The Red Cross Barge Part 9

When those who appeared to be the leaders of the unkempt rabble saw the two figures standing in the sunlit square, their line wavered, and some of them drew back, while the loud talking died down into a surprised silence.

There came quickly forward the burly figure of a non-commissioned officer, one, too, who had almost all of his accoutrement complete.

'Herr Doktor?' he exclaimed eagerly. 'We were told there was a good wine-shop up this way! Can you direct me to it? My men are badly in need of food and rest, and every inn in the lower part of the town has already been taken by a.s.sault'--he spoke complainingly; it was clear that he was labouring under a sense of grievance.

'But--but where have you come from?' asked the Herr Doktor in a low voice. He felt bewildered--bewildered and strangely oppressed. 'I don't understand how or why you are here, in Valoise-sur-Marne?'

'And yet it's clear enough!' said the other sharply. 'We were promised good beds, plenty to eat, and above all plenty to drink, once we reached Valoise. We find the town practically deserted--only old women and a few children left in it! As for wine'--he shrugged his shoulders. 'Just now the Mayor was required to produce twenty thousand bottles of wine. Do you know, Herr Doktor, how many he offers to provide?' He waited, and as the Herr Doktor remained silent, he suddenly shouted out, 'Eight hundred bottles! What is that among three thousand men? Of course we excluded the wine-shops as a source of supply--the wine-shops were already emptied before we managed to hunt out the Mayor. Our officers are furious!'

'The officers will get plenty of good wine at the Tournebride----'

The Herr Doktor knew now wherein lay the difference between the victors of Charleroi, and the men who stood staring stupidly before him. The victors of Charleroi had been sober; these countrymen of his were already more or less drunk.

But what was this the corporal was saying, smiling angrily the while?

'The Tournebride? Nay, those of our comrades who pa.s.sed that way three weeks ago seem to have been locusts--what they couldn't drink they took away! All they left behind them is poison--rank poison! Cheap blue stuff, and not a single bottle of beer!'

There came a quick stir among the soldiers, and they parted to make way for a tall, fine-looking young officer. But he also looked worn, haggard, and angry. His face cleared somewhat as he came up to his two fellow-countrymen, and softened as his eye rested on the black-draped, fair-haired figure who now stood, with eyes cast down, and hands loosely clasped together, some way apart from the Red Cross doctor and his companion.

'I was told that I should probably find you up here, Herr Doktor! A woman down by the river directed me. Is it true that you've been in this town a fortnight, and that a number of our fellows stayed here a week and ate and drank up everything--the locusts? Not content with drinking up all the wine, it's clear that they also took all the young women away with them! They had, however, mercy on _you_!' With a smile and a slight gesture towards Jeanne Rouannes, he added a few joking words which made the hot colour rush to the Herr Doktor's face.

'This lady,' he said stiffly, 'is a distinguished Sister of the Red Cross. It is in that capacity that she is now under my protection and care. Her father died but yesterday.'

The other had the grace to look slightly ashamed.

'Yes, yes,' he said hastily. 'I understand that--the woman by the river told me of the funeral. But, Herr Doktor? In your place I should take this Red Cross demoiselle straight back to her hospital, and, unless it is absolutely necessary, do not go down into the lower part of the town.

When I said just now that there was no wine left in Valoise, it was merely a figure of speech. Of course, there _is_ wine; in fact our weary fellows have got hold of a fair amount but it is not good--it is not the sort that we hoped to find here!'

There were many pressing questions on the Herr Doktor's lips, but he judged it best not to ask them. Instead he only observed: 'I am very desirous to get a pa.s.s into Paris for this Sister of Compa.s.sion. Her father was my colleague, a doctor, that is, of the Red Cross, and on his bed of death I promised him to try and procure a suitable escort and a pa.s.s into Paris for his daughter. So pray inform me, Herr Captain, of the name of our Commandant. Where can I find him?--is he at the Tournebride?'

The other turned, and gazed with a singular expression at the Herr Doktor. 'You will not be able to get a pa.s.s into Paris from any of us just now,' he said slowly. 'No doubt the time will come when you will be able to do so. But we do not yet hold the gates of Paris.' He waited a moment, then asked abruptly, 'Does this Red Cross Sister know our language?'

'No, not one word of it.'

