men talking and laughing. I looked about the tables and saw familiar
- faces. There were a good many cavalry officers in the room where I sat,
- and among them officers of the Guards and the Tank Corps, aviators,
- machine-gunners, staff officers of infantry divisions, French
- interpreters, American <i>liaison</i> officers, A.P.M.‘s, town majors, and
- others. The lid was off at last. All these men were intoxicated with the
- thought of the victory we had won—complete, annihilating—and
- of this Armistice which had ended the war and made them sure of life. Some
- of them were a little drunk with wine, but not enough at this hour to
- spoil their sense of joy.
- </p>
- <p>
- Officers rose at various tables to make speeches, cheered by their own
- groups, who laughed and shouted and did not listen.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The good old British Army has done the trick at last——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The old Hun is down and out.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Gentlemen, it has been a damned tough job——”
- </p>
- <p>
- Another group had burst into song:
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Here’s to good old beer, put it down, put it down!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The cavalry came into its own in the last lap. We’ve fought mounted and
- fought dismounted. We’ve rounded up innumerable Huns. We’ve ridden down
- machine-guns——”
- </p>
- <p>
- Another group was singing independently:
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- “There’s a long, long trail a-winding,
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- To the land of my dreams.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- A toast was being pledged at the next table by a Tank officer, who stood
- on a chair with a glass of champagne-raised high above his head:
- “Gentlemen, I give you the toast of the Tank Corps. This war was won by
- the Tanks——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Pull him down!” shouted two lads at the same table. “Tanks be damned! It
- was the poor old bloody infantry all the time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- One of them pulled down the little Tank officer with a crash and stood on
- his own chair.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Here’s to the foot-sloggers—the infantry battalions, Tommy Atkins
- and his company officer, who did all the dirty work and got none of the
- reward, and did most of the dying.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A cavalry officer with a monocle immovably screwed in his right eye
- demanded the attention of the company, and failed to get it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We all know what we have done ourselves, and what we failed to do. I give
- you the toast of our noble Allies, without whom there would be no
- Armistice to-night. I drink to the glory of France——”
- </p>
- <p>
- The words were heard at several tables, and for once there was a general
- acknowledgment of the toast.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Vive la France!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- The shout thundered out from all the tables, so that the candelabra
- rattled. Five French interpreters in various parts of the room rose to
- respond.
- </p>
- <p>
- There were shouts of “The Stars and Stripes—Good old Yanks—Well
- done, the U.S.A.!” and I was sorry Dr. Small was still at Valenciennes. I
- should like him to have heard those shouts. An American staff officer was
- on his feet, raising his glass to “England.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Charles Fortune stood up at my table. He reminded me exceedingly at that
- moment of old prints portraying George IV. in his youth—“the First
- Gentleman of Europe”—slightly flushed, with an air of noble dignity
- and a roguish eye.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Go to it, Fortune,” said Brand. “Nobody’s listening, so you can say what
- you like.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Gentlemen,” said Fortune, “I venture to propose the health of our late
- enemy, the Germans.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Young Clatworthy gave an hysterical guffaw.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We owe them a very great debt,” said Fortune.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But for their simplicity of nature and amiability of character the
- British Empire—that glorious conglomeration of races upon which the
- sun utterly declines to set—would have fallen into decay and
- debility as a second-class Power. Before the war the German Empire was
- gaining our trade, capturing all the markets of the world, waiting at
- table in all the best hotels, and providing all the music in the <i>cafés-chantants</i>
- of the universe.... With that immense unselfishness so characteristic of
- their race, the Germans threw away these advantages and sacrificed
- themselves for the benefit of the British. By declaring war they enabled
- all the ancient virtues of our race to be revived. Generals sprang up in
- every direction—especially in Whitehall, Boulogne and Rouen. Staff
- officers multiplied exceedingly. British indigestion—the curse of
- our race—became subject to a Sam Brown belt. Business men, mostly
- bankrupt, were enriched enormously. Clergymen thundered joyfully from
- their pulpits and went back to the Old Testament for that fine old law,
- ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ Elderly virgins married the
- youngest subalterns. The youngest flapper caught the eldest and wiliest of
- bachelors. Our people were revivified, gentlemen—revivified-”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Go easy,” growled Brand. “This is not a night for irony.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Even I,” said Charles Fortune, with a sob of pride in his voice, “even I,
- a simple piano-tuner, a man of music, a child of peace and melody—Shut
- up, Brand!—became every inch a soldier!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He drew himself up in a heroic pose and, raising his glass, cried out:
- “Here’s to our late enemy—poor old Fritz!”
- </p>
- <p>
- A number of glasses were raised amidst a roar of laughter.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Here’s to Fritz—and may the Kaiser roast at Christmas!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And they say we haven’t a sense of humour,” said Charles Fortune
- modestly, and opened a new bottle of champagne.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand had a sense of humour, and had laughed dining Fortune’s oration,
- knowing that beneath its mockery there was no malice. But I noticed that
- he had no spontaneous gaiety on this night of Armistice and sat rather
- silent, with a far-away look in his eyes and that hag-ridden melancholy of
- his.
- </p>
- <p>
- Young Clatworthy was between me and Brand, drinking too heavily, I
- thought. Brand thought so too, and gave him a word of caution.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That champagne is pretty bad. I’d ‘ware headaches, if I were you,
- young’un.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s good enough,” said Clatworthy. “Anything to put me in the right
- spirit.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was an unnatural glitter in his eyes, and he laughed too easily at
- any joke of Fortune’s. Presently he turned his attention to me, and began
- talking excitedly in a low monologue.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Funny to think it’s the last night! Can you believe it? It seems a
- lifetime since I came out in ‘14. I remember the first night, when I was
- sent up to Ypres to take the place of a subaltern who’d been knocked out.
- It was Christmas Eve, and my battalion was up in the line round Hooge. I
- detrained at Vlamertinghe. ‘Can any one tell me the way to Hooge?’ I asked
- one of the traffic men, just like a country cousin at Piccadilly Circus.
- He looked at me in a queer way, and said, ‘It’s the same way to hell, sir.
- Straight on until you get to Ypres, then out of the Menin Gate and along
- the road to Hell-fire Corner. After that you trust to luck. Some young
- gentlemen never get no further.’ I damned his impertinence and went on,
- till I came to the Grande Place in Ypres, where I just missed an
- eight-inch shell. It knocked out a gun-team. Shocking mess it made. ‘The
- same way to hell,’ I kept saying, until I fell into a shell-hole along the
- Menin Road. But, d’you know, the fellow was wrong, after all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- Young Clatworthy drank up his wine and laughed, as though very much
- amused.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, <i>that</i> wasn’t the way to hell. It was the other way.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was puzzled at his meaning and wondered if he were really drunk.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What other way?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Behind the lines—in the back areas. I should have been all right if
- I had stuck in the trenches. It was in places like Amiens that I went to
- the devil.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not as bad as that,” I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mind you,” he continued, lighting a cigarette and smiling at the flame,
- “I’ve had pleasant times in this war, between the bad ones, and,
- afterwards, in this cushy job. Extraordinarily amusing and agreeable along
- the way to hell. There was little Maiguérite in Amiens—such a kid!
- Funny as a kitten! She loved me not wisely, but too well. I had just come
- down from the Somme battles then. That little idyll with Marguérite was
- like a dream. We two were Babes in the Wood. We plucked the flowers of
- life and didn’t listen to the howling of the wolves beyond the forest.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He jerked his head up and listened, and repeated the words:
- </p>
- <p>
- “The howling of the wolves!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Somebody was singing “John Peel”:
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- “D’ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay.
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- D’ye ken John Peel at the break of day,
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- D’ye ken John Peel when he’s far, far away.
- </p>
- <p class="indent20">
- With, his horn, and his hounds in. the morning?”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Cyril Clatworthy was on his feet, joining in the chorus with a loud joyous
- voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- “We’ll follow John Peel through fair and through foul.
- </p>
- <p class="indent20">
- If we want a good hunt in the morning!’’
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- “Bravo! Bravo!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He laughed as he sat down.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I used to sing that when I was captain of the school,” he said. “A long
- time ago, eh? How many centuries?... I was as clean a fellow as you’d meet
- in those days. Keen as mustard on cricket. Some bat, too! That was before
- the dirty war, and the stinking trenches, and fever, and lice, and dead
- bodies, and all that. But I was telling you about Yvonne, wasn’t I?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Marguérite,” I reminded him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No. Yvonne. I met her at Cassel. A brown-eyed thing. Demure. You know the
- type?... One of the worst little sluts I ever met. Oh, a wicked little
- witch... Well, I paid for that affair. That policeman was wrong.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What policeman?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The traffic man at Vlamertinghe. ‘It’s the same way to hell,’ he said,
- meaning Hooge. It was the other way, really. All the same, I’ve had some
- good hours. And now it’s Armistice night.... Those fellows are getting
- rather blue, aren’t they? It’s the blinking cavalry who used to get in the
- way of the infantry, blocking up the roads with their ridiculous horses
- and their preposterous, lances. Look here, old man, there’s one thing I
- want to know. Tell me, as a wise owl.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What is that?” I asked, laughing at his deference to my wisdom.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How are we going to get clean enough for peace?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Clean enough?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I could not follow the drift of his question, and he tried to explain
- himself.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I don’t mean the soap and water business. But morally, spiritually,
- intellectually, and all that? Some of us will want a lot of scrubbing
- before we sit down in our nice little Christian families, somewhere at
- Wimbledon or Ealing. Somehow I funk peace. It means getting back again to
- where one started, and I don’t see how it’s possible.... Good Lord, what
- tripe I’ve been talking!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He pulled the bow of one of the “Waacs” and undid her apron.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Encore une bouteille de champagne, mademoiselle!</i>” he said in his
- best French, and started singing “La Marseillaise.” Some of the officers
- were dancing the fox trot and the bunny hug.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand rose with a smile and a sigh.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Armistice night!” he said. “Thank God there’s a crowd of fellows left to
- do the dancing.... I can’t help thinking of the others.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He touched a glass with his lips to a silent toast, and I saw that he
- drank to ghosts. Then he put the glass down and laid his hand on
- Clatworthy’s shoulder.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Care for a stroll?” he said. “This room is too fuggy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not I, old lad,” said the boy. “This is Armistice night—and the end
- of the adventure. See it through!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand shook his head and said he must breathe fresh air. Fortune was
- playing a Brahms concerto in the style of a German master on the
- table-cloth.
- </p>
- <p>
- I followed Brand, and we strolled through the dark streets of Lille and
- did not talk. In each of our minds was the stupendous thought that it was
- the last night of the war—the end of the adventure, as young
- Clatworthy had said. God! It had been a frightful adventure from first to
- last—a fiery furnace in which youth had been burnt up like grass.
- How much heroism we had seen, how much human agony, ruin, hate, cruelty,
- love! There had been comradeship and laughter in queer places and perilous
- hours. Comradeship, perhaps that was the best of all: the unselfish
- comradeship of men. But what a waste of life! What a lowering of
- civilisation! Our heritage—what was it, after victory? Who would
- heal the wounds of the world?
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand suddenly spoke, after our long tramp in the darkness, past windows
- from which came music, and singing, and shouts of laughter. He uttered
- only one word, but all his soul was in it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Peace!”
- </p>
- <p>
- That night we went to see Eileen O’Connor and to enquire after the girl
- Marthe. Next day Pierre Nesle was coming to find his sister.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XIX
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">E</span>ileen O’Connor had
- gone back from the convent to the rooms she had before her trial and
- imprisonment. I was glad to see her in a setting less austere than the
- whitewashed parlour in which she had first received us. There was
- something of her character in the sitting-room where she had lived so long
- during the war, and where with her girl friends she had done more
- dangerous work than studying the elements of drawing and painting. In that
- setting, too, she looked at home—“The Portrait of a Lady,” by
- Lavery, as I saw her in my mind’s eye, when she sat in a low armchair by
- the side of a charcoal stove, with the lamplight on her face and hair and
- her dress shadowy. She wore a black dress of some kind, with a tiny edge
- of lace about the neck and a string of coloured beads so long that she
- twisted it about her fingers in her lap. The room was small, but cosy in
- the light of a tall lamp on an iron stand shaded with red silk. Like all
- the rooms I had seen in Lille—not many—this was panelled, with
- a polished floor, bare except for one rug. On the walls were a few
- etchings framed in black—London views mostly—and some
- water-colour drawings of girls’ heads, charmingly done, I thought. They
- were her own studies of some of her pupils and friends, and one face
- especially attracted me because of its delicate and spiritual beauty.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That was my fellow prisoner,” said Eileen O’Connor. “Alice de
- Villers-Auxicourt. She died before the trial—happily, because she
- had no fear.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I noticed one other thing in the room which was pleasant to see—an
- upright piano, and upon a stool by its side a pile of old songs which I
- turned over one by one as we sat talking. They were English and Irish,
- mostly from the seventeenth century onwards, but among them I found some
- German songs, and on each cover was written the name of Franz von
- Kreuzenach. At the sight of that name I had a foolish sense of
- embarrassment and dismay, as though I had discovered a skeleton in the
- cupboard, and I slipped them hurriedly between other sheets.
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen was talking to Wickham Brand. She did not notice my confusion. She
- was telling him that Marthe, Pierre’s sister, was seriously ill with
- something like brain-fever. The girl had regained consciousness at times,
- but was delirious, and kept crying out for her mother and Pierre to save
- her from some horror that frightened her. The nuns had made enquiries
- about her through civilians in Lille. Some of them had heard of the girl
- under her stage name—“Marthe de Méricourt.” She had sung in the <i>cabarets</i>
- before the war. After the German occupation she had disappeared for a
- time. Somebody said she had been half-starved and was in a desperate
- state. What could a singing-girl do in an “occupied” town? She reappeared
- in a restaurant frequented by German officers and kept up by a woman of
- bad character. She sang and danced there for a miserable wage, and part of
- her duty was to induce German officers to drink champagne—the worst
- brand for the highest price. A horrible degradation for a decent girl! But
- starvation, so Eileen said, has fierce claws. Imagine what agony, what
- terror, what despair must have gone before that surrender! To sing and
- dance before the enemies of your country!
- </p>
- <p>
- “Frightful!” said Brand. “A girl should prefer death.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen O’Connor was twisting the coloured beads between her fingers. She
- looked up at Wickham Brand with a deep thoughtfulness in her dark eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Most men would say that. And all women beyond the war zone, safe and
- shielded. But death does not come quickly from half-starvation in a garret
- without fire, in clothes that are worn threadbare. It is not the quick
- death of the battlefield. It is just a long-drawn misery.... Then there is
- loneliness. The loneliness of a woman’s soul. Do you understand that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand nodded gravely. “I understand the loneliness of a man’s soul. I’ve
- lived with it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Worse for a woman,” said Eileen. “That singing-girl was lonely in Lille.
- Her family—with that boy Pierre—were on the other side of the
- lines. She had no friends here before the Germans came.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You mean that afterwards——”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand checked the end of his sentence and the line of his mouth hardened.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Some of the Germans were kind,” said Eileen. “Oh, let us tell the truth
- about that! They were not all devils.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They were our enemies,” said Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen was silent for another moment, staring down at those queer beads of
- hers in her lap, and before she spoke again I think her mind was going
- back over many episodes and scenes during the German occupation of Lille.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was a long time—four years. A tremendous time for hatred to hold
- out against civility, kindness, and—human nature.... Human nature is
- strong; stronger than frontiers, nations, even patriotism.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen O’Connor flung her beads back, rose from the low chair and turned
- back her hair with both hands with a kind of impatience.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ve seen the truth of things, pretty close—almost as close as
- death.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” said Brand in a low voice. “You were pretty close to all that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl seemed to be anxious to plunge deep into the truth of the things
- she had seen.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The Germans—here in Lille—were of all kinds. Everything there
- was in the war, for them, their emotion, their pride in the first
- victories, their doubts, fears, boredom, anguish, brutality, sentiment,
- found a dwelling-place in this city behind the battle-front. Some of them—in
- the administration—stayed here all the time, billeted in French
- families. Others came back from the battlefields, horror-stricken, trying
- to get a little brief happiness—forgetfulness. There were lots of
- them who pitied the French people and had an immense sympathy with them.
- They tried to be friends. Tried hard, by every sort of small kindness in
- their billets.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Like Schwarz in Madame Chéri’s house,” said Brand bitterly. It seemed to
- me curious that he was adopting a mental attitude of unrelenting hatred to
- the Germans, when, as I knew, and as I have told, he had been of late on
- the side of toleration. That was how his moods swung when as yet he had no
- fixed point of view.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, yes, there were many beasts,” said Eileen quickly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But others were different. Beasts or not, they were human. They had eyes
- to see and to smile, lips to talk and tempt. It was their human nature
- which broke some of our hatred. There were young men among them, and in
- Lille girls who could be angry for a time, disdainful longer, and then
- friendly. I mean lonely, half-starved girls, weak, miserable girls—and
- others not starved enough to lose their passion and need of love. German
- boys and French girls—entangled in the net of fate.... God pity
- them!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand said, “I pity them, too.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He walked over to the piano and made an abrupt request, as though to
- change the subject of conversation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sing something... something English!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen O’Connor sang something Irish first, and I liked her deep voice, so
- low and sweet.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- “There’s one that is pure as an angel
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- And fair as the flowers of May,
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- They call her the gentle maiden
- </p>
- <p class="indent20">
- Wherever she takes her way.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- Her eyes have the glance of sunlight
- </p>
- <p class="indent20">
- As it brightens the blue sea-wave,
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- And more than the deep-sea treasure
- </p>
- <p class="indent20">
- The love of her heart I crave.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- “Though parted afar from my darling,
- </p>
- <p class="indent20">
- I dream of her everywhere;
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- The sound of her voice is about me,
- </p>
- <p class="indent20">
- The spell of her presence there.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- And whether my prayer be granted,
- </p>
- <p class="indent20">
- Or whether she pass me by,
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- The face of that gentle maiden
- </p>
- <p class="indent20">
- Will follow me till I die.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand was standing by the piano, with the light of the tall lamp on his
- face, and I saw that there was a wetness in his eyes before the song was
- ended.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is queer to hear that in Lille,” he said. “It’s so long since I heard
- a woman sing, and it’s like water to a parched soul.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen O’Connor played the last bars again and, as she played, talked
- softly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “To me, the face of that gentle maiden is a friend’s face. Alice de
- Villers-Auxicourt, who died in prison.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- “And whether my prayer be granted,
- </p>
- <p class="indent20">
- Or whether she pass me by,
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- The face of that gentle maiden
- </p>
- <p class="indent20">
- Will follow me till I die.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand turned over the songs, and suddenly I saw his face flush, and I knew
- the reason. He had come to the German songs on which was written the name
- of Franz von Kreuzenach.
- </p>
- <p>
- He turned them over quickly, but Eileen pulled one out—it was a
- Schubert song—and opened its leaves.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That was the man who saved my life.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She spoke without embarrassment, simply.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” said Brand. “He suppressed the evidence.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, you know?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I told her that we had heard part of the tale from the Reverend Mother,
- but not all of it. Not the motive, nor what had really happened.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you guessed?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” I answered sturdily.
- </p>
- <p>
- She laughed, but in a serious way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is not a hard guess, unless I am older than I feel, and uglier than
- the mirror tells me. He was in love with me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand and I looked absurdly embarrassed. Of course we <i>had</i> guessed,
- but this open confession was startling, and there was something repulsive
- in the idea to both of us who had come through the war-zone into Lille,
- and had seen the hatred of the people for the German race, and the fate of
- Pierre Nesle’s sister.
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen O’Connor told us that part of her story which the Reverend Mother
- had left out. It explained the “miracle” that had saved this girl’s life,
- though, as the Reverend Mother said, perhaps the grace of God was in it as
- well. Who knows?
- </p>
- <p>
- Franz von Kreuzenach was one of the intelligence officers whose
- headquarters were in that courtyard. After service in the trenches with an
- infantry battalion he had been stationed since 1915 at Lille until almost
- the end. He had a lieutenant’s rank, but was Baron in private life,
- belonging to an old family in Bonn. Not a Prussian, therefore, but a
- Rhinelander, and without the Prussian arrogance of manner. Just before the
- war he had been at Oxford—Brasenose College—and spoke English
- perfectly, and loved England with a strange, deep, unconcealed sentiment.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Loved England?——” exclaimed Brand at this part of Eileen’s
- tale.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why not?” asked Eileen. “I’m Irish, but I love England, in spite of all
- her faults and all my grievances! Who can help loving England that has
- lived with her people?”
- </p>
- <p>
- This Lieutenant von Kreuzenach was two months in Lille before he spoke a
- word with Eileen. She passed him often in the courtyard and always he
- saluted her with great deference. She fancied she noticed a kind of
- wistfulness in his eyes, as though he would have liked to talk to her. He
- had blue eyes, sad sometimes, she noticed, and a clean-cut face, rather
- delicate and pale.
- </p>
- <p>
- One day she dropped a pile of books in the yard all of a heap as he was
- passing, and he said, “Allow me,” and helped to pick them up. One of the
- books was “Puck of Pook’s Hill,” by Kipling, and he smiled as he turned
- over a page or two.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I love that book,” he said in perfect English. “There’s so much of the
- spirit of old England in it. History, too. That’s fine about the Roman
- wall, where the officers go pig-sticking.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen O’Connor asked him if he were half English—perhaps he had an
- English mother?—but he shook his head and said he was wholly German—<i>echt
- Deutsch</i>.
- </p>
- <p>
- He hesitated for a moment as though he wanted to continue the
- conversation, but then saluted and passed on.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a week or so later when they met again, and it was Eileen O’Connor
- who said “Good-morning” and made a remark about the weather.
- </p>
- <p>
- He stopped, and answered with a look of pleasure and boyish surprise.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s jolly to hear you say ‘Good-morning’ in English. Takes me straight
- back to Oxford before this atrocious war. Besides——”
- </p>
- <p>
- Here he stopped and blushed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Besides what?” asked Eileen.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Besides, it’s a long time since I talked to a lady. Among officers one
- hears nothing but war-talk—the last battle, the next battle,
- technical jargon, ‘shop,’ as the English say. It would be nice to talk
- about something else—art, music, poetry, ideas.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She chaffed him a little, irresistibly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, but you Germans have the monopoly of all that! Art, music, poetry,
- they are all absorbed into your <i>Kultur</i>—properly Germanised.
- As for ideas—what is not in German philosophy is not an idea.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He looked profoundly hurt, said Eileen, “Some Germans are very narrow,
- very stupid, like some English perhaps. Not all of us believe that German
- <i>Kultur</i> is the only knowledge in the world.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Anyhow,” said Eileen O’Connor, “I’m Irish, so we needn’t argue about the
- difference between German and English philosophy.” He spoke as if quoting
- from a text-book.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The Irish are a very romantic race.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That, of course, had to be denied by Eileen, who knew her Bernard Shaw.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t you believe it,” she said. “We’re a hard, logical, relentless
- people, like all peasant folk of Celtic stock. It’s the English who are
- romantic and sentimental, like the Germans.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He was amazed at those words (so Eileen told us) and then laughed heartily
- in his very boyish way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are pleased to make fun of me. You are pulling my leg, as we said at
- Oxford.”
- </p>
- <p>
- So they took to talking for a few minutes in the courtyard when they met,
- and Eileen noticed that they met more often than before. She suspected him
- of arranging that, and it amused her. By that time she had a staunch
- friend in the old Kommandant who believed her to be an enemy of England
- and an Irish patriot. She was already playing the dangerous game under his
- very nose, or at least within fifty yards of the blotting-pad over which
- his nose used to be for many hours of the day in his office.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was utterly necessary to keep him free from any suspicion. His
- confidence was her greatest safeguard. It was therefore unwise to refuse
- him (an honest, stupid old gentleman) when he asked whether now and again
- he might bring one of his officers and enjoy an hour’s music in her rooms
- after dinner. He had heard her singing, and it had gone straight to his
- heart. There was one of his officers, Lieutenant Baron Franz von
- Kreuzenach, who had a charming voice. They might have a little musical
- recreation which would be most pleasant and refreshing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Bring your Baron,” said Eileen. “I shall not scandalise my neighbours
- when the courtyard is closed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her girl-friends were scandalised when they heard of these musical
- evenings—two or three times a month—until she convinced them
- that it was a service to France, and a life insurance for herself and
- them. There were times when she had scruples. She was tricking both those
- men who sat in her room for an hour or two now and then, so polite, so
- stiffly courteous, so moved with sentiment when she sang old Irish songs
- and Franz von Kreuzenach sang his German songs. She was a spy, in plain
- and terrible language, and they were utterly duped. On more than one night
- while they were there an escaped prisoner was in the cellar below, with a
- German uniform and cypher message, and all directions for escape across
- the lines. Though they seldom talked about the war, yet now and again by
- casual remarks they revealed the intentions of the German army and its <i>moral</i>,
- or lack of <i>moral</i>. With the old Kommandant she did not feel so
- conscience-stricken. To her he was gentle and charming, but to others a
- bully, and there was in his character the ruthlessness of the Prussian
- officer on all matters of “duty,” and he hated England ferociously.
- </p>
- <p>
- With Franz von Kreuzenach it was different. He was a humanitarian, and
- sensitive to all cruelty in life. He hated, not the English, but the war
- with real anguish, as she could see by many words he let fall from time to
- time.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was, she said, a poet, and could see across the frontiers of hatred to
- all suffering humanity, and so revolted against the endless, futile
- massacre and the spiritual degradation of civilised peoples. It was only
- in a veiled way he could say these things in the presence of his superior
- officer, but she understood. She understood another thing as time went on—nearly
- eighteen months all told. She saw quite clearly, as all women must see in
- such a case, that this young German was in love with her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He did not speak any word in that way,” said Eileen when she told us
- this, frankly, in her straight manner of speech, “but in his eyes, in the
- touch of his hand, in the tones of his voice, I knew that he loved me, and
- I was very sorry.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was a bit awkward,” said Brand, speaking with a strained attempt at
- being casual. I could see that he was very much moved by that part of the
- story, and that there was a conflict in his mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It made me uneasy and embarrassed,” said Eileen. “I don’t like to be the
- cause of any man’s suffering, and he was certainly suffering because of
- me. It was a tragic thing for both of us when I was found out at last.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What happened?” asked Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- The thing that happened was simple—and horrible. When Eileen and her
- companions were denounced by the sentry at the Citadel the case was
- reported to the Kommandant of the Intelligence Office, who was in charge
- of all anti-espionage business in Lille. He was enormously disturbed by
- the suspicion directed against Eileen. It seemed to him incredible, at
- first, that he could have been duped by her. After that, his anger was so
- violent that he became incapable of any personal action. He ordered Franz
- von Kreuzenach to arrest Eileen and search her rooms. “If she resist,
- shoot her at once,” he thundered out.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was at seven o’clock in the evening when Baron Franz von Kreuzenach
- appeared at Eileen’s door with two soldiers. He was extremely pale and
- agitated.
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen rose from her little table, where she was having an evening meal
- of. soup and bread. She knew the moment had come which in imagination she
- had seen a thousand times.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come in, Baron!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She spoke with an attempt at cheerfulness, but had to hold to the back of
- her chair to save herself from falling, and she felt her face become
- white.
- </p>
- <p>
- He stood for a moment in the room, silently, with the two soldiers behind
- him, and when he spoke, it was in a low voice, in English. “It is my
- painful duty to arrest you, Miss O’Connor.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She pretended to be amazed, incredulous, but it was, as she knew, a feeble
- mimicry.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Arrest me? Why, that is—ridiculous! On what charge?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Franz von Kreuzenach looked at her in a pitiful way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A terrible charge: Espionage and conspiracy against German martial law...
- I would rather have died than do this—duty.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen told us that he spoke that word “duty” as only a German could—as
- that law which for a German officer is above all human things, all kindly
- relationships, all escape. She pitied him then more, she said, than she
- was afraid for herself, and told him that she was sorry the duty had
- fallen to him. He made only one other remark before he took her away from
- her rooms.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I pray God the evidence will be insufficient.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a military car waiting outside the courtyard, and he opened the
- door for her to get in and sat opposite to her. The two soldiers sat
- together next to the driver, squeezed close—they were both stout men—with
- their rifles between their knees. It was dark in the streets of Lille and
- in the car. Eileen could only see the officer’s face vaguely and white. He
- spoke again as they were driven quickly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have to search your rooms to-night. Have you destroyed your papers?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He seemed to have no doubt about her guilt, but she would not admit it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have no papers of which I am afraid.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is well,” said Franz von Kreuzenach.
- </p>
- <p>
- He told her that the Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt and Marcelle Barbier had
- been arrested also, and that news was like a death-blow to the girl. It
- showed that their conspiracy had been revealed, and she was stricken at
- the thought of the fate awaiting her friends, those young delicate girls,
- who had been so brave in taking risks.
- </p>
- <p>
- Towards the end of the journey, which was not far, Franz von Kreuzenach
- began speaking in a low, emotional voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- Whatever happened, he said, he prayed that she might think of him with
- friendship, not blaming him for that arrest, which was in obedience to
- orders. He would ever be grateful to her for her kindness, and the songs
- she had sung. They had been happy evenings to him when he could see her
- and listen to her voice. He looked forward to them in a hungry way,
- because of his loneliness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He said—other things,” added Eileen, and she did not tell us,
- though dimly we guessed at the words of that German officer who loved her.
- At the gate of the prison he delivered her to a group of military police,
- and then saluted as he swung round on his heel.
- </p>
- <p>
- The next time she saw him was at her trial. Once only their eyes met, and
- he became deadly pale and bent his head. During her cross-examination of
- him he did not look at her, and his embarrassment, his agony—she
- could see that he was suffering—made an unfavourable impression on
- the court, who thought he was not sure of his evidence and was making
- blundering answers when she challenged him. She held him up to ridicule,
- but all the time was sorry for him, and grateful to him, because she knew
- how much evidence against her he had concealed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He behaved strangely about that evidence,” said Eileen. “What puzzles me
- still is why he produced so much and yet kept back the rest. You see, he
- put in the papers he had found in the secret passage, and they were enough
- to have me shot, yet he hushed up the fact about the passage, which, of
- course, was utterly damning. It looked as though he wanted to give me a
- sporting chance. But that was not his character, because he was a simple
- young man. He could have destroyed the papers as easily as he kept back
- the fact about the underground passage, but he produced them, and I
- escaped only by the skin of my teeth. Read me that riddle, Wickham Brand!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s easy,” said Brand. “The fellow was pulled two ways. By duty and—sentiment.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Love,” said Eileen in her candid way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Love, if you like... It was a conflict. Probably his sense of duty (I
- know these German officers!) was strong enough to make him hand up the
- papers to his superior officers. He couldn’t bring himself to burn them—the
- fool! Then the other emotion in him——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Give it a name,” said Eileen, smiling in her whimsical way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That damned love of his,” said Brand, “tugged at him intolerably, and
- jabbed at his conscience. So he hid the news about the passage and thought
- what a fine fellow he was. Mr. Facing-Both-Ways. Duty and love, both
- sacrificed!... He’d have looked pretty sick if you’d been shot, and it
- wasn’t to his credit that you weren’t.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen O’Connor was amused with Brand’s refusal to credit Franz von
- Kreuzenach with any kindness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Admit,” she said, “that his suppression of evidence gave me my chance. If
- all were told, I was lost.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand admitted that.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Admit also,” said Eileen, “that he behaved like a gentleman.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand admitted it grudgingly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A German gentleman.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he realised his meanness, and made amends.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s unfair! He behaved like a good fellow. Probably took big risks.
- Every one who knows what happened must be grateful to him. If I meet him
- I’ll thank him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen O’Connor held Brand to that promise, and asked him for a favour
- which made him hesitate.
- </p>
- <p>
- “When you go on to the Rhine will you take him a letter from me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s against the rules,” said Brand rather stiffly.
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen pooh-poohed those rules, and said Franz von Kreuzenach had broken
- his for her sake.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll take it,” said Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- That night when we left Eileen O’Connor’s rooms the Armistice was still
- being celebrated by British soldiers. Verey lights were rising above the
- houses, fired off by young officers as symbols of their own soaring
- spirits. Shadows lurched against us in the dark streets as officers and
- men went singing to their billets. Some girls of Lille had linked arms
- with British Tommies and were dancing in the darkness with screams of
- mirth. In one of the doorways a soldier with his steel hat at the back of
- his head and his rifle lying at his feet kept shouting one word in a
- drunken way: “Peace!... Peace!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand had his arm through mine, and when we came to his headquarters he
- would not let me go.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Armistice night!” he said. “Don’t let’s sleep just yet. Let’s hug the
- thought over a glass of whisky. The war is over!... No more blood!... No
- more of its tragedy!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Yet we had got no farther than the hall before we knew that tragedy had
- not ended with the Armistice.
- </p>
- <p>
- Colonel Lavington met us and spoke to Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A bad thing has happened. Young Clatworthy has shot himself... upstairs
- in his room.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand started back as if he had been hit. He had been fond of Clatworthy,
- as he was of all boys, and they had been together for many months. It was
- to Brand that Clatworthy wrote his last strange note, and the colonel gave
- it to him then in the hall.
- </p>
- <p>
- I saw it afterwards, written in a big scrawl—a few lines which now I
- copy out:—
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Dear old Brand,—It’s the end of the adventure. Somehow I funk
- Peace. I don’t see how I can go back to Wimbledon as if nothing had
- happened to me. None of us are the same as when we left, and I’m quite
- different. I’m going over to the pals on the other side. They will
- understand. Cheerio!</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Cyril Clatworthy</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was playing my flute when I heard the shot,” said the colonel.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand put the letter in his pocket and made only one comment.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Another victim of the war-devil.... Poor kid!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Presently he went up to young Clatworthy’s room, and stayed there a long
- time.
- </p>
- <p>
- A few days later we began to move on towards the Rhine by slow stages,
- giving the German Army time to get back. In Brand’s pocket-book was the
- letter to Franz von Kreuzenach from Eileen O’Connor.
- </p>
- <h3>
- END OF BOOK I.
- </h3>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- BOOK II—THROUGH HOSTILE GATES
- </h2>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- I
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he advance of the
- Allied Armies towards the Rhine was by definite, slow stages, enabling the
- German Army to withdraw in advance of us with as much material of war as
- was left to them by the conditions of the Armistice. On that retreat of
- theirs they abandoned so much that it was clearly impossible for them to
- resist our demands by fighting again, however hard might be the peace
- terms. Their acceptance of the Armistice drawn up by Marshal Foch with a
- relentless severity in every clause, so that the whole document was a
- sentence of death to the German military system, proved that they had no
- more “fight” in them. It was the most abject and humiliating surrender
- ever made by a great nation in the hour of defeat, and an acknowledgment
- before the whole world that their armies had broken to bits, in
- organisation and in spirit.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the roads for hundreds of kilometres out from Mons and Le Cateau, past
- Brussels and Liège and Namur, was the visible proof of the disintegration
- and downfall of what had been the greatest military machine in the world.
