The boy's slight figure seemed to shrink upon itself as the stony eyes looked at him, and the teeth showed under the red moustache, not tightly curled now, but stiffened and pointing to the eyes. Von Herrnung set a foot upon the broken wall and leaped into the baker's parlour, staggering slightly as he alighted amongst the rubbish on the broken floor. He had been drinking, but not to excess, for the restaurant-cellars having been thoroughly gutted by his countrymen, the wreckage of the bar behind which Madame had sat, busy with her embroidery, had yielded barely a half-tumbler of Cognac and a single bottle of Champagne.
Having drunk enough to spur memory and not to lull his snarling grievances to slumber, he had come forth to blunt the tooth of his bitter hatred on the boy. For, since that queer tickling, pleasurable sensation experienced in his first tantalization of Bawne's hunger, every new weal marked upon the wincing body, every fresh bruise inflicted on the shuddering soul of Her Dearest, imparted to von Herrnung a ferocious pleasure in comparison with which mere vicious indulgence palled.
"So, there you are, little English pig-dog," he said in German, as the blue eyes met his own and fell away before them and the colour sank out of the young face. "Get you back to the Market-platz there and wait for me. I have some business with your friend."
He stretched out a long arm, picked up the boy by the slack of his garments, and with a turn of the wrist dropped him into the street. His ears were pricked for the cry that should follow the slight scrambling fall of the light body on the rubbish. It failed to come, and he frowned. Presently— Meanwhile here was game of a larger kind. He looked down from his superb height upon the bloodstained figure in the stretcher. Its eyes were closed, and the haggard face beneath the grime and bristles had the yellowish-white of old wax. He spoke to it harshly, in his English, and the brownish lids split apart and the gaunt sick eyes glimmered up at him. But no reply came from the livid lips. He rapped his foot sharply on the floor, repeating:
"I suppose you know you are my prisoner, sir?" and a strange spasm of mingled amusement and irony twitched the muscles of the haggard mask. The faded negatives of eyes regarded him with the ghost of a smile in them. The dissolving voice said in tones no louder than a sigh:
"Possibly. But not—for long!"
The voice stopped short. As von Herrnung took a step nearer to the stretcher, his toe stubbed against and caught in the strap of a leather case lying on the littered floor. He picked up the case and smiled as he drew out a costly pair of Zeiss binoculars. His own, though hailing from the Jena workshop, only magnified to 12x. These registered 25x. On the metal rim of the larger lense was engraved the style and title of the owner: "Capt. Rt. Hon. Viscount Norwater, Royal Bearskins Plain."
A find in the dual sense. He restored the binoculars to their case, unbuckled the strap and slipped it under his heavy bandolier of cartridges, hanging the case beside his own, loosened the upper stud-clips that fastened his goggled helmet, and pushed it back so as to reveal his whole face. The gaunt eyes were open, looking at him attentively. He asked them:
"May it not be that we have met before? In Paris, yes? On the night of the Grand Prix. At the Hotel Spitz, ja, ja, gewiss! A dinner given by Sir Thomas Brayham for Lady Wathe and a few friends. You were one of the friends. I another. How is the old woman, do you know?"
Kreutzdonnerwetter! what inconceivable insolence! The eyes looked through him as though he had not been there. His hard blue eyes, already injected with blood, grew savage, and a purplish tinge suffused his florid skin. He reflected an instant, pulled a capacious silver spirit-flask from the deep side-pocket of his pneumatic, half-filled the drinking cup that capped it, and knelt down beside the stretcher, saying quite pleasantly, in his gutturals:
"See, here is some capital Cognac. Let me give you a sip, eh? Then you will feel better." He poured a dram between the teeth, and waited through a spasm of coughing, wiped the blood and mucus from the gasping lips with a rag of the torn clothing, then pulled a stool from amongst the rubbish, sat down near the feet of the wounded man, facing him, and took a long pull of the belauded brandy from the neck of the big flask.
