The Outrage Part 20

Then she determined that she must die. There was no help for it--she must die. She dreaded death; she was tied to life by a two-fold instinct--her own and that of the unborn being within her. How tenacious was its hold on life! It would not die and free her. It clung with all its tendrils to its own abhorred existence. Every night as she lay awake she pictured what it would be if it were born--this creature conceived in savagery and debauch, this child that she loathed and dreaded. She could imagine it living--a demon, a monster, a thing to shriek at, to make one's blood run cold. Waking and in her dreams she saw it; she saw it crawling like a reptile, she saw it stained with the colour of blood, she saw it babbling and mouthing at her, frenzied and insane.... That is what she would give life to, that is what she would have to nurse and to nourish; carrying that in her arms she would go to meet her husband when he came limping back from the war on his crutches.

She pictured that meeting with Claude in a hundred different ways, all horrible, all dreadful beyond words. Claude staring at her, not believing, not understanding.... Claude going mad.... Claude lifting his crutch and crus.h.i.+ng the child's skull with it, as Amour's skull had been crushed--ah! the dead horrible Amour that she had seen when she staggered out of the room at dawn that day!... That was the first thing she had seen--that gruesome animal with its brains beaten out and its gleaming teeth uncovered. She could see it now, she could always see it when she closed her eyes! What if this sight had impressed itself so deeply upon her.... Hus.h.!.+ this was insanity; she knew that she was going mad.

So she must die.

How should she die? And when she was dead, what would happen to Mireille? And to Cherie?

_Cherie!_ At the thought of Cherie a new rush of ideas overwhelmed Louise's wandering brain. Cherie! What was the matter with Cherie?

Had not she also that tense look, those pinched features, all those unmistakable signs that Louise well knew how to interpret? Was it possible that the same doom had overtaken her?

Then Louise forced herself to remember what she would have given her life to forget. With eyes closed, with shuddering soul, she compelled herself to live over again the darkest hours of her life.

... Before daybreak on the 5th of August. The house was silent. The invaders had gone. Louise, a livid spectre in the pale grey dawn, had staggered from her room--pa.s.sing the dead Amour on Cherie's threshold--and had stumbled down the stairs. There at the foot of the wrought-iron banister lay Mireille, her mouth open, her breath coming in gasps, like a little dying bird.

Louise had raised her, had unwound the long scarf that bound her, had sprinkled water on her face and poured brandy down her throat ... until Mireille had opened her eyes. Then Louise had seen that they were not Mireille's eyes. There was frenzy and vacancy in the pale orbs that wandered round the room, wandered and wandered--until they stopped and were fixed, suddenly wild, hallucinated and intent. On what were they fixed with such an expression of unearthly terror? The mother turned to see.

Mireille's wild gaze was fixed upon a door, the red-curtained door of a bedroom. It was a spare room, seldom used; sometimes a guest or one of Claude's patients had slept there.

It was on this door--now flung wide open and with the red drapery torn down--that Mireille's wild, meaningless gaze was fixed. Louise looked.

Then she looked again, without moving. She could see that the electric lights were burning in the room; a chair was overturned in the doorway, and there, there on the bed, lay a figure--Cherie! Cherie still in her white muslin dress all torn and bloodstained, Cherie with her two hands stretched upwards and tied to the bedpost above her head. A wide pink ribbon had been torn from her hair and used to tie her hands to the bra.s.s bedstead. Her face was scratched and bleeding. She was quite unconscious. Louise thought she was dead.

Ah! how had she found the strength to lift her, to call her, to drag her back to life, weeping over her and Mireille, gazing with maddened despair from one unconscious figure to the other?... She had dressed them, she had dragged and carried them down the stairs at the back of the house. Should she call for help? Should she go crying their shame and despair down the village street? No! no! Let no one see them. Let no one know what had befallen them....

And--listen! Was that not the clatter of Uhlans galloping down the road?

Moaning, staggering, stumbling, she dragged and carried her two helpless burdens into the woods....

There, the next evening a party of Belgian Guides had found them.