- Mile after mile and score after score of miles, on each side of the long
- straight roads, down which, four years before, the first German Armies had
- marched in endless columns after the first brief check at Liège, with
- absolute faith in victory, there lay now abandoned guns, trench mortars,
- aeroplanes, motor lorries, motor cars and transport wagons. Those
- monstrous guns which had pounded so much of our young flesh to pulp, year
- after year, were now tossed into the ditches, or overturned in the wayside
- fields, with broken breech-blocks or without their sights.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was good to see them there. Field-guns, upturned, thrust their muzzles
- into the mud, and Belgian peasant-, boys made cock-shies of them. I liked
- to see them at that game. Here also was the spectacle of a war machine
- which had worn out until, like the “one-hoss shay,” it had fallen to
- pieces. Those motor lorries, motor cars, and transport wagons were in the
- last stage of decrepitude, their axles and spokes all rusty, their
- woodwork cracked, their wheels tied round with bits of iron in the place
- of tyres. Everywhere were dead horses worn to skin and bones before they
- had fallen. For lack of food and fats and rubber and labour the German
- material of war was in a sorry state before the failure of their man-power
- in the fighting fields after those years of massacre brought home to them
- the awful fact that they had no more strength to resist our onslaughts.
- </p>
- <p>
- One of those who pointed the moral of all this was the little American
- doctor, Edward Small, and he found an immense satisfaction in the sight of
- those derelict wrecks of the German war-devils. He and I travelled
- together for some time, meeting Brand, Harding, and other friends, in
- towns like Liège and Namur. I remember him now, standing by a German
- howitzer—a colossus—sprawling out of a ditch. He chuckled in a
- goblin way, with his little grey beard thrust up by a muffler which he had
- tied over his field-cap and under his chin. (It was cold, with a white
- mist which clung damply to our faces.) He went so far in his pleasure as
- to pick up a big stone (like those Belgian boys) and heave it at the
- monster.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Fine!” he said. “That devil will never again vomit out death upon men
- crouching low in ditches—fifteen miles away. Never again will it
- smash through the roofs of farmhouses where people desired to live in
- peace, or bash big holes in little old churches where folk worshipped
- through the centuries—a loving God!... Sonny, this damned thing is
- symbolical. Its overthrow means the downfall of all the machinery of
- slaughter which has been accumulated by civilised peoples afraid of each
- other. In a little while, if there’s any sense in humanity after this
- fearful lesson, we shall put all our guns on to the scrap-heap and start a
- new era of reasonable intercourse between the peoples of the world.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Doctor,” I answered, “there’s a mighty big ‘If’ in that long sentence of
- yours.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He blinked at me with beads of mist on his lashes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t you go wet-blanketing my faith in a step-up for the human race!
- During the next few months we’re going to re-arrange life. We are going to
- give Fear the knock-out blow.... It was Fear that was the cause of all
- this horrible insanity and all this need of sacrifice. Germany was afraid
- of being ‘hemmed in’ by England, France and Russia. Fear, more than the
- lust of power, was at the back of her big armies. France was afraid of
- Germany trampling over her frontiers again. Russian Czardom was afraid of
- revolution within her own borders and looked to war as a safety-valve.
- England was afraid of the German Navy and afraid of Germans at Calais and
- Dunkirk. All the little Powers were afraid of the big Powers and made
- their beastly little alliances as a life insurance against the time when
- they would be dragged into the dog-fight. Now, with the German bogey
- killed—the most formidable and frightful bogey—Austria
- disintegrated, Russia groping her way with bloodshot eyes to a new
- democracy, a complete set of fears has been removed. The spirits of the
- peoples will be uplifted, the darkness of fear having passed from them. We
- are coming out into the broad sunlight of sanity, and mankind will march
- to better conquests than those of conscript armies. Thank God, the United
- States of America (and don’t you forget it!) will play a part in this
- advance to another New World.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was absurd to argue with the little man in a sodden field on the road
- to Liège. Besides, though I saw weak links in his chain of reasoning, I
- did not want to argue.
- </p>
- <p>
- I wanted to believe also that our victory would not be a mere vulgar
- triumph of the old kind, one military power rising upon the ruins of its
- rival, one great yell (or many) of “Yah—we told you so!” but that it
- would be a victory for all humanity, shamed by the degradation of its orgy
- of blood, in spite of all pride in long-enduring manhood, and that the
- peoples of the world, with one common, enormous, generous instinct, would
- cry out, “The horror has passed! Never again shall it come upon us.... Let
- us pay back to the dead by contriving a better way of life for those who
- follow!” The chance of that lay with living youth, if they would not allow
- themselves to be betrayed by their old men. That also was a mighty “If,”
- but I clung to the hope with as passionate a faith as that of the little
- American doctor....
- </p>
- <p>
- The way to the Rhine lay through many cities liberated from hostile rule,
- through many wonderful scenes in which, emotion surged like a white flame
- above great crowds. There was a pageantry of life which I had never before
- seen in war or in peace, and those of us who went that way became dazed by
- the endless riot of colour, and our ears were tired by a tumult of joyous
- sound. In Brussels, Bruges, Ghent, Liège, Namur, Venders, banners waved
- above every house. Flags—flags—flags of many nations and
- designs, decorated the house-fronts, were draped on the balconies, were
- entwined in the windows, came like flames above the heads of marching
- crowds. Everywhere there was the sound of singing by multitudes, and
- through those weeks one song was always in the air, triumphant, exultant,
- intoxicating, almost maddening in its effect upon crowds and individuals—the
- old song of liberty and revolt: “La Marseillaise.” With it, not so
- universal, but haunting in constant refrain between the outbursts of that
- other tune, they sang “La Brabançonne” of Belgium and quaint old
- folk-songs that came to life again with the spirit of the people. Bells
- pealed from churches in which the Germans had left them by special favour.
- The belfry of Bruges had not lost its carillon. In Ghent, when the King of
- the Belgians rode in along flower-strewn ways, under banners that made one
- great canopy, while cheers swept up and around him to his grave, tanned,
- melancholy face, unchanged by victory—so I had seen him in his
- ruined towns among his dead—I heard the great boom of the cathedral
- bell. In Brussels, when he rode in later, there were many bells ringing
- and clashing, and wild cheering, which to me, lying in an upper room after
- a smash on the Field of Waterloo, seemed uncanny and inhuman, like the
- murmur of innumerable ghost-voices. Into these towns, and along the roads
- through Belgium to the Meuse, bands were playing and soldiers singing, and
- on each man’s rifle was a flag or a flower. In every city there was
- carnival. It was the carnival of human joy after long fasting from the
- pleasure of life. Soldiers and civilians, men and women, sang together,
- linked arms, danced together through many streets, in many towns. In the
- darkness of those nights of Armistice one saw the eyes of people
- sparkling, laughing, burning; the eyes of girls lit up by inner fires,
- eager, roving, alluring, untamed; and the eyes of soldiers, surprised,
- amused, adventurous, drunken, ready for any kind of fun; and sometimes in
- those crowds, dead eyes, or tortured eyes, staring inwards and not
- outwards, because of some remembrance which came like a ghost between them
- and carnival.
- </p>
- <p>
- In Ghent there were other sounds besides music and laughter, and
- illuminations too fierce and ruddy in their glow to give me pleasure. At
- night I heard the screams of women. I had no need to ask the meaning of
- them. I had heard such screams before, when Pierre Nesle’s sister Marthe
- was in the hands of the mob. But one man told me, as though I did not
- know.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They are cutting off some ladies’ hair. Six of them—the hussies!
- They were too friendly with the Germans, you understand? Now they are
- being stripped, for shame. There are others, monsieur. Many, many, if one
- only knew. Hark at their howling!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He laughed heartily, without any touch of pity. I tried to push my way
- nearer to try by some word of protest to stop that merry sport with hunted
- women. The crowds were too dense, the women too far away. In any case no
- word of mine would have had effect. I went into a restaurant and ordered
- dinner, though not hungry. Brand was there, sitting alone till I joined
- him. The place was filled with French and Belgian officers and womenfolk.
- The swing-door opened and another woman came in and sat a few tables away
- from ours. She was a tall girl, rather handsome, and better dressed than
- the ordinary <i>bourgeoisie</i> of Ghent. At least, so it seemed to me
- when she hung up some heavy furs on the peg above her chair.
- </p>
- <p>
- A waiter advanced towards her, and then, standing stock-still, began to
- shout, with a thrill of fury in his voice. He shouted frightful words in
- French, and one sentence which I remember now.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A week ago you sat here with a German officer!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Belgian officers were listening gravely. One of them half-rose from
- his chair with a flushed, wolfish face. I was staring at the girl. She was
- white to the lips, and held on to a brass rail as though about to faint.
- Then, controlling herself instantly, she fumbled at the peg, pulled down
- her furs and fled through the swing-door... She was another Marthe.
- </p>
- <p>
- Somebody laughed in the restaurant, but only one voice. For a moment there
- was silence, then conversation was resumed, as though no figure of tragedy
- had passed. The waiter who had denounced the woman swept some crumbs off a
- table and went to fetch some soup.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand did not touch his food.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I feel sick,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- He pushed his plate away and paid the bill.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let’s go.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He forgot to ask whether I wanted to eat—he was absent-minded in
- that way—but I felt like him, and avoiding the Grande Place we
- walked by hazard to a part of the city where some fires were burning. The
- sky was reddened and we smelt smoke, and presently felt the heat of
- flames.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What new devilry?” asked Brand. “Can’t these people enjoy peace? Hasn’t
- there been enough violence?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Possibly a bonfire,” I said, “symbolical of joy and warmth after cold
- years!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Coming closer, I saw that Brand was right. Black figures like dancing
- devils were in the ruddy glare of a savage fire up a side street of Ghent.
- In other streets were other fires. Close to where we stood was an old inn,
- called the Hotel de la Demie-Lune—the Hotel of the Half-Moon—and
- its windows had been heaved out, and inside the rooms Belgian soldiers and
- citizens were flinging out tables and chairs and planks and wainscoting to
- feed the bonfire below, and every time the flames licked up to the new
- fuel there were shouts of joy from the crowd.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What does it mean?” asked Brand, and a man in the crowd told us that the
- house had been used as the headquarters of a German organisation for
- “Flemish Activists”—or Flamagands, as they were called—whose
- object was to divide the Walloons, or French-speaking Belgians, from the
- Flemings, in the interests of Germany.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is the people’s revenge for those who have tried to sow seeds of
- hatred among-them,” said the man.
- </p>
- <p>
- Other people standing by spoke disapprovingly of the scene.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The Germans have made too many fires in this war,” said an elderly man in
- a black hat with a high crown and broad brim, like a portrait by Franz
- Hals. “We don’t want to destroy our own houses now the enemy has gone.
- That is madness.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It seems unnecessary!” said Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- As we made our way back we saw the light of other fires, and heard the
- noise of smashing glass and a splintering of woodwork. The mob was sacking
- shops which had traded notoriously with the Germans. Out of one alley a
- man came running like a hunted animal. We heard his breath panting as he
- passed. A shout of “Flamagand! Flamagand!” followed him, and in another
- second a mob had caught him. We heard his death-cry before they killed him
- like a rat.
- </p>
- <p>
- Never before in the history of the world had such crowds gathered together
- as now in Brussels, Ghent or Liège. French and English soldiers walked the
- same streets, khaki and sky-blue mingling. These two races had met before,
- not as friends, in some of these towns—five centuries and more
- before in history. But here also were men from Canada, Australia, New
- Zealand, South Africa, and the new world which had come to the old world
- on this adventure, paying back something to the old blood and the old
- ghosts because of their heritage, yet strangely aloof on the whole from
- these continental peoples, not understanding them, despising them.
- </p>
- <p>
- The English soldier took it all as it came, with that queer adaptability
- of his to any environment or any adventure, with his simple human touch.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Better than the old Ypres salient,” said one of them, grinning at me
- after a game of kiss-in-the-ring at Venders. He wiped the sweat from his
- face and neck, and as he raised his arm I saw by his gold stripes that he
- had been three times wounded. Yes, that was better than the old hell. He
- roared with laughter when one of his comrades went into the ring with a
- buxom girl while the crowd danced round him, holding hands, singing,
- laughing, pulling him this side and that.
- </p>
- <p>
- The man who had just left the ring spoke to me again in a confidential
- way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My wife wouldn’t like it if she’d seen me just then. I shan’t tell ‘er.
- She wouldn’t understand. Nobody can understand the things we’ve done, the
- things we’ve thought, nor the things we’ve seen, unless they’ve been
- through with us... and we don’t understand, neither!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who does?” I asked, to express agreement with him, but he took my words
- as a question to be answered.
- </p>
- <p>
- “P’raps Gord knows. If so, ‘E’s a clever One, ‘E is!... I wish I ‘ad ‘alf
- ‘Is sense.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He drifted away from me with a gurgle of laughter at a girl who pushed his
- cap on one side.
- </p>
- <p>
- Along the kerbstone of the market-place some transport wagons were halted,
- and the drivers were cooking their evening meal over a charcoal stove, as
- though on one of the roads of war, while a crowd of Belgians roared with
- laughter at their by-play with clasp-knives, leaden spoons, and dixies.
- One of them was a cockney humorist—his type was always to be found
- in any group of English soldiers—and was performing a pantomime for
- the edification of the onlookers and his own pleasure.
- </p>
- <p>
- A woman standing on the edge of this scene touched me on the sleeve.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are you going forward to the Rhine, <i>mon lieutenant?</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- I told her “yes,” and that I should soon be among the Germans.
- </p>
- <p>
- She gave a little tug to my sleeve, and spoke in a kind of coaxing
- whisper.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Be cruel to them, <i>mon lieutenant!</i> Be hard and ruthless. Make them
- suffer as we have suffered. Tread on their necks so that they squeal. <i>Soyez
- cruel.</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her face and part of her figure were in the glow from the charcoal fire of
- the transport men, and I saw that she was a little woman, neatly dressed,
- with a thin, gentle, rather worn-looking face. Those words, “<i>Soyez
- cruel!</i>” gave me a moment’s shock, especially because of the soft,
- wheedling tone of her voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What would you do,” I asked in a laughing way, “if you were in my place?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I dream at nights of what I would like to do. There are so many things I
- would like to do for vengeance. I think all German women should be killed
- to stop them breeding. That is one thing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And the next?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It would be well to kill all German babies. Perhaps the good God will do
- it in His infinite wisdom.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are religious, madame?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We had only our prayers,” she said, with piety.
- </p>
- <p>
- A band of dancing people bore down upon us and swept us apart. From a high
- balcony an Italian who had been a prisoner of war sang “La Marseillaise,”
- and though these people’s ears had been dinned with it all day, though
- their throats were hoarse with singing it, they listened to it now, again,
- as though it were a new revelation. The man sang with passion in his
- voice, as powerful as a trumpet, more thrilling than that. The passion of
- four years’ agony in some foul prison-camp inspired him now, as he sang
- that song of liberty and triumph.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p class="indent20">
- “Allons, Enfants de la patrie!
- </p>
- <p class="indent20">
- Le jour de gloire est arrivé!”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- The crowd took up the song again, and it roared across the square of
- Venders until another kind of music met and clashed with it, and
- overwhelmed it with brazen notes. It was the town band of Venders,
- composed of twenty-five citizens, mostly middle-aged and portly—some
- old and scraggy, in long frock-coats and tall pot-hats. Solemnly, with
- puffed cheeks, they marched along, parting the waves of people as they
- went, as it seemed, by the power of their blasts. They were playing an old
- tune called “Madelon”—its refrain comes back to me now with the
- picture of that carnival in Venders, with all those faces, all that human
- pressure and emotion—and behind them, as though following the Pied
- Piper (twenty-five pied pipers!) came dancing at least a thousand people,
- eight abreast, with linked arms or linked hands. They were young Belgian
- boys and girls, old Belgian men and women, children, British soldiers,
- American soldiers, English, Scottish, Irish, Canadian, Australian,
- Russian, and Italian ex-prisoners of war just liberated from their
- prison-camps, new to liberty. They were all singing that old song of
- “Madelon,” and all dancing in a kind of jig. Other crowds, dancing and
- singing, came out of side-streets into the wide Grande Place, mingled,
- like human waves meeting, swirled in wild, laughing eddies. Carnival after
- the long fasting.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand clutched me by the arm and laughed in his deep, hollow voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look at that old satyr!... I believe Daddy Small is Pan himself!”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was the little American doctor. He was in the centre of a row of eight
- in the vanguard of a dancing column. A girl of the <i>midinette</i> type—pretty,
- impudent, wild-eyed, with a strand of fair hair blowing loose from her
- little fur cap—was clinging to his arm on one side, while on the
- other was a stout, middle-aged woman with a cheerful Flemish face and
- mirth-filled eyes. Linked up with the others they jigged behind the town
- band. Dr. Small’s little grey beard had a raffish look. His field cap was
- tilted back from his bony forehead. His spectacles were askew. He had the
- happy look of careless boyhood. He did not see us then, but later in the
- evening detached himself from the stout Flemish lady, who kissed him on
- both cheeks, and made his way to where Brand and I stood under the portico
- of a hotel.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Fie, doctor!” said Brand. “What would your old patients in New York say
- to this Bacchanalian orgy?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sonny,” said the doctor, “they wouldn’t believe it. It’s incredible!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He wiped the perspiration from his brow, threaded his fingers through his
- grey beard, and laughed in that shrill way which was his habit when
- excited.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My word, it was good fun! I became part of a people’s joy. I had their
- sense of escape from frightful things. Youth came back to me. Their songs
- danced in my blood. In spite of my goggles and my grey beard that buxom
- lady adored me as though I were the young Adonis. The little girl clasped
- my hand as though I were her younger brother. Time rolled back from the
- world. Old age was touched with the divine elixir. In that crowd there is
- the springtime of life, when Pan played on his pipes through pagan woods.
- I wouldn’t have missed it for a million dollars!”
- </p>
- <p>
- That night Brand and I and some others (Charles Fortune among them) were
- billeted in a small hotel which had been a German headquarters a few days
- before. There was a piano in the billiard room, and Fortune touched its
- keys. Several notes were broken but he skipped them deftly and improvised
- a musical caricature of “Daddy” Small dancing in the carnival. He, too,
- had seen that astonishing vision, and it inspired him to grotesque
- fantasies. In his imagination he brought a great general to Venders—“Blear-eyed
- Bill, the Butcher of the Boche”—and gave him a <i>pas seul</i> in
- the Grande Place, like an elephant gambolling in green fields and
- trumpeting his joy.
- </p>
- <p>
- Young Harding was moody, and confided to me that he did not like the idea
- of crossing the German frontier and going to Cologne.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There will be dirty work,” he said, “as sure as fate. The Huns will begin
- sniping and then we shall have to start reprisals. Well, if they ask for
- it I hope we shall give it them. Without mercy, after all they have done.
- At the first sign of treachery I hope the machine-guns will begin to play.
- Every time I see a Hun I shall feel like slitting his throat.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, you’ll get into a murderous state of mind,” I answered him. “We
- shall see plenty, and live among them. I expect they will be tame enough.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Some poor devils of ours will be murdered in their beds,” said Harding.
- “It makes my blood boil to think of it. I only hope we shan’t stand any
- nonsense. I’d like to see Cologne Cathedral go up in flames. That would be
- a consolation.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Charles Fortune broke away from his musical fantasy of “Blear-eyed Bill”
- and played a bar or two of the “Marseillaise” in ragtime. It was a
- greeting to Pierre Nesle, who came into the room quietly in his <i>képi</i>
- and heavy motor-coat, with a salute to the company.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Bon soir, petit Pierre!</i>” said Fortune, “<i>qu’il y a, done—quoi?—avec
- ta figure si sombre, si mélancolique, d’une tristesse pitoyable</i>——”
- </p>
- <p>
- Pierre Nesle inspired him to sing a little old French <i>chanson</i> of
- Pierrot disconsolate.
- </p>
- <p>
- Pierre had just motored down from Lille—a long journey—and was
- blue with cold, as he said, warming his hands at the charcoal stove. He
- laughed at Fortune’s jesting, begged a cigarette from Harding, apologised
- for keeping on his “stink-coat” for a while until he had thawed out—and
- I admired the boy’s pluck and self-control. It was the first time I had
- seen him since he had gone to Lille to see his sister. I knew by the new
- lines about his eyes and mouth, by a haggard, older look he had that he
- had seen that sister of his—Marthe—and knew her tragedy.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was to Brand’s room that he went after midnight, and from Brand, a day
- later, I heard what had happened. He had begun by thanking Brand for that
- rescue of his sister in Lille, in a most composed and courteous way. Then
- suddenly that mask fell from him and he sat down heavily in a chair, put
- his head down on his arms upon the table and wept like a child in
- uncontrollable grief. Brand was immensely distressed and could not think
- of any word to comfort him. He kept saying, “Courage! Courage!” as I had
- said to Madame Chéri when she broke down about her boy Edouard, as the
- young Baronne had sent word to Eileen from her prison death-bed, and as so
- many men and women had said to others who had been stricken by the
- cruelties of war.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The boy was down and out,” said Brand. “What could I say? It is one of
- those miseries for which there is no cure. He began to talk about his
- sister when they had been together at home, in Paris before the war. She
- had been so gay, so comradely, so full of adventure. Then he began to
- curse God for having allowed so much cruelty and men for being such
- devils. He cursed the Germans, but then, in most frightful language, most
- bitterly of all he cursed the people of Lille for having tortured a woman
- who had been starved into weakness, and had sinned to save her life. He
- contradicted himself then, violently, and said, ‘It was no sin. My sister
- was a loyal girl to France. In her soul she was loyal. So she swore to me
- on her crucifix. I would have killed her if she had been disloyal.’... So
- there you are! Pierre Nesle is broken on the wheel of war, like so many
- others. What’s the cure?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “None,” I said, “for his generation. One can’t undo the things that are
- done.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand was pacing up and down his bedroom, where he had been telling me
- these things, and now, at my words, he stopped and stared at me before
- answering.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No. I think you’re right. This generation has been hard hit, and we shall
- go about with unhealed wounds. But the next generation?... Let’s try to
- save it from all this horror! If the world will only understand——”
- </p>
- <p>
- The next day we left Venders and crossed the German frontier on the way to
- the Rhine.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- II
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>rand and I, who
- were inseparable now, and young Harding, who had joined us, crossed the
- Belgian frontier with our leading troop of cavalry—the Dragoon
- Guards—and entered Germany on the morning of December 4th. For three
- days our advanced cavalry outposts had been halted on the frontier line
- beyond Venders and Spa. The scenery had become German already—hill-country,
- with roads winding through fir forests above deep ravines, where red
- undergrowth glowed like fire through the rich green of fir-trees, and
- where, on the hillsides and in the valleys, were wooden <i>châlets</i> and
- villas with pointed turrets like those in the Black Forest.
- </p>
- <p>
- We halted this side of a little stone bridge over the stream which divides
- the two countries. A picket of Dragoons was holding the bridge with double
- sentries, under orders to let no man pass until the signal was given to
- advance.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What’s the name of this place?” asked Brand of a young cavalry officer
- smoking a cigarette and clapping his hands to keep warm.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Rothwasser, sir,” said that child, removing the cigarette from his lips.
- He pointed to a small house on rising ground beyond, a white building with
- a slate roof, and said: “That’s the first house in Germany. I don’t
- suppose they’ll invite us to breakfast.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand and I leaned over the stone bridge, watching and listening to the
- swirl of tawny water over big grey stones.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The Red Water,” said Brand. “Not a bad name when one thinks of the rivers
- of blood that have flowed between our armies and this place. It’s been a
- long journey to this little bridge.”
- </p>
- <p>
- We stared across the brook and were enormously stirred (I was, at least)
- by the historic meaning of this scene. Over there, a few yards away, was
- Germany, the fringe of what had been until some weeks ago the mighty
- German Empire. Not a human being appeared on that side of the stone
- bridge. There was no German sentry facing ours. The gate into Germany was
- open and unguarded. A deep silence was over there by the pine-woods where
- the undergrowth was red. I wondered what would happen when we rode through
- that silence and that loneliness into the first German town—Malmédy—and
- afterwards through many German towns and villages on the way to the
- Rhine....
- </p>
- <p>
- Looking back on that adventure, I remember our psychological sensations,
- our surprise at the things which happened and failed to happen, the change
- of mind which gradually dawned upon some of our officers, the incredulity,
- resentment, suspicion, amazement, which overcame many of them because of
- the attitude of the German people whom they met for the first time face to
- face without arms in their hands. I have already said that many of our
- officers had a secret dread of this advance into German territory, not
- because they were afraid of danger to their own skins, but because they
- had a greater fear of being called upon to do “dirty work” in the event of
- civilians sniping and any sign of the <i>franc-tireur</i>. They had been
- warned by the High Command that that might happen, and that there must be
- a ruthless punishment of any such crimes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Our turn for atrocities!” whispered young cavalry officers, remembering
- Louvain and Alost, and they hated the idea. We were in the state of mind
- which led to some of the black business in Belgium when the Germans first
- advanced—nervous, ready to believe any rumour of treacherous attack,
- more afraid of civilian hostility than of armed troops. A single shot
- fired by some drunken fool in a German village, a single man of ours
- killed in a brawl, or murdered by a German out for vengeance, might lead
- to most bloody tragedy. Rumour was already whispering of ghastly things.
- </p>
- <p>
- I remember on the first day of our advance meeting a young officer of ours
- in charge of an armoured car which had broken down across the frontier,
- outside a village.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’d give a million pounds to get out of this job,” he said gloomily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What’s the matter?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- He told me that the game was already beginning, and swore frightful oaths.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What game?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Murder,” he answered sharply. “Don’t you get the news? Two of our fellows
- have been killed in that village. Sniped from the windows. Presently I
- shall be told to sweep the streets with machine-guns. Jolly work, what?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He was utterly wrong, though where he heard the lie which made him
- miserable I never knew. I walked into the village and found it peaceful.
- No men of ours had been killed there. No men of ours had yet entered it.
- </p>
- <p>
- The boy who was to go forward with the leading cavalry patrol across the
- Rothwasser that morning had “the needle” to the same degree. He leaned
- sideways in his saddle and confided his fears to me with laughter which
- did not conceal his apprehensions.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hope there’s no trouble.... Haven’t the ghost of| an idea what to do if
- the Hun turns nasty. I don’t know a word of their beastly language either!
- If I’m the boy who takes the wrong turning, don’t be too hard on me!”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a Sunday morning, with a cold white fog on the hill-tops, and white
- frost on fir-trees and red bracken. Our cavalry and horse artillery, with
- their transport drawn up on the Belgian side of the frontier before the
- bugle sounded for the forward march, were standing by their horses,
- clapping hands, beating chests, stamping feet. The men wore their steel
- hats as though for an advance in the usual conditions of warfare, and the
- troopers of the leading patrol rode forward with drawn swords. They rode
- at the trot through pine forests along the edge of deep ravines in which
- innumerable “Christmas-trees” were powdered with glistening frost. There
- was the beat of horses’ hoofs on frozen roads, but the countryside was
- intensely silent. The farmhouses we passed and cottages under the shelter
- of the woods seemed abandoned. No flags hung out from them like those
- millions of flags which had fluttered along all the miles of our way
- through Belgium. Now and again, looking back at a farmhouse window, I saw
- a face there, staring out, but it was quickly withdrawn. A dog came out
- and barked at us savagely.
- </p>
- <p>
- “First sign of hostility!” said the cavalry lieutenant, turning round in
- his saddle and laughing boyishly. The troopers behind him grinned under
- their steel hats and then looked stem again, glancing sideways into the
- glades of those silent fir-woods.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It would be easy to snipe us from those woods,” said Harding. “Too damned
- easy!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And quite senseless,” said Brand. “What good would it do them?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Harding was prepared to answer the question. He had been thinking it out.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The Hun never did have any sense. He’s not likely to get it now. Nothing
- will ever change him. He is a bad, treacherous, evil swine. We must be
- prepared for the worst, and if it comes——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What?” asked Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- Harding had a grim look, and his mouth was hard.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We must act without mercy, as they did in Louvain.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wholesale murder, you mean?” said Brand harshly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A free hand for machine-guns,” said Harding, “if they ask for it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand gave his usual groan.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, Lord!... Haven’t we finished with blood?”
- </p>
- <p>
- We dipped down towards Malmédy. There was a hairpin turn in the road and
- we could see the town below us in the valley—a German town.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Pretty good map-reading!” shouted the cavalry kid. He was pleased with
- himself for having led his troop on the right road, but I guessed that he
- would be glad to halt this side of the mystery that lay in that town where
- Sunday bells were ringing.
- </p>
- <p>
- A queer thing happened then. Up a steep bank was a party of girls. German
- girls, of course, and the first civilians we had seen. A flutter of white
- handkerchiefs came from them. They were waving to us.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, I’m damned!” said Harding.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not yet,” answered Brand ironically, but he was as much astonished as all
- of us.
- </p>
- <p>
- When we came into Malmédy the cavalry patrol halted in the market square
- and dismounted. It was about midday and the German people were coming out
- of church. Numbers of them surrounded us, staring at the horses, whose
- sleek look seemed to amaze them, and at the men who lit up cigarettes and
- loosened the straps of their steel hats. Some girls patted the necks of
- the horses and said: “<i>Wundershon!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- A young man in the crowd in black civilian clothes with a bowler hat spoke
- in perfect English to the sergeant-major: “Your horses are looking fine!
- Ours are skin and bones. When will the infantry be here?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Haven’t an idea,” said the sergeant-major gruffly.
- </p>
- <p>
- Another young man addressed himself to me in French, which he spoke as
- though it were his native tongue.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is this the first time you have been in Germany, monsieur?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I told him I had visited Germany before the war.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You will find us changed,” he said. “We have suffered very much, and the
- spirit of the people is broken. You see, they have been hungry so long.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I looked round at the crowd and saw some bonny-faced girls among them and
- children who looked well-fed. It was only the younger men who had a
- pinched look.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The people here do not seem hungry,” I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- He explained that the state of Malmédy was not so bad. It was only a
- big-sized village and they could get produce from the farms about. All the
- same, they were on short commons and were underfed. Never any meat. No
- fats. “<i>Ersatz</i>” coffee. In the bigger towns there was real hunger,
- or, at least, an <i>unternahrung</i> or malnutrition, which was causing
- disease in all classes, and great mortality among the children.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You speak French well,” I told him, and he said that many people in
- Malmédy spoke French and German in a bi-lingual way. It was so close to
- the Belgian frontier.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is why the people here had no heart in the war, even in the
- beginning. My wife was a Belgian girl. When I was mobilised she said, ‘You
- are going to kill my brothers,’ and wept very much. I think that killed
- her. She died in ‘16.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The young man spoke gravely but without any show of emotion. He narrated
- his personal history in the war. He had been in the first and second
- battles of Ypres, then badly wounded and put down at the base as a clerk
- for nearly two years. After that, when German man-power was running short,
- he had been pushed into the ranks again and had fought in Flanders,
- Cambrai, and Valenciennes. Now he had demobilised himself.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am very glad the war is over, monsieur. It was a great stupidity from
- the beginning. Now Germany is ruined.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He spoke in a simple, matter-of-fact way, as though describing natural
- disturbances of life, regrettable, but inevitable.
- </p>
- <p>
- I asked him whether the people farther from the frontier would be hostile
- to the English, troops, and he seemed surprised at my question.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hostile! Why, sir?.... The war is over, and we can now be friends again.
- Besides, the respectable people and the middle classes”—he used the
- French word <i>bourgeoisie</i>—“will be glad of your coming. It is a
- protection against the evil elements who are destroying property and
- behaving in a criminal way—the sailors of the fleet and the low
- ruffians.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>The war is over, and we can be friends again!</i> That sentence in the
- young man’s speech astonished me by its directness and simplicity. Was
- that the mental attitude of the German people? Did they think that England
- would forget and shake hands? Did they not realise the passion of hatred
- that had been aroused in England by the invasion of Belgium, the early
- atrocities, the submarine war, the sinking of the <i>Lusitania</i>, the
- execution of Nurse Çavell, the air-raids over London—all the range
- and sweep of German frightfulness?
- </p>
- <p>
- Then I looked at our troopers. Some of them were chatting with the Germans
- in a friendly way. One of them close to me gave a cigarette to a boy in a
- college cap who was talking to him in schoolboy English. Another was in
- conversation with two German girls who were patting his horse. We had been
- in the German village ten minutes. There was no sign of hatred here, on
- one side or the other. Already something had happened which in England, if
- they knew, would seem monstrous and incredible. A spell had been broken,
- the spell which for four years had dominated the souls of men and women.
- At least, it seemed to have been broken in the village where for the first
- time English soldiers met the people of the nation they had fought and
- beaten. These men of the first cavalry patrol did not seem to be
- nourishing thoughts of hatred and vengeance. They were not, it seemed,
- remembering atrocities. They were meeting fellow-mortals with human
- friendliness, and seemed inclined to talk to them and pass the time of
- day. Astounding!
- </p>
- <p>
- I saw Wickham Brand talking to a group of German children—boys in
- sailor caps with the words <i>Hindenburg, Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse,
- Unterseeboot</i>, printed in gold letters on the cap-bands, and girls with
- yellow pigtails and coloured frocks. He pulled out a packet of chocolate
- from a deep pocket of his British warm and broke it into small pieces.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who would like a bit?” he asked in German, and there was a chorus of “<i>Bitte!...
- Bitte schön!</i>” He held out a piece to the prettiest child, a tiny
- fairy-like thing with gold-spun hair, and she blushed very vividly and
- curtseyed when she took the chocolate, and then kissed Brand’s long lean
- hand. Young Harding was standing near. He had an utterly bewildered
- expression, as a man who sees the groundwork of his faith slipping beneath
- him. He turned to me as I strolled his way and looked at me with wide
- astonished eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t understand!” he stammered. “Haven’t these people any pride? This
- show of friendliness—what does it mean? I’d rather they scowled and
- showed their hatred than stand round fawning on us.... And our men! They
- don’t seem to bear any malice. Look at that fellow gossiping with those
- two girls! It’s shameful.... What have we been fighting for if it ends in
- this sort of thing? It makes it all a farce!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He was so disturbed, so unnerved, by the shock of his surprise that there
- were tears of vexation in his eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- I could not argue with him or explain things to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was astonished myself, quite baffled by a German friendliness that was
- certainly sincere and not a mask hiding either hatred or humiliation.
