Gerbeviller"s tragic little river Mortagne gleamed silver-bright beneath a torn lace of delicate white flowers that was like a veil flung off by a fugitive bride. It ran sparkling under the motionless wheel of a burned mill, and twinkled on--the one living thing the Germans left--to flow through the park of a ruined chateau.
When it was alive, that small chateau must have been gay and delightful as a castle in a fairy tale, pink and friendly among its pleasant trees; but even in its prime, rich with tapestries and splendid old paintings, which were its treasures, never could the place have been so beautiful as in death!
At a first glance--seen straight in front--the face of the house seems to live still, rosy with colour, gazing with immense blue eyes through a light green veil. But a second glance brings a shock to the heart. The face is a mask held up to hide a skull; the blue of the eyes is the open sky framed by gla.s.sless windows; the rosy colour is stained with dark streaks of smoke and flame; the chateau among its trees, and the chapel with its stopped clock and broken saints are skeletons.
Not even O"Farrell could talk. We were a silent procession in the midst of silence until we came at last to the one quarter of the town whose few houses had been spared to the courage of Gerbeviller"s heroine, Soeur Julie.
Her street (but for her it would not exist) has perhaps a dozen houses intact, looking strangely _bourgeois_, almost out of place, so smugly whole where all else has perished. Yet it was a comfort to see them, and wonderful to see Soeur Julie.
We knocked at the door of the hospice, the cottage hospital which is famous because of her, its head and heart; and she herself let us in, for at that instant she had been in the act of starting out. I recognized her at once from the photographs which were in every ill.u.s.trated paper at the time when, for her magnificent bravery and presence of mind, she was named Chevaliere of the Legion of Honour.
But with her first smile I saw that the pictures had done her crude injustice. They made of Soeur Julie an elderly woman in the dress of a nun; somewhat stout, rather large of feature. But the figure which met us in the narrow corridor had dignity and a n.o.ble strength. The smile of greeting lit deep eyes whose colour was that of brown topaz, and showed the kindly, humorous curves of a generous mouth. The flaring white headdress of the Order of Saint-Charles of Nancy framed a face so strong that I ceased to wonder how this woman had cowed a German horde; and it thrilled me to think that in this very doorway she had stood at bay, offering her black-robed body as a shield for the wounded soldiers and poor people she meant to save.
Even if we had not come from the Prefet, and with some of his family who were her admiring friends, I"m sure Soeur Julie would have welcomed the strangers. As it was she beamed with pleasure at the visit, and called a young nun to help place chairs for us all in the clean, bare reception room. By this time she must know that she is the heroine of Lorraine--her own Lorraine!--and that those who came to Gerbeviller come to see her; but she talked to us with the unself-consciousness of a child. It was only when she was begged to tell the tale of August 23, 1914, that she showed a faint sign of embarra.s.sment. The blood flushed her brown face, and she hesitated how to begin, as if she would rather not begin at all, but once launched on the tide, she forgot everything except her story: she lived that time over again, and we lived it with her.
"What a day it was!" she sighed. "We knew what must happen, unless G.o.d willed to spare Gerbeviller by some miracle. Our town was in the German"s way. Yet we prayed--we hoped. We hoped even after our army"s defeat at Morhange. Then Luneville was taken. Our turn was near. We heard how terrible were the Bavarians under their general, Clauss. Our soldiers--poor, brave boys!--fought every step of the way to hold them back. They fought like lions. But they were so few! The Germans came in a gray wave of men. Our wounded were brought here to the hospice, as many as we could take--and more! Often there were three hundred. But when there was no hope to save the town, quick, with haste at night, they got the wounded away--ambulance after ambulance, cart after cart: all but a few; nineteen _grands blesses_, who could not be moved. They were here in this room where we sit. But ah, if you had seen us--we sisters--helping the commandant as best we could! We made ourselves carpenters. We took wooden shutters and doors from their hinges for stretchers. We split the wood with axes. We did not remember to be tired. We tore up our linen, and linen which others brought us. We tied the wounded boys on to the shutters. They never groaned. Sometimes they smiled. Ah, it was we who wept, to see them jolting off in rough country wagons, going we knew not where, or to what fate! All night we worked, and at dawn there were none left--except those nineteen I told you of.
And that was the morning of the 23rd of August, hot and heavy--a weight upon our hearts and heads.