"That does more good than canteen coffee," he said, and sucked his red moustache appreciatively. He set down the flask on the floor between his feet, found his case, and carefully chose a cigar.
"A zigarre? No! You will, then, perhaps not object to my smoking? We of the Field Flight have to comfort ourselves with snuff when in the air. To burn tobacco and blaze up like a star-shell and come down like a charred rocket-stick, that is not at all agreeable or praktisch. Sapperlot! you are not a very amusing companion. Nevertheless, my fellow, I drink to your jolly good health!"
He knocked off the ash of his cigar, cleared his throat, and spat, just clearing Franky's shoulder. The flicker of anger in the sunken eyes brought a glitter of malice into his own. He sent out a long swaggering stream of smoke, and knocked the ash from his cigar with the little finger of his ringed left hand, continuing:
"You see, I have cut the long thumb-nail that amused you when we met in Paris. The Day has come—though you would not join me in drinking to its dawning!—and the German eagle has dipped his claws in English blood. We Prussians have beaten out the iron sceptre of World Power with giant blows upon the War Anvil, and the sun that never set upon the swanky British Empire, has already risen to find the Roast Beef of Old England in danger, and the Triple Entente a bankrupt syndicate." He shrugged and twisted his red moustache, tilted his big body sidewise, and spat at a carefully-calculated angle, missing the other shoulder of the victim as he pursued:
"But you do not know ... Donnerwetter! how should you?—lying here like a stuck pig! Yesterday—in the neighbourhood of Ypres—took place the ultimate, conclusive battle, in which the German mammoth pounded the British Lion into pulp. Your little British Expeditionary Force may be said to exist no longer. Your Brigade of Guards, who boast that, like the Samurai, they do not surrender while yet unwounded, is practically extinct. Maddened by despair the officers shot the few men who remained and then blew one another's brains out. Your Commander-in-Chief is our prisoner, Sir Rothesay Craig has been killed, also General Callonby and General Jones-Torrian. The French Generalissimo has surrendered, with the 5th French Army. The 6th French Army has been chopped into sausage-meat. So, all is over! Total Kaput!"
"If what you say is Gospel," said the weak voice, and the faded eyes had the ghost of a smile in them, "why do I keep on hearing our guns?"
For the hurly-burly of battle in the South had broken out afresh as though in contradiction. The crazy floor vibrated, the tottering walls shook with the distant fury of sound:
Thud—thud—thud—thud! and the muffled Boom!—Crash! of immense explosions. And through all the steady slogging of Royal Garrison Artillery howitzers, and the tireless, dogged hammering of Field Artillery eighteen-pounders.
"Macht nicht!"
Von Herrnung shrugged contemptuously, though his keen ear did not miss the fact that the guns were coming nearer: "That must go on—for a little!—until the last show of resistance is broken down. If it be a military virtue not to be aware when you are beaten—your big-jawed, dull-brained, short-headed British bull-dogs of soldiers have that virtue, of course. But comes the awakening! The Russian Navy has been blown off the Baltic, the Czar has accepted our Kaiser's ultimatum—the Belgian Government has made its submission—the Belgian Army has laid down its arms. Our 17-inch siege-howitzers are bombarding the shores of England from their emplacements at Calais. The Army of Invasion is embarking—your British Navy—the floating bulwark of your Empire—lies at the bottom of the North Sea. Ministers run from one end of England to the other, begging, coaxing, persuading—your proletariat. There is panic in the English War Office, and despair at Buckingham Palace; rebellion in the streets of London, débâcle in the City, and stampede in the West End. To-morrow the Emperor of Greater Germany and the Crown Prince, Viceroy of the Brito-German Possessions, will, with the Empress enter Paris. Ten miles of films will record for all Posterity this colossal and magnificent scene. The London pageant of triumph follows. Well may you weep, my unlucky fellow, over the collapse and ruin of your proud country"—for tears were really trickling from the puckered eyelids of the now flushed and quivering face. "Himmelkreuzbombenelement! You are not weeping. You are laughing, you dirty English swine!"