- Those people of Malmédy were pleased to see us. As yet I could not get the
- drift of their psychology, in spite of what the young French-speaking
- German had told me. I gave Harding the benefit of that talk.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is a frontier town,” I said. “These people are not real Germans in
- their sympathies and ideas.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That seemed to comfort Harding a little. He clung on to the thought that
- when we had got beyond the frontier we should meet the hatred he expected
- to see. He wanted to meet it. He wanted to see scowling looks, deep
- humiliation, a shameful recognition of defeat, the evil nature of the
- people we had been fighting. Otherwise, to him, the war was all a lie. For
- four years he had been inspired, strengthened, and upheld by hatred of the
- Germans. He believed not only in every atrocity story that appeared in
- English newspapers, but also, in accordance with all else he read, that
- every German was essentially and unutterably vile, brutal, treacherous,
- and evil. The German people were to him a race apart—the Huns. They
- had nothing in common with ordinary human nature, with its kindliness and
- weakness. They were physically, mentally, and morally debased. They were a
- race of devils, and they could not be allowed to live. Civilisation could
- only be saved by their extermination, or if that were impossible, by their
- utter subjection. All the piled-up slaughter of British youth and French
- youth was to him justified by the conviction that the last man of ours
- must die if need be in order to crush Germany and kill Germans. It is true
- that he had not died, nor even had been wounded, but that was his
- ill-luck. He had been in the cavalry, and had not been given many chances
- of fighting. Before the last phase, when the cavalry came into their own,
- he had been transferred to the Intelligence (though he did not speak a
- word of German) in order to organise their dispatch-rider service. He knew
- nothing about dispatch-riding, but his cousin was the brother-in-law of a
- general’s nephew, and he had been highly recommended for this appointment,
- which had surprised and annoyed him. Still, as a young man who believed in
- obedience to authority and in all old traditional systems such as
- patronage and privilege, he had accepted the post without protest. It had
- made no difference to his consuming hatred of the Hun. When all his
- companions were pessimistic about final victory he had remained an
- optimist, because of his faith that the Huns must be destroyed or God
- would be betrayed. When some of his colleagues who had lived in Germany
- before the war praised the German as a soldier and exonerated the German
- people from part at least of the guilt of their war lords, he tried to
- conceal his contempt for this folly (due to the mistaken generosity of the
- English character) and repeated his own creed of abhorrence for their race
- and character. “The only good German is a dead German,” he said, a
- thousand times, to one’s arguments pleading extenuating circumstances for
- German peasants, German women, German children.... But now in this village
- of Malmédy on our first morning across the frontier, within three minutes
- of our coming, English troopers were chatting with Germans as though
- nothing had happened to create ill-feeling on either side. Brand was
- giving chocolate to German children, and German girls were patting the
- necks of English horses.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” he said, after my attempted explanation. “We’re too close to the
- frontier. These people are different. Wait till we get on a bit. I’m
- convinced we shall have trouble, and at the slightest sign of it we shall
- sweep the streets with machine-gun fire. I’ve got my own revolver handy,
- and I mean to use it without mercy if there’s any treachery.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- III
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>arding had no need
- to use his revolver on the way to the Rhine or in Cologne, where he stayed
- for some months after Armistice. We went on with the cavalry into many
- villages and small towns, by slow stages, the infantry following behind in
- strength, with guns and transport. The girls outside Malmédy were not the
- only ones who waved handkerchiefs at us. Now and then, it is true, there
- were scowling looks from men who had obviously been German officers until
- a few weeks ago. Sometimes in village inns the German inn-keeper would be
- sullen and silent, leaving his wife or his maidservant to wait upon us.
- But even that was rare. More often there was frank curiosity in the eyes
- of the people who stared at us, and often unconcealed admiration at the
- smart appearance of our troops. Often German inn-keepers welcomed our
- officers with bows and smiles and prepared meat meals for us (in the
- country districts), while explaining that meat was scarce and hardly
- tasted by ordinary folk. Their wives and their maidservants praised God
- that the war was over.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It lasted too long!” they said. “Oh, the misery of it! It was madness to
- slaughter each other like that!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand and I went into a little shop to buy a toothbrush.
- </p>
- <p>
- The woman behind the counter talked about the war.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was due to the wickedness of great people,” she said. “There are many
- people who grew rich out of the war. They wanted it to go on and on so
- that they could get more rich. They gorged themselves while the poor
- starved. It was the poor who were robbed of their life-blood.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She did not speak passionately, but with a dull kind of anger.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My own life-blood was taken,”, she said presently, after wrapping up the
- tooth-brush. “First they took Hans, my eldest. He was killed almost at
- once—at Liège. Then they took my second-born, Friedrich. He was
- killed at Ypres. Next, Wilhelm died—in hospital at Brussels. He had
- both his legs blown off. Last they took little Karl, my youngest. He was
- killed by an air-bomb, far behind the lines, near Valenciennes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A tear splashed on the bit of paper in which she had wrapped the
- tooth-brush. She wiped it away with her apron.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My man and I are now alone,” she said, handing us the packet. “We are too
- old to have more children. We sit and talk of our sons who are dead, and
- wonder why God did not stop the war.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is sad,” said Brand. He could find nothing else to say. Not with this
- woman could he argue about German guilt.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Ja, es ist traurig</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She took the money with a “<i>Danke schön</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- In the town of Mürren I spent some time with Brand and others in. the
- barracks where a number of trench-mortars and machine-guns were being
- handed over by German officers according to the terms of the Armistice.
- The officers were mostly young men, extremely polite, anxious to save us
- any kind of trouble, marvellous in their concealment of any kind of
- humiliation they may have felt—<i>must</i> have felt—in this
- delivery of arms. They were confused only for one moment, and that was
- when a boy with a wheelbarrow trundled by with a load of German swords—elaborate
- parade swords with gold hilts.
- </p>
- <p>
- One of them laughed and passed it off with a few words in English.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There goes the old pomp and glory—-to the rubbish-heap!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand made things easier by a tactful sentence.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The world will be happier when we are all disarmed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A non-commissioned officer talked to me. He had been a hairdresser in
- Bayswater and a machine-gunner in Flanders. He was a little fellow with a
- queer cockney accent.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Germany is <i>kaput</i>. We shall have a bad time in front of us. No
- money. No trade. All the same, it will be better in the long run. No more
- conscription; no more filthy war. We’re all looking to President Wilson
- and his ‘Fourteen Points.’ There is the hope of the world. We can hope for
- a good peace—fair all round. Of course we’ll have to pay, but we
- shall get liberty, like in England.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Was the man sincere? Were any of these people sincere? Or were they
- crawling, fawning, hiding their hatred, ready for any treachery? I could
- not make up my mind....
- </p>
- <p>
- We went into Cologne some days before our programme at the urgent request
- of the <i>Burgermeister</i>. We were invited in! The German seamen of the
- Grand Fleet had played the devil, as in all the towns they had passed
- through. They had established a Soldiers’ and Workmen’s Council on the
- Russian system, raised the Red Flag, liberated the criminals from the
- prisons. Shops had been sacked, houses looted. The <i>Burgermeister</i>
- desired British troops to ensure law and order.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was no disorder visible when we entered Cologne. The revolutionaries
- had disappeared. The streets were thronged with middle-class folk, among
- whom were thousands of men who had taken off their uniforms a few days
- before our coming, or had “civilised” themselves by tearing off their
- shoulder-straps and badges. As our first squadron rode into the great
- cathedral square on the way to the Hohenzollem Bridge many people in the
- crowds turned their heads away and did not glance at the British cavalry.
- We were deliberately ignored, and I thought that for the Germans it was
- the best attitude, with most dignity. Others stared gravely at the passing
- cavalcade, showing no excitement, no hostility, no friendliness, no
- emotion of any kind. Here and there I met eyes which were regarding me
- with a dark, brooding look, and others in which there was profound
- melancholy. That night, when I wandered out alone and lost my way, and
- asked for direction, two young men, obviously officers until a few days
- back, walked part of the way to put me right and said “<i>Bitte schön!
- Bitte!</i>” when I thanked them, and saluted with the utmost courtesy....
- I wondered what would have happened in London if we had been defeated and
- if German officers had walked out alone at night and lost themselves in
- by-streets and asked the way. Imagination fails before such a thought.
- Certainly our civility would not have been so easy. We could not have
- hidden our hatred like that, if these were hiding hatred.
- </p>
- <p>
- Somehow, I could not find even the smouldering fires of hate in any German
- with whom I spoke that day. I could find only a kind of dazed and
- stupor-like recognition of defeat, a deep sadness among humble people, a
- profound anxiety as to the future fate of a ruined Germany, and a hope in
- the justice of England and America.
- </p>
- <p>
- A score of us had luncheon at the Domhof Hotel, opposite the cathedral
- which Harding had hoped to see in flames. The manager bowed us in as if we
- had been distinguished visitors in time of peace. The head-waiter handed
- us the menu and regretted that there was not much choice of food, though
- they had scoured the country to provide for us. He and six other waiters
- spoke good English, learnt in London, and seemed to have had no
- interruption in their way of life, in spite of war. They were not rusty in
- their art, but masters of its service according to tradition. Yet they had
- all been in the fighting-ranks until the day of Armistice, and the
- head-waiter, a man of forty, with hair growing grey and the look of one
- who had spent years in a study rather than in front-line trenches after
- table management, told me that he had been three times wounded in
- Flanders, and in the last phase had been a machine-gunner in the rearguard
- actions round Grevilliers and Bapaume. He revealed his mind to me between
- the soup and the stew—strange talk from a German waiter.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I used to ask myself a hundred thousand times, ‘Why am I here—in
- this mud—fighting against the English whom I know and like? What
- devil’s meaning is there in all this? What are the evil powers that have
- forced us to this insane massacre?’ I thought I should go mad, and I
- desired death.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I did not argue with him, for the same reason that Brand and I did not
- argue with the woman behind the counter who had lost four sons. I did not
- say, “Your war lords were guilty of this war. The evil passion and
- philosophy of you German people brought this upon the world—your
- frightfulness.” I listened to a man who had been stricken by tragedy, who
- had passed through its horrors and was now immensely sad.
- </p>
- <p>
- At a small table next to us were the boy who had led the first cavalry
- patrol and two fellow-officers. They were not eating their soup. They were
- talking to the waiter, a young fellow who was making a map with knives and
- spoons.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is the village of Fontaine Notre Dame,” he said. “I was just here
- with my machine-gun when you attacked.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Extraordinary!” said one of the young cavalry officers. “I was here, at
- the corner of this spoon, lying on my belly with my nose in the mud—scared
- stiff.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The German waiter and the three officers laughed together. Something had
- happened which had taken away from them the desire to kill each other. Our
- officers did not suspect there might be poison in their soup. The young
- waiter was not nervous lest one of the knives he laid should be thrust
- into his heart....
- </p>
- <p>
- Some nights later I met Wickham Brand in the Hohestrasse. He took me by
- the arm and laughed in a strange, ironical way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you think of it all?” he asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- I told him that if old men from St. James’s Street clubs in London, and
- young women in the suburbs clamouring for the Kaiser’s head, could be
- transported straight to Cologne without previous warning of the things
- they would see, they would go raving mad.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand agreed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It knocks one edgewise—even those of us who understand.”
- </p>
- <p>
- We stood on one side, by a shop window filled with beautiful
- porcelain-ware, and watched the passing crowd. It was a crowd of German
- middle-class, well dressed, apparently well fed. The girls wore heavy
- furs. The men were in black coats and bowler hats, or in military
- overcoats and felt hats. Among them, not aloof, but mingling with them,
- laughing with them, were English and Canadian soldiers. Many of them were
- arm-in-arm with German girls. Others were surrounded by groups of young
- Germans who had been, unmistakably, soldiers until a few weeks earlier.
- English-speaking Germans were acting as interpreters in the exchange of
- experiences, gossip, opinions. The German girls needed no interpreters.
- Their eyes spoke, and their laughter.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand and I went into an immense <i>café</i> called the “Germania,” so
- densely crowded that we had to wander round to find a place, foggy with
- tobacco-smoke through which electric light blazed, noisy with the music of
- a loud, unceasing orchestra, which, as we entered, was playing selections
- from “Patience.” Here also were many English and Canadian officers and
- men, sitting at the same tables with Germans, who laughed and nodded at
- them, clinked their mugs or wine-glasses with them, and raised bowler hats
- to British Tommies when they left the tables with friendly greetings on
- both sides. There was no orgy here, no impropriety. Some of the soldiers
- were becoming slightly fuddled with Rhine wine, but not noisily. “Glad
- eyes” were passing between them and German girls, or conversations made up
- by winks and signs and oft-repeated words, but all quietly and
- respectfully in outward behaviour.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand and I were wedged close to a table at which sat one of our
- sergeant-majors, a corporal, a middle-aged German woman, and two German
- girls. One of the girls spoke English remarkably well, and the
- conversation of our two men was directed to her, and through her to the
- others. Brand and I were eavesdroppers.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tell your ma,” said the sergeant-major, “that I shouldn’t have been so
- keen to fight Germans if I had known they were such pleasant, decent
- people, as far as I find ‘em at present, and I take people as I find ‘em.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl translated to her mother and sister and then answered: “My mother
- says the war was prepared by the rich people in Europe, who made the
- people mad by lies.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah,” said the sergeant-major, “I shouldn’t wonder! I know some of them
- swine. All the same, of course, you began it, you know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was another translation, and the girl answered again: “My mother
- says the Germans didn’t begin it. The Russians began it by moving their
- armies. The Russians hated us and wanted war.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The sergeant-major gave a snort of laughter.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The Russians?... They soon tired of it, anyhow. Let us all down, eh?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What about atrocities?’’ said the corporal, who was a cockney.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Atrocities?” said the English-speaking girl. “Oh, yes, there were many.
- The Russians were very cruel.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come oft it,” said the corporal. “I mean German atrocities.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “German?” said the girl. “No, our soldiers were well behaved—always!
- There were many lies told in the English papers.” *
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s true enough,” said the sergeant-major. “Lies? Why, they fed us up
- with lies. ‘The Germans are starving. The Germans are on their last legs.’
- ‘The great victory at Neuve Chapelle.’ God! I was in that great victory.
- The whole battalion cut to pieces and not an officer left. A bloody
- shambles—and no sense in it.... Another drop of wine, my dear?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Seems to me,” said the cockney corporal, “that there was a deal of dirty
- work on both sides. I’m not going to say there wasn’t no German atrocities—lies
- or no lies—becos saw a few of ‘em myself, an’ no mistake. But what I
- says now is what I says when I lay in the lousy trenches with
- five-point-nines busting down the parapets. The old devil ‘as got us all
- by the legs!’ I said, and ‘ad a fellow-feelin’ for the poor blighters on
- the other side of the barbed wire lying in the same old mud. Now I’m
- beginning to think the Germans are the same as us, no better nor no worse,
- I reckon. Any ‘ow, you can tell your sister, miss, that I like the way she
- does ‘er ‘air. It reminds me of my Liz.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The English-speaking German girl did not understand this speech. She
- appealed to the sergeant-major.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What does your friend say?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The sergeant-major roared with laughter..
- </p>
- <p>
- “My chum says that a pretty face cures a lot of ill-feeling. Your sister
- is a sweet little thing, he says. <i>Comprenney?</i> Perhaps you had
- better not translate that part to your ma. Have another drop of wine, my
- dear.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Presently the party rose from the table and went out, the sergeant-major
- paying for the drinks in a lordly way and saying, “After you, ma’am,” to
- the mother of the two girls.
- </p>
- <p>
- “All this,” said Brand when they had gone, “is very instructive.... And
- I’ve been making discoveries.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What kind?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand looked away into the vista of the room, and his eyes roved about the
- tables where other soldiers of ours sat with other Germans.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ve found out,” he said, “that the British hatred of a nation breaks
- down in the presence of its individuals. I’ve discovered that it is not in
- the character of English fighting-men—Canadian, too, by the look of
- it—to demand vengeance from the innocent for the sins of the guilty.
- I’m seeing that human nature, ours anyhow, swings back to the normal as
- soon as an abnormal strain is released. It is normal in human nature to be
- friendly towards its kind, in spite of five years’ education in savagery.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I doubted that, and told him so, remembering scenes in Ghent and Lille,
- and that girl Marthe, and the woman of Venders. That shook Brand a little
- from his new point of view, and he shifted his ground with the words:
- “Perhaps I’m wrong there.”
- </p>
- <p>
- ‘He told me of other “discoveries” of his, after conversation with many
- German people, explaining perhaps the lack of hostility and humiliation
- which had surprised us all. They were glad to see the English because they
- were afraid of the French and Belgians, with their desire for vengeance.
- They believed in English fair-play in spite of all the wild propaganda of
- the war. Now that the Kaiser had fled and Germany was a Republic, they
- believed that, in spite of defeat and great ruin, there would be a peace
- which would give them a chance of recovery, and a new era of liberty,
- according to the pledges of President Wilson and the terms of the
- “Fourteen Points.” They believed they had been beaten by the hunger
- blockade, and not by the failure of the German Armies in the field, and
- they would not admit that as a people they were more guilty in the war
- than any others of the fighting nations.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is a sense of guilt,” said Brand, “that must be brought home to them.
- They must be convinced of that before they can get clean again and gain
- the world’s forgiveness.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He leaned over the table with his square face in the palms of his hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- “God knows,” he said, “that there was evil on both sides. We have our
- Junkerdom, too. The philosophy of our old men was not shining in its
- Christian charity. We share the guilt of the war. Still, the Germans the
- aggressors. They must acknowledge that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The German war lords and militarists,” I suggested. “Not that woman who
- lost her four sons, nor peasants dragged from their ploughs, ignorant of
- <i>Welt-politik</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s all a muddle,” said Brand. “I can’t sort it out. I’m full of
- bewilderment and contradictions. Sometimes when I look at these Germans in
- the streets, some of them so smug, I shudder and say, ‘These are the
- people who killed my pals,’ and I’m filled with cold rage. But when they
- tell me all they suffered, and their loathing of the war, I pity them and
- say, ‘They were trapped, like we were, by false ideas, and false systems,
- and the foul lies of politicians, and the dirtiness of old diplomacy, and
- the philosophy of Europe leading up to that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he told me something which interested me more at the time than his
- groping to find truth, because a touch of personal drama is always more
- striking to the mind than general aspects and ideas.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m billeted at the house of Franz von Kreuzenach. You remember?—Eileen’s
- friend.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was astounded at that.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What an amazing coincidence!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was no coincidence,” he said. “I arranged it. I had that letter to
- deliver, and I wanted to meet the fellow. As yet, however, I have only
- seen his mother and sister. They are very civil.”
- </p>
- <p>
- So did Wickham Brand “ask for trouble,” as soldiers say, and certainly he
- found it before long.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- IV
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he first meeting
- between Wickham Brand and young Franz von Kreuzenach had been rather
- dramatic, according to my friend’s account of it, and he did not dramatise
- his stories much, in spite of being (before the war) an unsuccessful
- novelist. It had happened on the third night after his presentation of the
- billeting-paper which by military right of occupation ordered the owners
- of the house to provide a bedroom and sitting-room for an officer. There
- had been no trouble about that. The <i>Madchen</i> who had answered the
- door of the big white house in a side street off the Kaiserring had
- dropped a curtsey, and in answer to Brand’s fluent and polite German said
- at once, “<i>Kommmen Sie herein, bitte</i>,” and took him into a
- drawing-room to the right of the hall, leaving him there while she went to
- fetch “<i>die gnadige Baronin</i>,” that is to say, the Baroness von
- Kreuzenach. Brand remained standing, and studied the German drawing-room
- to read its character as a key to that of the family under whose roof he
- was coming by right of conquest, for that, in plain words, was the meaning
- of his presence.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a large square room, handsomely and heavily furnished in an
- old-fashioned style, belonging perhaps to the Germany of Bismarck, but
- with here and there in its adornment a lighter and more modern touch. On
- one wall, in a gilt frame to which fat gilt cupids clung, was a large
- portrait of William I. of Prussia, and on the wall opposite, in a similar
- frame, a portrait of the ex-Kaiser William II. Brand saw also, with an
- instant thrill of remembrance, two large steel engravings from
- Winterhalter’s portraits of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He had seen
- them, as a child, in his grandfather’s house at Kew, and in the houses of
- schoolfellows’ grandfathers, who cherished these representations of
- Victoria and Albert with almost religious loyalty. The large square of
- Turkey carpet on polished boards, a mahogany sideboard, and some stiff big
- armchairs of clumsily carved oak, were reminiscent of German furniture and
- taste in the period of the mid-nineteenth century, when ours was equally
- atrocious. The later period had obtruded itself into that background.
- There was a piano in white wood at one end of the room, and here and there
- light chairs in the “New Art” style of Germany, with thin legs and
- straight uncomfortable backs. The most pleasing things in the room were
- some porcelain figures of Saxon and Hanover ware, little German ladies
- with pleated gowns and low-necked bodices, and, on the walls, a number of
- water-colour drawings, mostly of English scenes, delicately done, with
- vision and a nice sense of atmosphere.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The younger generation thrusting out the old,” thought Brand, “and the
- spirit of both of them destroyed by what has happened in five years.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The door opened, he told me, when he had taken stock of his surroundings,
- and there came in two women, one middle-aged the other young. He guessed
- that he was in the presence of Frau von Kreuzenach and her daughter, and
- made his bow, with an apology for intruding upon them. He hoped that they
- would not be in the least degree disturbed by his billeting-order. He
- would need only a bedroom and his breakfast.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Baroness was courteous but rather cold in her dignity. She was a
- handsome woman of about forty-eight, with very fair hair streaked with
- grey, and a thin, aristocratic type of face, with thin lips. She wore a
- black silk dress with some fur round her shoulders.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It will be no inconvenience to us, sir,” she answered in good English, a
- little hard and over-emphasised. “Although the English people are pleased
- to call us Huns”—here she laughed good-humouredly—“I trust
- that you will not be too uncomfortable in a German house, in spite of the
- privations due to our misfortunes and the severity of your blockade.”
- </p>
- <p>
- In that short speech there was a hint of hostility—masked under a
- graciousness of manner—which Wickham Brand did not fail to perceive.
- </p>
- <p>
- “As long as it is not inconvenient——” he said awkwardly.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was the daughter who now spoke, and Brand was grateful for her friendly
- words and impressed by her undeniable and exceptional good looks. That she
- was the daughter of the older woman was clear at a glance. She had the
- same thin face and fair hair, but youth was on her side, and her
- finely-chiselled features had no hardness of line that comes from age or
- bitterness. Her hair was like spun gold, as one sees it in Prussia more, I
- fancy, than in southern Germany, and her complexion was that perfect
- rose-red and lily-white which often belongs to German girls, and is
- doll-like if they are soft and plump, as many are. This girl’s fault was
- thinness, but to Brand, not a sentimentalist nor quickly touched by
- feminine influence (I have written that, but on second thoughts believe
- that under Brand’s ruggedness there was a deep strain of sentiment,
- approaching weakness), she seemed flower-like and spiritual. So he told me
- after his early acquaintance with her.
- </p>
- <p>
- Her first words to him were charming.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We have suffered very much from the war, sir, but we welcome you to our
- house, not as an enemy, because the war finished with the Armistice, but
- as an Englishman who may come to be our friend.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Thanks,” said Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- He could find nothing else to say at the moment, but spoke that one word
- gratefully.
- </p>
- <p>
- The mother added something to her daughter’s speech.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We believed the English were our friends before they declared war upon
- us. We were deeply saddened by our mistake.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was inevitable,” said Brand, “after what had happened.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The daughter—her name was Elsa—put her hand on her mother’s
- arm with a quick gesture of protest against any other words about the war.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I will show Captain Brand to his rooms.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand wondered at her quickness in knowing his name after one glance at
- his billeting-paper, and said, “Please do not trouble, <i>gnàdiges
- Fraulein</i>,” when he saw a look of disapproval, almost of alarm, on the
- mother’s face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It will be better for Truda to show the gentleman to his rooms. I will
- ring for her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Elsa von Kreuzenach challenged her mother’s authority by a smile of
- amusement, and there was a slight deepening of that delicate colour in her
- face. “Truda is boiling the usual cabbage for the usual <i>Mittagessen.</i>
- I will go, mother.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She turned to Brand with a smile and bowed to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I will act as your guide upstairs, Captain Brand. After that you may find
- your own way. It is not difficult.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand, who described the scene to me, told me that the girl went very
- quickly up a wide flight of stairs so that in his big riding boots he
- found it difficult to keep pace with her. She went down a long corridor
- lined with etchings on the walls, and opened a white door leading into a
- big room furnished as a library. There was a wood fire burning there, and
- at a glance Brand noticed one or two decorations on the walls—a pair
- of foils with a fencing-mask and gauntlets, some charcoal drawings—one
- of a girl’s head, which was this girl’s when that gold hair of hers hung
- in two Gretchen pig-tails—and some antlers.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Here you can sit and smoke your pipe,” said Elsa von Kreuzenach. “Also,
- if you are bored, you can read those books. You see we have many English
- authors—Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, G. K. Chesterton, Kipling—heaps.
- My brother and I used to read all we could get of English books.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand remembered that Franz von Kreuzenach had read Kipling. He had quoted
- “Puck of Pook’s Hill” to Eileen O’Connor.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now and then,” he said, “I may read a little German.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Pooh!” said the girl. “It is so dull, most of it. Not exciting, like
- yours.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She opened another door.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Here is your bedroom. It used to belong to my brother Heinrich.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Won’t he want it?” asked Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- He could have bitten his tongue out for that question when the girl
- answered it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He was killed in Flanders.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A sudden sadness took possession of her eyes and Brand said, “I’m sorry.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes. I was sorry, too, and wept for weeks. He was a nice boy, so jolly,
- as you say. He would have been an artist if he had lived. All those
- charcoal sketches are by him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She pointed to the drawing of a young man’s head over the dressing-table.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is my brother Franz. He is home again, <i>Gott sei dank!</i>
- Heinrich worshipped him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand looked at the portrait of the man who had saved Eileen O’Connor. He
- had Eileen’s letter to him in his pocket. It was a good-looking head,
- clean-cut, with frank eyes, rather noble.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope we shall meet one day,” said Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- Elsa von Kreuzenach seemed pleased with those words.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He will like to meet you—ever so much. You see, he was educated at
- Oxford, and does not forget his love for England.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “In spite of the war?” asked Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl put both her hands to her breast.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The war!” she said. “Let us forget the years when we all went mad. It was
- a madness of hate and of lies and of ignorance—on both sides. The
- poor people in all countries suffered for the sins of the wicked men who
- made this war against our will and called out our evil passions. The
- wicked men in England were as bad as those in Germany. Now it is for good
- people to build up a new world out of the ruins that war made, the ruin of
- hearts.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She asked a direct question of Brand, earnestly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are you one of those who will go on hating?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand hesitated. He could not forget many things. He knew, so he told me,
- that he had not yet killed the old hatred that had made him a sniper in No
- Man’s Land. Many times it surged up again. He could not forgive the
- Germans for many cruelties. To this girl, then, he hedged a little.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The future must wipe out the past. The peace must not be for vengeance.”
- </p>
- <p>
- At those last words the blue eyes of Elsa von Kreuzenach lighted up
- gladly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is the old English spirit! I have said to my mother and father a
- thousand times, ‘England is generous at heart. She loves fair play. Now
- that victory is hers she will put away base passions and make a noble
- peace that will help us out of our agony and ruin. All our hope is with
- England, and with the American President, who is the noblest man on
- earth.’”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And your father and mother?” asked Brand. “What do they say?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl smiled rather miserably.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They belong to the old school. Franz and I are of the younger
- generation... My father denounces England as the demon behind all the
- war-devils, and little mother finds it hard to forgive England for joining
- the war against us, and because the English Army killed Heinrich. You must
- be patient with them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She spoke as though Brand belonged already to their family life and would
- need great tact.
- </p>
- <p>
- She moved towards the door, and stood framed there in its white woodwork,
- a pretty figure.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We have two maidservants for this great house,” she said. “The war has
- made us poor. Truda and Gretchen they are called. They are both
- quarrelling for the pleasure of waiting on you. They are both frightfully
- excited to have an English officer in the house.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Queer!” said Brand, laughing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why queer?” asked Elsa von Kreuzenach. “I am a little excited, too.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She made a half-curtsey, like an early Victorian girl; and then closed his
- door, and Brand was sorry, as he told me quite frankly, that he was left
- alone.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The girl’s a pretty piece of Dresden china,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- When I chaffed him with a “Take care, old lad!” he only growled and
- muttered, “Oh, to hell with that! I suppose I can admire a pretty thing,
- even if it’s made in Germany?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand told me that he met Elsa’s father and brother on the third evening
- that he slept in the Kreuzenachs’ house. When he arrived that evening at
- about five o’clock, the maid-servant, Truda, who “did” his bedroom and
- dusted his sitting-room with a German passion for cleanliness and with
- many conversational advances, informed him with a look of mysterious
- importance that the “Old Man” wanted to see him in the drawing-room.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What old man?” asked Brand, at which Truda giggled and said, “The old
- Herr Baron.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He hates the English like ten thousand devils,” added Truda
- confidentially.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps I had better not go then,” was Brand’s answer.
- </p>
- <p>
- Truda told him that he would have to go. When the old Herr Baron asked for
- a thing it had to be given him. The only person who dared to disobey him
- was Frâulein Elsa, who was very brave and a “<i>hubsches Madchen.</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand braced himself for the interview, but felt extremely nervous when
- Truda rapped at the drawingroom door, opened it, and announced in German:
- “The English officer!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The family von Kreuzenach was in full strength, obviously waiting for his
- arrival. The Baroness was in an evening gown, of black silk showing her
- bare neck and arms. She was sitting stiffly in a high-backed chair by the
- piano, and was very handsome in her cold way.
- </p>
- <p>
- Her husband, General von Kreuzenach, was pretending to read a book by the
- fireside. He was a tall, bald-headed, heavy-jowled man with a short white
- moustache. The ribbon of the Iron Cross was fastened to the top buttonhole
- of his frock-coat.
- </p>
- <p>
- Elsa was sitting on a stool by his side, and on a low seat, with his back
- to the fire, was a tall young man with his left arm in a sling, whom Brand
- knew at once to be Franz von Kreuzenach, Eileen O’Connor’s friend.
- </p>
- <p>
- When Brand came into the room everybody rose in a formal, frightening way,
- and Elsa’s mother rose very graciously and spoke to her husband.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This, Baron, is Captain Brand, the English officer who is billeted in our
- house.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Baron bowed stiffly to Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope, sir, that my servants are attending to your needs in every way. I
- beg of you to believe that as an old soldier I wish to fulfil my duty as
- an officer and a gentleman, however painful the circumstances in which you
- find us.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand replied with equal gravity, regretting his intrusion, and expressing
- his gratitude for the great courtesy that had been shown to him.
- Curiously, he told me, he had a strong temptation to laugh. The enormous
- formality of the reception touched some sense of absurdity so that he
- wanted to laugh loudly and wildly. Probably that was sheer nervousness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Permit me to present my son,” said the lady. “Lieutenant Franz von
- Kreuzenach.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The young man came forward and clicked heels in the German fashion, but
- his way of shaking hands and his easy “How do you do?” were perfectly
- English. For a moment Brand met his eyes, and found them frank and
- friendly. He had a vision of this man sitting in Eileen O’Connor’s room,
- gazing at her with love in his eyes, and, afterwards, embarrassed,
- shameful, and immensely sad in that trial scene.
- </p>
- <p>
- Elsa also shook hands with him and helped to break the hard ice of
- ceremony.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My brother is very glad to meet you. He was at Oxford, you know. Come and
- sit here. You will take tea, I am sure.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They had prepared tea for him specially, and Elsa served it like an
- English girl, charmingly.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand was not an easy conversationalist. His drawingroom manners were <i>gauche</i>
- always, and that evening in the German drawing-room he felt, he told me,
- “a perfect fool,” and could think of no small talk. Franz von Kreuzenach
- helped him out by talking about Oxford, and Brand felt more at ease when
- he found that the young German officer knew some of his old college
- friends and described a “rag” in his own third year. The old Baron sat
- stiffly, listening with mask-like gravity to this conversation. Elsa
- laughed without embarrassment at her brother’s description of à
- “debagging” incident, when the trousers of a proctor had been removed in
- “the High,” and the Frau von Kreuzenach permitted herself a wintry smile.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Before the war,” she said, “we wished our children to get an English
- education. Elsa went to a school at Brighton. We were very fond of
- England.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The general joined in the conversation for the first time.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was a weakness. Without offence, sir, I think that our German youth
- would have been better employed at German universities, where education is
- more seriously regarded, and where the national spirit is fostered and
- strengthened.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand announced that he had been to Heidelberg University, and agreed that
- German students take their studies more seriously than English.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We go to our universities for character more than for knowledge.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” said the elder von Kreuzenach. “It is there the English learn their
- Imperialism and political ambitions. From their point of view they are
- right. English pride—so arrogant—is a great strength.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Franz von Kreuzenach toned down his father’s remark.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My father uses the word pride in its best sense—pride of race and
- tradition. Personally, what struck me most at Oxford was the absence of
- all deliberate philosophical influence. The men were very free in their
- opinions. Most of those in my set were anti-imperialists and advanced
- Liberals, in a light-hearted way. But I fancy most of them did not worry
- very much about political ideas. They were up for ‘a good time,’ and made
- the most of youth, in sport and companionship. They laughed enormously. I
- think the Germans laugh too little. We are lacking in a national sense of
- humour, except of a coarse and rustic type.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I entirely disagree with you, Franz,” said the elder man sternly. “I find
- my own sense of humour sufficiently developed. You are biassed by your
- pro-English sympathy, which I find extraordinary and regrettable after
- what has happened.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He turned to Brand and said that as a soldier he would understand that
- courtesy to individuals did not abolish the sacred duty of hating a
- country which was essentially hostile to his own in spirit and in act.
- </p>
- <p>
- “England,” he added, “has behaved in an unforgivable way. For many years
- before the war she plotted the ruin of Germany in alliance with Russia and
- France. She challenged Germany’s trade interests and national development
- in every part of the globe, and built a great fleet for the sole purpose
- of preventing Germany’s colonial expansion. England has always been our
- enemy since she became aware of our increasing strength, for she will
- brook no rival. I do not blame her, for that is the right of her national
- egotism. But as a true German I have always recognised the inevitability
- of our conflict.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand had no need to answer this denunciation, for Elsa von Kreuzenach
- broke into her father’s speech impatiently.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are too bad, father! Captain Brand does not wish to spend the evening
- in political argument. You know what Franz and I think. We believe that
- all the evil of the war was caused by silly old hatred and greedy
- rivalries. Isn’t the world big enough for the free development of all its
- peoples? If not, then life is not worth living, and the human race must go
- on killing each other until the world is a wilderness.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I agree,” said Brand, looking at Elsa. “The peoples of Europe must resist
- all further incitements to make war on each other. Surely the American
- President has given us all a new philosophy by his call for a League of
- Nations, and his promise of peace without vengeance, with the
- self-determination of peoples.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is true,” said Franz von Kreuzenach. “The Allies are bound by
- Wilson’s ‘Fourteen Points.’ We agreed to the Armistice on that basis, and
- it is because of the promise that lies in those clauses—the charter
- of a New World—that the German people, and the Austrians, accept
- their defeat with resignation, and look forward with hope—in spite
- of our present ruin—to a greater liberty and to a more beautiful
- democracy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” said Elsa, “what my brother says, Captain Brand, explains the
- spirit with which your English soldiers have been received on the Rhine.
- Perhaps you expected hostility, hatred, black looks? No, the German people
- welcome you, and your American comrades, because the bitterness of defeat
- is softened by the knowledge that there is to be no more bloodshed—alas,
- we are drained of blood!—and that the peace will begin a nobler age
- in history for all of us.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The general shifted in his chair so that it scraped the polished boards. A
- deep wave of colour swept up to his bald head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Defeat?” he said. “My son and daughter talk of defeat!... There was no
- defeat. The German Armies were invincible to the last. They never lost a
- battle. They fell back, not because of their own failure but because the
- heart of the German people was sapped by the weakness of hunger, caused by
- the infamous English blockade, which starved our women and children. <i>Ja</i>,
- even our manhood was weakened by starvation. Still more, our civilians
- were poisoned by a pestilential heresy learnt in Russia, a most damnable
- pacifism, which destroyed their will to win. Our glorious armies were
- stabbed in the back by anarchy and treachery.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is defeat, sir, all the same,” said Franz von Kreuze-nach, with grim
- deference, to his father. “Let us face the tragedy of the facts. As an
- officer of the rearguard defence, I have to admit, too, that the German
- Armies were beaten in the field. Our war machine was worn out and
- disintegrated by the repeated blows that struck us. Our man-power was
- exhausted, and we could no longer resist the weight of the Allied Armies.
