The Outrage Part 29

In order that the child should not disturb Louise, Cherie had given up her own bedroom and chosen for the nursery the spare room on the floor below--the room with the red curtains--which, strangely enough, seemed for her to hold no memories. One afternoon as she sat there nursing her child, Louise, who hardly ever crossed that threshold, opened the door and came in.

Cherie looked up with a welcoming smile of surprise and joy. But Louise turned her eyes away from her and from the slumbering babe.

"I have come to tell you," she said, "that Mireille is coming home. I am going to fetch her this evening."

Cherie drew a quick breath of alarm. "Mireille!... Mireille is coming here?" she exclaimed.

"Surely you did not expect the poor child to stay away for ever?" said Louise, her eyes filling with tears. "I have missed her very much," she added bitterly.

"Of course ... of course," stammered Cherie, "I am sorry!... But what is ... what is to become of me? I mean, what shall we do, the baby and I?"

"What _can_ you do?" said Louise bitterly.

Cherie bent over her child. "I wish we could hide" ... she said in a low voice, "hide ourselves away where n.o.body would ever see us."

Louise made no reply. She sat down, turning away from Cherie, and tried not to feel pitiless. "Harden not your hearts ... harden not your hearts ..." she repeated to herself, striving to stifle the sense of implacable rancour, of bitter hatred which hurt her own heart, but which she could not overcome.

"Mireille will come here!" Cherie repeated under her breath. "She will see the child! What will she say? What will she say?"

Louise raised her sombre eyes and drew a deep breath of pain.

"Alas! She will say nothing, poor little Mireille! She will say nothing." And the bitter thought of Mireille's affliction overwhelmed her mother's soul.

No; whatever happened Mireille, once such a joyous, laughter-loving sprite, would say nothing. She would see Cherie with a baby in her arms, and would say nothing. She would see her mother kneeling at her feet beseeching for a word, and would say nothing. Her father might return, and she would be silent; or he might die--and she would not open her lips. This other child, this child of shame and sorrow, would grow up and learn to speak, would smile and laugh and call Cherie by the sweet-sounding name by which Louise would never be called again, but Mireille would be for ever silent.

Cherie had risen with her baby in her arms. Shy and trembling she went to Louise and knelt at her feet.

"Louise! Louise! Can you not love us and forgive us? What have we done?

What has this poor little creature done to you that you should hate it so? Louise, it is not for me that I implore your pity and your love; I can live without them if I must; I can live despised and hated because I know and understand. But for him I implore you! For this poor innocent who has done no harm, who has come into life branded and ill-fated, and does not know that he may not be loved as other children are--one word of tenderness, Louise, one word of blessing!"

She caught at Louise's dress with her trembling hand. "Louise, lay your hand on his forehead and say 'G.o.d bless you.' Just those three little words that every one says to the poorest and the most wretched. Just say that shortest of all prayers for him!"

There was silence.

"Louise!" sobbed Cherie, "if you were to say that, I think it would help him and me to live through all the days of misery to come. It is so sad, Louise, that no one, no one should ever have invoked a benediction upon so poor and helpless a child."

Louise's eyes filled with tears. She looked down at the tiny face and the strange light eyes blinked up at her. They were cruel eyes. They were the eyes she had seen glaring at her across the room, mocking and taunting her, at that supreme instant when her prayers and little Mireille's had at last succeeded in touching their oppressor's heart.

Those eyes, those light grey eyes in the ruthless face had lit upon her, hard as flint, cruel as a blade of steel: "The seal of Germany must be set upon the enemy's country----"

Those eyes had condemned her to her doom.

"I cannot, I cannot," she said, and turned away.

CHAPTER XXIV

Dusk was falling and a thin grey mist crept up from the two rivers as Louise, with a black scarf over her head, hurried out of the house to fetch Mireille. She was about to turn down the narrow rue de la Pompe which led straight to the house of Madame Dore without pa.s.sing the Place de l'eglise, where at this hour all the German soldiers were a.s.sembled, when she noticed the hunched-up figure of a Flemish peasant coming slowly along the small alley. He seemed to be mumbling to himself, and looked such a strange figure with his slouch hat and limping gait that in order to avoid him she turned back and went through the Square where the soldiers lounged and smoked. They paid no heed to her and she hurried on.

In her heart a wild new hope had sprung. She was going to bring Mireille home. For the first time since that terrible morning of their flight, Mireille would find herself once more in the surroundings that had witnessed her martyrdom.