'Then I will tell you,' and even so he lowered his voice, 'that we were within one day's march of Paris when came the order to make a turning movement. Do not ask me why, my dear fellow! I know less than nothing about it--only the bare fact. Ask Von Kluck the reason the next time you meet him! For the last three days we have been fighting--fighting and, well, yes, retreating, by night as well as day. That is why my men are worn out. Yesterday evening we were badly surprised, and as our fellows ran they threw away everything--everything which could impede their flight----'

'Their flight?' repeated the Herr Doktor, in a dazed voice.

'Yes, their flight,' said the other shortly, 'or if you prefer the word, my dear Herr Doktor, their rout! But we shall soon re-form. It is but a temporary check. We must not expect to meet nothing but astounding victories--such victories as have blessed us. .h.i.therto--in war. The British, at any rate are _done_--rolled up, put out of action altogether. It is a new French army which circled round from Versailles, commanded, they say, by Maunoury, which upset our calculations.' He added, lowering his voice yet more: 'But we are falling back on prepared positions, beyond the Aisne.'

'Then are the French just behind you--close to Valoise?'

'Not very far off,' said the other drily, but not likely to enter the town yet awhile. We have found excellent gun positions up there'--he pointed vaguely beyond the cemetery--'and this place should be easy to defend.'

'But where are our main forces?'

'Some have cut straight across the front of what remains of the contemptible little British army--at least that was the general disposition when I was last in touch with the Staff. About those corps there is no anxiety, for, as I told you just now, the British are done.'

A gleam of joy shot across the Herr Doktor's now haggard face. And the other hurried on: 'So, too, are the French who fell back with them. But that new, fresh army under Maunoury--that was a colossal surprise! Once it is disposed of, we shall renew our advance on Paris.' He hesitated for a moment, and then the pleasure of finding a listener conquered prudence. 'The Crown Prince did not come up to time. His army was to have joined ours on September 2--Von Kluck was waiting for him. There could be no final attack on Paris without the "Draufganger." You understand? It was our future War Lord's perquisite----'

The Herr Doktor nodded comprehendingly. Oddly enough, he had never seen the Crown Prince, but from various things he had heard about him he supposed him to be not unlike Prince Egon.

4

After leaving the square, the Herr Doktor and Jeanne Rouannes found every street and every alley barred. And though the uniform of the 'Militar-Arzt' generally opened a way without much difficulty, Max Keller soon realised, with bitter, dumb self-reproach that he had wasted priceless minutes in asking and in answering futile questions. Perhaps because he had now spent a length of treasure-stored days in a country where time means at once so very much more, and so very much less, than it does in modern Germany, he was no longer in mental touch with the type of human being created by the sinister amalgam of sentimental idealism and military discipline.

To a German officer any waste of time, especially on active service, is abhorrent, and during the half-hour the Herr Doktor and his companion had spent in the square, Valoise had been rapidly divided into districts, and the looting therein, as far as was possible, systematised. Thus as soon as a certain number of marauders had been allowed to go through into it, further entry to a street was barred; and to the Herr Doktor there was something horribly grotesque in the contrast between the sharp discipline enforced by the patrols who sealed each thoroughfare, and the orgy of thieving and senseless destruction which they were apparently set there to supervise and protect.

It seemed, too, as if Nature herself had become a willing accomplice to the powers of evil, for the bright, delicious sunlight, the delicate breeze already touched to an autumnal sharpness, shone on, and blew about, the pitiful heaps of household plenishings which grew and swelled before each doorway.

In tacit agreement the two fugitives--for such they now felt themselves to be--chose a roundabout way to the Rue des Jardins; and as they hurried along, looking straight before them, averting their eyes from the sights which lay to their right and to their left, the Herr Doktor yet became conscious that here and there a house was being spared outrage. Before one such a number of his fellow-countrymen had squatted down on the cobble-stones, and were engaged in happily eating and drinking their fill. An old Frenchwoman, with a pitifully eager, servile manner, was waiting on them, bringing out of the villa, of which she was evidently the care-taker, armfuls of red-sealed bottles of wine. And yet, as he pa.s.sed this house which was being spared outrage, the Herr Doktor quickened his footsteps. Somehow the sight he saw there shocked him more than did that of greater disorder.

Tides of shame, bewilderment, and pain welled up in his sore, burdened heart. Would the girl who now walked, with quick short steps, her head held high, looking always straight before her, ever forget the scenes they were now pa.s.sing through? There was no fear now in her face, only a look of measureless scorn, disgust, and contempt. And it was he, rather than she, who felt a pa.s.sion of relief when at last they emerged, through a final patrol, to find the intersecting web of streets composing the highest lap of the Haute Ville still free of soldiery.