- The Americans had immense reserves of men to throw in against us. We could
- only save ourselves by retreat. Field Marshal von Hindenburg himself has
- admitted that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The general’s face was no longer flushed with angry colour. He was very
- white, with a kind of dead look, except for the smouldering fire of his
- eyes. He spoke in a low, choking voice, in German.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I had known that a son of mine, bearing the name of Franz von
- Kreuzenach, would have admitted the defeat of the German Army before an
- officer of an enemy power I would have strangled him at birth.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He grasped the arms of his chair and made one or two efforts to rise, but
- could not do so.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Anna!” he commanded harshly, to his wife, “give me your arm. This officer
- will excuse me, I trust. I feel unwell.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Franz von Kreuzenach went quickly over to his father, before his mother
- could rise.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Father, I deeply regret having pained you. The truth is tragic enough——”
- </p>
- <p>
- The old man answered him ferociously.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have not spoken truth, but lies. You are a disgrace to the rank of a
- German officer and to my name. You have been infected by the poison of
- socialism and anarchy. Anna—your arm!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Elsa’s mother stooped over her husband and lifted his hand to her lips.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Mein lieber Mann</i>,” she said very softly.
- </p>
- <p>
- The old man rose stiffly, leaning on his wife’s arm, and bowed to Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I beg you to excuse me, sir. As a German soldier I do not admit the words
- ‘defeat’ or ‘retreat,’ even when spoken within my own household. The
- ever-glorious German Army has never been defeated, and has never retreated—except
- according to plan. I wish you goodnight.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand was standing, and bowed to the general in silence.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a silence which lasted after the husband and wife had left the
- room. The girl Elsa was mopping her eyes. Franz von Kreuzenach stood, very
- pale, by the empty chair in which his father had sat. He was the first to
- speak.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m awfully sorry. I ought not to have spoken like that before my father.
- He belongs to the old school.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand told me that he felt abominably uncomfortable, and wished with all
- his heart that he had not been billeted in this German house.
- </p>
- <p>
- Elsa rose quickly and put her hand on her brother’s arm.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am glad you spoke as you did, Franz. It is hateful to hurt our dear
- father, but it is necessary to tell the truth now, or we cannot save
- ourselves, and there will be no new era in the world. It is the younger
- generation that must re-shape the world, and that cannot be done if we
- yield to old falsehoods and go the way of old traditions.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Franz raised his sister’s hand to his lips, and Brand told me that his
- heart softened at the sight of that caress, as it had when Elsa’s mother
- kissed the hand of her old husband. It seemed to him symbolical of the two
- generations, standing together, the old against the young, the young
- against the old.
- </p>
- <p>
- “In England, also,” he said, “we have those who stand by hate, and those
- who would break with the old traditions and forget, as soon as possible,
- old enmities.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is the new conflict,” said Franz von Kreuzenach solemnly. “It will
- divide the world and many houses, as Christ’s gospel divided father from
- son and blood-brothers. It is the new agony.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The new hope,” said Elsa passionately.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand made an early excuse to retire to his room, and Franz von Kreuzenach
- conducted him upstairs and carried his candlestick.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Thanks,” said Brand, in the doorway of his room. Then suddenly he
- remembered Eileen O’Connor’s letter, and put his hand into his
- breast-pocket for his case.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have a letter for you,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So?” The young German was surprised.
- </p>
- <p>
- “From a lady in Lille,” said Brand. “Miss Eileen O’Connor.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Franz von Kreuzenach started violently, and for a moment or two he was
- incapable of speech. When he took the letter from Brand his hand trembled.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You know her?” he said at last.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I knew her in old days and met her in Lille,” answered
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand. “She told me of your kindness to her. I promised to thank you when
- I met you. I do so now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He held out his hand and Franz von Kreuzenach grasped it in a hard grip.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She is well?” he asked, with deep emotion.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well and happy,” said Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is good.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The young German was immensely embarrassed, absurdly self-conscious and
- shy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “In Lille,” he said, “I had the honour of her friendship.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “She told me,” answered Brand. “I saw some of your songs in her room.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I sang to her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Franz von Kreuzenach laughed awkwardly. Then suddenly a look of something
- like fear—certainly alarm—changed his expression.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I must beg of you to keep secret any knowledge of my—my friendship—with
- that lady. She acted—rashly. If it were known, even by my father,
- that I did—what I did—my honour, perhaps even my life, would
- be unsafe. You understand, I am sure.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perfectly,” said Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “As a German officer,” said Franz von Kreuzenach, “I took great risk.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He emphasised his words.
- </p>
- <p>
- “As a German officer I took liberties with my duty—because of a
- higher law.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “A higher law than discipline,” said Brand. “Perhaps a nobler duty than
- the code of a German officer.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He spoke with a touch of irony, but Franz von Kreuzenach was unconscious
- of that.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Our duty to God,” he said gravely. “Human pity. Love.”
- </p>
- <p>
- An expression of immense sentiment filled his eyes An Englishman would
- have masked it more guardedly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good-night,” said Brand, “and thanks again.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The young German clicked his heels and bowed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good-night, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand went to bed in a leisurely way, and before sleeping heard a violin
- being played in the room above his own. By the tune he remembered the
- words of an old song, as Eileen O’Connor had sung it in Lille, and as he
- had learnt it in his own home before the war.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- “There’s one that is pure as an angel,
- </p>
- <p class="indent20">
- And fair as the flowers of May,
- </p>
- <p class="indent15">
- They call her the gentle maiden
- </p>
- <p class="indent20">
- Wherever she takes her way.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br />
- </p>
- <p>
- Franz von Kreuzenach was having an orgy of sentiment, and Brand, somehow,
- envied him.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- V
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>ur entry into
- Cologne and life among the people whom we had been fighting for four years
- and more was an amazing psychological experience, and not one of us there
- on the Rhine could escape its subtle influence upon our opinions and
- subconscious state of mind. Some of our officers, I am sure, were utterly
- unaware of the change being wrought in them by daily association with
- German civilians. They did not realise how, day by day, their old beliefs
- on the subject of “the Hun” were being broken down by contact with people
- who behaved with dignity for the most part, and according to the ordinary
- rules of human nature. Charles Fortune, our humorist, delighted to observe
- these things, and his irony found ready targets in Cologne, both among
- British officers and German civilians, neither of whom he spared. I
- remember that I was walking one day down Hohestrasse with young Harding,
- after the proclamation had been issued (and enforced with numerous arrests
- and fines by the A.P.M. and the military police) that all German civilians
- were to salute British officers by doffing their hats in the streets. The
- absurdity of it was so great that in a crowded street..like the
- Hohestrasse the civilian people would have had to remain bareheaded, owing
- to the constant passing of our officers.
- </p>
- <p>
- Fortune saluted Harding and myself not only with one hand but with two. He
- wore his “heroic” face, wonderfully noble and mystical.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How great and glorious is the British Army!” he said. “How immense are
- the power and majesty of the temporary lieutenant! For four years and a
- half have we fought to crush militarism. Nine hundred thousand men of ours
- have died explosive deaths in order to abolish the philosophy of Zabernism—you
- remember!—the claim of the military caste to the servility of
- civilian salutes. Two million men of ours are blind, crippled,
- shell-shocked, as martyrs for democracy made free of Junkerdom by the
- crushing of the Hun. Now, by a slight error in logic (the beautiful
- inconsistency of our English character), we arrest, fine, or imprison any
- German man or child who does not bare his head before a little English
- subaltern from Peckham Rye or Tooting in a ‘Gor’blimy’ cap! How great and
- good we are! How free from hypocrisy! How splendid our victory for the
- little peoples of the earth!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Young Harding, who had been returning salutes solemnly and mechanically to
- great numbers of Germans, flushed a little.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose it’s necessary to enforce respect. All the same, it’s a horrid
- bore.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Fortune wagged his hand behind his ear to an elderly German who took off
- his bowler hat. The man stared at him in a frightened way, as though the
- English officer had suddenly gone mad and might bite him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Strange!” said Fortune. “Not yet have they been taught the beauty of the
- Guards’ salute. That man ought to be put into a dark cell, with bread and
- water, and torture from 9 a.m. till mid-day on Wednesdays and Fridays.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Fortune was vastly entertained by the sight of British soldiers walking
- about with German families in whose houses they were billeted. Some of
- them were arm-inarm with German girls, a sergeant-major was carrying a
- small flaxen-haired boy on whose sailor’s cap was the word “<i>Vaterland</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Disgraceful!” said Fortune, looking sternly at Harding. “In spite of all
- our atrocity tales, our propaganda of righteous hate, our training of the
- young idea that a Hun must be killed at sight—‘the only good German
- is a dead German,’ as you remember, Harding—these soldiers of ours
- are fraternising with the enemy and flirting with the enemy’s fair-haired
- daughters, and carrying infant Huns shoulder-high. Look at that
- sergeant-major forgetting all my propaganda. Surely he ought to cut the
- throat of that baby Hindenburg! My heart aches for Blear-eyed Bill, the
- Butcher of the Boche. All his work undone. All his fury fizzled. Sad!
- sad!” Harding looked profoundly uncomfortable at this sarcasm. He was
- billeted with a German family who treated him as an honoured friend. The
- mother, a dear old soul, as he reluctantly admitted, brought him an early
- cup of tea in the morning, with his shaving-water. Three times he had
- refused it, remembering his oath never to accept a favour from male or
- female Hun. On the fourth time his will-power weakened under the old
- lady’s anxious solicitations and his desire for the luxury of tea before
- dressing. He said “<i>Danke schön</i>,” and afterwards reproached himself
- bitterly for his feeble resistance. He was alarmed at his own change of
- heart towards these people. It was impossible for him to draw back
- solemnly or with pompous and aloof dignity when the old lady’s grandchild,
- a little girl of six, waylaid him in the hall dropped a curtsey in the
- pretty German style, and then ran forward to kiss his hand and say, “<i>Guten
- Tag, Herr Offizier!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- He bought a box of chocolate for her in the Hohestrasse and then walked
- with it irresolutely, tempted to throw it into the Rhine, or to give it to
- a passing Tommy. Half-an-hour later he presented it to little Elizabeth,
- who received it with a cry of delight, and, jumping on to his knee, kissed
- him effusively on both cheeks. Young Harding adored children, but felt as
- guilty at these German kisses as though he had betrayed his country and
- his faith.
- </p>
- <p>
- One thing which acted in favour of the Germans was the lack of manners
- displayed by some young English officers in the hotels, restaurants, and
- shops. In all armies there are cads, and ours was not without them, though
- they were rare. The conditions of our military occupation with absolute
- authority over the civilian people provided a unique opportunity for the
- caddish instincts of “half-baked” youth. They came swaggering into Cologne
- determined to “put it across the Hun” and “to stand no nonsense.” So they
- bullied frightened waiters, rapped their sticks on shop-counters, insulted
- German shop-girls, and talked loudly about “Hunnish behaviour” in
- restaurants where many Germans could hear and understand.
- </p>
- <p>
- Harding, Fortune and I were in the Domhof Hotel when one such scene
- occurred. A group of noisy subalterns were disputing the cost of their
- meal and refusing to pay for the wine.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You stole all the wine in Lille,” shouted one lieutenant of ours. “I’m
- damned if I’ll pay for wine in Cologne.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I stole no wine in Lille, sir,” said the waiter politely. “I was never
- there.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t you insult English officers,” said one of the other subalterns. “We
- are here to tread on your necks.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Fortune looked at me and raised his eye-brows.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It isn’t a good imitation,” he said. “If they want to play the game of
- frightfulness, they really ought to do better than that. They don’t even
- make the right kind of face.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Harding spoke bitterly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Cads!... Cads!... Somebody ought to put them under arrest.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It doesn’t really impress the Germans,” said Fortune. “They know it’s
- only make-believe. You see, the foolish boys are paying their bill. Now,
- if I, or Blear-eyed Bill, were to do the Junker stunt, we should at least
- look the real ogres.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He frowned horribly, puffed out his cheeks, and growled and grumbled with
- an air of senile ferocity—to the great delight of a young German
- waiter watching him from a corner of the room, and already aware that
- Fortune was a humorist.
- </p>
- <p>
- The few cads among us caused a reaction in the minds of all men of good
- manners, so that they took the part of the Germans. Even various
- regulations and restrictions ordered by the military governor during the
- first few months of our occupation were resented more by British officers
- and men than by the Germans themselves. The opera was closed, and British
- officers said, “What preposterous nonsense! How are the poor devils going
- to earn their living, and how are we going to amuse ourselves?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The wine-concerts and restaurants were ordered to shut down at ten
- o’clock, and again the British Army of Occupation “groused” exceedingly
- and said, “We thought this war had been fought for liberty. Why all this
- petty tyranny?” Presently these places were allowed to stay open till
- eleven, and all the way down the Hohestrasse, as eleven o’clock struck,
- one saw groups of British officers and men, and French and American
- officers, pouring out of a <i>Wein-stube, Kunstler Conzert or Bier-halle</i>,
- with farewell greetings or promises of further rendezvous with laughing
- German girls, who seemed to learn English by magic.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Disgraceful!” said young Harding, who was a married man with a pretty
- wife in England for whom he yearned with a home-sickness which he revealed
- to me boyishly when we became closer friends in this German city.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not disgraceful,” said the little American doctor, who had joined us in
- Cologne, “but only the fulfilment of nature’s law, which makes man desire
- woman. Allah is great!... But juxtaposition is greater.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Dr. Small was friends with all of us, and there was not one among our
- crowd who had not an affection and admiration for this little man whose
- honesty was transparent, and whose vital nervous energy was like a fresh
- wind to any company in which he found himself. It was Wickham Brand,
- however, who had captured the doctor’s heart most of all, and I think I
- was his “second best.” Anyhow, it was to me that he revealed his opinion
- of Brand, and some of his most intimate thoughts.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wickham has the quality of greatness,” he said. “I don’t mean to say he’s
- great now. Not at all. I think he’s fumbling and groping, not sure of
- himself, afraid of his best instincts, thinking his worst may be right.
- But one day he will straighten all that out and have a call as loud as a
- trumpet. What I like is his moodiness and bad temper.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Queer taste, doctor!” I remarked. “When old Brand is in the sulks there’s
- nothing doing with him. He’s like a bear with a sore ear.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sure!” said Dr. Small. “That’s exactly it. He is biting his own sore ear.
- I guess with him, though, it’s a sore heart. He keeps moping and fretting
- and won’t let his wounds heal. That’s what makes him different from most
- others, especially you English. You go through frightful experiences and
- then forget them and say, ‘Funny old world, young fellah! Come and have a
- drink.’ You see civilisation rocking like a boat in a storm, but you say,
- in your English way, ‘Why worry?’... Wickham worries. He wants to put
- things right, and make the world safer for the next crowd. He thinks of
- the boys who will have to fight in the next war—wants to save them
- from his agonies.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, he’s frightfully sensitive underneath his mask of ruggedness,” I
- said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And romantic,” said the doctor.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Romantic?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, yes. That girl, Eileen O’Connor, churned up his heart all right.
- Didn’t you see the worship in his eyes? It made me feel good.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I laughed at the little doctor, and accused him of romanticism.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Anyhow,” I said, more seriously. “Eileen O’Connor is not without romance
- herself, and I don’t know what she wrote in that letter to Franz von
- Kreuzenach, but I suspect she re-opened an episode which had best be
- closed.... As for Brand, I think he’s asking for trouble of the same kind.
- If he sees much of that girl Elsa I won’t answer for him. She’s amazingly
- pretty, and full of charm from what Brand tells me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I guess he’ll be a darned fool if he fixes up with that girl,” growled
- the doctor.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re inconsistent,” I said. “Are you shocked that Wickham Brand should
- fall in love with a German girl?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not at all, sonny,” said Dr. Small. “As a biologist I know you can’t
- interfere with natural selection, and a pretty girl is an alluring
- creature, whether she speaks German or Icelandic. But this girl, Elsa von
- Kreuzenach, is not up to a high standard of eugenics.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was amused by the doctor’s scientific disapproval.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What’s wrong with her?” I asked. “And when did you meet her?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sonny,” said the doctor, “what do you think I’ve been doing all these
- weeks in Cologne? Drinking coffee at the Domhof Hotel with the A.P.M. and
- his soldier-policemen? Watching the dancing-girls every evening in
- wine-rooms like this?”
- </p>
- <p>
- We sat in a <i>Wein-stube</i> as we talked, for the sake of light and a
- little music. It was typical of a score of others in Cologne, with settees
- of oak divided from each other in “cosy corners” hung with draperies of
- green and red silk; and little tables to which waiters brought relays of
- Rhine wines in tall thin bottles for the thirstiness of German civilians
- and British officers. At one end of the room was a small stage, and an
- orchestra composed of a pianist who seemed to be suffering from a mild
- form of shell-shock (judging from a convulsive twitch), a young
- German-Jew, who played the fiddle squeakily, and a thin, sad-faced girl
- behind a ‘cello. Every now and then a bald-headed man in evening clothes
- mounted the stage and begged the attention of the company for a dance by
- the well-known artist Fraulein So-and-so. From behind a curtain near the
- wine-bar came a dancing-girl, in the usual ballet dress and the usual
- fixed and senseless smile, who proceeded to perform Pavlova effects on a
- stage two yards square, while the young Jew fiddler flattened himself
- against the side curtain with a restricted use of his bow, and the pianist
- with the shell-shock lurched sideways as he played to avoid her floppy
- skirts, and the girl behind the ‘cello drew deep chords with a look of
- misery.
- </p>
- <p>
- “These are pretty dull spots,” I said to the little doctor, “but where
- have you been spending your time? And when did you meet Elsa von
- Kreuzenach?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Dr. Small told me that he had been seeking knowledge in the only place
- where he could study social health and social disease—hospitals,
- work-shops, babies’ <i>crèches</i>, slum tenements. He was scornful of
- English officers and correspondents who summed up the social state of
- Germany after a stroll down the Hohestrasse, a gorge of <i>ersatz</i>
- pastry (“Filth” he said) in the tea-shops, and a dinner of four courses in
- a big hotel on smuggled food at fantastic prices.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You might as well judge Germany by the guzzling swine in this place as
- England by a party of profiteers at Brighton. The poor middle-classes and
- the labourers stay indoors after their day’s job and do not exhibit their
- misery in the public ways.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Real misery?” I asked. “Hunger?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Dr. Small glowered at me through his goggles.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come and see. Come and see the mothers who have no milk for their babes,
- and the babes who are bulbousheaded, with rickets. Come and see the
- tenement lodgings where working families sit round cabbage soup as their
- chief meal, with bread that ties their entrails into knots but gives ‘em a
- sense of fulness not enjoyed by those who have no bread. Man, it’s awful.
- It tears at one’s heart. But you needn’t go into the slums to find hunger—four
- years of under-nourishment which has weakened growing girls so that they
- swoon at their work or fall asleep through weakness in the tram cars. In
- many of the big houses where life looks so comfortable, from which women
- come out in furs, looking so rich, these German people have not enough to
- eat, and what they eat is manufactured in the chemist’s shop and the <i>ersatz</i>
- factories. I found that out from that girl, Elsa von Kreuzenach.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She is a nurse in a babies’ <i>crèche</i>, poor child. Showed me round
- with a mother-look in her eyes, while all the scrofulous kiddies cried, ‘<i>Guten
- Tag! Guten Tag!</i>’ like the quacking of ducks. ‘After to-morrow,’ she
- said, ‘there will be no more milk for them. What can we do for them then,
- doctor? They will wither and die.’ Those were her words, and I saw her
- sadness. I saw something else presently. I saw her sway a little, and she
- fell like that girl Marthe on the doorstep at Lille. ‘For the love of
- Mike!’ I said, and when she pulled round bullied her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “‘What did you have for breakfast?’ I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “‘<i>Ersatz</i> coffee,’ she said, laughing, ‘and a bit of bread. A good
- <i>fruhstuck</i>, doctor.’
- </p>
- <p>
- “‘Good be hanged!’ I said. ‘What did you have for lunch?’
- </p>
- <p>
- “‘Cabbage soup and <i>ein kleines brodchen</i>,’ she says. ‘After four
- years one gets used to it.’
- </p>
- <p>
- “‘What will you have for dinner?’ said I, not liking the look of things.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She laughed, as though she saw a funny joke.
- </p>
- <p>
- “‘Cabbage soup and turnips,’ she said, ‘and a regular feast.’
- </p>
- <p>
- “‘I thought your father was a Baron,’ I remarked in my sarcastic way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “‘That’s true,’ she says, ‘and an honest man he is, and therefore poor. It
- is only the profiteers who feed well in Germany. All through the war they
- waxed fat on the flesh-and-blood of the men who fought and died. Now they
- steal the food of the poor by bribing the peasants to sell their produce
- at any price.’ <i>Schleichandlung</i> is the word she used. That means
- ‘smuggling.’ It also means hell’s torture, I hope, for those who do it....
- So there you are. If Wickham Brand marries Elsa von Kreuze-nach, he
- marries a girl whose health has been undermined by four years’
- semi-starvation. What do you think their children will be? Rickety,
- tuberculous, undersized, weak-framed. Wickham Brand deserves better luck
- than that, sonny.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I roared with laughter at the little doctor, and told him he was looking
- too far ahead, as far as Brand and the German girl were concerned. This
- made him angry, in his humorous way, and he told me that those who don’t
- look ahead fail to see the trouble under their nose until they fall over
- it.
- </p>
- <p>
- We left the <i>Wein-stube</i> through a fog of smoke. Another dancing girl
- was on the tiny stage, waving her arms and legs. An English officer,
- slightly fuddled, was writing a cheque for his bill and persuading the
- German manager to accept it. Two young French officers were staring at the
- dancing-girl with hostile eyes. Five young Germans were noisy round six
- tall bottles of <i>Liebfraumilch</i>. The doctor and I walked down to the
- bank of the Rhine below the Hohenzollern bridge. Our sentries were there,
- guarding heavy guns which thrust their snouts up from tarpaulin covers.
- </p>
- <p>
- Two German women passed, with dragging footsteps, and one said wearily, “<i>Ach,
- lieber Gott!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- The doctor was silent for some time after his long monologue. He stared
- across the Rhine, on whose black surface lights glimmered with a milky
- radiance. Presently he spoke again, and I remember his words, which were,
- in a way, prophetic.
- </p>
- <p>
- “These German people are broken. They <i>had</i> to be broken. They are
- punished. They <i>had</i> to be punished. Because they obeyed the call of
- their leaders, which was to evil, their power has been overthrown and
- their race made weak. You and I, an Englishman, an American, stand here,
- by right of victory, overlooking this river which has flowed through two
- thousand years of German history. It has seen the building-up of the
- German people, their industry, their genius, their racial consciousness.
- It has been in the rhythm of their poetry and has made the melody of their
- songs. On its banks lived the little people of German fairy-tales, and the
- heroes of their legends. Now there are English guns ready to fire across
- the water and English, French and American soldiers pacing this road along
- the Rhine, as victors and guards of victory. What hurt to the pride of
- this people! What a downfall! We must be glad of that because the German
- challenge to the world was not to be endured by free peoples. That is
- true, and nothing can ever alter its truth or make it seem false. I stand
- firm by that faith. But I see also, what before I did not see, that many
- of these Germans were but slaves of a system which they could not change,
- and spellbound by old traditions, old watch-words, belonging to the soul
- of their race, so that when they were spoken they had to offer their lives
- in sacrifice. High powers above them arranged their destiny, and the
- manner and measure of their sacrifice, and they had no voice, or strength,
- or knowledge, to protest—these German peasants, these boys who
- fought, these women and children who suffered and starved. Now it is they,
- the ignorant and the innocent, who must go on suffering, paying in peace
- for what their rulers did in war. Men will say that is the Justice of God.
- I can see no loving God’s work in the starvation of babes, nor in the
- weakening of women so that mothers have no milk. I see only the cruelty of
- men. It is certain now that, having won the war, we must be merciful in
- peace. We must relieve the blockade, which is still starving these people.
- We must not go out for vengeance but rather to rescue. For this war has
- involved the civilian populations of Europe and is not limited to armies.
- A treaty of peace will be with Famine and Plague rather than with defeated
- generals and humiliated diplomats. If we make a military peace, without
- regard to the agonies of peoples, there will be a tragic price to pay by
- victors as well as by vanquished. For the victors are weak too. Their
- strength was nearly spent. They—except my people—were panting
- to the last gasp when their enemy fell at last. They need a peace of
- reconciliation for their own sakes, because no new frontiers may save them
- from sharing the ruin of those they destroy, nor the disease of those they
- starve. America alone comes out of the war strong and rich. For that
- reason we have the power to shape the destiny of the human race, and to
- heal, as far as may be, the wounds of the world. It is our chance in
- history. The most supreme chance that any race has had since the beginning
- of the world. All nations are looking to President Wilson to help them out
- of the abyss and to make a peace which shall lead the people out of the
- dark jungle of Europe. My God!... If Wilson will be noble and wise and
- strong, he may alter the face of the world, and win such victory as no
- mortal leader ever gained. If not—if not—there will be anguish
- unspeakable, and a worse darkness, and a welter of anarchy out of whose
- madness new wars will be bred, until civilisation drops back to savagery,
- or disappears. <i>I am afraid!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- He spoke those last words with a terrible thrill in his rather high, harsh
- voice, and I, too, standing there in the darkness, by the Rhine, had a
- sense of mighty powers at work with the destiny of many peoples, and of
- risks and chances and hatreds and stupidities thwarting the purpose of
- noble minds and humble hearts after this four years’ massacre.... And I
- was afraid.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- VI
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>ymptoms of
- restless impatience which had appeared almost as soon as the signing of
- the Armistice began to grow with intensity among all soldiers who had been
- long in the zone of war. Their patience, so enduring through the bad
- years, broke at last. They wanted to go home, desperately. They wanted to
- get back to civil life, in civil clothes. With the Armistice all meaning
- had gone out of their khaki uniform, out of military discipline, out of
- distinctions of rank, and out of the whole system of their soldiers’ life.
- They had done the dirty job, they had faced all its risks, and they had
- gained what glory there might be in human courage. Now they desired to get
- back to their own people, and their own places, and the old ways of life
- and liberty.
- </p>
- <p>
- They remembered the terms of their service—these amateurs who had
- answered the call in early days. “For the duration of the war.” Well, the
- war was finished. There was to be no more fighting—and the wife
- wanted her man, and the mother her son. “Demobilisation” became the word
- of hope, and many men were sullen at the delays which kept them in exile
- and in servitude. The men sent deputations to their officers. The officers
- pulled wires for themselves which tinkled little bells as far away as the
- War Office, Whitehall, if they had a strong enough pull. One by one,
- friends of mine slipped away after a word of farewell and a cheerful grin.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Demobbed!... Back to civvies!... Home!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Harding was one of those who agonised for civil liberty and release from
- military restraint, and the reason of it lay in his pocket-book, where
- there was the photograph of a pretty girl—his wife.
- </p>
- <p>
- We had become good friends, and he confided to me many things about his
- state of mind with a simplicity and a sincerity which made me like him. I
- never met a man more English in all his characteristics, or more typical
- of the quality which belongs to our strength and our weakness. As a Harrow
- boy his manners were perfect, according to the English code—quiet,
- unemotional, easy, unobtrusively thoughtful of other people’s comfort in
- little things. According to the French code, he would have been considered
- cold, arrogant, conceited and stupid. Certainly he had that touch of
- arrogance which is in all Englishmen of the old tradition. All his
- education and environment had taught him to believe that English
- civilisation—especially in the hunting set—was perfect and
- supreme. He had a pity rather than contempt for those unlucky enough to be
- born Frenchmen, Italians, or of any other race. He was not stupid by
- nature—on the contrary, he had sound judgment on matters within his
- range of knowledge and a rapid grasp of detail, but his vision was shut in
- by those frontiers of thought which limit public-school life in England
- and certain sets at Oxford who do not break free, and do not wish to break
- free, from the conventional formula of “good form,” which regulates every
- movement of their brain as well as every action of their lives. It is in
- its way a noble formula, and makes for aristocracy. My country, right or
- wrong; loyalty to King and State; the divine right of the British race to
- rule uncivilised peoples for their own good; the undoubted fact that an
- English gentleman is the noblest work of God; the duties of “<i>noblesse
- oblige</i>,” in courage, in sacrifice, in good maimers, and in playing the
- game, whatever the game may be, in a sporting spirit.
- </p>
- <p>
- When I was in Harding’s company I knew that it was ridiculous to discuss
- any subject which lay beyond that formula. It was impossible to suggest
- that England had ever been guilty of the slightest injustice, a touch of
- greed, or a tinge of hypocrisy, or something less than wisdom.
- </p>
- <p>
- To him that was just traitor’s talk. A plea for the better understanding
- of Ireland, for a generous measure of “self-determination” would have
- roused him to a hot outburst of anger. The Irish to him were all
- treacherous, disloyal blackguards, and the only remedy of the Irish
- problem was, he thought, martial law and machine-gun demonstrations, stern
- and, if need be, terrible. I did not argue with him, or chaff him as some
- of his comrades did, and keeping within the prescribed limits of
- conversation set by his code, we got on together admirably. Once only in
- those days on the Rhine did Harding show an emotion which would have been
- condemned by his code. It was due, no doubt, to that nervous fever which
- made some wag change the word “demobilisation” into “demoralisation.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He had a room in the Domhof Hotel, and invited me to drink a whiskey with
- him there one evening. When I sat on the edge of the bed while he
- dispensed the drink, I noticed on his dressing-table a large photograph of
- a girl in evening dress—a wonderfully pretty girl, I thought.
- </p>
- <p>
- He caught my glance, and after a moment’s hesitation and a visible blush,
- said: “My wife.... We were married before I came out, two years ago
- exactly.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He put his hand into the breast-pocket of his tunic and pulling out a
- pocket-book, opened it with a snap, and showed me another photograph.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s a better one of her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I congratulated him, but without listening to my words he asked me rather
- awkwardly whether I could pull any strings for him to get “demobbed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s all a question of ‘pull,’” he said, “and I’m not good at that kind
- of thing. But I want to get home.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Everybody does,” I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I know, and of course I want to play the game, and all that. But the
- fact is, my wife—she’s only a kid, you know—is rather hipped
- with my long absence. She’s been trying to keep herself merry and bright,
- and all that, with the usual kind of war-work. You know—charity
- bazaars, fancy-dress balls for the wounded, Red Cross work, and all that.
- Very plucky, too. But the fact is, some of her letters lately have been
- rather—well—rather below par—you know—rather
- chippy and all that. The fact is, old man, she’s been too much alone, and
- anything you can do in the way of a pull at the War Office——”
- </p>
- <p>
- I told him bluntly that I had as much influence at the War Office as the
- charwoman in Room M.I. 8, or any other old room—not so much—and
- he was damped, and apologised for troubling me. However, I promised to
- write to the one High Bird with whom I had a slight acquaintance, and this
- cheered him up considerably.
- </p>
- <p>
- I stayed chatting for some time—the usual small-talk—and it
- was only when I said good-night that he broached another subject which
- interested me a good deal.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m getting a bit worried about Wickham Brand,” he remarked in a casual
- kind of way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How’s that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I gathered from Harding’s vague, disjointed sentences that Brand was
- falling into the clutches of a German hussy. He had seen them together at
- the Opera—they had met as if by accident—and one evening he
- had seen them together down by the Rhine outside Cologne. He was bound to
- admit the girl was remarkably good-looking, and that made her all the more
- dangerous. He hated to mention this, as it seemed like scandal-mongering
- about “one of the best,” but he was frightfully disturbed by the thought
- that Brand, of all men, should fall a victim to the wiles of a “lady Hun.”
- He knew Brand’s people at home—Sir Amyas Brand, the Member of
- Parliament, and his mother, who was a daughter of the Harringtons.
- </p>
- <p>
- They would be enormously “hipped” if Wickham were to do anything foolish.
- It was only because he knew that I was Wickham’s best chum that he told me
- these things, in the strictest confidence. A word of warning from me might
- save old Brand from getting into a horrible mess—“and all that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I pooh-poohed Harding’s fears, but when I left him to go to my own billet
- I pondered over his words, and knew that there was truth in them.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was no doubt to my mind that Brand was in love with Elsa von
- Kreuzenach. At least, he was going through some queer emotional phase
- connected with her entry into his life, and he was not happy about it,
- though it excited him. The very day after Harding spoke to me on the
- subject I was, involuntarily, a spy upon Brand and Fraülein Elsa on a
- journey when we were fellow-travellers, though they were utterly unaware
- of my presence. It was in one of the long electric trams which go without
- a stop from Cologne to Bonn. I did not see Brand until I had taken my seat
- in the small first-class smoking car. Several middle-class Germans were
- there, and I was wedged between two of them in a corner. Brand and a girl,
- whom I guessed to be Elsa von Kreuzenach, were on the opposite seat, but
- farthest away from me and screened a little by a German lady with a large
- feathered hat. If Brand had looked round the compartment he would have
- seen me at once, and I waited to nod to him, but never once did he glance
- my way, but turned slightly sideways towards the girl, so that I only saw
- his profile. Her face was, in the same way, turned a little to him, and I
- could see every shade of expression which revealed her moods as she
- talked, and the varying light in her eyes. She was certainly a pretty
- thing, exquisite, even, in delicacy of colour and fineness of feature,
- with that “spun-gold” hair of hers; though I thought (remembering Dr.
- Small’s words) that she had a worn and fragile look which robbed her of
- the final touch of beauty. For some time they exchanged only a few words
- now and then, which I could not hear, and I was reading a book when I
- heard Brand say in his clear, rather harsh voice: “Will your people be
- anxious about you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl answered in a low voice. I glanced up and saw that she was
- smiling, not at Brand, but at the countryside which seemed to travel past
- us as the tram went on its way. It was the smile of a girl to whom life
- meant something good just then.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand spoke again.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should hate to let your mother think that I have been disloyal to her
- confidence. Don’t let this friendship of ours be spoilt by secrecy. I am
- not afraid of it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He laughed in a way that was strange to me. There was a note of joy in it.
- It was a boy’s laugh, and Brand had gone beyond boyhood in the war. I saw
- one or two of the Germans look up at him curiously, and then stare at the
- girl, not in a friendly way. She was unconscious of their gaze, though a
- wave of colour swept her face. For a second she laid her hand on Brand’s
- brown fist, and it was a quick caress.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Our friendship is good!” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- She spoke these words very softly, in almost a whisper, but I heard them
- in spite of the rattle of the tram-car and the gutteral argument of two
- Germans next to me. Those were the only words I heard her say on that
- journey to Bonn, and after that Brand talked very little, and then only
- commonplace remarks about the time and the scenery. But what I had heard
- was revealing, and I was disturbed, for Brand’s sake.
- </p>
- <p>
- His eyes met mine as I passed out of the car, but they were unseeing eyes.