"What else do you—expect—when you're so—dashed amusin'?" gasped Franky painfully. "Roll along with some more of it—why don't you, Anatole?"
"You do not believe me, no? You think that I am rotting," von Herrnung shrugged his huge shoulders and laughed with forced heartiness. "Always to rot, that is the English custom." He added, with a cruel relish: "Desto besser, you will die more pleasantly. For of course you will die. This is the third day you have lain here, Alter junge, and you have the smell and colour of gangrene. You are a lump of carrion, Norwater, not worth the taking away!"
"Possibly not!"
The eyes met his calmly, though their laughter had died out. It angered von Herrnung to be baulked of the ferocious enjoyment he had promised himself. He finished the Cognac slowly, seeking in the fiery drink a spur to inventiveness, and sucked his moustache slowly as he capped and pocketed the flask.
"I am hellishly sorry, I assure you, Norwater," he said, adopting a bluff and hearty manner as he sucked the stump of the nearly finished cigar. "One is hardened to death and wounds in War, but one is human. And I have been on friendly terms with many Englishmen and Angenehme Englânderinn such as Lady Wathe, whom I have known for years, and that superb brunette, Mees Saxham. We flirted desperately that night in Paris. Later on, in London, she became my mistress——"
"You lie, you aëroplane-stealing cad!" said Franky, feebly but with great distinctness. Von Herrnung swore and spat, full in his face. Its nostrils winced disgust, but the brown eyes were indomitable. And from the blue lips came a mere thread of human utterance, pregnant with scathing irony:
"I—say to you what the—Belgian woman said to your Kaiser—when his—horse splashed her. 'This kind of filth—wipes off!'"
"You think so, eh? You——"
Von Herrnung clenched his fist, and might have dashed it in the eyes that defied him, but for a sudden, significant change in the sound of those distant guns. The barrage of the German Field Artillery was becoming intermittent. The slogging of the British had increased in energy.
A flare of red spurted into the Kaiserman's pasty cheeks, and his hard eyes lighted eagerly. He forgot his rule of sleeping off liquor before again taking to the air. With a confidence in his own powers largely justified by his successes, his mind leaped to the scene of conflict. Now, when the German batteries were weakening, was the moment for the arrival of a pilot-aviator of the Imperial Field Flight, skilled as aërial observer and signaller, and known to be indifferent to risk.
Here was the chance one had hoped for. Restitution of the forfeited decoration. Restoration to the Emperor's favour. Reinstatement in the lost place upon the regimental roster. Promotion—the bestowal of new honours—danced before him like little, gaudy demons, drowning with their buzz the voice of prudence, luring him to the essay.
"I am compelled to leave you now, Norwater," he said smilingly to the man on the stretcher; "thanks so much for our interesting chat! I shall carry away a pleasant recollection, and leave you also a memento in the shape of a bomb, which I shall drop on you when I have climbed to a suitable height. So Gut Abend, Alter junge. Though before I go there is a trifling formality——"
He knelt down by the stretcher, and without unnecessary gentleness rifled the pockets of the wounded man. The victim had swooned when von Herrnung rose, transferring to his own person a small purse, heavy with English sovereigns, and a pigskin case full of crisp French banknotes, with a thin gold wrist-watch that had a luminous dial, and a coroneted monogram upon the back.
Sheer waste, according to the German War Book, issued by the Great Staff for the use of German officers, to leave upon the person of the fallen opponent articles likely to be of use to the conqueror. He rinsed his hands in the water-can, and dried them on his clothing, pulled up his helmet, fastened it, and buttoned his pockets, straightened his bandolier, nodded pleasantly at the reflection of his giant person in the skewed wall-mirror, jumped lightly through the window-gap, and went upon his way.
