Defenders of Democracy Part 44

"How peaceful she looks," said the old man. "You would say the stone face of a saint from the facade of a cathedral."

"It may be," said Jeanne Bergere, "that already G.o.d has opened His mind to her, and that she knows of that vengeance, which we with our small minds are not able to invent."

"I can only think of what they have done to us," said the old man.

"It does not seem as if there was anything left for us to do to them. Vengeance which does not give the Avenger pleasure is a poor sort of vengeance. Madame Simon..."

The old woman in question turned a pair of sheeny eyes towards the speaker.

"Would it give you any particular pleasure to cut the b.r.e.a.s.t.s off an old German woman?"

With a trembling hand Madame Simon flattened the bosom of her dress to show that there was nothing beneath.

"It would give me no pleasure," she said, "but I shall show my scars to the President."

"An eye for an eye--a tooth for a tooth," said the old man. "That is the ancient law. But it does not work. There is no justice in exchanging a German eye and a French. French eyes see beauty in everything. To the German eye the sense of beauty has been denied.

You cannot compare a beast and a man. In the old days, when there were wolves, it was the custom of the naive people of those days to torture a wolf if they caught one. They put him to death with the same refinements which were requisitioned for human criminals.

This meant nothing to the wolf. The mere fact that he had been caught was what tortured him. And so I think it will be with the Germans when they find that they have failed. They have built up their power on the absurd hypothesis that they are men. Their punishment will be in discovering that they never were anything but low animals and never could be."

"That is too deep for me," said the other man. "They tied my daughter to her bed, and afterward they set fire to her mattress."

"I wish," said Jeanne Bergere, "that they had set fire to my mattress."

A violent concussion shook the cellar to its foundations. Even the face of the thirsty little boy brightened.

"It is one of ours," he said.

"To eradicate the lice which feed upon the Germans and the foul smells which emanate from their bodies there is nothing so effective as high explosives," said the old man. He looked at his watch and said:

"We have half an hour more."

At the end of that time, he climbed the cellar stair, pushed open the door, and looked out. Partly in the bright sunlight and partly in the deep shadows, he resembled a painting by Rembrandt.

"I see no one," he said. "There is a lot of smoke."

His eyes became suddenly wide open, fixed, round with a kind of celestial astonishment. This his old French heart stopped beating, and he fell to the foot of the stair. His companions thought that he must have been shot. They dared not move.

But it was no bullet or fragment of far-blown sh.e.l.l that had laid the old man low. He had seen in the smoke that whirled down the village street, a little soldier in the uniform of France. Pure unadulterated joy had struck him dead.

Five minutes pa.s.sed, and no one had moved except the little boy.

With furtive glances and trembling hands he had crept to the old well in the corner and drunk a cup of the poisoned water. Then he crept back to his place.

The second old man now rose, drew a deep breath and climbed the cellar stair. For a time he stood blinking, and mouthing his scattered teeth. He was trying to speak and could not.

"What is it?" they called up to him. "What has happened?"

He did not answer. He made inarticulate sounds, and suddenly with incredible speed, darted forward into the smoke and the sunlight.

A little hand cold and wet crept into Jeanne Bergere's. She was vexed. She wished to go out of the cellar with the others; but the little hand clung to her so tightly that she could not free herself.

Except for the old woman who had drunk from the well, and the old man, all in a heap at the foot of the cellar stair, they were alone.

She and the little boy.

"It is true," said the little boy, "at least I think it is true about the water...when...n.o.body was looking.... Please, please stay with me, Jeanne Bergere."

"You drank when it was forbidden? That was very naughty, Charlie....

Good G.o.d, what am I saying--you poor baby--you poor baby." She s.n.a.t.c.hed him into her arms, and held him with a kind of tigerish ferocity.

"It hurts," said Charlie. "It hurts. It hurts me all over. It hurts worse all the time."

"I will go for help," she said. "Wait."

"Please do not go away."

"You want to die?"

The child nodded.

"If I grow up, I should not be a man," he said. "You know what the doctor did to me?"

"I know," she said briefly, "but you shan't die if I can help it."

She could not help it. A few minutes after she had gone, his back strongly arched became rigid. His jaws locked and he died in the att.i.tude of a wrestler making a bridge.

The village street was full of smoke and Frenchmen. These were methodically fighting the fires and hunting the ruins for Germans.

Jeanne Bergere seized one of the little soldiers by the elbow.

"Come quickly," she said, "there is a child poisoned!"

The Idiot turned, and she would have fallen if he had not caught her. She tore herself loose from his arms with a kind of ferocity.

"Come! Come!" she cried, and she ran like a frightened animal back to the cellar door, the Idiot close behind her.

The Idiot knelt by the dead child, and after feeling in vain for any pulsation, straightened up and said:

"He is dead."

"He drank from the well," said Jeanne. "We told him that it was poisoned. But he was so thirsty."

They tried to straighten the little boy, but could not. The Idiot rose to his feet, and looked at her for the first time. He must have made some motion with his hands, for she cried suddenly:

"Don't! You mustn't touch me!"

"We have always loved each other," he said simply.

"You don't understand."

"What have you been through? I understand. Kiss me."

She held him at arm's length.