- He stared straight through me to some vision beyond. He gave his hand to
- Elsa von Kreuzenach, and they walked slowly up from the station and then
- went inside the cathedral. I had business in Bonn with officers at our
- headquarters in the hotel “Der Goldene Stern.” Afterwards I had lunch with
- them, and then, with one, went to Beethoven’s house—a little shrine
- in which the spirit of the master still lives, with his old instruments,
- his manuscript sheets of music, and many relics of his life and work.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was at about four o’clock in the afternoon that I saw Brand and the
- German girl again. There was a beautiful dusk in the gardens beyond the
- University, with a ruddy glow through the trees when the sun went down,
- and then a purple twilight. Some German boys were playing leapfrog there,
- watched by British soldiers, and townsfolk passed on their way home. I
- strolled the length of the gardens, and at the end which is near the old
- front of the University buildings I saw Brand and Elsa von Kreuzenach
- together on a wooden seat. It was almost dark where they sat under the
- trees, but I knew Brand by his figure and by the tilt of his field-cap,
- and the girl by the white fur round her neck. They were holding hands like
- lovers in a London park, and when I passed them I heard Brand speak.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose this was meant to be. Fate leads us...”
- </p>
- <p>
- When I went back to Cologne by tram that evening I wondered whether Brand
- would confide his secret to me. We had been so much together during the
- last phase of the war and had talked so much in intimate friendship that I
- guessed he would come one day and let me know this new adventure of his
- soul.
- </p>
- <p>
- Several weeks passed and he said no word of this,-although we went for
- walks together and sat smoking sometimes in <i>cafés</i> after dinner. It
- had always been his habit to drop into deep silences, and now they lasted
- longer than before. Now and then, however, he would be talkative,
- argumentative, and passionate. At times there was a new light in his eyes,
- as though lit by some inward fire. And he would smile unconsciously as he
- blew out clouds of smoke, but more often he looked worried, nervous, and
- irritable, as though passing through some new mental crisis.
- </p>
- <p>
- He spoke a good deal about German psychology and the German point of view,
- illustrating his remarks sometimes by references to conversations with
- Franz von Kreuzenach, with whom he often talked. He had come to the
- conclusion that it was quite hopeless to convince even the broadest-minded
- Germans that they were guilty of the war. They admitted freely enough that
- their military party had used the Serbian assassination and Austrian fury
- as the fuel for starting the blaze in Europe. Even then they believed that
- the Chancellor and the civil Ministry of State had struggled for peace
- until the Russian movements of troops put the military party into the
- saddle so that they might ride to hell. But in any case it was, Brand
- said, an unalterable conviction of most Germans that sooner or later the
- war had been bound to come, as they were surrounded by a ring of enemies
- conspiring to thwart their free development and to overthrow their power.
- They attacked first as a means of self-defence. It was an article of faith
- with them that they had fought a defensive warfare from the start.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is sheer lunacy!” I said. Brand laughed, and agreed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Idiotic in the face of plain facts, but that only shows how strong is the
- belief of people in their own righteousness. I suppose even now most
- English people think the Boer War was just and holy. Certainly at the time
- we stoned all who thought otherwise. Yet the verdict of the whole world
- was against us. They regarded that war as the brutal aggression of a great
- power upon a small and heroic people.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But surely,” I said, “a man like Franz von Kreu-zenach admits the
- brutality of Germany in Belgium—the shooting of. priests and
- civilians—the forced labour of girls—the smashing of machinery—and
- all the rest of it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand said that Franz von Kreuzenach deplored the “severity” of German
- acts, but blamed the code of war which justified such acts. It was not his
- view that Germans had behaved with exceptional brutality, but that war
- itself is a brutal way of argument. “We must abolish war,” he says, “not
- pretend to make it kind.” As far as that goes, I agree with him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How about poison gas, the <i>Lusitania</i>, the sinking of hospital
- ships, submarine warfare?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand shrugged his shoulders.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The German answer is always the same. War is war, and they were hard
- pressed by our superiority in material, man-power and sea-power. We were
- starving them to death with our blockade. They saw their children dying
- and diseased, their old people carried to the grave, their men weakened.
- They had to break through somehow, anyhow, to save their race. I don’t
- think we should have stopped at much if England had been ringed round with
- enemy ships and the kids were starving in Mayfair and Maida Vale, and
- every town and hamlet.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He laughed, with a shrug of his shoulders, as he lit his pipe for about
- the fifteenth time.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Argument is no good,” he said. “I’ve argued into the early hours of the
- morning with that fellow Franz von Kreuzenach, who is a fine fellow and
- the whitest man I’ve met in Germany. Nothing will convince him that his
- people were, more guilty than ourselves. Perhaps he’s right. History will
- decide. Now we must start afresh—wipe out the black past, confess
- that though the Germans started the war we were all possessed by the devil—and
- exorcise ourselves. I believe the German people are ready to turn over a
- new leaf and start a fresh chapter of history if we will help them and
- give them a chance. They have an immense hope that England and America
- will not push them over into the bottomless abyss, now that they have
- fulfilled Wilson’s demand to get rid of their old rulers and fall into
- line with the world’s democracy. If that hope fails them they will fall
- back to the old philosophy of hatred, with vengeance as its goal—and
- the damned thing will happen again in fifteen—twenty—thirty
- years.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand made one remark that evening which referred, I fancy, to his love
- affair with Elsa von Kreuzenach.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There is so much folly in the crowd that one despairs of reaching a
- higher stage of civilisation. I am falling back on individualism. The
- individual must follow his own ideals, strive for his own happiness, find
- friendship and a little love where he can, and stand apart from world
- problems, racial rivalries, international prejudices, as far as he may
- without being drawn into the vortex. Nothing that he can do will alter
- human destiny, or the forces of evolution, or the cycles of history, which
- make all striving futile. Let him get out of the rain and comfort himself
- with any human warmth he can find. Two souls in contact are company
- enough.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sometimes,” I said, “mob passion tears them asunder and protests against
- their union with stones or outlaw judgment. Taboo will exist for ever in
- human society, and it is devilish unpleasant for individuals who violate
- the rules.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It needs courage,” said my friend. “The risk is sometimes worth taking.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- VII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>rand decided to
- take the risk, and though he asked my advice beforehand, as a matter of
- friendship, I knew my warnings were useless. It was about a month after
- that train journey to Bonn that he came into my room at the Domhof,
- looking rather pale but with a kind of glitter in his eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I may as well tell you,” he said abruptly, “that I am going to marry a
- German girl.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Elsa von Kreuzenach?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes. How did you know?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Just a guess.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s against her parents’ wish,” he said, “to say nothing of my parents,
- who think I have gone mad. Elsa and I will have to play a lone hand.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “‘Lone’ is not the word,” I suggested. “You are breaking that taboo we
- talked of. You will be shunned by every friend you have in the world—except
- one or two queer people like myself”—(here he said, “Thanks,” and
- grinned rather gratefully)—“and both you and she will be pariahs in
- England, Germany, and anywhere on the wide earth where there are English,
- Germans, French, Americans and others who fought the war. I suppose you
- know that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perfectly,” he answered gravely.
- </p>
- <p>
- I told him that I was amazed that he of all men should fall in love with a
- German girl—he who had seen all the abomination of the war, and had
- come out to it with a flaming idealism. To that he answered savagely:
- “Flaming idealism be blowed! I came out with blood-lust in my heart, and
- having killed until I was sick of killing—German boys who popped
- their heads over the parapet—I saw that the whole scheme of things
- was wrong, and that the grey men had no more power of escape than the
- brown men. We had to go on killing each other because we were both under
- the same law, thrust upon us by those directing the infernal machinery of
- world-politics. But that’s not the point, and it’s old and stale, anyhow.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The point is,” I said, “that you will be looked upon as a traitor by many
- of your best pals, that you will smash your father and mother, and that
- this girl Elsa and you will be profoundly miserable.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We shall be enormously and immensely happy,” he answered, “and that
- outweighs everything.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He told me that he needed happiness. For more than four years he had
- suffered agony of mind in the filth and mud of war. He craved for beauty,
- and Elsa fulfilled his ideal. He had been a lonely devil, and Elsa had
- offered him the only cure for the worst disease in life, intimate and
- eternal love.
- </p>
- <p>
- Something prompted me to say words which I deeply regretted as soon as
- they were spoken. It was the utterance of a subconscious thought.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There is a girl, not German, who might have cured your loneliness. You
- and Eileen O’Connor would have made good mates.”
- </p>
- <p>
- For some reason he was hit rather hard by that remark. He became
- exceedingly pale, and for a moment or two did not answer me. I thought he
- would blurt out some angry reply, damning my impudence, but when he spoke
- it was in a grave, gentle way which seemed to me more puzzling.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Eileen would make a fine wife for any man she liked. But she’s above most
- of us.”
- </p>
- <p>
- We stayed up talking nearly all that night, and Wickham Brand described
- one scene within his recent experiences which must have been sensational.
- It was when he announced to the family von Kreuzenach that he loved Elsa
- and desired her hand in marriage.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand’s sense of humour came back to him when he told me of this episode,
- and he laughed now at the frightfulness of his ordeal. It was he who had
- insisted upon announcing the news to Elsa’s parents, to avoid any charge
- of dishonesty. Elsa herself was in favour of hiding their love until peace
- was declared, when, perhaps, the passionate hostility of her parents to
- England might be abated. For Brand’s sake, also, she thought it would be
- better. But she yielded to his argument that secrecy might spoil the
- beauty of their friendship, and give it an ugly taint.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We’ll go through with it straight from the start,” he had cried.
- </p>
- <p>
- Elsa’s answer was quick and glad.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have no fear now of anything in the world except the loss of you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Franz von Kreuzenach was the first to know, and Elsa told him. He seemed
- stunned with surprise, and then immensely glad, as he took his sister in
- his arms and kissed her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your marriage with an English officer,” he said, “will be the symbol of
- reconciliation between England and Germany.”
- </p>
- <p>
- After that he remembered his father and mother, and was a coward at the
- thought of their hostility. The idea of telling his father, as Elsa asked
- him to do, put him into what Brand called “the bluest of blue funk.” He
- had the German reverence for parental authority, and though he went as far
- as the door-handle of his father’s study he retreated, and said in a
- boyish way, speaking in English, as usual, with Brand and his sister: “I
- haven’t the pluck! I would rather face shell-fire than my father’s wrath.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was Brand who “went over the top.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He made his announcement formally, in the drawingroom after dinner, in the
- curiously casual way which proved him a true Englishman. He cleared his
- throat (he told me, grinning at his own mannerism), and during a gap in
- the conversation said to the General: “By the way, sir, I have something
- rather special to mention to-night.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Bitte?</i>” said the old General, with his hard, deliberate courtesy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your daughter and I,” said Brand, “wish to be married as soon as
- possible. I have the honour to ask your consent.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand told me of the awful silence which followed his statement. It seemed
- interminable. Franz von Kreuze-nach, who was present, was as white as
- though he had been condemned to death by court-martial. Elsa was
- speechless, but came over to Brand’s side and held his hand. Her mother
- had the appearance of a lady startled by the sudden appearance of a
- poisonous snake. The General sat back in his chair, grasping its arms and
- gasping for breath as though Brand had hit him in the stomach.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was the mother who spoke first, and ignoring Brand completely, she
- addressed her daughter harshly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are mad, Elsa!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, mother,” said the girl. “I am mad with joy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “This English officer insults us intolerably,” said the mother, still
- ignoring Brand by any glance. “We were forced to receive him into our
- house. At least he might have behaved with decency and respect.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mother,” said Elsa, “this gentleman has given me the great honour of his
- love.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “To accept it,” said the lady, “would be a dishonour so dreadful for a
- good German girl that I refuse to believe it possible.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is true, mother, and I am wonderfully happy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Elsa went over to her mother, sinking down on her knees, and kissing the
- lady’s hand. But Frau von Kreu-zenach withdrew her hand quickly, and then
- rose from her chair and stood behind her husband, with one hand on his
- shoulder.
- </p>
- <p>
- The old man had found his means of speech at last.
- </p>
- <p>
- He spoke in a low, stern voice to his daughter. Brand was ignored by him
- as by the mother. They did not recognise his presence.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My daughter,” he said (if Brand remembered his words) “the German people
- have been brought to ruin and humiliated by one nation in Europe who was
- jealous of our power and genius. That nation was England, our treacherous,
- hypocritical enemy. Without England, France would have been smashed.
- Without England, our Emperor would have prevailed over all his enemies.
- Without the English blockade we should not have been weakened by hunger,
- deprived of the raw material necessary to victory, starved so that our
- children died and our will to win was sapped. They were English soldiers
- who killed my dear son Heinrich, and your brother. The flower of German
- manhood was slain by the English in Flanders and on the Somme.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The General spoke very quietly, with an intensity of effort to be calm.
- But suddenly his voice rose, said Brand, to a kind of harsh shout.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Any German girl who permits herself to love an Englishman is a traitorous
- hussy. I would have her stripped and flogged. The curse of our old German
- God shall follow her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Another silence, in which there was no sound except the noisy breathing of
- the old man, was broken by the hard voice of Frau von Kreuzenach.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your father has spoken, Elsa. There is no more to say.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Elsa had become very pale, but she was smiling at Brand, he told me, and
- still held his hand in a tight grip.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There is something more to say, my dear father and mother,” she answered.
- “It is that I love Captain Brand, and that I will follow him anywhere in
- the world if he will take me. For love is stronger than hate, and above
- all nationality.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was Franz von Kreuzenach who spoke now. He was standing at the table,
- facing his father, and it was to his father that he talked. He said that
- Elsa was right about love. In spite of the war, the souls of men and women
- were not separated by racial boundaries. When two souls touched and
- mingled, no hatred of peoples, no patriotic passion, could intervene.
- Elsa’s love for an English gentleman was but a symbol of the peace that
- was coming, when all countries would be united in a Society of Nations
- with equal rights and equal duties, and a common brotherhood. They saw in
- the streets of Cologne that there was no natural, inevitable hatred
- between English and Germans. The Army of Occupation had proved itself to
- be an instrument of goodwill between those who had tried to kill each
- other during four years of slaughter. Captain Brand had behaved with the
- most charming courtesy and chivalry, according to the traditions of an
- English gentleman, and he, Franz von Kreuzenach, was glad and honoured
- because this officer desired to take Elsa for his wife. Their marriage
- would be a consecration of the new peace.
- </p>
- <p>
- The father listened to him silently, except for that hard noise of
- breathing. When his son uttered those last words, the old man leaned
- forward in his chair, and his eyes glittered.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Get out of my house, <i>Schweinhund!</i> Do not come near me again, or I
- will denounce you as a traitor and shoot you like a dog.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He turned to Elsa with outstretched hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Go up to bed, girl. If you were younger I would flog you with my
- hunting-whip.”
- </p>
- <p>
- For the first time he spoke to Brand, controlling his rage with a
- convulsive effort.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have not the power to evict you from the house. For the time being the
- German people of the Rhineland are under hostile orders. Perhaps you will
- find another billet more to your convenience, and more agreeable to
- myself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “To-night, sir,” said Brand, and he told me that he admired the old man’s
- self-control and his studied dignity.
- </p>
- <p>
- Elsa still clasped his hand, and before her family he kissed her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “With your leave, or without leave,” he said, “your daughter and I will be
- man and wife, for you have no right to stand between our love.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He bowed and left the room, and, in an hour, the house.
- </p>
- <p>
- Franz von Kreuzenach came into his room before he left, and wrung his
- hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I must go, too,” he said. “My father is very much enraged with me. It is
- the break between the young and the old—the new conflict, as we were
- saying one day.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He was near weeping, and Brand apologised for being the cause of so much
- trouble.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the hall Elsa came to Brand as the orderly carried out his bags.
- </p>
- <p>
- “To-morrow,” she said, “we will meet at Elizabeth von Detmold’s—my
- true friend.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her eyes were wet with tears, but she was smiling, and there was, said
- Brand, a fine courage shining in her face.
- </p>
- <p>
- She put her hands on Brand’s shoulders and kissed him, to the deep
- astonishment and embarrassment of the orderly, who stood by. It was from
- this man, Brock, that the news of Brand’s “entanglement” spread, through
- other orderlies, to officers of his mess, as he knew by the cold shoulder
- that some of them turned to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0029" id="link2H_4_0029"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- VIII.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> met Elsa and
- Franz von Kreuzenach at the house of Elizabeth von Detmold in the
- Hohenzollernring, which became a meeting-place for Brand and the girl to
- whom he was now betrothed. Dr. Small and I went round there to tea at
- Brand’s invitation, and I spent several evenings there owing to the
- friendship of Elizabeth von Detmold, who seemed to like my company. That
- lady was in many ways remarkable, and I am bound to say that in spite of
- my repugnance to many qualities of the German character I found her
- charming. The tragedy of the war had hit her with an almost particular
- malignancy. Married in 1914 to a young officer of the Prussian Guard, she
- was widowed at the first battle of Ypres. Her three brothers had been
- killed in 1915, ‘16 and ‘17. Both her parents had died during the war,
- owing to its accumulating horror. At twenty-six years of age she was left
- alone in her big house with hardly enough money for its upkeep, and not
- enough to supplement the rigid war rations which were barely sufficient
- for life. I suppose there were thousands of young women in Germany—hundreds
- of thousands—who had the same cause for sorrow (we do not realise
- how German families were massacred in that blood-bath of war, so that even
- French and British losses pale in tragedy before their piled dead), but
- there were few, I am sure, who faced their grief with such high courage
- and such unembittered charity. Like Elsa von Kreuzenach, she devoted her
- days to suffering childhood in the <i>crèches</i> and feeding-centres
- which she had helped to organise, and she spent many of her evenings in
- working-women’s clubs, and sometimes in working-men’s clubs, where she
- read and lectured to them on social problems. The war had made her an
- ardent pacifist, and, to some extent, a revolutionary of the Liebknecht
- school. She saw no hope for civilisation so long as the junker caste
- remained in Europe, and the philosophy of militarism, which she believed
- stood fast not only in Germany but in France and England, and other
- nations. She had a passionate belief, like many other German people at
- that time, in President Wilson and his League of Nations, and put all her
- hopes in the United States as the one power in the world who could make a
- peace of reconciliation and establish a new brotherhood of peoples. After
- that she looked to a social revolution throughout the world by which the
- working classes should obtain full control of their own destiny and
- labour.
- </p>
- <p>
- I found it strange to hear that patrician girl, for she was one of the
- aristocratic caste, with an elegance that came from long breeding,
- adopting the extreme views of revolutionary socialism, not as a pretty
- intellectual theory, but with a pasisonate courage that might lead her to
- prison or to death in the conflict between the old powers and the new.
- </p>
- <p>
- To Elsa von Kreuzenach she behaved in a protective and mothering way, and
- it seemed to me that “Brand’s girl,” as Dr. Small called her, was the
- spiritual child of this stronger and more vital character. Elsa, was, I
- fancy, timid of those political and pacifist ideas which Elizabeth von
- Detmold stated with such frank audacity. She cherished the spirit of the
- human charity which gave them their motive power, but shrank from the
- thought of the social strife and change which must precede them. Yet there
- was nothing doll-like in her character. There were moments when I saw her
- face illumined by a kind of mediaeval mysticism which was the light of a
- spirit revealed perhaps by the physical casket which held it, insecurely.
- Truly she was as pretty and delicate as a piece of Dresden china, but for
- Brand’s sake I did not like the fragile look which hinted at a quick
- fading of her flower-like beauty. Her adoration for Brand was, in my
- opinion, rather pitiful. It was very German, too, in its meek reverence,
- as of a mediaeval maid to knighthood. I prefer the way of French
- womanhood, convinced of intellectual equality with men, and with their
- abiding sense of humour; or the arrogance of the English girl, who makes
- her lover prove his mettle by quiet obedience. Elsa followed Brand with
- her eyes wherever he moved, touched his hard, tanned hand with little
- secret caresses, and whenever he spoke her eyes shone with gladness at the
- sound of his voice. I liked her better when she was talking to our little
- doctor or to myself, and, therefore, not absorbed in sentiment. At these
- times she was frank and vivacious, and, indeed, had an English way with
- her which no doubt she had learnt in her Brighton school.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand interested me intensely at these times. Sometimes I found myself
- doubting whether he was really so much in love with his German girl as he
- imagined himself to be. I noticed that he was embarrassed by Elsa’s public
- demonstrations of love—that way she had of touching his hand, and
- another trick of leaning her head against his shoulder. As a typical
- Englishman, in some parts of his brain at least, he shrank from exposing
- his affection. It seemed to me also that he was more interested in
- political and psychological problems than in the by-play of love’s glances
- and revealings. He argued long and deeply with Elizabeth von Detmold on
- the philosophy of Karl Marx, the anarchist movement in Berlin, and on the
- possibility of a Rhineland republic, which was then being advocated by a
- party in Cologne and Mainz whose watchword was “<i>Los von Berlin!</i>”
- and freedom from Prussian domination for the Rhine provinces. Even with
- Elsa he led the conversation to discussions about German mentality, the
- system of German education, and the possible terms of peace. Twice at
- least, when I was present, he differed with her rather bluntly—a
- little brutally, I thought—about the German administration of
- Belgium.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Our people did no more than was allowed by the necessities of war,” said
- Elsa. “It was stern and tragic, but not more barbarous than what other
- nations would have done.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was horrible, bloody, and unjustified,” said Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “All war,” said Elizabeth von Detmold, “is bloody and unjustified.
- Directly war is declared the moral law is abrogated. It is simply the
- reign of devildom. Why pretend otherwise—or weaken the devilish
- logic by a few inconsistencies of sentiment?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand’s answer to Elsa was not exactly lover-like. I saw the colour fade
- from her face at the harshness of his answer, but she leaned her head
- against his body (she was sitting by his side on a low stool), and was
- silent until her friend Elizabeth had spoken. Then she laughed, bravely, I
- thought.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We differ in expression, but we all agree. What Wickham thinks is my
- thought. I hate to remember how Belgium suffered.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand was utterly unconscious of his harsh way of speech and of his
- unconcealed acknowledgment of Elizabeth von Detmold’s intellectual
- superiority in her own drawing-room, so that when she spoke his interest
- was directed from Elsa to this lady.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Daddy” Small was also immensely impressed by Frau von Detmold’s
- character, and he confessed to me that he made notes of her conversation
- every time he left her house.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That woman,” he said, “will probably be a martyr for civilisation. I find
- myself so cussedly in agreement with her that when I go back to New York I
- shall probably hang a red flag out of my window and lose all my
- respectable patients. She has the vision of the future.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What about Brand and Elsa?” I asked, dragging him down to personalities.
- </p>
- <p>
- He put his arm through mine as we walked down the Hohestrasse.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Brand,” he said, in his shrewd way, “is combining martyrdom with romance—an
- unsafe combination. The pretty Elsa has lighted up his romantic heart
- because of her adoration and her feminine sentiment. I don’t blame him. At
- his age—after four years of war and exile—her gold-spun hair
- would have woven a web round my heart. Youth is youth, and don’t you
- forget it, my lad!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where does the martyrdom come in?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- The little doctor blinked through his horn spectacles.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t you see it? Brand has been working out new ideals of life. After
- killing a good many German boys, as sniper and chief assassin of the XI.
- Corps, he wants to marry a German girl as a proclamation to the world that
- he—Wickham Brand—has done with hatred and is out for the
- brotherhood of man and the breaking down of the old frontiers. For that
- ideal he is going to sacrifice his reputation and make a martyr of himself—not
- forgetting that romance is pleasant and Elsa von Kreuzenach as pretty as a
- peach! Bless his heart, I admire his courage and his boyishness.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Any doubt I had about the reality of Brand’s passion for Elsa was at least
- partly dispelled when he told me, a few nights later, of a tragic thing
- that had happened to both of them.
- </p>
- <p>
- He came into my room at the “Domhof” as though he had just seen a ghost.
- And, indeed, it was a ghost that had frightened him and put a cold hand
- between him and Elsa.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear old man!” I cried at the sight of him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What on earth has happened?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “A damnable and inconceivable thing!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I poured him out some brandy, and he drank it in gulps. Then he did a
- strange and startling thing. Fumbling in his breast-pocket, he pulled out
- a silver cigarette-case, and going over to the fireplace, dropped it into
- the blaze of the wood logs which I had had lighted because of the dampness
- of the room.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why do you do that?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- He watched the metal box blacken and then begin to melt. Several times he
- poked it so as to get it deeper into the red embers.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My poor little Elsa!” he said in a pitiful way. “<i>Mein hussches Madel!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- The story he told me later was astounding. Even now to people who were not
- in the war, who do not know how many strange, fantastic things happened in
- that wild nightmare, it will seem improbable and untrue. Indeed, I think
- the central fact was untrue, except as a subjective reality in the minds
- of Brand and Elsa.
- </p>
- <p>
- It happened when they were sitting alone in Elizabeth von Detmold’s
- drawing-room. I fancy they must have been embracing each other, though
- Brand did not tell me that. Anyhow, Elsa put her hand into his
- breast-pocket and in a playful way pulled out his cigarette-case.
- </p>
- <p>
- “May I open it?” she asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- But she did not open it. She stared at a little monogram on its cover, and
- then began to tremble so that Brand was scared.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What is the matter?” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- Elsa let the cigarette-case drop on to the carpet.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That box!” she said, in an agonised voice. “Where did you find it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand remembered where he had found it, though he had not given a thought
- to it for more than two years. He had found it on a night in No Man’s Land
- out by the Bois Français, near Fricourt. He had been lying out there on
- the lip of a mine crater below a hummock of white chalk. Just before dawn
- a German patrol had crept out, and he had shot at them. One man dropped
- quite close to where Brand lay. After an hour, when dawn came with a thick
- white mist rising from the moist earth, Brand crawled over to the body and
- cut off its shoulder-straps for identification. It was the body of a young
- man, almost a boy, and Brand saw, with a thrill of satisfaction (it was
- his “tiger” time), that he had shot him clean through the heart. A good
- shot in the twilight of the dawn! He thrust his hands into the man’s
- pockets for papers, and found his pay-book and some letters, and a
- cigarette-case. With these he crawled back into his own trench. He
- remembered reading the letters. One was from the boy’s sister, lamenting
- the length of the war, describing the growing hunger of civilians in
- Germany, and saying how she prayed every night for her brother’s safety,
- and for peace. He had read thousands of German letters as an intelligence
- officer afterwards, but he remembered those because of the night’s
- adventure. He had handed them over to the adjutant, for headquarters, and
- had kept the cigarette-case, having lost his own. It had the monogram of
- “H. v. K.” He had never thought about it from that time to this. Now he
- thought about it with an intensity of remembrance.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand told Elsa von Kreuzenach that he had found the box in No Man’s Land.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is my brother Heinrich’s,” she cried. “I gave it to him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She drew back, shivering, from the cigarette-case—or was it from
- Brand? When she spoke next it was in a whisper: “Did you kill him?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand lied to her, and she knew he was lying. She wept bitterly, and when
- Brand kissed her she was cold, and fainted in his arms.
- </p>
- <p>
- That was Brand’s story, and it was incredible. Even now I cannot help
- thinking that such a coincidence could not have happened. There is plenty
- of room for doubt about that cigarette-case. It was of a usual pattern,
- plain, with a wreath engraved round a monogram. That monogram “H. v. K.”
- was astonishing in relation to Elsa von Kreuzenach, but there are
- thousands of Germans, I imagine, with the same initials. I know two,
- Hermann von Kranitz and Hans von Kurtheim. In a German directory I have
- found many other names with those initials. I refuse to believe that Brand
- should have gone straight to the house of that boy whom he had killed in
- No Man’s Land.
- </p>
- <p>
- He believed it, and Elsa was sure of it. That was the tragedy, and the
- ghost of the girl’s dead brother stood between them now.
- </p>
- <p>
- For an hour or more he paced up and down my room in an agony of mind, and
- none of my arguments would convince him or comfort him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Several times he spoke one sentence which puzzled me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It makes no difference,” he said. “It makes no difference.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I think he meant that it made no difference to his love or purpose. When
- one thinks over this incident one is inclined to agree with that view. He
- was no more guilty in killing Elsa’s brother, if he did, than in killing
- any other German. If their love were strong enough to cross over fields of
- dead, the fact that Elsa’s brother lay there, shot by Brand’s bullet,
- made, as he said, “no difference.” It only brought home more closely to
- two poor individuals the meaning of that world-tragedy.
- </p>
- <p>
- Elsa, after her first shock of horror, argued that too, and at the
- beginning of March Brand and she stood at the altar together in a church
- at the end of the Hohenzollem Ring, and were made man and wife.
- </p>
- <p>
- At the ceremony there were present Elizabeth von Detmold, Franz von
- Kreuzenach, Dr. Small, and myself, as Brand’s best man. There was, I
- think, another presence there, visible only to the minds of Brand and
- Elsa, and, strangely enough, to mine. As the bride and bridegroom stood
- together before the priest I had a most uncomfortable vision of the dead
- body of a German boy lying on the altar beyond them, huddled up as I had
- seen many grey figures in the mud of Flanders and Picardy. This idea was,
- of course, due to that war-neurosis which, as Dr. Small said, was the
- malady of the world. I think at one moment of the service Elsa and Brand
- felt some cold touch upon them, for they both looked round in a startled
- way. It may have been a draught stealing through the aisle.
- </p>
- <p>
- We had tea at Elizabeth von Detmold’s house, and Brand and his wife were
- wonderfully self-controlled. They could not be happy beyond the sense of a
- spiritual union because Brand had been ordered by telegram to report at
- the War Office in London, and was leaving Cologne at four o’clock that
- afternoon, while Elsa was going home to her parents, who were ignorant of
- her marriage. Brand’s recall, I am convinced, had been engineered by his
- father, who was determined to take any step to prevent his son’s marriage
- with a German girl.
- </p>
- <p>
- Young Harding was going with him, having been given his demobilisation
- papers, and being desperately anxious, as I have told, to get home. It was
- curious that Brand should be his fellow-traveller that night, and I
- thought of the contrast of their journey, one man going to his wife with
- eager gladness, the other man leaving his wife after a few hours of
- marriage.
- </p>
- <p>
- At the end poor Elsa clung to her husband with most passionate grief and,
- without any self-consciousness now, because of the depth of his emotion,
- Brand, with tears in his eyes, tenderly embraced her. She walked back
- bravely with her brother to her mother’s house, while Brand and I raced to
- the station where his orderly was waiting with his kit.
- </p>
- <p>
- “See you again soon,” said Brand, gripping my hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where?” I asked, and he answered gloomily: “God knows.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was not on the Rhine. There was a general exodus of all officers who
- could get “demobbed” on any claim or pretext, the small Army of Occupation
- settled down to a routine life without adventure, and the world’s interest
- shifted to Paris, where the fate of Europe was being settled by a company
- of men with the greatest chance in history. I became a wanderer in a sick
- world.
- </p>
- <h3>
- END OF BOOK II.
- </h3>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0030" id="link2H_4_0030"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- BOOK III—BUILDERS OF PEACE
- </h2>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0031" id="link2H_4_0031"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- I
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>hose of us who had
- been in exile during the years of war and now returned to peace found that
- England had changed in our absence. We did not know this new England. We
- did not understand its spirit or its people. Nor did they understand the
- men who came back from the many fronts of war, by hundreds of thousands,
- now that demobilisation had become a spate after murmurings that were loud
- with the menace of revolt from men who had been long patient.
- </p>
- <p>
- These “<i>revenants,</i>” the men who came back out of the terror, were so
- many Rip van Winkles (of a youthful kind), looking round for the
- companions of their boyhood, going to old places, touching old stones,
- sitting by the same fireside, but with a sense of ghostliness. A new
- generation had arrived since 1914. The children had become boys and girls;
- the girls had grown into womanhood precociously. There were legions of
- “flappers” in London and other big cities, earning good wages in
- Government offices and factories, spending most of their money on the
- adornment of their prettiness, self-reliant, audacious, out for the fun of
- life, and finding it. The tragedy of the war had not touched them. It had
- been a great “lark” to them. They accepted the slaughter of their brothers
- or their fathers light-heartedly, after a few bursts of tears and a period
- of sentiment in which pride was strongest. They had grown up to the belief
- that a soldier is generally killed or wounded, and that he is glad to take
- the risk, or, if not, ought to be, as part of the most exciting and
- enjoyable game of war. Women had filled many of the jobs which formerly
- were the exclusive possession of men, and the men coming back looked at
- these legions of women clerks, tram conductors, ticket collectors,
- munition workers, plough-girls, and motor drivers with the brooding
- thought that they, the men, had been ousted from their places. A new class
- had arisen out of the whirlpool of social upheaval. The profiteers, in a
- large way of business, had prospered exceedingly out of the supply and
- demand of massacre. The profiteer’s wife clothed herself in furs and
- jewels. The profiteer’s daughters were dancing by night and sleeping by
- day. The farmers and the shopkeepers had made a good thing out of war.
- They liked war so long as they were untouched by air-raids or not
- afflicted by boys who came back blind or crippled. They had always been
- optimists. They were optimists now, and claimed a share in the merit of
- the victory that had been won by the glorious watchword of “business as
- usual.” They hoped the terms of peace would be merciless upon the enemy,
- and they demanded the Kaiser’s head as a pleasant sacrifice adding spice
- to the great banquet of victory celebrations.
- </p>
- <p>
- Outwardly, England was gay and prosperous and light-spirited. It was only
- by getting away from the seething crowds in the streets, from the dancing
- crowds, and the theatre crowds, and the shopping crowds, that men came
- face to face with private and hidden tragedy. In small houses or big,
- there were women who had lost their men and were listless and joyless, the
- mothers of only sons who did not come back with the demobilised tide, and
- the sweethearts of boys who would never fulfil the promise that had given
- hope in life to lonely girlhood. There was a new rich, but there was also
- a new poor, and people on small fixed incomes or with little nest-eggs of
- capital on which they scraped out life found themselves reduced to
- desperate straits by the soaring of prices and the burden of taxation.
- Underneath the surface joy of a victorious people there was bitterness to
- which victory was a mockery and a haggard grief at the cost of war in
- precious blood. But the bitterness smouldered without any flame of
- passion, and grief nagged at people’s hearts silently.
- </p>
- <p>
- Many of the men who came back were in a strange mood—restless,
- morbid, neurotic. Their own people did not understand them. They could not
- understand themselves. They had hated war, most of them, but this peace
- seemed flat and unprofitable to their souls. All purpose and meaning
- seemed suddenly to have gone out of life. Perhaps it was the narrowness of
- English home-life. Men who had travelled to far places of the world, who
- had seen the ways of foreign people, and had been part of a great drama,
- found themselves back again in a little house, closed in and isolated by
- the traditions of English individualism, so that often the next-door
- neighbour is a stranger. They had a sense of being suffocated. They could
- not stay indoors with the old pleasure in a pipe or a book by the fireside
- or a chat with mother or wife. Often they would wander out on the chance
- of meeting some of the “old pals,” or, after a heavy sigh, say, “Oh,
- God!... let’s go to a theatre or a ‘movie’ show!” The theatres were
- crammed with men seeking distraction, yet bored with their pleasures and
- relapsing into a deeper moodiness afterwards. Wives complained that their
- husbands had “changed.” Their characters had hardened and their tempers
- were frayed, so that they were strangely irritable and given to storms of
- rage about nothing at all. It was frightening.... There was an epidemic of
- violence and of horrible sensual crimes with women victims, ending often
- in suicide. There were mob riots by demobilised soldiers or soldiers still
- waiting in camps for demobilisation. Police stations were stormed and
- wrecked and policemen killed by bodies of men who had been heroes in the
- war and now fought like savages against their fellow-citizens. Some of
- them pleaded guilty in court and made queer statements about an utter
- ignorance of their own actions after the disorder had begun. It seemed as
- though they had returned to the psychology of that war when men, doped
- with rum, or drunk with excitement, had leapt over the parapet and
- remembered nothing more of a battle until they found themselves panting in
- an enemy trench or lying wounded on a stretcher. It was a dangerous kind
- of psychology in civil life.