CHAPTER XIV

The Vicar of Maylands, the Reverend Ambrose Yule, was in his study writing his monthly contribution to the _Northern Ecclesiastical Review_. He was interested in his subject--"Our Sinful Sundays"--and his thoughts flowed smoothly on the topic of drink, frivolous talk and open kinematograph theatres. He wrote quickly and fluently in his neat small handwriting. A knock at the door interrupted him.

"Yes? What is it?" he asked somewhat impatiently.

"A lady to see you, sir," said Parrot, the comely maid.

"A lady? Who is it? I thought every one knew that I do not receive today."

"It is one of the foreign ladies staying with Mrs. Whitaker, sir."

"Oh, well. Show her into the drawing-room, and tell your mistress."

"I beg your pardon, sir, but----" a smile flickered over Parrot's mild face--"she asked specially for you. She said she wished to speak to 'Mr.

the Clergyman' himself. First she said, 'Mr. the Cury' and then she said, 'Mr. the Clergyman.'"

"Well," sighed the vicar, "show her in." He placed a paper-weight on his neatly written sheets, rose and awaited his visitor standing on the hearthrug with his back to the fire.

Parrot ushered in a tall figure in black and then withdrew. The vicar stepped forward and found himself gazing into the depths of two resplendent dark eyes set in a very white face.

"Pray sit down," he said, "and tell me in what way I can be of service to you."

"May I speak French?" asked the lady in a low voice.

"_Mais certainement, Madame_," said the courtly clergyman, who twenty or thirty years ago had studied Sinful Sundays abroad with intelligence and attention.

The lady sat down and was silent. She wore black cotton gloves and held in her hands a small handkerchief, which she clutched and crumpled nervously into a little ball.

The kindly vicar with his head on one side waited a little while and then spoke. "You are staying in Maylands? In Mrs. Whitaker's house, I believe? Have I not seen you, with two young girls?"

"Yes. My daughter and my sister-in-law." Louise's voice was so low that he had to bend forward to catch her words.

"Indeed. Yes." The vicar joined his finger-tips together, then disjoined them, then clapped them lightly together, waiting for further enlightenment. As it was not forthcoming he inquired: "May I know your name, Madame?"

"Louise Brandes."

"And ... er--monsieur your husband----?" the vicar's face was interrogative and prepared for sympathy.

"He is wounded, in hospital, at Dunkirk."

"Sad, sad," said the vicar, gently shaking his handsome grey head.

"And ... you wish me to help you to go and see him?"

"No!" Louise uttered the word like a cry. Sudden tears welled up into her eyes, rolled rapidly down her cheeks and dropped upon her folded hands in their black cotton gloves.

"_Alors?_ ..." interrogated the vicar, with his head still more on one side.

Louise raised her dark lashes and looked at the kind handsome face before her, looked at the narrow benevolent forehead, the firm straight lips, the beautiful hands (the vicar knew they were beautiful hands) with the finger-tips lightly pressed together. Instinctively she felt that here she would find no help. She knew that if she asked for pity, for protection, for money, it would be given her. But she also knew that what she was about to crave would meet with a stern repulse.

She had made up her mind that this was to be her last appeal for help, her last effort to obtain release. He was the priest, he was the representative of the All-Merciful....

She made the sign of the cross, she dropped on her knees and grasped his hand. "_Mon pere_," she said--thus she used to address the Cure of Bomal, butchered on that never-to-be-forgotten night. "I will tell you----"

The vicar withdrew his hand from her grasp. "I beg you, madam, not to address me in that way. Also pray rise from your knees and take a seat."

Ah me! how melodramatic were the Latin races! Poor woman! as if all this were necessary in order, probably, to ask for a few pounds, or to say that she could not get on with the peppery Mrs. Whitaker.

Louise had blushed crimson and risen quickly to her feet. "I am sorry,"

she said.

And then the kind vicar blushed too and felt that he had behaved like a brute.

At that moment the door opened and Mrs. Yule entered the room. With her was Dr. Reynolds, carrying a black leather bag.

"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Yule, catching sight of Louise. "I am sorry, Ambrose. I did not know you had a visitor."