The Woman of Mystery Part 8

The retreat began. Painful as it was to one and all, it was doubly so perhaps to those of our troops which had been victorious at the start.

Paul and his comrades in the third company could not contain themselves for rage and disappointment. During the half a day which they spent in Belgium, they saw the ruins of a little town that had been destroyed by the Germans, the bodies of eighty women who had been shot, old men hung up by their feet, stacks of murdered children. And they had to retire before those monsters!

Some of the Belgian soldiers had attached themselves to the regiment; and, with faces that still bore traces of horror at the infernal visions which they had beheld, these men told of things beyond the conception of the most vivid imagination. And our fellows had to retire. They had to retire with hatred in their hearts and a mad desire for vengeance that made their hands close fiercely on their rifles.

And why retire? It was not a question of being defeated, because they were falling back in good order, making sudden halts and delivering violent counter-attacks upon the disconcerted enemy. But his numbers overpowered all resistance. The wave of barbarians reformed itself. The place of each thousand dead was taken by two thousand of the living. And our men retired.

One evening, Paul learnt one of the reasons for this retreat from a week-old newspaper; and he was painfully affected by the news. On the 20th of August, Corvigny had been taken by a.s.sault, after some hours of bombardment effected under the most inexplicable conditions, whereas the stronghold was believed to be capable of holding out for at least some days, which would have strengthened our operations against the left flank of the Germans.

So Corvigny had fallen; and the Chateau d'Ornequin, doubtless abandoned, as Paul himself hoped, by Jerome and Rosalie, was now destroyed, pillaged and sacked with the methodical thoroughness which the Huns applied to their work of devastation. On this side, too, the furious horde were crowding precipitately.

Those were sinister days, at the end of August, the most tragic days perhaps that France has ever pa.s.sed through. Paris was threatened, a dozen departments were invaded. Death's icy breath hung over our gallant nation.

It was on the morning of one of these days that Paul heard a cheerful voice calling to him from a group of young soldiers behind him:

"Paul, Paul! I've got my way at last! Isn't it a stroke of luck?"

Those young soldiers were lads who had enlisted voluntarily and been drafted into the regiment; and Paul at once recognized elisabeth's brother, Bernard d'Andeville. He had no time to think of the att.i.tude which he had best take up. His first impulse would have been to turn away; but Bernard had seized his two hands and was pressing them with an affectionate kindness which showed that the boy knew nothing as yet of the breach between Paul and his wife.

"Yes, it's myself, old chap," he declared gaily. "I may call you old chap, mayn't I? It's myself and it takes your breath away, what? You're thinking of a providential meeting, the sort of coincidence one never sees: two brothers-in-law dropping into the same regiment. Well, it's not that: it happened at my express request. I said to the authorities, 'I'm enlisting by way of a duty and pleasure combined,' or words to that effect. 'But, as a crack athlete and a prize-winner in every gymnastic and drill-club I ever joined, I want to be sent to the front straight away and into the same regiment as my brother-in-law, Corporal Paul Delroze.' And, as they couldn't do without my services, they packed me off here. . . . Well? You don't look particularly delighted . . . ?"

Paul was hardly listening. He said to himself:

"This is the son of Hermine d'Andeville. The boy who is now touching me is the son of the woman who killed . . ."

But Bernard's face expressed such candor and such open-hearted pleasure at seeing him that he said:

"Yes, I am. Only you're so young!"

"I? I'm quite ancient. Seventeen the day I enlisted."

"But what did your father say?"

"Dad gave me leave. But for that, of course, I shouldn't have given him leave."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, he's enlisted, too."

"At his age?"

"Nonsense, he's quite juvenile. Fifty the day he enlisted! They found him a job as interpreter with the British staff. All the family under arms, you see. . . . Oh, I was forgetting, I've a letter for you from elisabeth!"

Paul started. He had deliberately refrained from asking after his wife.

He now said, as he took the letter:

"So she gave you this . . . ?"

"No, she sent it to us from Ornequin."

"From Ornequin? How can she have done that? elisabeth left Ornequin on the day of mobilization, in the evening. She was going to Chaumont, to her aunt's."

"Not at all. I went and said good-bye to our aunt: she hadn't heard from elisabeth since the beginning of the war. Besides, look at the envelope: 'M. Paul Delroze, care of M. d'Andeville, Paris, etc.' And it's post-marked Ornequin and Corvigny."

Paul looked and stammered:

"Yes, you're right; and I can read the date on the post-mark: 18 August.

The 18th of August . . . and Corvigny fell into the hands of the Germans two days later, on the 20th. So elisabeth was still there."

"No, no," cried Bernard, "elisabeth isn't a child! You surely don't think she would have waited for the Huns, so close to the frontier! She would have left the chateau at the first sound of firing. And that's what she's telling you, I expect. Why don't you read her letter, Paul?"

Paul, on his side, had no idea of what he was about to learn on reading the letter; and he opened the envelope with a shudder.

What elisabeth wrote was:

"_Paul_,

"I cannot make up my mind to leave Ornequin. A duty keeps me here in which I shall not fail, the duty of clearing my mother's memory. Do understand me, Paul.

My mother remains the purest of creatures in my eyes.

The woman who nursed me in her arms, for whom my father retains all his love, must not be even suspected. But you yourself accuse her; and it is against you that I wish to defend her. To compel you to believe me, I shall find the proofs that are not necessary to convince me. And it seems to me that those proofs can only be found here. So I shall stay.

"Jerome and Rosalie are also staying on, though the enemy is said to be approaching. They have brave hearts, both of them, and you have nothing to fear, as I shall not be alone.

eLISABETH DELROZE."

Paul folded up the letter. He was very pale.

Bernard asked:

"She's gone, hasn't she?"

"No, she's there."

"But this is madness! What, with those beasts about! A lonely country-house! . . . But look here, Paul, she must surely know the terrible dangers that threaten her! . . . What can be keeping her there?

Oh, it's too dreadful to think of. . . ."

Paul stood silent, with a drawn face and clenched fists. . . .

CHAPTER V

THE PEASANT-WOMAN AT CORVIGNY

Three weeks before, on hearing that war was declared, Paul had felt rising within him the immediate resolution to get killed at all costs.

The tragedy of his life, the horror of his marriage with a woman whom he still loved in his heart, the certainty which he had acquired at the Chateau d'Ornequin: all this had affected him to such a degree that he came to look upon death as a boon. To him, war represented, from the first and without the least demur, death. However much he might admire the solemnly impressive and magnificently consoling events of those first few weeks--the perfect order of the mobilization, the enthusiasm of the soldiers, the wonderful unity that prevailed in France, the awakening of the souls of the nation--none of these great spectacles attracted his attention. Deep down within himself he had determined that he would perform acts of such kind that not even the most improbable hazard could succeed in saving him.

Thus he thought that he had found the desired occasion on the first day.