- </p>
- <p>
- Labourers back at work in factories or mines or railway stations or
- dockyards, after months or years of the soldier-life, did not return to
- their old conditions or their old pay with diligence and thankfulness.
- They demanded higher wages to meet the higher cost of life and after that
- a margin for pleasure, and after that shorter hours for higher pay and
- less work in shorter hours. If their demands were not granted they downed
- tools and said: “What about it?” Strikes became frequent and general, and
- at a time when the cost of war was being added up to frightful totals of
- debt which could only be reduced by immense production the worker slacked
- off, or suspended his labours, and said: “Who gets the profits of my
- sweat?... I want a larger share.” He was not frightened of a spectre that
- was scaring all people of property and morality in the Western world. The
- spectre of Bolshevism, red-eyed, dripping with blood, proclaiming anarchy
- as the new gospel, did not cause a shiver to the English working man. He
- said, “What has Russia to do with me? I’m English. I have fought this war
- to save England, I have done the job; now then, where’s my reward?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Men who looked round for a living while they lived on an unemployment dole
- that was not good enough for their new desires became sullen when they
- returned home night after night with the same old story of “Nothing
- doing.” The women were still clinging to their jobs. They had earned their
- independence by good work in war-time. They hated the thought of going
- back to little homes to be household drudges, dependent for pocket-money
- on father and brothers. They had not only tasted liberty; they had made
- themselves free of the large world. They had proved their quality and
- strength. They were as good as men, and mostly better. Why should they
- slink back to the little narrow rut of life? But the men said, “Get out.
- Give us back our jobs.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was hard on the officer boys—hardest of all on them. They had
- gone straight from school to the war, and had commanded men twice as old
- as themselves and drawn good pay for pocket-money as first lieutenants,
- captains, even majors of air squadrons and tank battalions. They had
- gained immense experience in the arts and crafts of war, and that
- experience was utterly useless in peace.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear young man,” said the heads of prosperous businesses who had been
- out to “beat the Boche,” even though they sacrificed their only sons or
- all their sons (with heroic courage!), “you have been wasting your time.
- You have no qualifications whatever for a junior clerkship in this office.
- On the contrary, you have probably contracted habits of idleness and
- inaccuracy which would cause a lot of trouble. This vacancy is being
- filled by a lad who has not been vitiated by military life, and has
- nothing to unlearn. Good-morning!”
- </p>
- <p>
- And the young officers, after a statement like that, went home with
- swear-words learnt in Flanders, and said: “That’s the reward of
- patriotism, eh? Well, we seem to have been fooled pretty badly. Next time
- we shan’t be so keen to strew the fields of death with our fresh little
- corpses.”
- </p>
- <p>
- These words, all this murmur from below, did not reach those who sat in
- high places. They were wonderfully complacent, except when outbreaks of
- violence or the cessation of labour shocked them with a sense of danger.
- They arranged peace celebrations before the peace, victory marches when
- the fruits of victory were as bitter as Dead Sea fruit in the mouths of
- those who saw the ruin of the world; and round a council table in Paris
- statesmen of Europe abandoned all the ideals for which the war had been
- fought by humble men and killed the hopes of all those who had looked to
- them as the founders of a new era of humanity and common sense.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0032" id="link2H_4_0032"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- II
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was when the
- Peace Treaty had been signed, but not ratified by the representatives of
- Germany and Austria, that I met some of the friends with whom I had
- travelled along many roads of war or had met in scenes which already
- seemed far back in history. In London, after a journey to America, I came
- again in touch with young Harding, whom I had seen last on his way home to
- his pretty wife, who had fretted at his long absence, and Charles Fortune,
- whose sense of humour had made me laugh so often in the time of tragedy.
- Those were chance meetings in the eddies of the great whirlpool of London
- life, as I saw other faces, strange for a moment or two, until the
- difference between a field-cap and a bowler hat, a uniform and civil
- clothes, was wiped out by a look of recognition and the sound of a
- remembered voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- Not by chance but by a friendship which had followed me across the world
- with written words, I found myself once more in the company of Wickham
- Brand, and with him went again to spend some evenings with Eileen
- O’Connor, who was now home in Kensington, after that grim drama which she
- had played so long in Lille.
- </p>
- <p>
- With “Daddy” Small I had been linked up by a lucky chain of coincidences
- which had taken us both to New York at the same time and brought us back
- to Europe on the same boat, which was the White Star liner <i>Lapland</i>.
- </p>
- <p>
- My chance meeting with Harding led to a renewal of friendship which was
- more of his seeking than mine, though I liked him a good deal. But he
- seemed to need me, craving sympathy, which I gave with sincerity, and
- companionship, which I could not give so easily, being a busy man.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was on the night when London went mad because of peace, though not so
- mad, I was told, as on the night of armistice. It all seemed mad to me
- when I was carried like a straw in a raging torrent of life which poured
- down the Strand, swirled round Trafalgar Square, and choked all channels
- westwards and eastwards of Piccadilly Circus. The spirit of London had
- broken bounds. It came wildly from mean streets in the slum quarters to
- the heart of the West End. The worst elements had surged up and mingled
- with the middle-class folk and those who claim exclusiveness by the power
- of wealth. In ignorance that all barriers of caste were to be broken that
- night, “society” women, as they are called, rather insolent in their
- public display of white shoulders and diamonds and furs, set out in motor
- cars for hotels and restaurants which had arranged peace dinners and peace
- dances. Some of them, I saw, were unaccompanied by their own men, whom
- they were to meet later, but the vacant seats in their open cars were
- quickly filled by soldiers, seamen, or merry devils in civil clothes who
- climbed over the backs of the cars when they were brought to a standstill
- in the crush of vast crowds. Those uninvited guests, some of them wearing
- women’s bonnets, most of them fluttering with flags pinned to their coats,
- all of them provided with noisemaking instruments, behaved with ironical
- humour to the pretty ladies, touched their coiled hair with “ticklers,”
- blew loud blasts on their toy trumpets, delivered cockney orations to them
- for the enjoyment of the crowds below. Some of the pretty ladies accepted
- the situation with courage and good humour, laughing with shrill mirth at
- their grotesque companions. Others were frightened and angry. I saw one
- girl try to beat off the hands of men clambering about her car. They
- swarmed into it and paid no heed to her cries of protest....
- </p>
- <p>
- All the flappers were out in the Strand and in Trafalgar Square and many
- streets. They were factory girls, shop girls, office girls, and their eyes
- were alight with adventure and a pagan ecstasy. Men teased them as they
- passed with the long “ticklers,” and they, armed with the same weapon,
- fought duels with these aggressors, and then fled, and were pursued into
- the darkness of side-streets, where they were caught and kissed. Soldiers
- in uniform, English, Scots, Canadians, Australians, came lurching along in
- gangs, arm in arm, then mingled with the girls, changed headgear with
- them, struggled and danced and stampeded with them. Seamen, three sheets
- in the wind, steered an uneven course through this turbulent sea of life,
- roaring out choruses, until each man had found a maid for the dance of
- joy.
- </p>
- <p>
- London was a dark forest with nymphs and satyrs at play in the glades and
- Pan stamping his hoofs like a giddy goat. All the passions let loose by
- war, the breaking down of old restraints, the gladness of youth at escape
- from death, provided the motive-power, unconscious and primitive, behind
- this carnival of the London crowds. From some church a procession came
- into Trafalgar Square, trying to make a pathway through the multitude. A
- golden cross was raised high, and clergymen in surplices, with acolytes
- and faithful women, came chanting solemn words. The crowd closed about
- them. A mirthful sailor teased the singing women with his “tickler.” Loud
- guffaws, shrill laughter, were in the wake of the procession, though some
- men stood to attention as the cross passed, and others bared their heads,
- and something hushed the pagan riot a moment.
- </p>
- <p>
- At the windows in Pall Mall men in evening clothes who had been officers
- in the world-war sat by the pretty women who had driven through the
- crowds, looking out on the noisy pageant of the street. A piano-organ was
- playing, and two young soldiers danced with ridiculous grace, imitating
- the elegance and languorous ecstasy of society dancers. One of them wore a
- woman’s hat and skirt, and was wonderfully comic.
- </p>
- <p>
- I stood watching them, a little stupefied by all the noise and tumult of
- this “Peace” night, and with a sense of tragic irony, remembering millions
- of boys who lay dead in quiet fields and the agony of many peoples in
- Europe. It was then that I saw young Harding. He was sitting in his club
- window just above the dancing soldiers and looking out with a grave and
- rather woe-begone face, remarkable in contrast with the laughing faces of
- fellow-clubmen and their women. I recognised him after a moment’s query in
- my mind, and said: “Hulloa, Harding!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He stared at me, and I saw the sudden dawning of remembrance.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come in,” he answered. “I had no idea you were back again!”
- </p>
- <p>
- So I went into his club and sat by his side at the open window, glad of
- this retreat from the pressure and tumult of the mob below.
- </p>
- <p>
- He talked conventionally for a little while, and asked me whether I had
- had “a good time” in the States, and whether I was busy, and why the
- Americans seemed so hostile to President Wilson. I understood from him
- that he approved of the Peace Treaty and was glad that Germany and Austria
- had been “wiped off the map” as far as it was humanly possible.
- </p>
- <p>
- We chatted like that for what I suppose was something more than half an
- hour, while we looked out upon the seething multitude in the street below,
- when suddenly the boy’s mask fell from him, so abruptly and with such a
- naked revelation of a soul in anguish that concealment was impossible.
- </p>
- <p>
- I saw him lean forward with his elbows on the windowsill and his hands
- clenching an iron bar. His face had become like his shirt front, almost as
- white as that. A kind of groan came from him, like that of a man badly
- wounded. The people on either side of him turned to look at him, but he
- was unconscious of them, as he stared at something in the street. I
- followed the direction of his eyes and guessed that he was looking at a
- motor-car which had been stopped by the crowd, who were surging about it.
- It was an open car, and inside were a young man and woman in fancy dress
- as Pierrot and Columbine. They were standing up and pelting the crowd with
- long coloured streamers, which the mob caught and tossed back again with
- shouts of laughter. The girl was very pretty, with an audacious little
- face beneath the white sugar-loaf cap, and her eyes were on fire. Her
- companion was a merry-eyed fellow, dean-shaven and ruddy-faced (for he had
- not chalked it to Pierrot’s whiteness), and looked to me typical of a
- naval officer or one of our young airmen. I could see nothing to groan
- about in such a sight.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What’s wrong, Harding?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I touched him on the elbow, for I did not like him to give himself away
- before the other company in the window-seat.
- </p>
- <p>
- He rose at once, and walked in a stumbling way across the room, while I
- followed. The room was empty where we stood.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Aren’t you well?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- He laughed in a most tragic way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did you see those two in the car, Pierrot and Columbine?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I nodded.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Columbine was my wife. Pierrot is now her husband. Funny, isn’t it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- My memory went back to that night in Cologne, less than six months before,
- when Harding had asked me to use my influence to get him demobilised, and
- as an explanation of his motive opened his pocket-book and showed me the
- photograph of a pretty girl, and said, “That’s my wife;... she is hipped
- because I have been away so long.” I felt enormously sorry for him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come and have a whisky in the smoke-room,” said Harding. “I’d like a
- yarn, and we shall be alone.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I did not want him to tell me his tale. I was tired of tragic history. But
- I could not refuse. The boy wanted to unburden himself. I could see that,
- though for quite a time after we had sat on each side of the wood fire he
- hesitated in getting to the point and indulged in small talk about his
- favourite brand of cigars and my evil habit of smoking the worst kind of
- cigarettes.
- </p>
- <p>
- Suddenly we plunged into what were the icy waters of his real thoughts.
- </p>
- <p>
- “About my wife... I’d like you to know. Others will tell you, and you’d
- have heard already if you hadn’t been away so long. But I think you would
- get a wrong notion from others. The fact is, I don’t blame Evelyn. I would
- like you to understand that. I blame the Germans for everything.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The Germans?”
- </p>
- <p>
- That was a strange statement, and I could not see the drift of it until he
- explained his meaning.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The Germans made the war, and the war took me away from Evelyn just after
- our marriage.... Imagine the situation, a kid of a girl, wanting to be
- merry and bright, eager for the fun of life, and all that, left alone in a
- big old house in the country, or when she got fed up with that in a big
- gloomy house in town. She got fed up with both pretty quick. I used to get
- letters from her—every day for a while—and she used to say in
- every one of them, ‘I’m fed up like Billy-O.’ That was her way of putting
- it, don’t you know, and I got scared. But what could I do out there except
- write and tell her to try and get busy with something? Well, she got busy
- all right!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Harding laughed again in his woeful way, which was not good to hear. Then
- he became angry and passionate, and told me it was all the fault of “those
- damned women.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I asked him what “damned women,” and he launched into a wild denunciation
- of a certain set of women—most of the names he mentioned were
- familiar to me from full-length portraits in the <i>Sketch</i> and <i>Tatler</i>—who
- had spent the years of war in organising fancy bazaars, charity matinées,
- private theatricals for Red Cross funds, “and all that,” as Harding
- remarked in his familiar phrase. He said they were rotten all through,
- utterly immoral, perfectly callous of all the death and tragedy about
- them, except in a false, hysterical way at times.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They were ghouls,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- Many of them had married twice, three times, even more than that, before
- the boys who were killed were cold in their graves. Yet those were the
- best, with a certain respect for convention. Others had just let
- themselves go. They had played the devil with any fellow who came within
- their circle of enticement, if he had a bit of money, or could dance well,
- or oiled his hair in the right way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They corrupted English society,” said Harding, “while they smiled and
- danced, and dressed in fancy clothes, and posed for their photos in the
- papers. It was they who corrupted Evelyn when the poor kid was fighting up
- against her loneliness and very hipped, and all that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who was the man?” I asked, and Harding hesitated before he told me. It
- was with frightful irony that he answered: “The usual man in most of these
- cases, the man who is often one’s best pal. Damn him!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Harding, seemed to repent of that curse; at least, his next words were
- strangely inconsistent.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mind you, I don’t blame him, either. It was I who sent him to Evelyn. He
- was in the Dragoons with me, and when he went home on leave I said, ‘Go
- and cheer up my little wife, old man. Take her to a theatre or two, and
- all that. She’s devilishly lonely.’ Needless to say, he fell in love with
- her. I might have known it. As for Evelyn, she was immensely taken with
- young Dick. He was a bit of a humorist and made her laugh. Laughter was a
- devilish good thing in war-time. That was where Dick had his pull. I might
- have known <i>that!</i> I was a chuckle-headed idiot.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The end of the story was abrupt, and at the time I found it hard to find
- extenuating circumstances in the guilt of the girl who had smashed this
- boy Harding. She lied to him up to the very moment of his demobilisation;
- at least, she gave him no clue to her purpose until she hit him, as it
- were, full in the face with a mortal blow to his happiness.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had sent her a wire with the one word “Demobilised,” and then had taken
- the next train back and a cab from Charing Cross to that house of his at
- Rutland Gate.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is the mistress well?” he had asked one of the maids when his kit was
- handled in the hall.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The mistress is out, sir,” said the maid, and he remembered afterwards
- that she looked queerly at him, with a kind of pity.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was the usual note waiting for him. Evelyn was “very sorry.” She
- hated causing her husband the grief she knew he would feel, but she and
- Dick could not do without each other. The war had altered everything, and
- many wives to many husbands. She hoped Harding would be happy after a
- bit....
- </p>
- <p>
- Harding was not happy. When he read that note he went a little mad, and
- roamed round London with an automatic pistol, determined to kill his
- former friend if he could set eyes on him. Fortunately, he did not find
- him. Evelyn and Dick had gone off to a village in Devonshire, and after
- three days with murder in his heart Harding had been very ill and had gone
- into a nursing-home. There, in his weakness, he had, he told me, “thought
- things out.” The result of his meditations amounted to no more than the
- watchword of many people in years of misery: “<i>C’est la guerre!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was the war which had caused his tragedy. It had put too great a strain
- on human nature, or at least on human nerves and morals. It had broken
- down the conventions and traditions of civilised life. The Germans had not
- only destroyed many towns and villages, but many homes and hearts far from
- the firing-line. They had let the devil loose.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Quite a number of my pals,” said Harding, “are in the same boat with me.
- They either couldn’t stick their wives, or their wives couldn’t stick
- them. It gives one a sense of companionship!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He smiled in a melancholy way, but then confessed to loneliness—so
- many of his real pals had gone west—and asked whether he could call
- on me now and then. It was for that reason that he came to my house fairly
- often, and sometimes Fortune, who came too at times, made him laugh, as in
- the old days.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0033" id="link2H_4_0033"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- III
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>ortune and I met
- also in a crowd, but indoors. Brand and Eileen O’Connor were both to be at
- one of the evening parties which assembled every now and then in a flat at
- Chelsea belonging to Susy Whincop, designer of stained glass, driver of
- ambulances for the Scottish Women’s Convoy, and sympathetic friend before
- the war of any ardent soul who grew long hair if a man, short hair if a
- woman, and had some special scheme, philosophy, or inspiration for the
- welfare of humanity.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had known Susy and her set in the old days. They were the minor
- intellectuals of London, and I had portrayed some of them in a novel
- called “Intellectual Mansions,” which they did not like, though I loved
- them all. They wrote little poems, painted little pictures, produced
- little plays, and talked about all subjects under heaven with
- light-hearted humour, an arrogance towards popular ideas, and a quick
- acceptance of the new, the unusual and the revolutionary in art and
- thought. Into their way of life war crashed suddenly with its thunder
- notes of terror. All that they had lived for seemed to be destroyed, and
- all their ideals overthrown. They had believed in beauty, and it was flung
- into the mud, and bespattered with blood, and buried beneath the ugly
- monsters of war’s idolatry.
- </p>
- <p>
- They had been devotees of liberty, and were made slaves of the drill
- sergeant and other instruments of martial law. They had been enemies of
- brutality, cruelty, violence, but all human effort now was for the
- slaughter of men, and the hero was he who killed most with bayonet or
- bomb. Their pretty verses were made of no account. Their impressionistic
- paintings were not so useful as the camouflage of tin huts. Their little
- plays were but feeble drama to that which now was played out on the
- world’s stage to the roar of guns and the march of armies. They went into
- the tumult and fury of it all, and were lost. I met some of them, like
- Fortune and Brand, in odd places. Many of them died in the dirty ditches.
- Some of them wrote poems before they died, stronger than their work before
- the war, with a noble despair or the exaltation of sacrifice. Others gave
- no sign of their previous life, and were just absorbed into the ranks—ants
- in these legions of soldier-ants. Now those who had escaped with life were
- coming back to their old haunts, trying to pick up old threads, getting
- back, if they could, to the old ways of work, hoping for a new inspiration
- out of immense experience, but not yet finding it.
- </p>
- <p>
- In Susy Whincop’s flat some of them had gathered when I went there, and
- when I looked round upon them, seeing here and there vaguely-remembered
- faces, I was conscious of a change that had overtaken them, and, with a
- shock, wondered whether I too had altered so much in those five years. I
- recognised Peter Hallam, whom I had known as a boy just down from Oxford,
- with a genius (in a small way) for satirical verse and a talent for
- passionate lyrics of a morbid and erotic type. Yes, it was certainly
- Peter, though his face had hardened and he had cropped his hair short and
- walked with one leg stiff.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was talking to a girl with bobbed hair. It was Jennie Southcombe, who
- had been one of the heroines of the Serbian retreat, according to accounts
- of newspaper correspondents.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My battery,” said Peter, “plugged into old Fritz with open sights for
- four horns. We just mowed ‘em down.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Another face rang a little bell in my memory. Surely that was Alfred Lyon,
- the Futurist painter? No, it could not be, for Lyon had dressed like an
- Apache, and this man was in conventional evening clothes and looked like a
- Brigadier in mufti. Alfred Lyon?... Yes, there he was, though he had lost
- his pose—cribbed from Murger’s <i>Vie de Bohème</i>—and his
- half-starved look, and the wildness in his eyes. As he passed Susy Whincop
- he spoke a few words, which I overheard.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ve abandoned Futurism. The present knocked that silly. Our little
- violence, which shocked Suburbia, was made ridiculous by the enormous
- thing that smashed every convention into a cocked hat.’ I’m just going to
- put down some war scenes—I made notes in the trenches—with
- that simplicity of the primitive soul to which we went back in that way of
- life. The soldier’s point of view, his vision, is what I shall try for.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Splendid!” said Susy. “Only, don’t shrink from the abomination. We’ve got
- to make the world understand—and remember.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I felt a touch on my sleeve, and a voice said, “Hulloa!... Back again?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I turned and saw an oldish-young man, with white hair above a lean,
- clean-shaven face and sombre eyes. I stared, but could not fix him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t you remember?” he said. “Wetherall, of the Stage Society!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, Lord, yes!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I grasped his hand, and tried to keep the startled look out of my eyes.
- But he saw it, and smiled.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Four years as a prisoner of the Turk have altered me a bit. This white
- hair, eh? And I feel like Rip van Winkle.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He put into words something which I had been thinking since my arrival in
- Susy’s rooms.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We are the <i>revenants</i>, the ghosts who have come back to their old
- haunts. We are pretending that everything is the same as before, and that
- we are the same. But it’s all different, and we have changed most of all.
- Five years of war have dug their hoofs into the faces of most people in
- this crowd. Some of them look fifteen, twenty, years older, and I expect
- they’ve been through a century of experience and emotion.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What’s coming out of it?” I asked. “Anything big?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not from us,” said Wetherall. “Most of us are finished. Our nerves have
- gone to pieces, and our vitality has been sapped. We shall put down a few
- notes of things seen and understood. But it’s the next generation that
- will get the big vision, or the one after next.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then I was able to shake hands with Susy Whincop, and, as I have said, she
- left me in no doubt about the change that four years of war had made to
- me.
- </p>
- <p>
- She held me at arm’s length, studying my face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Soul alive!” she said. “You’ve been through it all right! Hell’s
- branding-irons have been busy with a fair-faced man.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “As bad as that?” I asked, and she answered very gravely, “As bad as
- that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had hardly changed, except for a few streaks of grey in her brown
- hair. Her low, broad forehead was as smooth as before; her brown eyes
- shone with their old steady light. She had not lost her sense of humour,
- though she had seen a good deal of blood and agony and death.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How’s humanity?” I asked, and she laughed and Shrugged her shoulders.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What can one do with it? I thought we were going to catch the old devil
- by the tail and hold him fast, but he’s broken loose again. This peace!
- Dear God!... And all the cruelty and hatred that have survived the
- massacre! But I don’t despair even now. In this room there is enough
- good-will and human kindness to create a new world. We’re going to have a
- good try to make things better by-and-by.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who’s your star to-night?” I asked. “Who is the particular Hot-Gospeller
- with a mission to convert mankind?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ve several,” said Susy.
- </p>
- <p>
- She glanced round the room, and her eyes rested on a little man with
- goggles and a goatee beard, none other than my good friend Dr. Small, with
- whom I had travelled down many roads. I had no notion that he knew Susy or
- was to be here to-night.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There’s one great soul—a little American doctor whose heart is as
- big as humanity itself, and whose head is filled with the wisdom of the
- wise.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know him,” I said, “and I agree with you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He caught our eyes fixed on him, and blinked through his goggles, and then
- waved his hand, and made his way to us.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hulloa, doc.!” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew Susy Whincop?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No need,” he answered. “Miss Whincop is the golden link between all men
- of good-will.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Susy was pleased with that. She patted the little doctor’s hand and said,
- “Bully for you, doctor! and may the Stars and Stripes wave over the League
- of Nations!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then she was assailed by other guests, and the doctor and I took refuge in
- a corner.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How’s everything?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- The doctor was profoundly dejected, and did not hide the gloom that
- possessed his soul.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sonny,” he answered, “we shall have to fight with our backs to the wall,
- because the enemy—the old devil—is prevailing against us. I
- have just come over from Paris, and I don’t mind telling you that what I
- saw during the Peace Conference has made me doubt the power of goodness
- over evil.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tell me,” I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Daddy” Small’s story was not pleasant to hear. It was the story of the
- betrayal, one by one, of every ideal for which simple men had fought and
- died, a story of broken pledges, of hero-worship dethroned, and of great
- peoples condemned to lingering death. The Peace Treaty, he said, would
- break the heart of the world and prepare the way for new, more dreadful,
- warfare.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How about Wilson?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- The little doctor raised his hands like a German crying, “<i>Kamerad!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wilson was not big enough. He had the future of civilisation in his
- hands, but his power was filched from him, and he never knew until the end
- that he had lost it. He was like a simple Gulliver among the Liliputians.
- They tied him down with innumerable threads of cotton while he slept in
- self-complacency with a sense of righteousness. He was slow-thinking among
- quick-witted people. He stated a general principle, and they drafted out
- clauses which seemed to fulfil the principle while violating it in every
- detail. They juggled with facts and figures so that black seemed white
- through his moral spectacles, and he said Amen to their villainy,
- believing that God had been served by righteousness. Bit by bit they broke
- his pledges and made a jigsaw puzzle of them so artfully that he believed
- they were uncracked. Little by little they robbed him of his honour, and
- he was unaware of the theft. In preambles and clause headings and
- interpretations they gave lip-service to the fourteen points upon which
- the armistice was granted, and to which the allied nations were utterly
- pledged, not only to the Germans and all enemies, but to their own people.
- Not one of those fourteen points is in the reality of the Treaty. There
- has been no self-determination of peoples. Millions have been transferred
- into unnatural boundaries. There have been no open covenants openly
- arrived at. The Conference was within closed doors. The clauses of the
- Peace Treaty were kept secret from the world until an American journalist
- got hold of a copy and sent it to his paper. What has become of the
- equality of trade conditions and the removal of economic barriers among
- all nations consenting to peace? Sonny, Europe has been carved up by the
- spirit of vengeance, and multitudes of men, women and children have been
- sentenced to death by starvation. Another militarism is enthroned above
- the ruin of German militarism. Wilson was hoodwinked into putting his
- signature to a peace of injustice which will lead by desperation to world
- anarchy and strife. When he understands what thing he has done he will be
- stricken by a mortal blow to his conscience and his pride.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Doctor,” I said, “there is still hope in the League of Nations. We must
- all back that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He shook his head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The spirit has gone out of it. It was born without a soul. I believe now
- that the future welfare of the world depends upon a change of heart among
- the peoples, inspired by individuals in all nations who will work for good
- and give a call to humanity, indifferent to statesmen, treaties and
- Governments.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The International League of Good-will?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He nodded and smiled.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Something like that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I remembered a dinner-party in New York after the armistice. I had been
- lecturing on the League of Nations at a time when the Peace Treaty was
- still unsigned, but when already there was a growing hostility against
- President Wilson, startling in its intensity. The people of the United
- States were still moved by the emotion and idealism with which they had
- roused great armies and sent them to the fields of France. Some of the men
- were returning home again. I stood outside a club in New York when a
- darkie regiment returned its colours, and I heard the roars of cheering
- that followed the march of the negro troops. I saw Fifth Avenue filled
- with triumphal arches, strung across with jewelled chains, festooned with
- flags and trophies of the home-coming of the New York Division. The heart
- of the American people was stirred by the pride of its achievement on the
- way to victory and by a new sense of power over the destiny of mankind.
- But already there was a sense of anxiety about the responsibilities to
- which Wilson in Europe was pledging them without their full and free
- consent. They were conscious that their old isolation was being broken
- down, and that by ignorance or rash promise they might be drawn into other
- European adventures which were no concern of theirs. They knew how little
- was their knowledge of European peoples, with their rivalries, and racial
- hatreds, and secret intrigues. Their own destiny as a free people might be
- thwarted by being dragged into the jungle of that unknown world. In any
- case Wilson was playing a lone hand, pledging them without their advice or
- agreement, subordinating them, it seemed, to the British Empire, with six
- votes on the Council of the League to their poor one. What did he mean? By
- what right did he do so?
- </p>
- <p>
- At every dinner-table these questions were asked before the soup was
- drunk; at the coffee end of the meal every dinner-party was a debating
- club, and the women joined with the men in hot discussion; until some
- tactful soul laughed loudly, and some hostess led the way to music or a
- dance.
- </p>
- <p>
- The ladies had just gone after one of these debates, leaving us to our
- cigars and coffee, when “Daddy” Small made a proposition which startled me
- at the time.
- </p>
- <p>
- “See here,” he said to his host and the other men. “Out of this discussion
- one thing stands clear and straight. It is that in this room, now, at this
- table, are men of intellect—American and English—men of
- goodwill towards mankind, men of power in one way or another, who agree
- that whatever happens there must be eternal friendship between England and
- the United States.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sure!” said a chorus of voices.
- </p>
- <p>
- “In other countries there are men with the same ideals as, ourselves—peace,
- justice between men and nations, a hatred of cruelty, pity for women and
- children, charity and truth. Is that agreed?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sure!” said the other guests.
- </p>
- <p>
- They were mostly business men, well-to-do, but not of the “millionaire”
- class, with here and there a writing-man, an artist and, as I remember, a
- clergyman.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am going to be a commercial traveller in charity,” said the little
- doctor. “I am going across the frontiers to collect clients for an
- international society of goodwill. I propose to establish a branch at this
- table.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The suggestion was received with laughter by some of the men, but, as I
- saw, with gravity by others.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What would be the responsibilities, doctor. Do you want money?”
- </p>
- <p>
- This was from the manager of an American railroad.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We shall want a bit,” said the doctor. “Not much. Enough for stamps and
- occasional booklets and typewriting. The chief responsibility would be to
- spot lies leading to national antagonism, and to kill them by exposure to
- cold truth; also, to put in friendly words, privately and publicly, on
- behalf of human kindness across the barriers of hate and malignity. Any
- names for the New York branch?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The doctor took down twelve names, pledged solemnly to his programmes....
- </p>
- <p>
- I remembered that scene in New York when I stood with the little man in
- Susy Whincop’s drawing-room.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What about this crowd?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sonny,” he said, “this place is reeking with humanity. The real stuff.
- Idealists who have seen hell pretty close, most of them. Why, in this room
- there’s enough goodwill to move mountains of cruelty, if we could get a
- move on all together.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was then that I saw Charles Fortune, though I was looking for Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- Fortune was wearing one of his special “faces.” I interpreted it as his
- soulful and mystical face. It broke a little as he winked at me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Remarkable gathering,” he said. “The Intellectuals come back to their
- lair. Some of them like little Bo-Peep who lost her sheep and left their
- tails behind them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What does that mean?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nothing,” he answered. “We used to talk like that. I’m trying to grope
- back.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He put his hand over his forehead wearily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “God!” he said. “How terrible was war in a Nissen hut! I cannot even now
- forget that I was every yard a soldier!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He began to hum his well-remembered anthem, “Blear-eyed Bill the Butcher
- of the Boche,” and then checked himself.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nay, let us forget that melody of blood. Let us rather sing of fragrant
- things of peace.” He hummed the nursery ballad of “Twinkle, twinkle,
- little star, How I wonder what you are!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Susy Whincop seized him by the wrist.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So the Fat Boy has escaped the massacre? Come and make us laugh. We are
- getting too serious at the piano end of the room.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Lady,” said Fortune, “tempt me not to mirth-making. My irony is terrible
- when roused.”
- </p>
- <p>
- As he went to the piano I caught sight of Brand just making his way
- through a group by the door.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had never seen him in civil clothes, but he looked as I had imagined
- him, in an old pre-war dinner-jacket and baggy trousers, and a shirt that
- bulged abominably. A tuft of hair stuck up behind—the tuft that
- Eileen O’Connor, had pulled for Auld Lang Syne. But he looked fine and
- distinguished, with his hard, lean face and strong jaw and melancholy
- eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- He caught sight of me and gripped my hand, painfully.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hullo, old man! Welcome back. I have heaps to tell you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good things?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- He shook his head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not good.... Damned bad, alas!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He did not continue the conversation. He stared across my shoulder at the
- door as though he saw an apparition. I turned to see the object of his
- gaze. It was Eileen O’Connor, whom I had first met in Lille.
- </p>
- <p>
- She was in an evening frock cut low at the neck, and her arms were bare.
- There was a smile in her dark Irish eyes, and about her long humorous
- mouth. The girl I had seen in Lille was not so elegant as this, not so
- pretty. The lifting of care, perhaps, had made the change.
- </p>
- <p>
- Susy Whincop gave a cry of “Is that Eileen?” and darted to her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s myself,” said Eileen, releasing herself from an ardent embrace, “and
- all the better for seeing you. Who’s who in this distinguished crowd?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Old friends,” I said, being nearest to her. “Four men who walked one day
- of history up a street in Lille, and met an Irish girl who had the worship
- of the crowd.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She took my hand and I was glad of her look of friendship.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Four?” she said. “That’s too good to be true. All safe and home again?”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was astonishing that four of us should be there in a room in London
- with the girl who had been the heroine of Lille. But there was Fortune and
- “Daddy” Small and Brand and myself.
- </p>
- <p>
- The crowd gave us elbow-room while we stood round Eileen. To each she gave
- her hands—both hands—and merry words of greeting. It was only
- I, and she, perhaps, who saw the gloom on Brand’s face when she greeted
- him last and said: “Is it well with you, Wickham?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her colour rose a little at the sight of him, and he was paler than when I
- saw him first that night.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Pretty well,” he said. “One still needs courage—even in peace.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He laughed a little as he spoke, but I knew that his laughter was the
- camouflage of hidden trouble, at which he had hinted in his letters to me.
- </p>
- <p>
- We could not have much talk that evening. The groups shifted and
- re-shifted. The best thing was when Eileen sang “The Gentle Maiden” as on
- a night in Lille. Brand, standing near the door, listened, strangely
- unconscious of the people about him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s good to hear that song again,” I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- He started, as though suddenly awakened.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It stirs queer old memories.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was in Eileen’s own house that Brand and I renewed a friendship which
- had been made in a rescued city where we had heard the adventure of this
- girl’s life.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0034" id="link2H_4_0034"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- IV
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>s Brand admitted
- to me, and as he had outlined the trouble in his letters, he was having “a
- bad time.” Since his marriage with Elsa von Kreuzenach he had not had much
- peace of mind nor any kind of luck. After leaving Cologne the War Office,
- prompted by some unknown influence—he suspected his father, who knew
- the Secretary for War—had sent him off on a special mission to Italy
- and had delayed his demobilisation until a month before this meeting of
- ours. That had prevented his plan of bringing Elsa to England, and now,
- when he was free and her journey possible, he was seriously embarrassed
- with regard to a home for her. There was plenty of room in his father’s
- house at Cheyne Walk, Chelsea—too big a house for his father and
- mother and younger sister, now that the eldest girl had married and his
- younger brother lay dead on the Somme. It had been his idea that he and
- Elsa would live in the upper rooms—it made a kind of flat—while
- he got back to novel-writing until he earned enough to provide a home of
- his own. It was still his idea, as the only possible place for the
- immediate future, but the family was dead against it and expressed the
- utmost aversion, amounting almost to horror, at the idea of receiving his
- German wife. By violent argument, by appeals to reason and charity, most
- of all by the firm conviction of his father that he was suffering from
- shell-shock and would go over the borderline of sanity if thwarted too
- much, a grudging consent had been obtained from them to give Elsa
- house-room. Yet he dreaded the coldness of her welcome, and the hostility
- not only of his own people but of any English society in which she might
- find herself.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I shouldn’t have believed,” said Brand, “that such vindictive hatred
- could have outlasted the war, in England. The people here at home, who
- have never seen war closer than an air-raid, are poisoned, twisted and
- envenomed with hate. And the women are worst. My own mother—so sweet
- and gentle in the old days—would see every German baby starve rather
- than subscribe to a single drop of milk. My own sister—twenty years
- of age, add as holy as an angel—would scratch out the eyes of every
- German girl. She reads the papers every day with a feverish desire for the
- Kaiser’s trial. She licks her lips at the stories of starvation in
- Austria. ‘They are getting punished,’ she says. ‘Who?’ I ask her.