The slight figure lying so still upon the stretcher had never been remarkable for beauty of proportion. The sharpened face with its hue of old wax, the discoloured stains and the hair and grime upon it, had never been handsome even in health. But thrown back and tilted upwards, with the rosy glow of the setting sun touching the high brow, and violet shadows framing the sealed eyelids and close-shut mouth, it did not lack the quality of nobility. There was something knightly about the still form.
He revived to pain and loneliness and burning thirst, the squalor and abomination of desolation, the louder, nearer thudding of the German drum-fire, and the dogged reply of the unweakening British guns. He might have deemed the events that had taken place illusions born of weakness and fever, but for the testimony of the looking-glass that hung away upon the wall. There was the familiar vista of the Market Square, with the charred ruins of Town Hall and Clock Tower, yet sending up thin columns of bluish smoke into the radiant air. You could even make out a corner of the great stack of stiffened, blackening bodies. Nothing was wanting but that the Taube should still be resting on the cobblestones like a drowsy white vampire-bat glutted with human blood.
But the Taube was not there. From high overhead the buzzing note of the hoverer came down to Franky. He could see through the rents in the penthouse of broken flooring the white, winged shape hanging poised overhead. He even fancied he could descry the helmeted, goggled head of von Herrnung peering over the bulwarks of the bird-body, the jut of his elbow and the pear-shaped wire cages in which the bombs hung ready to his hand.
The thought of Margot and the child was an exquisite agony. The thirst for life, delectable life, revived in Franky ragingly. In dreadful expectation of the deafening crash, and the rending pang, and the burning bite of the greenish flame, the haggard eyes were straining upwards, when the terror went out of them, and their lids flickered down.... Let the fellow do his worst. Where was the good of hating? Christ had prayed for His murderers when they nailed Him on the Tree. The numb hand feebly made the Sacred Sign, and the tension passed with the terror.... There was a dull boom high overhead, and some heavy objects fell in a neighbouring backyard. Little bits of metal rattled on Franky's plank penthouse, and some warm drops pattered on Franky's face and wetted the hand that lay upon his breast. Not rain, but something sticky and thick, with a sickly, well-known odour. He lifted the hand. Oh, horrible! The heavens were raining blood.
Too weak to even guess at what had happened, he fell again into a stupor. The hollowed chest heaved at longer intervals beneath the First Aid bandaging over which had been thrown the khaki coat. Long cold breaths expired through the panting nostrils, the eyes showed a glassy line of white between the parted lids. He was dreaming....
Dreaming of being borne along in a shadowy boat under starless skies, through clear lucent darkness, over another darkness unfathomable, and yet diamond-clear. Perhaps no more water than the atmosphere above it was air, both possibly, elements unknown.... The boat crowded with seated shapes, three of them feminine.... A tall, black-hooded, black-mantled figure in the sternway seemed to impel the vessel with a single oar.
"Is this stuff water?"
The quiet voice of a man seated beside Franky had asked the question. Franky slipped his hand over the boat's low side and withdrew it shining, but not dripping, thinking:
"It is and it isn't. Fairly odd! Wonder where we're bound for? That fellow sculling.... Reminds me of old Charon, in the Sixth Æneid, when I swotted Virgil at School."
"Me too!" Thought seemed to pass current as speech, for though Franky had not voiced his reflection, the tall man who sat next him had answered instantly:
"But if this is the Ninefold—what about the 'cold and venomous waters, consuming iron and breaking the rarest vessels.'" The speaker dipped his hand over the side and brought it up all shining but not dripping, and touched his lips with it, and went on, smiling: "Besides, if you and I are alive, where are our golden boughs, and if we're dead, where are our oboli? We ought to have 'em! It wouldn't be good form not!"
"Why, you're Braythwayte of Ours! How is it I didn't know you? Why did I suppose—" Franky broke off, for Braythwayte's very recent exit from the stage of life had been performed after a highly coloured fashion, when the Germans had showered heavy shells of high explosive upon the little Belgian town. "That fellow sculling," he said to cover the slight embarrassment. "Somehow I fancy I've seen him before."