"Not only the wounded, but our defenders had gone. The army was in retreat. We had fifty-seven cha.s.seurs left, ordered to keep the enemy back for five hours. They did it for _eleven_! From dawn till twilight they held the bridge outside the town, and fought behind barriers they had flung up in haste. Boys they were, but of a courage! They knew they were to die to save their comrades. They asked no better than to die hard. And they fought so well, the Germans believed there were thousands. Not till our boys had nearly all fallen did the enemy break through and swarm into the town. That was down at the other end from us, below the hill, but soon we heard fearful sounds--screams and shoutings, shots and loud explosions. They were burning the place street by street with that method of theirs! They fired the houses with pastilles their chemists have invented, and with petrol. The air was thick with smoke.
We shut our windows to save the wounded from coughing. Soon we might all die together, but we would keep our boys from new sufferings while we could!
"Then at last the hour struck for us. One of our sisters, who had run to look at the red sky to see how near the fire came, cried out that Germans were pouring up the hill--four officers on horseback heading a troop of soldiers. I knew what that meant. I went quickly to the door to meet them. My knees felt as if they had broken under my weight. My heart was a great, cold, dead thing within me. My mouth was dry as if I had lost myself for days in the desert. I am not a small woman, yet it seemed that I was no bigger than a mouse under the stare of those big men who leaped off their horses, and made as if to pa.s.s me at the door.
But I did not let them pa.s.s. I knew I could stop them long enough at least to kill me and then the sisters, one by one, before they reached our wounded! We backed slowly before them into the hall, the sisters and I, to stand guard before this room.
""You are hiding Frenchmen here--French soldiers!" a giant of a captain bawled at me. Beside him was a lieutenant even more tall. They had swords in their hands, and they both pointed their weapons at me.
""We have nineteen soldiers desperately wounded," I said. "There are no other men here."
""You are lying!" shouted the captain. He thought he could frighten me with his roar like a lion: but he did not seem to me so n.o.ble a beast.
""You may come in and see for yourselves that I speak the truth," I said. And think what it was for me, a woman of Lorraine, to bid a _German_ enter her house! I did not let those two pa.s.s by me into this room. I came in first. While the lieutenant stood threatening our boys in their beds that he would shoot if they moved, the captain went round, tearing off the sheets, looking for firearms. In his hand was a strange knife, like a dagger which he had worn in his belt. One of our soldiers, too weak to open his lips, looked at the German, with a pair of great dark eyes that spoke scorn; and that look maddened the man with a sudden fury.
""Coward, of a country of cowards! You and cattle like you have cut off the ears and torn out the eyes of our glorious Bavarians. I"ll slit your throat to pay for that!"
"Ah, but this was too much--more than I could bear! I said "No!" and I put my two hands--so--between the throat of that boy and the German knife."
When Soeur Julie came to this part of the tale, she made a beautiful, unconscious gesture, re-enacting the part she had played. I knew then how she had looked when she faced the Bavarian officer, and why he had not hacked those two work-worn but n.o.bly shaped hands of hers, to get at the French cha.s.seur"s throat. She seemed the incarnate spirit of the mother-woman, whose selfless courage no brute who had known a mother could resist. And her "No!" rang out deep and clear as a warning tocsin.
I felt that the wounded boy must have been as safe behind those hands and that "No!" as if a thick though transparent wall of gla.s.s had magically risen to protect him.
"All this time," Soeur Julie went on, gathering herself together after a moment. "All this time Germans led by non-commissioned officers were searching the hospice. But they found no hiding soldiers, because there were none such to find. And somehow that captain and his lieutenant did not touch our wounded ones. They had a look of shame and sullenness on their faces, as if they were angry with themselves for yielding their wicked will to an old woman. Yet they _did_ yield, thank G.o.d! And then I got the captain"s promise to spare the hospice--got it by saying we would care for his wounded as faithfully as we tended our own. I said, "If you leave this house standing to take in your men, you must leave the whole street. If the buildings round us burn, we shall burn, too--and with us your German wounded. Will you give me your word that this whole quarter shall be safe?"
"The man did not answer. But he looked down at his boots. And I have always noticed that, when men of any nation look at their boots, it is that they are undecided. It was so with him. A few more arguments from me, and he said: "It shall be as you ask."
"Soon he must have been glad of his promise, for there were many German wounded, and we took them all in. Ah, this room, which you see so clean and white now, ran blood. We had to sweep blood into the hall, and so out at the front door, where at least it washed away the German footprints from our floor! For days we worked and did our best, even when we knew of the murders committed: innocent women with their little children. And the fifteen old men they shot for hostages. Oh, we did our best, though it was like acid eating our hearts. But our reward came the day the Germans had to gather up their wounded in wild haste, as the French commandant had gathered ours before the retreat. They fled, and our Frenchmen marched back--too late to save the town, but not too late to redeem its honour. And that is all my story."