- ‘Austrian babies?’ And she says, ‘The people who killed my brother and
- yours.’ What’s the good of telling her that I have killed <i>their</i>
- brothers—many of them—even the brother of my wife——”
- </p>
- <p>
- I shook my head at that, but Brand was insistent.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m sure of it.... It is useless telling her that the innocent are being
- punished for the guilty, and that all Europe was involved in the same
- guilt. She says, ‘You have altered your ideas. The strain of war has been
- too much for you.’ She means I’m mad or bad.... Sometimes I think I may
- be, but when I think of those scenes in Cologne, the friendly way of our
- fighting men with their former enemy, the charity of our Tommies, their
- lack of hatred now the job is done, I look at these people in England, the
- stay-at-homes, and believe it is they who are warped.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The news of Brand’s marriage with a German girl had leaked out, though his
- people tried to hush it up. It came to me now and then as a tit-bit of
- scandal from men who had been up at Oxford with him in the old days.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You know that fellow Wickham Brand?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Heard the rumour about him?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They say he’s got a German wife. Married her after the armistice.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why not?”
- </p>
- <p>
- That question of mine made them stare as though I had uttered some
- blasphemy. Generally they did not attempt to answer it, but shrugged their
- shoulders with a look of unutterable disgust, or said, “Disgraceful!” They
- were men, invariably, who had done <i>embusqué</i> work in the war, in
- Government offices and soft jobs. Soldiers who had fought their way to
- Cologne were more lenient. One of them said, “Some of the German girls are
- devilish pretty. Not my style, perhaps, but kissable.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I saw something of Brand’s trouble when I walked down Knightsbridge with
- him one day on the way to his home in Chelsea. Horace Chipchase, the
- novelist, came face to face with us and gave a whoop of pleasure when he
- saw us. Then suddenly, after shaking hand? with me and greeting Brand
- warmly, he remembered the rumour that had reached him. Embarrassment
- overcame him, and ignoring Brand he confined his remarks to me, awkwardly,
- and made an excuse for getting on. He did not look at Brand, again.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Bit strained in his manner,” I remarked, glancing sideways at Wickham.
- </p>
- <p>
- He strode on with tightened lips.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Shared rooms with me once, and I helped him when he was badly in need of
- it.... He’s heard about Elsa. Silly blighter!”
- </p>
- <p>
- But it hurt the man, who was very sensitive under his hard crust.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was on the way to his house that he told me he had made arrangements at
- last for Elsa to join him in England. One of his friends at headquarters
- in Cologne was providing her with a passport and had agreed to let her
- travel with him to Paris where he was to give evidence before a committee
- of the Peace Conference. Brand could fetch her from there, in a week’s
- time.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am going to Paris next week,” I told him, and he gave a grunt of
- pleasure, and said, “Splendid! We can both meet Elsa.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I thought it curious then, and afterwards, that he was anxious for my
- company when he met his wife and when she was with him. I think the
- presence of a third person helped him to throw off a little of the
- melancholy into which he relapsed when alone.
- </p>
- <p>
- I asked him if Elsa’s family knew of her marriage and were reconciled to
- it, and he told me that they knew, but were less reconciled now than when
- she had first broken the news to her father and mother on the day of her
- wedding. Then there had been a family “scene.” The General had raged and
- stormed, and his wife had wept, but after that outburst had decided to
- forgive her, in order to avoid a family scandal. There had been a
- formidable assembly of uncles, aunts and cousins of the von Kreuzenach
- family to sit in judgment upon this affair which, as they said, “touched
- their honour,” and Elsa’s description of it, and of her terror and sense
- of guilt (it is not easy to break with racial traditions), was very
- humorous, though at the same time rather pathetic. They had graciously
- decided, after prolonged discussions in which they treated Elsa exactly as
- though she were the prisoner at a court-martial, to acknowledge and accept
- her marriage with Captain Brand. They had been led to this decision mainly
- owing to the information given by Franz von Kreuzenach that Captain Brand
- belonged to the English aristocracy, his father being Sir Amyas Brand, and
- a member of the English House of Parliament. They were willing to admit
- that, inferior as Captain Brand’s family might be to that of von
- Kreuzenach—so old and honoured in German history—it was yet
- respectable and not unworthy of alliance with them. Possibly—it was
- an idea suggested with enormous solemnity by Onkel von Kreuzenach—Elsa’s
- marriage with the son of an English Member of Parliament might be of
- service to the Father-land in obtaining some amelioration of the Peace
- Terms (the Treaty was not yet signed), and in counteracting the harsh
- malignity of France. They must endeavour to use this opportunity provided
- by Elsa in every possible way as a patriotic duty.... So at the end of the
- family conclave Elsa was not only forgiven but was, to some extent,
- exalted as an instrument of God for the rescue of their beloved Germany.
- </p>
- <p>
- That position of hers lasted in her family until the terms of the Peace
- Treaty leaked out, and then were published in full. A storm of indignation
- rose in Germany, and Elsa was a private victim of its violence in her own
- house. The combined clauses of the Treaty were read as a sentence of death
- by the German people. Clause by clause, they believed it fastened a doom
- upon them, and insured their ruin. It condemned them to the payment of
- indemnities which would demand all the produce of their industry for many
- and uncertain years. It reduced them to the position of a slave state,
- without an army, without a fleet, without colonies, without the right to
- develop industries in foreign countries, without ships to carry their
- merchandise, without coal to supply their factories or raw material for
- their manufactures. To enforce the payment of these indemnities foreign
- commissions would seize all German capital invested in former enemy or
- neutral states, and would keep armed forces on the Rhine ready to march at
- any time, years after the conclusion of peace, into the heart of Germany.
- The German people might work, but not for themselves. They had freed
- themselves of their own tyrants, but were to be subject to an
- international tyranny depriving them of all hope of gradual recovery from
- the ruin of defeat. On the West and on the East, Austria was to be hemmed
- in by new states formed out of her own flesh-and-blood under the
- domination of hostile races. She was to be maimed and strangled. The
- Fourteen Points to which the allies had pledged themselves before the
- armistice had been abandoned utterly, and Wilson’s promise of a peace
- which would heal the wounds of the world had been replaced by a peace of
- vengeance which would plunge Central Europe into deep gulfs of misery,
- despair, and disease. That, at least, was the German point of view.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They’re stunned,” said Brand. “They knew they were to be punished, and
- they were willing to pay a vast price of defeat. But they believed that
- under a republican Government they would be left with a future hope of
- progress, a decent hope of life, based upon their industry. Now they have
- no hope, for we have given them a thin chance of reconstruction. They are
- falling back upon the hope of vengeance and revolt. We have prepared
- another inevitable war when the Germans, with the help of Russia, will
- strive to break the fetters we have fastened on them. So goes the only
- purpose for which most of us fought this war, and all our pals have died
- in vain.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He stopped in the street and beat the pavement with his stick.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The damned stupidity of it all!” he said. “The infernal wickedness of
- those old men who have arranged this thing!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Three small boys came galloping up Cheyne Walk with toy reins and tinkling
- bells.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Those children,” said Brand, “will see the things that we have seen and
- go into the ditches of death before their manhood has been fulfilled. We
- fought to save them, and have failed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He told me that even Elsa had been aghast at the Peace Terms.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hoped more from the generous soul of England,” she had written to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Franz von Kreuzenach had written more bitterly than that.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We have been betrayed. There were millions of young men in Germany who
- would have worked loyally to fulfil Wilson’s conditions of peace as they
- were pledged in his Fourteen Points. They would have taken their
- punishment with patience and courage, knowing the penalty of defeat. They
- would have worked for the new ideals of a new age, which were to be
- greater liberty and the brotherhood of man in a League of Nations. But
- what is that league? It is a combination of enemies, associated for the
- purpose of crushing the German people and keeping her crushed. I, who
- loved England and had no emnity against her even in war, cannot forgive
- her now for her share in this peace. As a German I find it unforgivable,
- because it perpetuates the spirit of hatred and thrusts us back into the
- darkness where evil is bred.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you agree with that?” I asked Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “On the whole, yes,” he said, gravely. “Mind you, I’m not against
- punishing Germany. She had to be punished. But we are substituting slow
- torture for just retribution, and like Franz I’m thinking of the effect on
- the future. By generosity we should have made the world safe. By vengeance
- we have prepared new strife. Europe will be given up to anarchy and
- deluged in the blood of the boys who are now babes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I had dinner with Brand’s people and found them “difficult.” Sir Amyas
- Brand had Wickham’s outward hardness and none of his inner sensibility. He
- was a stiff, pompous man who had done extremely well out of the war, I
- guessed, by the manufacture of wooden huts, to which he attached a
- patriotic significance, apart from his profits. He alluded to the death of
- his younger son as his “sacrifice for the Empire,” though it seemed to me
- that the boy Jack had been the real victim of sacrifice.. To Wickham he
- behaved with an exasperating air of forgiveness, as to one who had sinned
- and was physically and morally sick.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How do you think Wickham is looking?” he asked me at table, and when I
- said, “Very well,” he sighed and shook his head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The war was a severe nervous strain upon Mm. It has changed him sadly. We
- try to be patient with him, poor lad.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand overheard his speech and flushed angrily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m sorry I try your patience so severely, sir,” he said in a bitter,
- ironical way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t let’s argue about it, dear lad,” said Sir Amyas Brand suavely.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” said Lady Brand plaintively, “you know argument is bad for you,
- Wickham. You become so violent, dear.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Besides,” said Ethel Brand, the daughter, in a low and resigned voice,
- “what’s done can’t be undone.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Meaning Elsa?” asked Wickham savagely. I could see that but for my
- restraining presence as a stranger there was all the inflammable stuff
- here for a first-class domestic “flare-up.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What else?” asked Ethel coldly, and meeting her brother’s challenging
- eyes with a perfectly steady gaze. She was a handsome girl with regular,
- classical features and tight lips, as narrow-minded, I imagined, as a
- mid-Victorian spinster in a cathedral town, and as hard as granite in
- principle and prejudice.
- </p>
- <p>
- Wickham weakened after signs of an explosion of rage. He spoke gently, and
- revealed a hope to which I think he clung desperately.
- </p>
- <p>
- “When Elsa comes you will all fall in love with her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was the worst thing he could have said, though he was unconscious of
- his “gaffe.”
- </p>
- <p>
- His sister Ethel reddened, and I could see her mouth harden.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So far I have remarkably little love for Germans, male or female.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope we shall behave with Christian charity,” said Lady Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sir Amyas Brand coughed uneasily, and then tried to laugh off his
- embarrassment for my benefit.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There will be considerable scandal in my constituency!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “To hell with that!” said Brand, irritably. “It’s about time the British
- public returned to sanity.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah!” said Sir Amyas, “there’s a narrow border-line between sanity, and
- shell-shock. Really, it is distressing what a number of men seem to come
- back with disordered nerves. All these crimes, all these cases of violence——”
- </p>
- <p>
- It gave him a chance of repeating a leading article which he had read that
- morning in <i>The Times</i>. It provided a conversation without
- controversy until the end of dinner.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the hall, before I left, Wickham Brand laughed, rather miserably.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s not going to be easy! Elsa will find the climate rather cold here,
- eh?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “She will win them over,” I said hopefully, and these words cheered him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, yes, they’re bound to like her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- We arranged for the Paris trip two weeks later, but before then we were
- sure to meet at Eileen O’Connor’s. As a matter of fact, we dined together
- with “Daddy” Small next day, and Eileen was with him.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0035" id="link2H_4_0035"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- V
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> found Eileen
- O’Connor refreshing and invigorating, so that it was good to be in her
- company. Most people in England at that time, at least those I met, were
- “nervy,” depressed, and apprehensive of evil to come. There was hardly a
- family I knew who had not one vacant chair wherein a boy had sat when he
- had come home from school or office, and afterwards on leave. Their ghosts
- haunted these homes and were present in any company where people gathered
- for conversation or distraction. The wound to England’s soul was unhealed,
- and the men who came back had received grave hurt, many of them, to their
- nervous and moral health.
- </p>
- <p>
- This Irish girl was beautifully gay, not with that deliberate and
- artificial gaiety which filled London theatres and dancing halls, but with
- ah inner flame of happiness. It was difficult to account for that. She had
- seen much tragedy in Lille. Death and the agony of men had been familiar
- to her. She had faced death herself, very closely, escaping, as she said,
- by a narrow “squeak.” She had seen the brutality of war and its welter of
- misery for men and women, and now in time of peace she was conscious of
- the sufferings of many people, and did not hide these things from her
- mental vision or cry, “All’s right with the world!” when all was wrong.
- But something in her character, something, perhaps, in her faith, enabled
- her to resist the pressure of all this “morbid emotion” and to face it
- squarely, with smiling eyes. Another thing that attracted one was her
- fearlessness of truth. At a time when most people shrank from truth her
- candour was marvellous, with the simplicity of childhood joined to the
- wisdom of womanhood.
- </p>
- <p>
- I saw this at the dinner-party for four arranged in her honour by “Daddy”
- Small. That was given, for cheapness’ sake, at a little old restaurant in
- Whitehall which provided a good dinner for a few shillings, and in an
- “atmosphere” of old-fashioned respectability which appealed to the little
- American.
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen knocked Brand edgewise at the beginning of his dinner by remarking
- about his German marriage.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The news came to me as a shock,” she said, and when Wickham raised his
- eyebrows and looked both surprised and dismayed (he had counted on her
- sympathy and help), she patted his hand as it played a devil’s tattoo on
- the table-cloth, and launched into a series of indiscretions that fairly
- made my hair curl.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Theoretically,” she said, “I hadn’t the least objection to your marrying
- a German girl. I have always believed that love is an instinct which is
- beyond the control of diplomats who arrange frontiers and generals who
- direct wars. I saw a lot of it in Lille—and there was Franz von
- Kreuzenach, who fell in love with me, poor child. What really hurt me for
- a while was green-eyed jealousy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Daddy” Small laughed hilariously, and filled up Eileen’s glass with
- Moselle wine.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand looked blank.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Jealousy?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, yes,” said Eileen. “Imagine me, an Irish girl, all soppy with
- emotion at the first sight of English khaki (that’s a fantastic situation
- anyhow!), after four years with the grey men, and then finding that the
- first khaki tunic she meets holds the body of a man she knew as a boy,
- when she used to pull his hair! And such a grave heroic-looking man,
- Wicky! Why, I felt like one of Tennyson’s ladies released from her dark
- tower by a Knight of the Round Tower. Then you went away and married a
- German Gretchen! And all my doing, because if I hadn’t given you a letter
- to Franz you wouldn’t have met Elsa. So when I heard the news, I thought,
- ‘There goes my romance!’”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Daddy” Small laughed again, joyously.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Say, my dear,” he said, “you’re making poor old Wickham blush like an
- Englishman asked to tell the story of his V.C. in public.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand laughed, too, in his harsh, deep voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, Eileen, you ought to have told me before I moved out of Lille.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And where would maiden modesty have been?” asked Eileen, in her humorous
- way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where is it now?” asked the little doctor.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Besides,” said Brand, “I had that letter to Franz von Kreuzenach in my
- pocket. I don’t mind telling you I detested the fellow for his infernal
- impudence in making love to you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sure now, it was a one-sided affair, entirely,” said Eileen, exaggerating
- her Irish accent, “but one has to be polite to a gentleman that saves
- one’s life on account of a romantic passion. Oh, Wickham, it’s very
- English you are!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand could find nothing to say for himself, and it was I who came to the
- rescue of his embarrassment by dragging a red herring across the thread of
- Eileen’s discourse. She had a wonderful way of saying things that on most
- girls’ lips would have seemed audacious, or improper, or ‘high-falutin’,
- but on hers were natural with a simplicity which shone through her.
- </p>
- <p>
- Her sense of humour played like a light about her words, yet beneath her
- wit was a tenderness and a knowledge of tragic things. I remember some of
- her sayings that night at dinner, and they seemed to me very good then,
- though when put down they lose the deep melody of her voice and the smile
- or sadness of her dark eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “England,” she said, “fought the war for liberty and the rights of small
- nations, but said to Ireland, ‘Hush, keep quiet there, damn you, or you’ll
- make us look ridiculous.’”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Irish soldiers,” she said, “helped England to win all her wars, but
- mostly in Scottish regiments. When the poor boys wanted to carry an Irish
- flag, Kitchener said, ‘Go to hell,’ and some of them went to Flanders...
- and recruiting stopped with a snap.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now, how do you know these things?” asked “Daddy” Small. “Did Kitchener
- go to Lille to tell you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” said Eileen, “but I found some of the Dublin boys in the prison at
- Lille, and they told the truth before they died, and perhaps it was that
- which killed them. That and starvation and German brutality.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I believe you’re a Sinn Feiner,” said Dr. Small. “Why don’t you go to
- Ireland and show your true colours, ma’am?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m Sinn Fein all right,” said Eileen, “but I hated the look of a white
- wall in Lille, and there are so many white walls in the little green isle.
- So I’m stopping in Kensington and trying to hate the English, but can’t
- because I love them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She turned to Wickham and said: “Will you take me for a row in Kensington
- Gardens the very next day the sun shines?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Rather!” said Wickham, “on one condition!’
- </p>
- <p>
- “And that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That you’ll be kind to my little Elsa when she comes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll be a mother to her,” said Eileen, “but she must come quick or I’ll
- be gone.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Gone?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Wickham spoke with dismay in his voice. I think he had counted on Eileen
- as his stand-by when Elsa would need a friend in England.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hush now!” said “Daddy” Small. “It’s my secret, you wicked lady with
- black eyes and a mystical manner.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Doctor,” said Eileen, “your own President rebukes you. ‘Open covenants
- openly arrived at—weren’t those his words for the new diplomacy?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Would to God he had kept to them,” said the little doctor, bitterly,
- launching into a denunciation of the Peace Conference until I cut him
- short with a question.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What’s this secret, Doctor?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He pulled out his pocket-book with an air of mystery.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We’re getting on with the International League of Goodwill,” he said.
- “It’s making more progress than the League of Nations. There are names
- here that are worth their weight in gold. There are golden promises which
- by the grace of God——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Daddy” Small spoke solemnly—“will be fulfilled by golden deeds.
- Anyhow, we’re going to get a move on—away from hatred towards
- charity, not for the making of wounds but for the healing, not punishing
- the innocent for the sins of the guilty, but saving the innocent—the
- Holy Innocents—for the glory of life. Miss Eileen and others are
- going to be the instruments of the machinery of mercy, rather, I should
- say, the spirit of humanity.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “With you as our gallant leader,” said Eileen, patting his hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It sounds good,” said Brand. “Let’s hear some more.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Dr. Small told us more in glowing language, and in Biblical utterance
- mixed with American slang like Billy Sunday’s Bible. He was profoundly
- moved. He was filled with hope and gladness, and with a humble pride
- because his efforts had borne fruit.
- </p>
- <p>
- The scheme was simple. From his friends in the United States he had
- promises, as good as gold, of many millions of American dollars. From
- English friends he had also considerable sums. With this treasure he was
- going to Central Europe to organise relief on a big scale for the children
- who were starving to death. Eileen O’Connor was to be his private
- secretary and assistant-organiser. She would have heaps of work to do, and
- she had graduated in the prisons and slums of Lille. They were starting in
- a week’s time for Warsaw, Prague, Buda-Pesth and Vienna.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then,” said Brand, “Elsa will lose a friend.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Bring her, too,” said Eileen. “There’s work for all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand was startled by this, and a sudden light leapt into his eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “By Jove!... But I’m afraid not. That’s impossible.”
- </p>
- <p>
- So it was only a week we had with Eileen, but in that time we had some
- good meetings and merry adventures. Brand and I rowed her on the lake in
- Kensington Gardens, and she told us Irish fairy-tales as she sat in the
- stem with her hat in her lap, and the wind playing in her brown hair. We
- took her to the Russian Ballet and she wept a little at the beauty of it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “After four years of war,” she said, “beauty is like water to a parched
- soul. It’s so exquisite it hurts.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She took us one day into the Carmelite Church at
- </p>
- <p>
- Kensington, and Brand and I knelt each side of her, feeling sinners with a
- saint between us. And then, less like a saint, she sang ribald little
- songs on the way to her mother’s house in Holland Street, and said “Drat
- the thing!” when she couldn’t find her key to unlock the door.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sorry, Biddy my dear,” she said to the little maidservant who opened the
- door. “I shall forget my head one day.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sure, Miss Eileen,” said the girl, “but never the dear heart of you, at
- all, at all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen’s mother was a buxom, cheery, smiling Irishwoman who did not worry,
- I fancy, about anything in the world, and was sure of heaven. Her
- drawing-room was littered with papers and novels, some of which she swept
- off the sofa with a careless hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Won’t you take a seat then?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I asked her whether she had not been anxious about her daughter when
- Eileen was all those years under German rule.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not at all,” said the lady. “I knew our dear Lord was as near to Lille as
- to London.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Two of her boys had been killed in the war, “fighting,” she said, “for an
- ungrateful country which keeps its heel on the neck of Ireland,” and two
- were in the United States, working for the honour of Ireland on American
- newspapers. Eileen’s two sisters had married during the war and between
- them had given birth to four Sinn Feiners. Eileen’s father had died a year
- ago, and almost his last word had been her name.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The dear man thought all the world of Eileen,” said Mrs. O’Connor. “I was
- out of it entirely when he had, her by his side.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’ll be lonely,” said Brand, “when your daughter goes abroad again.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen answered him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, you can’t keep me back by insidious remarks like that! Mother spends
- most of her days in church, and the rest of them reading naughty novels
- which keep her from ascending straight to heaven without the necessity of
- dying first. She is never lonely because her spirit is in touch with those
- she loves, in this world or the other. And isn’t that the truth I’m after
- talking, mother o’ mine!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I never knew more than one O’Connor who told the truth yet,” said the
- lady, “and that’s yourself, my dear. And it’s a frightening way you have
- with it that would scare the devil out of his skin.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They were pleasant hours with Eileen, and when she went away from Charing
- Cross one morning with Dr. Small, five hospital nurses and two Americans
- of the Red Cross, I wished with all my heart that Wickham Brand had asked
- her and not Elsa von Kreuzenach to be his wife. That was an idle wish, for
- the next morning Brand and I crossed over to France, and on the way to
- Paris my friend told me that the thought of meeting Elsa after those
- months of separation excited him so that each minute seemed an hour. And
- as he told me that he lit a cigarette and I saw that his hand was
- trembling, because of this nervous strain.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0036" id="link2H_4_0036"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- VI
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e met Elsa at the
- Gare de l’Est in Paris the evening after our arrival. Brand’s nervous
- anxiety had increased as the hour drew near, and he smoked cigarette after
- cigarette while he paced up and down the <i>Salle d’Attente</i> as far as
- he could for the crowds which surged there.
- </p>
- <p>
- Once he spoke to me about his apprehensions.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope to God this will work out all right.... I’m only thinking of her
- happiness.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Another time he said: “This French crowd would tear her to pieces if they
- knew she was German.”
- </p>
- <p>
- While we were waiting we met a friend of old times. I was first to
- recognise Pierre Nesle, who had been attached to us as interpreter and <i>liaison</i>
- officer. He was in civil clothes and was wearing a bowler hat and a light
- overcoat, so that his transformation was astonishing. I touched him on the
- arm as he made his way quickly through the crowd, and he turned sharply
- and stared at me as though he could not place me at all. Then a look of
- recognition leapt into his eyes and he grasped both my hands delightedly.
- He was still thin and pale, but some of his old melancholy had gone out of
- his eyes and in its place there was an eager, purposeful look.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Here’s Brand,” I said. “He’ll be glad to see you again.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Quelle chance!</i>” exclaimed Pierre, and he made a dash for his
- friend and before Brand could remonstrate kissed him on both cheeks. They
- had been good comrades and after the rescue of Marthe from the mob in
- Lille it was to Brand that Pierre Nesle had opened his heart and revealed
- his agony. He could not stay long with us in the station as he was going
- to some political meeting, and perhaps it was well, because Brand was
- naturally anxious to escape from him before Elsa came.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am working hard—speaking, writing, organising—on behalf of
- the <i>Ligue des Tranchées</i>,” said Pierre. “You must come and see me at
- my office. It’s the headquarters of the new movement in France.
- Anti-militarist, to fulfil the ideals of the men who fought to end war.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re going to fight against heavy odds,” said Brand. “Clemenceau won’t
- love you, nor those who like his peace.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Pierre laughed and used an old watchword of the war.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Nous les aurons!</i> Those old dead-heads belong to the past. Peace
- has still to be made by the men who fought for a new world.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He gave us his address, pledged us to call on him, and slipped into the
- vortex of the crowd.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand and I waited another twenty minutes, and then in a tide of new
- arrivals we saw Elsa. She was in the company of Major Quin, Brand’s friend
- who had brought her from Cologne, a tall Irishman who stooped a little as
- he gave his arm to the girl. She was dressed in a blue coat and skirt,
- very neatly, and it was the glitter of her spun-gold hair that made me
- catch sight of her quickly in the crowd. Her eyes had a frightened look as
- she came forward, and she was white to the lips. Thinner, too, than when I
- had seen her last, so that she looked older and not, perhaps, quite so
- wonderfully pretty. But her face lighted up with intense gladness when
- Brand stood in front of her, and then, under an electric lamp, with a
- crowd surging around him, took her in his arms.
- </p>
- <p>
- Major Quin and I stood aloof, chatting together.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good journey?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Excellent, but I’m glad it’s over. That little lady is too unmistakably
- German. Everybody spotted her and looked unutterable things. She was
- frightened, and I don’t wonder. Most of them thought the worst of me. I
- had to threaten one fellow with a damned good hiding for an impertinent
- remark I overheard.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand thanked him for looking after his wife, and Elsa gave him her hand
- and said, “<i>Danke schön</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Major Quin raised his finger and said, “Hush. Don’t forget you’re in Paris
- now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he saluted with a click of spurs and took his leave. I put Brand and
- his wife in a taxi and drove outside by the driver to a quiet old hotel in
- the Rue St. Honoré, where we had booked rooms.
- </p>
- <p>
- When we registered, the manager at the desk stared at Elsa curiously. She
- spoke English, but with an unmistakable accent. The man’s courtesy to
- Brand, which had been perfect, fell from him abruptly and he spoke with
- icy insolence when he summoned one of the boys to take up the baggage. In
- the dining-room that night all eyes turned to Elsa and Brand, with
- inquisitive, hostile looks. I suppose her frock, simple and ordinary as it
- seemed to me, proclaimed its German fashion. Or perhaps her face and hair
- were not so English as I had imagined. It was a little while before the
- girl herself was aware of those unpleasant glances about her. She was very
- happy sitting next to Brand, whose hand she caressed once or twice, and
- into whose face she looked with adoration. She was still very pale, and I
- could see that she was immensely tired after her journey, but her eyes
- shone wonderfully. Sometimes she looked about her and encountered the
- stares of people—elderly French <i>bourgeois</i> and some English
- nurses and a few French officers—dining at other tables in the great
- room with gilt mirrors and painted ceiling. She spoke to Brand presently
- in a low voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am afraid. These people stare at me so much. They guess what I am.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s only your fancy,” said Brand. “Besides, they would be fools not to
- stare at a face like yours.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She smiled and coloured up at that sweet flattery.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know when people like one’s looks. It is not for that reason they
- stare.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ignore them,” said Brand. “Tell me about Franz and Frau von Detmold.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was unwise of him to sprinkle his conversation with German names. The
- waiter at our table was listening attentively. Presently I saw him
- whispering behind the screen to one of his comrades and looking our way
- sullenly.
- </p>
- <p>
- He kept us waiting an unconscionable time for coffee, and when at last
- Brand gave his arm to Elsa and led her from the room, he gave a harsh
- laugh as they passed, and I heard the words, “<i>Sale Boche!</i>” spoken
- in a low tone of voice, yet loud enough for all the room to hear. From all
- the little tables there came titters of laughter and those words, “<i>Sale
- Boche!</i>” were repeated by several voices. I hoped that Elsa and Brand
- had not heard, but I saw Elsa sway a little on her husband’s arm as though
- struck by an invisible blow, and Brand turned with a look of passion, as
- though he would hit the waiter or challenge the whole room to warfare. But
- Elsa whispered to him, and he went with her up the staircase to their
- rooms.
- </p>
- <p>
- The next morning when I met them at breakfast Elsa still looked
- desperately tired, though very happy, and Brand had lost a little of his
- haggard look and his nerve was steadier. But it was an uncomfortable
- moment for all of us when the manager came to the table and regretted with
- icy courtesy that their rooms would not be available another night owing
- to a previous arrangement which he had unfortunately overlooked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nonsense!” said Brand, shortly. “I have taken these rooms for three
- nights, and I intend to stay in them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is impossible,” said the manager. “I must ask you to have your baggage
- packed by twelve o’clock.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand dealt with him firmly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am an English officer. If I hear another word from you I will call on
- the Provost Marshal and get him to deal with you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The manager bowed. This threat cowed him, and he said no more about a
- change of rooms. But Brand and his wife, and I, as their friend, suffered
- from a policy of passive resistance to our presence. The chambermaid did
- not answer their bell, having become strangely deaf.
- </p>
- <p>
- The waiter was generally engaged at other tables whenever we wanted him.
- The hall porter turned his back upon us. The page-boys made grimaces
- behind our backs, as I saw very well in the gilt mirror, and as Elsa saw.
- </p>
- <p>
- They took to having their meals out, Brand insisting always that I should
- join them, and we drove out to the Bois and had tea there in the <i>Chalet
- des Iles</i>. It was a beautiful afternoon in September, and the leaves
- were just turning to crinkled gold and the lake was as blue as the
- cloudless sky above. Across the ferry came boatloads of young Frenchmen
- with their girls, singing, laughing, on this day of peace. Some of the men
- limped as they came up the steps from the landing-stage. One walked on
- crutches. Another had an empty sleeve. Under the trees they made love to
- their girls and fed them with rose-tinted ices.
- </p>
- <p>
- “These people are happy,” said Elsa. “They have forgotten already the
- agony of war. Victory is healing. In Germany there is only misery.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A little later she talked about the peace.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If only the <i>Entente</i> had been more generous in victory our despair
- would not be so great. Many of us, great multitudes, believed that the
- price of defeat would be worth paying because Germany would take a place
- among free nations and share in the creation of a nobler world. Now we are
- crushed by the militarism of nations who have used our downfall to
- increase their own power. The light of a new ideal which rose above the
- darkness has gone out.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand took his wife’s hand and stroked it in his big paw.
- </p>
- <p>
- “All this is temporary and the work of the old men steeped in the old
- traditions which led to war. We must wait for them to die. Then out of the
- agony of the world’s boyhood will come the new revelation.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Elsa clasped her hands and leaned forward, looking across the lake in the
- Bois de Boulogne.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I would like to live long enough to be sure of that,” she said, eagerly.
- “If we have children, my husband, perhaps they will listen to our tales of
- the war as Franz and I read about wolves and goblins in our fairy-tales.
- The fearfulness of them was not frightening, for we knew we were safe.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “God grant that,” said Brand, gravely.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I am afraid!” said Elsa. She looked again across the lake, so blue
- under the sky, so golden in sunlight; and shivered a little.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are cold!” said Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- He put his arms about her as they sat side by side, and her head drooped
- upon his shoulder and she closed her eyes like a tired child.
- </p>
- <p>
- They went to the opera that night and I refused their invitation to join
- them, protesting that they would never learn to know each other if a third
- person were always present. I slipped away to see Pierre Nesle, and found
- him at an office in a street somewhere off the Rue du Louvre, which was
- filled with young men whose faces I seemed to have seen before under blue
- shrapnel helmets above blue tunics. They were typewriting as though
- serving machine-guns, and folding up papers while they whistled the tune
- of “<i>Madelon</i>.” Pierre was in his shirtsleeves, dictating letters to
- a <i>poilu</i> in civil clothes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Considerable activity on the western front, eh?” he said when he saw me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tell me all about it, Pierre.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He told me something about it in a restaurant where we dined in the Rue du
- Marché St. Honoré. He was one of the organising secretaries of a society
- made up exclusively of young soldiers who had fought in the trenches.
- There was a sprinkling of intellectuals among them—painters, poets,
- novelists, journalists—but the main body were simple soldiers
- animated by one idea—to prevent another war by substituting the
- common-sense and brotherhood of peoples for the old diplomacy of secret
- alliances and the old tradition of powerful armies.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How about the Peace Treaty and the League of Nations?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- Pierre Nesle shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The Peace Treaty belongs to the Napoleonic tradition. We’ve got beyond
- that now. It is the programme that has carefully arranged another and
- inevitable war. Look at the world now! Look at France, Italy, Germany,
- Austria! We are all ruined together, and those most ruined will, by their
- disease and death, drag down Europe into general misery. <i>Mon vieux</i>,
- what has victory given to France! A great belt of devastated country,
- cemeteries crowded with dead youth, bankruptcy, and everything five times
- the cost of pre-war rates. Another such victory will wipe us off the map.
- We have smashed Germany, it is true, for a time. We have punished her
- women and children for the crimes of their war lords, but can we keep her
- crushed? Are our frontiers impregnable against the time when her people
- come back for revenge, smashing the fetters we have placed on them, and
- rising again in strength? For ten years, for twenty years, for thirty
- years perhaps, we shall be safe. And after that, if the heart of Europe
- does not change, if we do not learn wisdom from the horror that has
- passed, France will be ravaged again, and all that we have seen our
- children will see, and their suffering will be greater than ours, and they
- will not have the hope we had.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He stared back into the past, not a very distant past, and I fancy that
- among the figures he saw was Marthe, his sister.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What’s the remedy?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A union of democracy across the frontiers of hate,” he answered, and I
- think it was a phrase that he had written and learnt by heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A fine phrase!” I said, laughing a little.
- </p>
- <p>
- He flared up at me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s more than a phrase. It’s the heart-beat of millions in Europe.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “In France?” I asked pointedly. “In the France of Clemenceau?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “More than you imagine,” he answered, boldly. “Beneath our present
- Chauvinism, our natural exultation in victory, our inevitable hatred of
- the enemy, common-sense is at work, and an idealism higher than that. At
- present its voice is not heard. The old men are having their day.
