Kitabı oku: «The Outrage», sayfa 7

CHAPTER XIII

Louise looked her doom in the face with steady eyes. No more hope, no more doubt was possible. This was November. The third month had passed.

What she had dreaded more than death had come to pass. From the first hour the fear of it had haunted her. Now she knew. She knew that the outrage to which she had been subjected would endure; she knew that her shame would live.

In the middle of the night after tossing sleeplessly for hours, the full realization of this struck her heart like a blow. She sat up with clenched teeth in the darkness, her hands pressed to her temples.

After a while she slid from her bed and stood motionless in the middle of the room. Around her the world was asleep. She was alone with her despair and her horror.

How should she elude her fate? How should she flee from herself and the horror within her?

She turned on the light and went with quick steps to the mirror. There she stood with bare feet in her long white nightdress, staring at herself. Yes. She nodded and nodded like a demented creature at the reflection she saw before her. She recognized the aspect of it; the dragged features, the restless eyes, the face that seemed already too small for her body, the hunted anxious look. That was maternity. To violence nature had conceded what had been withheld from love. What she and Claude had longed for, had prayed for—another child—behold, now it was vouchsafed to her.

With teeth clenched she gazed at her white-draped reflection, she gazed at the hated fragile frame in which the eternal mystery of life was being accomplished. With the groan of a tortured animal she hid her face in her hands. What should she do? Oh God! what should she do?

Then began for Louise the heartbreaking pursuit of liberation, the nightmare, the obsession of deliverance.

All was vain. Nature pursued its inexorable course.

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 crushing 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.... Hush! 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 Chérie?

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

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—passing the dead Amour on Chérie'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—Chérie! Chérie still in her white muslin dress all torn and bloodstained, Chérie 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 brass 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 Brandès."

"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 Curé 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."

"All right, dear," said the vicar; "this is Madame Brandès, who is staying with the Whitakers. She wants to consult me on some personal matter." Then he turned to Dr. Reynolds. "Well, doctor; how do you find our boy?"

"Quite all right. Quite all right," said the doctor. "We shall have him up and playing football again in no time. It is nothing but a strained tendon. Absolutely nothing at all."

Mrs. Yule had gone towards Louise with outstretched hand. "How do you do? I am glad to meet you," she said cordially. "You will stay for tea with us, I hope. My daughter, too, will be so pleased to see you. Not"—she added, with a little break in her voice—"that she really can see you. Perhaps you have heard that my dear daughter is blind."

"Blind!" Like a tidal wave the sorrow of the world seemed to overwhelm Louise. She felt that the sadness of life was too great to be borne. "Blind," she said. Then she covered her face and burst into tears.

Mrs. Yule's maternal heart melted; her maternal eyes noted the broken attitude, the tell-tale line of the figure! she stepped quickly forward, holding out both her hands.

"Come, my dear; sit down. Will you let me take your hat off? This English weather is so trying if one is not used to it," murmured Mrs. Yule with Anglo-Saxon shyness before the stranger's unexpected display of feeling, while the two men turned away and talked together near the window. Mrs. Yule pressed Louise's black-gloved hand in hers. What though this outburst were due, as it probably was, to the woman's condition, to her overwrought nerves, or to who knows what grief and misery of her own? The fact remained—and Mrs. Yule never forgot it—that this storm of tears was evoked by the news of her dear child's affliction. Mrs. Yule's heart was touched.

"You are Belgian, I know," she said in French, sitting down beside Louise and taking one of the black-gloved hands in her own. "I myself was at school in Brussels." And indeed her French was perfect, with just a little touch of Walloon closing the vowels in some of her words. "I would have called on you long ago—I would have asked you to make friends with my daughter whose affliction has so distressed your kind heart; but as you may have heard, my boy met with an accident, and I have not left the house for many days.... Do wait a moment, Dr. Reynolds," she added as the doctor approached to bid her good-bye. And turning to Louise she introduced him to her as "the kindest of friends and the best of doctors."

"We have met," said Dr. Reynolds, shaking hands with Louise and looking keenly into her face with his piercing, short-sighted eyes. "Madame Brandès's little daughter," he added, turning to Mrs. Yule, "is a patient of mine." There was a moment's silence; then the doctor, turning to the vicar, added in a lower voice: "It seems that their home was invaded, and the child terribly frightened. It is a very sad case. She has lost her reason and her power of speech."