As she finished with a smile half sad, half sweet, Soeur Julie looked over our heads at some one who had just come in--some one who had stood listening in silence, unheard and unseen by us. I turned mechanically, and my eyes met the eyes of Paul Herter, the "Wandering Jew."
CHAPTER XV
Dierdre O"Farrell and I were sitting side by side, our backs to the door, so it was only as we turned that Herter could have recognized us.
He had no scruple in showing that I was the last person he wished to meet. One look was enough for him! His pale face--changed and aged since London--flushed a dark and violent red. Backing out into the hall he banged the door.
My ears tingled as if they had been boxed. I suppose I"ve been rather spoiled by men. Anyhow, not one ever before ran away at sight of me, as if I were Medusa. I"d been hoping that Doctor Paul and I might meet and make friends, so this was a blow: and it hurt a little that Dierdre O"Farrell should see me thus snubbed. I glanced at her; and her faint smile told that she understood.
Soeur Julie was bewildered for a second, but recovered herself to explain that Doctor Herter was eccentric and shy of strangers. He came often from Luneville to Gerbeviller to tend the poor, refusing payment, and was so good at heart that we must forgive his odd ways.
"_Spurlos versnubt!_" I heard Puck chuckling to himself; so he, too, was in the secret of the situation. I half expected him to pretend ingenuousness, and spring the tale of Dierdre"s adventure with Herter on the company. But he preserved a discreet reticence, more for his own sake than mine or his sister"s, of course. He"s as lazy as he is impish, except when there"s some special object to gain, and probably he wished to avoid the bother of explanations. As for Brian, his extreme sensitiveness is better than studied tact. I"m sure he felt magnetically that Dierdre O"Farrell shrank from a reference to her part in the night air raid. But his silence puzzled her, and I saw her studying him--more curiously than gratefully, I thought.
We had heard the end of Soeur Julie"s story, and had no further excuse to keep her tied to the duties of hostess. When the Becketts had left something for the poor of the hospice, we bade the heroine of Gerbeviller farewell, and started out to regain our automobiles, Julian O"Farrell suddenly appearing at my side.
"Don"t make an excuse that you must walk with your brother," he said.
"He"s all right with Dierdre; perhaps just as happy as with you! One _does_ want a change from the best of sisters now and then."
"Mrs. Beckett----" I began.
"Mrs. Beckett is discussing with Mr. Beckett what they can do for Gerbeviller, and they"ll ask your advice when they want it. No use worrying. They"ve boodle enough for all their charities, and for the shorn lambs, too."
"Do you call yourself a shorn lamb?" I sniffed.
"Certainly. Don"t I look it? Good heavens, girl, you needn"t basilisk me so, to see if I do! You glare as if I were some kind of abnormal beast eating with its eyes, or winking with its mouth."
"You do wink with your mouth," I said.
"You mean I lie? All romantic natures embroider truth. I have a romantic nature. It"s growing more romantic every minute since I met you. I started this adventure for what I could get out of it. I"m going on to the end, bitter or sweet, for _les beaux yeux_ of Mary O"Malley. I don"t grudge you the Becketts" blessing, but I don"t know why it shouldn"t be bestowed on us both, with Dierdre and Brian in the background throwing flowers. You didn"t love Jim Beckett, for the very good reason that you never met him: so, if you owe no more debts than those you owe his memory, you"re luckier than----"
It was not I who cut his words short, though I was on the point of breaking in. Perhaps I should have flung at him the truth about Jim Beckett if something had not happened to s.n.a.t.c.h my thoughts from O"Farrell and his impudence. We had just pa.s.sed the quarter of the town saved by Soeur Julie, when out from the gaping doorway of a ruined house stepped Paul Herter.
He came straight to me, ignoring my companion.
"I was waiting for you," he said. "Will you walk on a little way with me? There are things I should like to speak about."
All the hurt anger I had felt was gone like the shadow of a flitting cloud. "Oh, yes!" I exclaimed. "I shall be very, very glad."
Whether O"Farrell had the grace to drop behind, or whether I pushed ahead I don"t know, but next moment Doctor Herter and I were pacing along, side by side, keeping well ahead of the others, in spite of his limp.
"I thought I never wanted to see you again, Mary O"Malley," he said; "but that glimpse I had, in the hospice, showed me my mistake. I couldn"t stand it to be so near and let you go out of my life without a word--not after seeing your face."
"It makes me happy to hear that," I answered. "I was disappointed when you avoided me the other night, and--hurt to-day when you slammed the door."
"How did you know I avoided you? The girl promised to hold her tongue."
"She kept her promise. She was pleased to keep it, because she dislikes me. But I heard your name next day and understood. I--I heard other things, too. If you wouldn"t be angry, I should like to tell you how I----"
"Don"t tell me."