- Presently the new men will arrive with the new ideas. They are here, but
- do not speak yet.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The old men again!” I said. “It is strange. In Germany, in France, in
- England, even in America, people are talking strangely about the old men
- as though they were guilty of all this agony. That is remarkable.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They were guilty,” said Pierre Nesle. “It is against the old men in all
- countries of Europe that youth will declare war. For it was their ideas
- which brought us to our ruin.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He spoke so loudly that people in the restaurant turned to look at him. He
- paid his bill and spoke in a lower voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is dangerous to talk like this in public. Let us walk up the Champs
- Elysées, where I am visiting some friends.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Suddenly a remembrance came back to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your friends, too,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My friends?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But yes; Madame Chéri and Hélène. After Edouard’s death they could not
- bear to live in Lille.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Edouard, that poor boy who came back? He is dead?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He was broken by the prison life,” said Pierre. “He died within a month
- of armistice, and Hélène wept her heart out. He confided a secret to me.
- Hélène and he had come to love each other, and would marry when they could
- get her mother’s consent—or, one day, if not.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What’s her objection?” I asked. “Why, it’s splendid to think that Hélène
- and you will be man and wife. The thought of it makes me feel good.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He pressed my arm and said, “<i>Merci, mille fois, mon cher</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Madame Chéri objected to his political opinions. She regarded them as
- poisonous treachery.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And Hélène?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I remembered that outburst, months back, when Hélène had desired the death
- of many German babies.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hélène loves me,” said Pierre simply. “We do not talk politics.”
- </p>
- <p>
- On our way to the Avenue Victor Hugo I ventured to ask him a question
- which had been a long time in my mind “Your sister, Marthe? She is well?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Even in the pearly twilight of the Champs Elysées I was aware of Pierre’s
- sudden change of colour. I had touched a nerve that still jumped.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She is well and happy,” he answered gravely. “She is now a <i>religieuse</i>,
- a nun, in the convent at Lille. They tell me she is a saint. Her name in
- religion is <i>Sour Angélique.</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- I called on Madame Chéri and her daughter with Pierre Nesle. They seemed
- delighted to see me, and Hélène greeted me like an old and trusted friend,
- giving me the privilege of kissing her cheek. She had grown taller and
- beautiful, and there was a softness in her eyes when she looked at Pierre
- which made me sure of his splendid luck.
- </p>
- <p>
- Madame Chéri had aged, and some of her fire had burnt out. I guessed that
- it was due to Edouard’s death. She spoke of that, and wept a little, and
- deplored the mildness of the Peace Treaty which had not punished the evil
- race who had killed her husband and her boy and the flower of France.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There are many German dead,” said Pierre. “They have been punished.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not enough!” cried Madame Chéri. “They should all be dead.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Hélène kissed her hand and snuggled down to her as once I had seen in
- Lille.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Petite maman</i>,” she said, “let us talk of happy things to-night.
- Pierre has brought us a good friend.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Later in the evening, when Pierre and Hélène had gone into another room to
- find some biscuits for our wine, Madame Chéri spoke to me about their
- betrothal.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Pierre is full of strange and terrible ideas,” she said. “They are shared
- by other young men who fought bravely for France. To me they seem wicked,
- and the talk of cowards, except that their medals tell of courage. But the
- light in Hélène’s eyes weakens me. I’m too much of a Frenchwoman to be
- stern with love.”
- </p>
- <p>
- By those words of hers I was able to give Pierre a message of good-cheer
- when he walked back with me that night, and he went away with gladness.
- </p>
- <p>
- With gladness also did Elsa Brand set out next day for England where, as a
- girl, she had known happy days, and where now her dream lived with the man
- who stood beside her. Together we watched for the white cliffs, and when
- suddenly the sun glinted on them she gave a little cry, and putting her
- hand through Brand’s arm, said, “Our home!”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0037" id="link2H_4_0037"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- VII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> saw very little
- of Brand in London after Elsa’s arrival in his parent’s house at Chelsea.
- I was busy, as usual, watching the way of the world and putting my nose
- down to bits of blank paper which I proceeded to spoil with futile words.
- Brand was doing the same thing in his study on the top floor of the house
- in Cheyne Walk, while Elsa, in true German style, was working embroidery
- or reading English literature to improve her mind and her knowledge of the
- language.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand was endeavouring strenuously to earn money enough to make him free
- of his father’s house. He failed, on the whole, rather miserably. He began
- a novel on the war, became excited with it for the first six chapters,
- then stuck hopelessly and abandoned it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I find it impossible,” he wrote to me, “to get the real thing into my
- narrative. It is all wooden, unnatural, and wrong. I can’t get the right
- perspective on paper, although I think I see it clear enough when I’m not
- writing. The thing is too enormous, the psychology too complicated for my
- power of expression. A thousand characters, four years of experience, come
- crowding into my mind, and I can’t eliminate the unessential and stick the
- point of my pen into the heart of truth. Besides, the present state of the
- world, to say nothing of domestic trouble, prevents anything like
- concentration... And my nerves have gone to hell.”
- </p>
- <p>
- After the abandonment of his novel he took to writing articles for
- magazines and newspapers, some of which appeared, thereby producing some
- useful guineas. I read them and liked their strength of style and
- intensity of emotion. But they were profoundly pessimistic, and “the
- gloomy Dean,” who was prophesying woe, had an able seconder in Wickham
- Brand, who foresaw the ruin of civilisation and the downfall of the
- British Empire because of the stupidity of the world’s leaders and the
- careless ignorance of the multitudes. He harped too much on the same
- string, and I fancied that editors would soon begin to tire of his
- melancholy tune. I was right.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have had six articles rejected in three weeks,” wrote Brand. “People
- don’t want the truth. They want cheery insincerity. Well, they won’t get
- it from me, though I starve to death.... But it’s hard on Elsa. She’s
- having a horrible time, and her nerve is breaking. I wish to God I could
- afford to take her down to the country somewhere, away from spiteful
- females and their cunning cruelty. Have you seen any Christian charity
- about in this most Christian country? If so, send me word, and I’ll walk
- to it on my knees, from Chelsea.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was in a postscript to a letter about a short story he was writing that
- he wrote an alarming sentence.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think Elsa is dying. She gets weaker every day.” Those words sent me to
- Chelsea in a hurry. I had been too careless of Brand’s troubles, owing to
- my own pressure of work and my own fight with a nervous depression which
- was a general malady, I found, with most men back from the war.
- </p>
- <p>
- When I rapped the brass knocker on the house in Cheyne Walk the door was
- opened by a different maid from the one I had seen on my first visit
- there. The other one, as Brand told me afterwards, had given notice
- because “she couldn’t abide them Huns” (meaning Elsa), and with her had
- gone the cook, who had been with Wickham’s mother for twenty years.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand was writing in his study upstairs when the new maid showed me in.
- Or, rather, he was leaning over a writing-block, with his elbows dug into
- the table and his face in his hands, while an unlighted pipe—his old
- trench pipe—lay across the inkpot.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Thinking out a new plot, old man?” I asked cheerily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It doesn’t come,” he said. “My own plot cuts across my line of thought.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How’s Elsa?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He pointed with the stem of his pipe to the door leading from his room.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sleeping, I hope.... Sit down and let’s have a yarn.”
- </p>
- <p>
- We talked about things in general for a time. They were not very cheerful,
- anyhow. Brand and I were both gloomy souls just then, and knew each other
- too well to camouflage our views about the state of Europe and the
- “unrest” (as it was called) in England.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he told me about Elsa, and it was a tragic tale From the very first
- his people had treated her with a studied unkindness which had broken her
- nerve and spirit. She had come to England with a joyous hope of finding
- happiness and friendship with her husband’s family, and glad to escape
- from the sadness of Germany and the solemn disapproval of her own people,
- apart from Franz, who was devoted to her.
- </p>
- <p>
- Her first dismay came when she kissed the hand of her mother-in-law, who
- drew it away as though she had been stung by a wasp, and when her movement
- to kiss her husband’s sister Ethel was repulsed by a girl who drew back
- icily and said, “How do you do?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Even then she comforted herself a little with the thought that this coldness
- was due to English reserve, and that in a little while English kindness
- would be revealed. But the days passed with only unkindness.
- </p>
- <p>
- At first Lady Brand and her daughter maintained a chilly silence towards
- Elsa, at breakfast, luncheon, and other meals, talking to each other
- brightly, as though she did not exist, and referring constantly to Wickham
- as “poor Wicky.” Ethel had a habit of reading out morsels from the penny
- illustrated papers, and often they referred to “another trick of the Huns”
- or “fresh revelations of Hun treachery.” At these times Sir Amyas Brand
- said “Ah!” in a portentous voice, but, privately, with some consciousness
- of decency, begged Ethel to desist from “controversial topics.” She
- “desisted” in the presence of her brother, whose violence of speech scared
- her into silence.
- </p>
- <p>
- A later phase of Ethel’s hostility to Elsa was in the style of amiable
- enquiry. In a simple, childlike way, as though eager for knowledge, she
- would ask Elsa such questions as “Why the Germans boiled down their dead?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why they crucified Canadian prisoners?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Was it true that German school children sang the Hymn of Hate before
- morning lessons?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Was it by order of the Kaiser that English prisoners were starved to
- death?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Elsa answered all these questions by passionate denials. It was a terrible
- falsehood, she said, that the Germans had boiled down bodies for fats. On
- the contrary, they paid the greatest reverence to their dead, as her
- brother had seen in many cemeteries on the Western front. The story of the
- “crucified Canadians” had been disproved by the English intelligence
- officers after a special enquiry, as Wickham had told her. She had never
- heard the Hymn of Hate. Some of the English prisoners had been harshly
- treated—there were brutal commandants—but not deliberately
- starved. Not starved more than German soldiers, who had very little food
- during the last years of the war.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But surely,” said Lady Brand, “you must admit, my dear, that Germany
- conducted this war with the greatest possible barbarity? Otherwise, why
- should the world call them Huns?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Elsa said it was only the English who called the Germans
- </p>
- <p>
- Huns, and that was for a propaganda of hatred which was very wicked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do <i>I</i> look like a Hun?” she asked, and then burst into tears.
- </p>
- <p>
- Lady Brand was disconcerted by that sign of weakness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You mustn’t think us unkind, Elsa, but, of course, we have to uphold the
- truth.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Ethel was utterly unmoved by Elsa’s tears, and, indeed, found a holy
- satisfaction in them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “When the German people confess their guilt with weeping and lamentation
- the English will be first to forgive. Never till then.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The presence of a German girl in the house seemed to act as a blight upon
- all domestic happiness. It was the cook who first “gave notice.” Elsa had
- never so much as set eyes upon that cross-eyed woman below-stairs who had
- prepared the family food since Wickham had sat in a high chair with a bib
- round his neck. But Mary, in a private interview with Lady Brand, stormy
- in its character, as Elsa could hear through the folding doors, vowed that
- she would not live in the same house with “one of those damned Germings.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Lady Brand’s tearful protestations that Elsa was no longer German, being
- “Mr. Wickham’s wife,” and that she had repented sincerely of all the wrong
- done by the country in which she had unfortunately been born, did not
- weaken the resolution of Mary Grubb, whose patriotism had always been
- “above suspicion,” “which,” as she said, “I hope to remain so.” She went
- next morning, after a great noise of breathing and the descent of tin
- boxes, while Lady Brand and Ethel looked with reproachful eyes at Elsa as
- the cause of this irreparable blow.
- </p>
- <p>
- The parlour-maid followed in a week’s time, on the advice of her young
- man, who had worked in a canteen of the Y.M.C.A. at Boulogne and knew all
- about German spies.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was very awkward for Lady Brand, who assumed an expression of Christian
- martyrdom, and told Wickham that his rash act was bearing sad fruit, a
- mixed metaphor which increased his anger, as he told me, to a ridiculous
- degree.
- </p>
- <p>
- He could see that Elsa was very miserable. Many times she wept when alone
- with him, and begged him to take her away to a little home of their own,
- even if it were only one room in the poorest neighbourhood. But Wickham
- was almost penniless, and begged her to be patient a little longer, until
- he had saved enough to fulfil their hope. There I think he was unwise. It
- would have been better for him to borrow money—he had good friends—rather
- than keep his wife in such a hostile atmosphere. She was weak and ill. He
- was alarmed at her increasing weakness. Once she fainted in his arms, and
- even to go upstairs to their rooms at the top of the house tired her so
- much that afterwards she would lie back in a chair, with her eyes closed,
- looking very white and worn. She tried to hide her ill-health from her
- husband, and when they were alone together she seemed gay and happy, and
- would have deceived him but for those fits of weeping at the unkindness of
- his mother and sister, and those sudden attacks of “tiredness” when all
- physical strength departed from her.
- </p>
- <p>
- Her love for him seemed to grow with the weakness of her body. She could
- not bear him to leave her alone for any length of time, and while he was
- writing, sat near him, so that she might have her head against his
- shoulder or touch his hand, or kiss it. It was not conducive to easy
- writing or the invention of plots.
- </p>
- <p>
- Something like a crisis happened after a painful scene in the drawing-room
- downstairs on a day when Brand had gone out to walk off a sense of deadly
- depression which prevented all literary effort.
- </p>
- <p>
- Several ladies had come to tea with Lady Brand and Ethel, and they gazed
- at Elsa as though she were a strange and dangerous animal.
- </p>
- <p>
- One of them, a thin and elderly schoolmistress, cross-questioned Elsa as
- to her nationality.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose you are Swedish, my dear?” she said sweetly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” said Elsa.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Danish, then, no doubt?” continued Miss Clutter.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am German,” said Elsa.
- </p>
- <p>
- That announcement had caused consternation among Lady Brand’s guests. Two
- of the ladies departed almost immediately. The others stayed to see how
- Miss Clutter would deal with this amazing situation.
- </p>
- <p>
- She dealt with it firmly, and with the cold intelligence of a high
- schoolmistress.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How <i>very</i> interesting!” she said, turning to Lady Brand. “Perhaps
- your daughter-in-law will enlighten us a little about German psychology
- which we have found so puzzling. I should be so glad if she could explain
- to us how the German people reconcile the sinking of merchant ships, the
- unspeakable crime of the <i>Lusitania</i> with any belief in God, or even
- with the principles of our common humanity. It is a mystery to me how the
- drowning of babies could be regarded as legitimate warfare by a people
- proud of their civilisation.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps it would be better to avoid controversy, dear Miss Clutter,” said
- Lady Brand, alarmed at the prospect of an “unpleasant” scene which would
- be described in other drawing-rooms next day.
- </p>
- <p>
- But Miss Clutter had adopted Ethel’s method of enquiry. She so much wanted
- to know the German point of view. Certainly they must have a point of
- view.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, it would be so interesting to know!” said another lady.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Especially if we could believe it,” said another.
- </p>
- <p>
- Elsa had been twisting and re-twisting a little lace handkerchief in her
- lap. She was very pale, and tried to conceal a painful agitation from all
- these hostile and enquiring ladies.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then she spoke to them in a low, strained voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You will never understand,” she said. “You look out from England with
- eyes of hate, and without pity in your hearts. The submarine warfare was
- shameful. There were little children drowned on the <i>Lusitania</i>, and
- women. I wept for them and prayed the dear God to stop the war. Did you
- weep for our little children and our women? They, too, were killed by sea
- warfare, not only a few, as on the <i>Lusitania</i>, but thousands and
- tens of thousands. Your blockade closed us in with an iron ring. No ship
- could bring us food. For two years we starved on short rations and
- chemical foods. We were without fats and milk. Our mothers watched their
- children weaken and wither and die, because of the English blockade. Their
- own milk dried up within their breasts. Little coffins were carried down
- our streets day after day, week after week. Fathers and mothers were mad
- at the loss of their little ones. ‘We must smash our way through the
- English blockade!’ they said. The U-boat warfare gladdened them. It seemed
- a chance of rescue for the children of Germany. It was wicked. But all the
- war was wickedness. It was wicked of you English to keep up your blockade
- so long after Armistice, so that more children died and more women were
- consumptive, and men fainted at their work. Do you reconcile that with
- God’s good love? Oh, I find more hatred here in England than I knew even
- in Germany. It is cruel, unforgiving, unfair! You, are proud of your own
- virtue and hypocritical. God will be kinder to my people than to you,
- because now we cry out for His mercy, and you are still arrogant, with the
- name of God on your lips but a devil of pride in your hearts. I came here
- with my dear husband believing that many English would be like him,
- forgiving, hating cruelty, eager to heal the world’s broken heart. You are
- not like him. You are cruel and lovers of cruelty, even to one poor German
- girl who came to you for shelter with her English man. I am sorry for you.
- I pity you because of your narrowness. I do not want to know you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She stood up, swaying a little, with one hand on the mantelpiece, as
- afterwards she told her husband. She did not believe that she could cross
- the floor without falling. There was a strange dizziness in her head, and
- a mist before her eyes. But she held her head high and walked out of the
- drawing-room, and then upstairs. When Wickham Brand came back she was
- lying on her bed very ill. He sent for a doctor who was with her for
- half-an-hour.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She is very weak,” he said. “No pulse to speak of. You will have to be
- careful of her—deuced careful.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He gave no name to her illness. “Just weakness,” he said. “Run down like a
- worn-out clock. Nerves all wrong, and no vitality.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He sent round a tonic which Elsa took like a child, and for a little while
- it seemed to do her good. But Brand was frightened because her weakness
- had come back.
- </p>
- <p>
- I am glad now that I had an idea which helped Brand in this time of
- trouble and gave Elsa some weeks of happiness and peace. It occurred to me
- that young Harding was living alone in his big old country house near
- Weybridge, and would be glad and grateful, because of his loneliness, to
- give house-room to Brand and his wife. He had a great liking for Brand, as
- most of us had, and his hatred of Germany had not been so violent since
- his days in Cologne. His good nature, anyhow, and the fine courtesy which
- was the essential quality of his character, would make him kind to Elsa,
- so ill and so desperately in need of kindness. I was not disappointed.
- When I spoke to him over the telephone he said, “It will be splendid for
- me. This lonely house is getting on my nerves badly. Bring them down.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I took them down in a car two days later. It was a fine autumn day with a
- sparkle in the air and a touch of frost on the hedgerows. Elsa, wrapped up
- in heavy rugs, lay back next to Brand, and a little colour crept back into
- her cheeks and brought back her beauty. I think a shadow lifted from her
- as she drove away from that house in Chelsea where she had dwelt with
- enmity among her husband’s people.
- </p>
- <p>
- Harding’s house in Surrey was at the end of a fine avenue of beeches,
- glorious in their autumn foliage of crinkled gold. A rabbit scuttled
- across the drive as we came, and bobbed beneath the red bracken of the
- undergrowth.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh,” said Elsa, like a child, “there is Peterkin! What a rogue he looks!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her eyes were bright when she caught sight of Harding’s house in the
- Elizabethan style of post-and-plaster splashed with scarlet where the
- Virginia creeper straggled on its walls.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is wonderfully English,” she said. “How Franz would love this place!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Harding came down from the steps to greet us, and I thought it noble of
- him that he should kiss the girl’s hand when Brand said, “This is Elsa.”
- For Harding had been a Hun-hater—you remember his much-repeated
- phrase, “No good German but a dead German!”—and that little act was
- real chivalry to a woman of the enemy.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a great fire of logs burning in the open hearth in the hall,
- flinging a ruddy glare on the panelled walls and glinting on bits of
- armour and hunting trophies. Upstairs, also, Brand told me, there was a
- splendid fire in Elsa’s room, which had once been the room of Harding’s
- wife. It wanned Elsa not only in body but in soul. Here was an English
- welcome and kindness of thought. On her dressing-table there were flowers
- from Harding’s hot-houses, and she gave a little cry of pleasure at the
- sight of them for there had been no flowers in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. That
- night she was strong enough to come down to dinner, and looked very
- charming there at the polished board, fit only by candlelight, whose soft
- rays touched the gold of her hair.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is a true English home,” she said, glancing up at the panelled walls
- and at portraits of Harding’s people in old-fashioned costumes which hung
- there.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A lonely one when no friends are here,” said Harding, and that was the
- only time he referred in any way to the wife who had left him.
- </p>
- <p>
- That dinner was the last one which Elsa had sitting at table with us. She
- became very tired again. So tired that Brand had to carry her upstairs and
- downstairs, which he did as though she weighed no more than a child.
- During the day she lay on a sofa in the drawing-room, and Brand did no
- writing now nor any kind of work, but stayed always with his wife. For
- hours together he sat by her side, and she held his hand and touched his
- face and hair, and was happy in her love.
- </p>
- <p>
- A good friend came to stay with them and brought unfailing cheerfulness.
- It was Charles Fortune who had come down at Harding’s invitation. He was
- as comical as ever, and made Elsa laugh with ripples of merriment while he
- satirised the world as he knew it, with shrewd and penetrating wit. He
- played the jester industriously to get that laughter from her, though
- sometimes she had to beg of him not to make her laugh so much because it
- hurt her. Then he played the piano late into the afternoon, until the
- twilight in the room faded into darkness except for the ruddy glow of the
- log fire, or after dinner in the evenings until Brand carried his wife to
- bed. He played Chopin best, with a magic touch, but Elsa liked him to play
- Bach and Schumann, and sometimes Mozart, because that brought back her
- girlhood in the days before the war.
- </p>
- <p>
- So it was one evening when Brand sat on a low stool by the sofa on which
- Elsa lay, with her fingers playing in his hair or resting on his shoulder,
- while Fortune filled the room with melody.
- </p>
- <p>
- Once or twice Elsa spoke to Brand in a low voice. I heard some of her
- words as I lay on a bearskin by the fire.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am wonderfully happy, my dear,” she said once, and Brand pulled her
- hand down and kissed it.
- </p>
- <p>
- A little later she spoke again.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Love is so much better than hate. Then why should people go to war?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “God knows, my dear,” said Brand.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was some time after that, when Fortune was playing softly, that I heard
- Elsa give a big, tired sigh and say the word “Peace!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Charles Fortune played something of Beethoven’s now, with grand crashing
- chords which throbbed through the room as the last glow of the sunset
- flushed through the windows.
- </p>
- <p>
- Suddenly Brand stirred on his stool, made an abrupt movement, then rose
- and gave a loud, agonising cry. Fortune stopped playing with a slur of
- notes. Harding leapt up from his chair in a dark corner and said,
- “Brand!... what’s the matter?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand had dropped to his knees and was weeping with, his arms about his
- dead wife.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0038" id="link2H_4_0038"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- VIII
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> was again a
- wanderer in the land, and going from country to country in Europe saw the
- disillusionment that had followed victory, and the despair that had
- followed defeat, and the ravages that were bequeathed by war to peace, not
- only in devastated earth and stricken towns, but in the souls of men and
- women.
- </p>
- <p>
- The victors had made great promises to their people, but for the most part
- they were still unredeemed. They had promised them rich fruits of victory
- to be paid out of the ruin of their enemies. But little fruit of gold or
- treasure could be gathered from the utter bankruptcy of Germany and
- Austria, whose factories stayed idle for lack of raw material and whose
- money was waste paper in value of exchange. “Reconstruction” was the
- watchword of statesmen, uttered as a kind of magic spell, but when I went
- over the old battlefields in France I found no sign of reconstruction, but
- only the vast belt of desolation which in war I had seen swept by fire. No
- spell-word had built up those towns and villages which had been blown into
- dust and ashes, nor had given life to riven trees and earth choked and
- deadened by high explosives. Here and there poor families had crept back
- to the place where their old homes had stood, grubbing in the ruins for
- some relic of their former habitations and building wooden shanties in the
- desert as frail shelters against the wind and the rain. In Ypres—the
- city of Great Death—there were wooden <i>estaminets</i> for the
- refreshment of tourists who came from Paris to see the graveyard of youth,
- and girls sold picture-postcards where boys of ours had gone marching up
- the Menin Road under storms of shell-fire which took daily toll of them.
- No French statesman by optimistic words could resurrect in a little while
- the beauty that had been in Artois and Picardy and the fields of
- Champagne.
- </p>
- <p>
- On days of national thanksgiving the spirit of France was exalted by the
- joy of victory. In Paris it was a feverish joy, wild-eyed, with laughing
- ecstasy, with troops of dancing girls and a carnival that broke all bounds
- between Montmartre and Montparnasse. France had saved herself from death.
- She had revenged herself for 1870 and the years just passed. She had
- crushed the enemy that had always been a brutal menace across the
- frontier. She had her sword deep in the heart of Germany which lay
- bleeding at her feet.
- </p>
- <p>
- I who love France with a kind of passion, and had seen during the years of
- war the agony and the heroism of her people, did not begrudge them their
- ecstasy, and it touched my spirit with its fire so that in France I could
- see and understand the French point of view, of ruthlessness towards the
- beaten foe. But I saw also what many people of France saw slowly, but with
- a sense of fear, that the treaty made by Clemenceau did not make them safe
- except for a little while. This had not been, after all, “the war to end
- war.” There was no guarantee of world-peace. Their frontiers were not made
- impregnable against the time when the Germans might grow strong again and
- come back for vengeance. They could not stand alone, but must make new
- alliances, new secret treaties, new armies, new armaments, because hate
- survived, and the League of Nations was a farce, as it had come from the
- table at Versailles.
- </p>
- <p>
- They looked round and counted their cost—a million and a half dead.
- A multitude of maimed and blind and nerve-shocked men. A birth-rate that
- had sunk to zero. A staggering debt which they could not pay. A cost of
- living which mounted higher and ever higher. A sense of revolt among the
- soldiers who had come back because their reward for four years of misery
- was no more than miserable.
- </p>
- <p>
- So it was in Italy, stricken by a more desperate poverty, disappointed by
- a lack of spoil, angry with a sense of “betrayal,” afraid of revolution,
- exultant when a mad poet seized the port of Fiume which had been denied to
- her by President Wilson and his conscience.
- </p>
- <p>
- Across the glittering waters of the Adriatic I went to Trieste and found
- it a dead port with Italian officers in possession of its deserted docks
- and abandoned warehouses and Austrians dying of typhus in the back
- streets, and starving to death in tenement houses.
- </p>
- <p>
- And then, across the new State of Jugo-Slavia, cut out of the body of the
- old Austrian Empire now lying dismembered, I came to Vienna, which once I
- had known as the gayest capital of Europe, where charming people played
- the pleasant game of life with music and love and laughter.
- </p>
- <p>
- In Vienna there was music still, but it played a <i>danse macabre</i>, a
- dance of death, which struck one with a sense of horror. The orchestras
- still fiddled in the restaurants. At night the opera-house was crowded. In
- <i>cafés</i> bright with gilt and glass, in restaurants rich in marble
- walls, crowds of people listened to the waltzes of Strauss, ate smuggled
- food at monstrous prices, laughed, flirted, and drank. They were the
- profiteers of war, spending paper money with the knowledge that it had no
- value outside Vienna, no value here except in stacks to buy warmth for
- their stomachs, a little warmth for their souk, while their stock of
- kronen lasted. They were the vultures from Jugo-Slavia and Czecho-Slovakia
- come to feed on the corpse of Austria while it still had flesh on its
- bones, and while Austrian kronen still had some kind of purchase power...
- And outside, two million people were starving slowly but very surely to
- death.
- </p>
- <p>
- The children were starving quickly to death. Their coffins passed me in
- the streets. Ten—twelve—fifteen—in one half-hour between
- San Stefan’s Chinch and the Favoritenstrasse. Small living skeletons
- padded after one with naked feet, thrusting out little claw-like hands,
- begging for charity. In the great hospital of Vienna children lay in
- crowded wards, with twisted limbs and bulbous heads, diseased from birth,
- because of their mother’s hunger and a life without milk and any kind of
- fat.
- </p>
- <p>
- Vienna, the capital of a great empire, had been sentenced to death by the
- Treaty of Peace which had so carved up her former territory that she was
- cut off from all her natural resources and from all means of industry,
- commerce and life.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was Dr. Small, dear “Daddy” Small, who gave me an intimate knowledge of
- what was happening in Vienna a year after Armistice, and it was Eileen
- O’Connor who still further enlightened me by taking me into the babies’ <i>crèches</i>,
- the <i>Kinderspital</i> and the working people’s homes, where disease and
- death found their victims. She took me to these places until I sickened
- and said, “I can bear no more.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Dr. Small had a small office in the Kârtnerstrasse, where Eileen worked
- with him, and it was here that I found them both a day after my arrival in
- Vienna. Eileen was on her knees making a wood fire and puffing it into a
- blaze for the purpose of boiling a tin kettle which stood on a trivet, and
- after that, as I found, for making tea. Outside there was a raw, horrible
- day, with a white mist in which those coffins were going by and with those
- barefoot children with pallid faces and gaunt cheeks padding by one’s
- side, so that I was glad to see the flames in the hearth and to hear the
- cheerful dink of tea-cups which the doctor was getting out. Better still,
- was I glad to see these two good friends, so sane, so vital, so
- purposeful, as I found them, in a world of gloom and neurosis.
- </p>
- <p>
- The doctor told me of their work. It was life-saving and increasing in
- range of action. They had organised a number of feeding centres in Vienna,
- and stores from which mothers could buy condensed milk and cocoa and
- margarine, at next to nothing, for their starving babes. Austrian ladies
- were doing most of the actual work apart from organisation at
- headquarters, and doing it devotedly. From America and from England money
- was flowing in.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The tide of thought is turning,” said the doctor. “Every dollar we get,
- and every shilling, is a proof that the call of humanity is being heard
- above the old war cries.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And every dollar and every shilling,” said Eileen, “is helping to save
- the life of some poor woman or some little mite who had no guilt in the
- war, but suffered from its cruelty.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “This job,” said the doctor, “suits my peculiar philosophy. I am not out
- so much to save these babies’ lives——”
- </p>
- <p>
- Here Eileen threatened to throw the teapot at his head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Because,” he added, “some of them would be better dead, and anyhow, you
- can’t save a nation by charity. But what I am out to do is to educate the
- heart of the world above the baseness of the passions that caused the
- massacre in Europe. We’re helping to do it by saving the children and by
- appealing to the chivalry of men and women across the old frontiers. We’re
- killers of cruelty, Miss Eileen and I. We’re rather puffed up with
- ourselves, ain’t we, my dear?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He grinned at Eileen in a whimsical way, and I could see that between this
- little American and that Irish girl there was an understanding
- comradeship.
- </p>
- <p>
- So he told me when she left the room a minute to get another tea-cup or
- wash one up.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That girl!” he said. “Say, laddie, you couldn’t find a better head in all
- Europe, including Hoover himself. She’s a Napoleon Bonaparte without his
- blood-lust. She’s Horatio Nelson and Lord Northcliffe and Nurse Cavell all
- rolled into one, to produce the organising genius of Eileen O’Connor. Only
- you would have to add a few saints like Catherine of Sienna and Joan of
- Arc to allow for her spirituality. She organises feeding-centres like you
- would write a column article. She gets the confidence of Austrian women so
- that they would kiss her feet if she’d allow it. She has a head for
- figures that fairly puts me to shame, and as for her courage—well, I
- don’t mind telling you that I’ve sworn to pack her back to England if she
- doesn’t keep clear of typhus dens and other fever-stricken places. We
- can’t afford to lose her by some dirty bug-bite.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Eileen came into the room again with another tea-cup and saucer. I counted
- those on the table and saw three already.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who is the other cup for?” I asked. “If you are expecting visitors I’ll
- go, because I’m badly in need of a wash.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t worry,” said Eileen. “We haven’t time to wash in Vienna, and,
- anyhow, there’s no soap, for love or money. This is for Wickham, who is no
- visitor but one of the staff.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wickham?” I said. “Is Brand here?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Rather!” said “Daddy” Small. “He has been here a week and is doing good
- work. Looks after the supplies, and puts his heart into the job.”
- </p>
- <p>
- As he spoke the door opened and Brand strode into the room, with rain
- dripping from his waterproof coat which he took off and flung into a
- corner before he turned to the table.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Lord! A cup of tea is what I want!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And what you shall have, my dear,” said Eileen.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But don’t you know a friend when you see him?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “By Jove!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He held my hand in a hard grip and patted me on the shoulder. Our
- friendship was beyond the need of words.
- </p>
- <p>
- So there we three, who had seen many strange and tragic things in those
- years of history, were together again in the city of Vienna, the city of
- death, where the innocent were paying for the guilty, but where also, as
- “Daddy” Small said, there was going out a call to charity which was being
- heard by the heart of the world above the old war-cries of cruelty.
- </p>
- <p>
- I stayed with them only a week. I had been long away from England and had
- other work to do. But in that time I saw how these three friends, and
- others in their service, were devoting themselves to the rescue of human
- life, partly, I think, for their own sake, though without conscious
- selfishness, and with a passionate pity for those who suffered. By this
- service they were healing their own souls, sorely wounded in the war. That
- was so, certainly, with Wickham Brand, and a little, I think, with Eileen
- O’Connor.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand was rescued in the nick of time by the doctor’s call to him. Elsa’s
- death had struck him a heavy blow when his nerves were already in rags and
- tatters. Now by active service in this work of humanity and healing he was
- getting back to normality, getting serene and steady. I saw the change in
- him, revealed by the light in his eyes and by his quietude of speech and
- the old sense of humour, which for a while he had lost.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I see now,” he said one night, “that it’s no use fighting against the
- injustice and brutality of life. I can’t re-make the world or change the
- things that are written in history or alter in any big way the destiny of
- peoples. Stupidity, ignorance, barbarity; will continue among the
- multitude. All that any of us can do is to tackle some good job that lies
- at hand, and keep his own soul bright and fearless if there is any chance
- and use his little intellect in his little circle for kindness instead of
- cruelty. I find that chance here, and I am grateful.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The doctor had larger and bigger hopes, though his philosophy of life was
- not much different from that of Brand’s.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I want to fix up an intellectual company in this funny old universe,” he
- said. “I want to establish an intellectual aristocracy on international
- lines—the leaders of the new world. By intellectuals I don’t mean
- high-brow fellows with letters after their names and encyclopaedias in
- their brain-pans. I mean men and women who by moral character, kindness of
- heart, freedom from narrow hatreds, tolerance of different creeds and
- races, and love of humanity, will unite in a free, unfettered way, without
- a label or a league, to get a move on towards a better system of human
- society. No red Bolshevism, mind you, no heaven by way of hell, but a
- striving for greater justice between classes and nations, and for peace
- within the frontiers of Christendom, and beyond, if possible. It’s getting
- back to the influence of the individual, the leadership of multitudes by
- the power of the higher mind. I’m doing it by penny postcards to all my
- friends. This work of ours in Vienna is a good proof of their response.
- Let all the folk with good hearts behind their brains start writing
- postcards to each other, with a plea for brotherhood, charity, peace, and
- the new world would come... You laugh! Yes, I talk a little nonsense. It’s
- not so easy as that. But see the idea? The leaders must keep in touch, and
- the herds will follow.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I turned to Eileen who was listening with a smile about her lips while she
- pasted labels on to packets of cocoa.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What’s your philosophy?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- She laughed, in that deep voice of hers.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ve none; only the old faith, and a little hope, and a heart that’s
- bustin’ with love.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Brand was adding up figures in a book of accounts, and smiled across at
- the girl whom he had known since boyhood, when she had pulled his hair.
- </p>
- <p>
- His wounds were healing.
- </p>
- <div style="height: 6em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
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-
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