"Ah! Now I recollect." Braythwayte was answering the thought of the previous moment. "I did get crumped up pretty badly. Should have come off lots worse hadn't it been for Cruse. He threw himself in front of me when the shell dropped so near us." He spoke of the Sergeant-Major of his Company who had been killed at the same moment. "Don't you recognise him? Cruse is the man who's sculling. I caught a glimpse of his face just now—it can be nobody but Cruse."
"Beggin' yer pard'n, Sorr." The soft South Irish brogue sounded more apologetic than contradictory. The thick, sturdy figure of the speaker, uncertainly descried in the clear obscurity, leaned anxiously over from the opposite seat. "'Tis Father Walsh—may Those Above reward him for an ould, bould gentleman!—that kem crawlin' out on his four bones to the Advanced threnches at a place they did be callin' La Bossy or suchlike—to give Holy Absolution to meself and Hanlon an' two other boys av' the Loyal Irish Rifles that wor' in a bad way. Wouldn't I swear to his skin on a gate, or the bend of his beak anywhere"—the voice hesitated—"barrin' for the mimmory I have that Thim Wans was afther pluggin' him through the head—and himself just layin' the Blessed Sacrament on me tongue!"
"Beg pardon." A woman's voice joined in the conversation. "Sorry to interrupt, but I know him, really. It isn't the Surgeon-Major—or Father Anybody!" Franky recognised in the clear obscurity the flowing white head-dress and grey Red-Cross badged cape of an Army Nursing Sister, as she went on: "It's just our Civil Surgical Specialist—who died of double pneumonia (septic) at the Harfleur Military Hospital. Had a touch of influenza—and would get out of bed to operate on one of the Sisters—a sudden case of appendix trouble with typhoid thrown in. Oh, yes! the operation was successful, but the Sister didn't recover. Still, the C.S.S. gave his life for hers all the same!"
"Good egg, him! But are you quite sure there's no mistake with regard to our friend there?" Franky nodded towards the tall, black-hooded, black-mantled figure plying the oar, upright in the stern. "Because just now I caught a glimpse of his face, and I could have sworn it was my grandfather—by a long sight the finest man I've ever come across! He dived over the yacht's side and saved my life when I was drowning. It was the Cowes Season of 1894. I was a cheeky nipper of eight—and he was seventy-one. And the chill and the excitement brought on a stroke or something. He was dead in his cabin-berth next morning, when his man went in with the mail."
"Oh, you funnies!" This with a clear little trill of laughter in the voice of a small girl—Franky could see her bright eyes dancing as she peeped at him from her niche between the Army Nurse and the small, black-habited elderly figure of a Sister of Charity in a deep starched guimpe and wide-flanged cornette. "As if it could be anybody but my Dada—who pulled the soldiers out of the train that was all smashed up and burning! When me and Mummy——"
"Taisez vous donc, Raymonde!" whispered the nun reprovingly. "It is not convenable that petites demoiselles should interrupt their elders thus. Remember where you are, and in what Presence!"
"Please don't scold her!" coaxed Franky, the devout lover of children. The nun smiled, meeting his entreating eyes. He smiled back and went on: "Right or wrong—we seem all agreed that our friend in the stern is a near relation—or a close acquaintance of nearly every one of us. In every case a supreme benefactor——"
"Surely, monsieur!" she gave back in a hushed tone. "But surely, monsieur! The Helper—the Benefactor of us all!"
As the keel grated on unseen bottom, she folded her hands with a beautiful devoutness, and sank upon her knees, drawing with her the child. The man of the Loyal Irish followed her example. Franky found himself kneeling with the others—and as the boat's prow ploughed into sand or shingle, and the Ferryman, shipping his oar, moved shorewards with a shepherding gesture, the voyagers rose with a thrill of expectancy, and followed with one accord.
He stepped ashore—dropping the great black mantle—turned and faced them, spreading out His Arms. Beauty Divine, glory unspeakable——