The Outrage Part 10

"_Froh mit mir_"--repeated he, glaring at her through his heavy lids.

And he sang:

Lebe, liebe, trinke schwarme Und erfreue dich mit mir.

Harme dich wenn ich mich harme Und sei weider froh mit mir!

At the last three words he clinked his gla.s.s against Cherie's. "Drink!"

he commanded in a terrible voice. "If you do not drink, it is an insult which must be punished."

With a sob Cherie raised the gla.s.s to her lips.

Louise was wringing her hands. "The brute! the brute!" she cried, while Mireille holding her mother's skirts stared wide-eyed at the scene.

Captain Fischer looked across at Louise. "My Samaritan," ... he mumbled.

"My sister of mercy...." He rose and approached her with a stupefied smile.

Mireille rushed at him like a little fury. "Go away," she screamed, "go away!"

The Herr Kapitan took her not unkindly by the shoulders. "Little girls should be in bed," he said thickly. "My little girls are in bed long ago."

Louise clasped her hands. "I beg you, sir, have pity on us; let us go away.... The house is yours, but let us go away."

"Where do you want to go?" he asked dully.

"To our rooms," said Louise.

"You have no rooms; they are ours," he said, and bending forward he widened his eyes at her significantly.

Louise looked about her like a trapped animal. She saw Von Wedel and Feldmann who had Cherie between them and were forcing her to drink out of their gla.s.ses; she saw Glotz seated on the piano-stool looking on with fat, impa.s.sive face; she saw the man before her bending forward and leering suggestively, so close that she could feel his hot, acrid breath on her face. The enemy! The man with mud and blood on his feet ... he was putting out his hand and touching her----

She fell on her knees and dragged Mireille down beside her! she lifted up her hands and raised her weeping face to him. "Your children ... you have children at home ... your little girls are in bed and asleep ...

they are safe ... safe, locked in their house.... As G.o.d may guard them for you, oh protect us! spare us! Take care of us!... Be kind--be kind!"

She dropped forward with her head on his feet--on Claude's slippers--and little Mireille with quick tears rolling down her face looked up at him and touched his sleeve with a trembling hand.

He looked down and frowned. His mouth worked. Yes. He had three yellow-headed little girls in Stuttgart. It was good that they were in Stuttgart and not in Belgium. But they were little German girls, while these were enemies. These were belligerents. Civilians if you will, but still belligerents....

He looked down at the woman's bowed head and fragile heaving shoulders, and he looked at the white, frightened child-face lifted to his.

"Belligerents" ... he growled, and cleared his throat and frowned. Then his chin quivered. "Get away," he said thickly. "Get away, both of you.

Quick. Hide in the cellar--no--not in the cellar, in the stable--in the garden--anywhere. Don't go in the streets. The streets are full of drunken soldiers. Go."

Louise kissed his feet, kissed Claude's slippers, and wept, while Mireille smiled up at him with the smile of a seraph, and thanked and thanked him, not knowing what she thanked him for.

"But--what of Cherie?" gasped Louise, looking round at the frightened wild-rose figure in its white dress, trembling and weeping between the two ribald men.

"You shall take her with you," said Fischer, and he went resolutely across the room and took Cherie by the arm.

"What? What? You old reprobate," roared Feldmann, digging him in the ribs, with peals of coa.r.s.e laughter. "You have two of them! What more do you want, you hedgehog, you? Leave this one alone."

"You leave her alone, too. I order her to go away." Fischer frowned and cleared his throat and tried to draw Cherie from Feldmann's and Von Wedel's grasp.

"What do you mean?" asked Von Wedel, going close up to Fischer and looking him up and down with provocative and menacing air.

"I mean that you leave her alone," puffed the captain. "Those are my orders, Lieutenant--and if they are not obeyed you shall answer for it."

"You old woman! you old head of a sheep," shouted Von Wedel; "answer for it, shall I? You are drunk; and I'm drunk; and I don't care a snap about your orders." And dragging Cherie's arm from Fischer's grasp he pushed him back and glowered at him.

"Your orders ..." stuttered the intoxicated Feldmann, placing his hand on Fischer's shoulder to steady himself, "your orders ... direct contradiction with other orders ... higher orders ..." He wagged his head at Fischer. "The German seal must be set upon the enemy's country.... Go away. Don't be a screeching owl."

"And don't be a head of a sheep," added Von Wedel. "_Vae victis!_ If it isn't you, it'll be somebody else. It'll be old Glotz--look at him ...

sitting there, all agog, _arrectis auribus_! Or it will be our drunken men downstairs. Just listen to them!..."

The drunken men downstairs were roaring "Die Wacht am Rhein." Von Wedel's argument seemed to carry conviction.

"_Vae victis!_" sighed Fischer, swallowing another gla.s.s of brandy and looking across the room at the trembling Louise. "If it isn't I ... then Glotz ... or somebody else ... drunken soldiers...."

He went unsteadily towards Louise, who stood clutching at the locked door. "Woe to the vanquished, my poor woman ... seal of Germany ...

higher orders.... Why should I be a head of a sheep?..."

BOOK II

CHAPTER VI

It is pleasant to sit in a quiet English garden on a mild September afternoon, sipping tea and talking about the war and weather, while venturesome sparrows hop on the velvety lawn and a light breeze dances over the flower-beds stealing the breath of the mignonette to carry back at nightfall to the sea.

Thus mused the gentle sisters, Miss Jane and Julia Cony, as they gazed round with serene and satisfied blue eyes on the lawn, the sparrows, the silver tea-set, the b.u.t.tered toast, and their best friend, Miss Lorena Marshall, who had dropped in to have tea with them and whose gentle brown eyes now smiled back into theirs with the self-same serenity and satisfaction. All three had youthful faces under their soft white hair; all three had tender hearts in their somewhat rigid b.r.e.a.s.t.s; all three had walked slender and tall through an unblemished life of undeviating conventionality. They were sublimely guileless, divinely charitable and inflexibly austere.

"It is pleasant indeed," repeated Julia in her rather querulous treble voice. Julia had been delicate in her teens and still retained some of the capricious ways of the petted child. She was the youngest, too--scarcely forty-five--and was considered very modern by her sister and her friend. "Of course the Continent is all very well in its way,"

she went on. "Switzerland in summer, and Monte Carlo in winter----"

"Oh, Julia," interrupted Miss Jane quickly, "why do you talk about Monte Carlo? We only stayed there forty-five minutes."

"Well, I'm sure I wish we could have stayed there longer," laughed the naughty Julia. "The sea was a dream, and the women's clothes were revelations. But, as I was saying, England is, after all----"

We all know what England is, after all. Still, it is always good to say it and to hear it said. Thus, in the enumeration of England's advantages and privileges a restful hour pa.s.sed, until the neat maid, Barratt, came to announce the arrival of other visitors. Mrs. Mulholland and her daughter Kitty had driven round from Widford and came rustling across the lawn in beflowered hats and lace veils. Fresh tea was made for them and they brought a new note into the conversation.

"Are you not thinking of taking a refugee?" asked Mrs. Mulholland. "The Davidsons have got one."

"The Davidsons have got one?" exclaimed Miss Marshall.

"The Davidsons have got one?" echoed Miss Jane and Miss Julia Corry.

"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Mulholland somewhat acidly. "And I am sure if they can have one in their small house, you can; and we can."