What if the shock of entering that house again, of being face to face with all that must remind her of the struggle in which her agonized child-spirit had been wrecked, what if that shock--Louise scarcely dared to formulate the wild hope even in her own mind--were to heal her? Such things had happened. Louise had heard and read of them; of people who were mad and had suddenly been restored to reason, of people who were dumb and had recovered their speech through some sudden powerful emotion.

With beating heart Louise went faster through the silent streets.

The man she had seen in the rue de la Pompe had limped on; then turning to the right he had found himself in front of Dr. Brandes's house.

He stopped and looked up at the windows. They were open, wide open to the cool evening air, and at the sight, joy rushed into his heart. The house was certainly inhabited. By whom? By whom?... Had they reached Bomal after all? He had heard from Claude that they had left England to return to their home. Had they arrived safely? Were they here?

The hope of seeing them again had inspired him to attempt and achieve his daring flight from the Infirmary at Liege, and his temerarious almost incredible journey across miles of closely-guarded country. The vision of Cherie had been before him when at dead of night, with bleeding hands, he had worked for hours to loosen the meshes of wire nets and entanglements that surrounded the hospital grounds, where--half patient, half prisoner--he had been held under strict surveillance for nearly a month. It was Cherie's white hand that had beckoned to him and upheld him through the long hungry days and the dreary nights, when he was hiding in woods, crouching in ditches, plunging into rivers, scrambling over walls and rocks until he had reached the valley of the Aisne--pa.s.sing indeed, quite near to Roche-a-Frene where, he remembered, she had gone for an excursion on her last birthday.... It was the thought of Cherie that had inspired and guided him through untold risks and dangers. And now, perhaps, she was here, here in this house before him, within reach of his voice, within sight of his eyes, just beyond those joyous open windows....

He remembered how on her birthday-night less than a year ago he had clattered up on horseback through the quiet streets and had seen these windows wide open as they were now.--Ah, what destruction had swept over the world since then!

He remembered the sound of those laughing, girlish voices:

Sur le pont D'Avignon On y danse On y danse....

He glanced quickly round, then he raised his head and softly whistled the well-known tune.

Cherie had remained alone. She had heard Louise leave the house, closing the outer door, and the sound of her quick footsteps had reached her for a while from the street. Then silence had fallen.

Louise was going to fetch Mireille. Soon they would come back together, and Cherie must decide what she would do. How should she face Mireille?

No; she must hide, hide with her child, so that Mireille should not see him. For what would Mireille say when she saw the child? True, as Louise said, she would say nothing--nothing that ears could hear. But what would her soul say? How could any one know what Mireille saw and what she did not see? Who could tell but what she might not see and remember and hate, even as Louise hated? And that silent hatred would be still more terrible to bear. Yes; Mireille would surely know when she saw those very light eyes that opened so widely in the tiny face; she would remember the man who had tortured her, who had bound her to the iron banisters with her face turned to the bedroom door--this very door, close by, draped with the red curtains--Yes. The memory and the horror of it all would come back to her wandering spirit every time she saw those strange light eyes, now half-closed as the small head nestled sleepily at its mother's breast.

Cherie bent over her child and kissed the fair hair and the drowsy eyes and the sweet half-open mouth. What if every one hated him? She loved him. She loved him with the love of all mothers and with the greater love of her sorrow and despair and shame.

"Child of mine," she whispered, "why did they not let us both drift away into eternity on that May morning when you had not yet crossed the threshold of life, and I was so near to the open doors of death? We could have floated peacefully away together, you and I, out of all this trouble and sorrow. How simple and restful it would have been."

But her baby slept and it was dusk and bed-time; so she rose and carried him to his cradle in the adjoining room, pus.h.i.+ng the red curtains aside with her elbow as she entered.

While she did so she found herself vaguely thinking of her birthday-night, of the dance with Jeannette, Cri-cri, Cecile. Like a bright disconnected thread that memory seemed to run through her dark thoughts. What had brought it into her mind? Why was she suddenly living over again that brief happy hour before the storm broke over her and wrecked her life?

The gay senseless words of the old dance kept ringing in her mind.

Sur le pont D'Avignon On y danse Tout en rond....

A thrill pa.s.sed through her as she realized that some pa.s.ser-by was whistling it in the street. Tears gathered in her eyes at the memories which that puerile tune evoked.

Sur le pont D'Avignon On y danse On y danse, Sur le pont D'Avignon On y danse Tout en rond.

Soft and clear the whistling still persisted. Cherie placed the baby in its cradle, stooped over him and kissed him. Then she went to the window and stood on tiptoe to look out--for the window was high and round, like a s.h.i.+p's porthole.

The whistling stopped. Somebody standing in the shadow of the wall stepped forward.

And Cherie's heart stood still.