Mrs. Yule in her turn was deeply moved and quick tears of sympathy gathered in her eyes. With an impulse of tenderest pity she bent suddenly forward and kissed the exile's pale cheek.

Like a flash of lightning in the night, it was revealed to Louise that now or never she must make her confession, now or never attempt a supreme, ultimate effort. This must be her last struggle for life. As she looked from Mrs. Yule's kind, tear-filled eyes to the calm, keen face of the physician hope bounded within her like a living thing. The blood rushed to her cheeks and she rose to her feet.

"Doctor!…" she gasped. Then she turned to Mrs. Yule again, it seemed almost easier to say what must be said, to a woman. "I want to say something.... I must speak...." And again turning to the doctor—"Do you understand me if I speak French?"

Doctor Reynolds looked rather like a timid schoolboy, notwithstanding his spectacles and his red beard, as he replied: "Oh … oui, Madame. Je comprong."

The vicar stepped forward. Looking from Louise to his wife and to the doctor he said: "Perhaps I had better leave you...."

But Louise quickly extended a trembling hand. "No! Please stay," she pleaded. "You are a priest. You are the doctor of the soul. And my soul is sick unto death."

The vicar took her extended hand. "I shall be honoured by your confidence," he said in courtly fashion, and seating himself beside her waited for her to speak.

Nor did he wait in vain. In eloquent passionate words, in the burning accents of her own language, the story of her martyrdom was revealed, her torn and outraged soul laid bare.

In that quiet room in the old-fashioned English vicarage the ghastly scenes of butchery and debauch were enacted again; the foul violence of the enemy, the treason, the drunkenness, the ribaldry of the men who with "mud and blood" on their feet, had trampled on these women's souls—all lived before the horrified listeners, and the martyrdom of the three helpless victims wrung their honest British hearts.

Louise had risen to her feet—a long black figure with a spectral face. She was Tragedy itself; she was the Spirit of Womanhood crushed and ruined by the war; she was the Grief of the World.

And now she flung herself at the doctor's feet, her arms outstretched, her eyes starting from their orbits, imploring him, in a paroxysm of agony and despair, to release and save her.

She fell face-downwards at his feet, shaken with spasmodic sobs, writhing and quaking as if in the throes of an epileptic fit. Mrs. Yule and the doctor raised her and placed her tenderly on the couch. Water and vinegar were brought, and wet cloths laid on her forehead.

There followed a prolonged silence.

"Unhappy woman!" murmured the vicar, aghast. "Her mind is quite unhinged."

"Yes," said the doctor; but he said it in a different tone, his experienced eye taking in every detail of the tense figure still thrilled and shaken at intervals by a convulsive tremor. "Yes, undoubtedly. She is on the verge of insanity." He paused. Then he looked the vicar full in the face. "And unless she is promptly assisted she will probably become hopelessly and incurably insane."

A low cry escaped Mrs. Yule's lips. "Oh, hush!" she said, bending over the pallid woman on the couch, fearful lest the appalling verdict might have reached her. But Louise's weary spirit had slipped away into unconsciousness.

"A sad case—a terribly sad case," said the vicar, thoughtfully pushing up his clipped grey moustache with his finger-tips and avoiding the doctor's resolute gaze. "She shall have our earnest prayers."

"And our very best assistance," said the doctor.

As if the words of comfort had reached her, Louise sighed and opened her eyes.

Mrs. Yule's protecting arm went round her.

"Of course, of course," said Mr. Yule to the doctor. Then he crossed the room and stood by the couch, looking down at Louise. "You will be brave, will you not? You must not give way to despair. We are all here to help and comfort you."

Louise raised herself on her elbow and looked up at him. A dazzling light of hope illuminated her face. Mr. Yule continued gravely and kindly.

"You can rely upon our friendship—nay, more—upon our tenderest affection. Our home is open to you if, as is most probable, Mrs. Whitaker desires you to leave her house. My wife and daughter will nurse and comfort you, will honour and respect you–" Louise broke into low sobs of gratitude as she grasped Mrs. Yule's hand and raised it to her lips. "And in the hour–" the vicar drew himself up to his full height and spoke in louder, more impressive tones—"and in the hour of your supreme ordeal, you shall not be forsaken."