The long, sunny Rue des Jardins looked unnaturally as usual, but when the two walked up through the garden of the Villa Rouannes, they saw that the front door was still locked, and the green wooden shutters of all the windows on the ground floor still barred. Therese and Jacob had evidently been stopped, and turned back, on their flight home from the cemetery.

'I think we can get in at the back, through the kitchen,' said Jeanne, breaking silence at last.

She led him round the house, to a door which stood wide open, and through the pleasant, exquisitely clean kitchen, where he had sometimes had occasion to seek old Therese while tending the dying Frenchman.

Together they walked through into the empty house, and the Herr Doktor spent the short time she kept him waiting in walking restlessly about the darkened salon, which had become so familiar and so dear.

Each minute seemed an eternity--an eternity filled with suspense and acute, unreasoning fear, for he knew that any moment he might hear the sound of eager, predatory feet tramping up the Rue des Jardins; and he visualised with dreadful clearness the little fragrant garden filled with a mob of his fellow-countrymen, decent enough men at home no doubt, but here, in their grey uniforms and spiked helmets, transformed into thieves, drunkards, and, he feared, worse.

At last Jeanne Rouannes opened the door. She was clad in the Red Cross uniform and veil-like cap which had now come to look unfamiliar in his eyes, for she had never worn them in her father's presence. She held a large, shabby leathern purse in her hand. 'This is the money--a thousand francs--my father always kept in the house. Will you take care of it for me?' She held it out to him. 'They say that'--she hesitated a moment, then said reluctantly--'they say that the Prussians always look first for the money, and then for the wine.'

He took the purse from her silently, and then, for what seemed to him a long time, though it was not five minutes, she stood in the centre of the square, shadowed sitting-room. A little light filtered through the c.h.i.n.ks in the old wooden shutters, and slowly she gazed this way and that, as if desirous of imprinting an image of everything that was there on her heart and memory. But when they had left the house, and were walking through the garden, even when they reached the door in the wall, she did not once look back.

They met with no adventures on their way to the Grande Place, for they chose a roundabout way, along field paths, and under the glades of the forest trees in what had been one of the loveliest of the smaller royal demesnes of old France. And as they at last came out from behind the Abreuvoir the Herr Doktor saw with silent, intense relief that here, too, everything looked as usual. The great open s.p.a.ce before them was as empty of life and movement as he had always known it. There was, however, one rather curious exception; but it was a pleasant exception, for it lent an air of spurious brightness, even of cheerfulness, to the scene. This was that the doors and windows of the large villas which formed the left of the Grande Place of Valoise were now all wide open, and were evidently being prepared for the overflow from the Tournebride.

Suddenly, however, as the Herr Doktor's eyes wandered down the broad thoroughfare leading straight to the river, he saw that all was not quite as normal in this part of the town as he had at first thought, for all the way down the hill, every window of the humbler houses had been battered in!

An old woman was even now engaged in carefully sweeping up the gla.s.s in the roadway in front of her little shop, and gradually he became aware that the shop itself was completely gutted, and that there was a dark yawning hole where the window, filled with toys and sweetmeats, had been.

Once more his heart ached with sick disgust and pain while slowly he and his companion began walking towards the long, low buildings of the Tournebride.

The beautiful old inn, at any rate, looked exactly as when he had last seen it that morning, though the great gilt gates, which had been closed for over a fortnight, were now wide open. It was clear that the Commandant of the German forces now holding Valoise had fixed his headquarters there, but the Herr Doktor's eyes sought vainly for the sentries who should have been standing at either side of the open gates.

This second occupation of Valoise was indeed unlike the first!

'While I the Herr Commandant interview, can you with Madame Blanc here stay?' he observed suddenly.

As they pa.s.sed through the gates the Herr Doktor was sorry indeed to see that hundreds of empty and broken bottles were lying under the chestnut trees, on the now wine-stained paving stones. These empty, broken bottles gave an untidy, rakish air to the shady, stately courtyard where the first conquerors of Valoise had spent such peaceful, restful hours.

On they walked, picking their way among the debris. The place seemed deserted.

Puzzled, and feeling at once relieved and uncomfortable, the Herr Doktor stayed his steps for a moment, and the girl at his side did so too. Her eyes filled with tears, a sense of terrible degradation seemed to soil her soul, and, as the moments sped by, her companion was filled with growing apprehension and unease.