Louise rose, vacillating, to her feet. "What … what do you mean?" she gasped. Her countenance was distorted; her eyes burned like black torches in her ashen face.

"I mean," declared the clergyman, his stern eyes fixed relentlessly, almost threateningly, upon the trembling woman, "I mean that whatever you may have suffered at the hands of the iniquitous, you have no right"—he raised his hand and his resonant voice shook with the vehemence of his feeling—"no right yourself to contemplate a crime."

A deep silence held the room. The sacerdotal authority wielded its powerful sway.

"A crime! a crime!" gasped Louise, and the convulsive tremor seized her anew. "Surely it is a greater crime to drive me to my death."

"The laws of nature are sacred," said the vicar, his brow flushing, a diagonal vein starting out upon it; "they may not be set aside. All you can do is humbly to submit to the Divine law."

Louise raised her wild white face and gazed at him helplessly, but Dr. Reynolds stepped forward and stood beside her. "My dear Yule," he said gravely, "do not let us talk about Divine law in connection with this unhappy woman's plight. We all know that every law, both human and Divine, has been violated and trampled upon by the foul fiends that this war has let loose."

The vicar turned upon him a face flushed with indignation. "Do you mean to say that this would justify an act which is nothing less than murder?"

The doctor made no reply and the vicar looked at him, aghast.

"Reynolds, my good friend! You do not mean to tell me that you would dare to intervene?"

Still the doctor was silent. Louise, her ashen lips parted, her wild eyes fixed upon the two men, awaited her sentence.

"I can come to no hasty decision," said the man of science at last. "But if on further thought I decide that it is my duty—as a man and a physician—to interrupt the course of events, I shall do so." He paused an instant while his eye studied the haggard face and trembling figure of Louise. "A priori," he added, "this woman's mental and physical condition would seem to justify me in fulfilling her wish."

"Ah!" It was a cry of delirious joy from Louise. She was tearing her dress from her throat, gasping, catching her breath, shaken with frenzied sobs in a renewed spasm of hysteria.

They had to lift her to the couch again. The doctor hurriedly dissolved two or three tablets of some sedative drug and forced the beverage through Louise's clenched teeth. Then he sat down beside her, holding her thin wrist in his fingers. Soon he felt the disordered intermittent pulse beat more rhythmically; he felt the tense muscles slacken, the quivering nerves relax.

Then he turned to the vicar, who stood with his back to the room looking out of the window at the dreary rain-swept garden.

"Yule," he said, "I shall be sorry if in following the dictates of my conscience I lose a life-long friendship—a friendship which has been very precious to me." The vicar neither answered nor moved; but Mrs. Yule came softly across the room and stood beside the doctor—the man who had healed and watched over her and those she loved, who fifteen years before had so tenderly laid her little blind daughter in her arms. She remained at his side with flushed cheeks, and her lips moved silently as if in prayer. Her husband stood motionless, looking out at the misty November twilight.

"Still more does it grieve me," continued the doctor, "to think that any act of mine should wound your feelings on a point of conscience which evidently touches you so deeply. But be that as it may, I must obey the dictates of common humanity which, in this case, coincide exactly with the teachings of science. Given the condition in which I find this woman, I feel that I must try my best to save her reason and her life. The chances are a hundred to one that if the child lived it would be abnormal; a degenerate, an epileptic." The doctor stepped near the couch and looked down at the unconscious Louise. "And as for the mother," he added, pointing to the pitiful death-like face, "look at her. Can you not see that she is well on her way to the graveyard or the madhouse?"

There was no reply. In the silence that followed Mrs. Yule drew near to her husband; but he kept his face resolutely turned away and stared out of the window.

She touched his arm tremulously. "Think, dear," she murmured, "think that she has a husband—whom she loves, who is fighting in the trenches for her and for his home. When he returns, will it not be terrible enough for her to tell him that his own daughter has lost her reason? Must she also go to meet him carrying the child of an enemy in her arms?"

The vicar did not answer. He turned his pale set face away without a word, and left the room.