No Man's Land Part 17

The Kid watched the young officer's arm tighten convulsively round her waist--and began to see red. Then the harsh guttural voice continued.

"Well, now, without wasting any more time, let us come to the point. I had proposed to let Lieutenant Rutter explain things to you; but--er--from one or two things I overheard, it struck me he might not make them clear." The beady eyes came slowly round to the Lieutenant.

"That is why I interrupted." Once again he stared at the trembling girl. "To be brief, Mademoiselle Marie, we antic.i.p.ate an attack--a big attack--by the English. We have good information that it is coming in this neighbourhood."

The Kid p.r.i.c.ked up his ears; what the devil was the man talking about?

"We have every reason to hope that Ovillers, Fricourt, Thiepval are impregnable; at the same time--in war--one never leaves things to chance." The Kid's astonishment turned to stupefaction; he himself had been in the storming of Ovillers. "And the chance," continued the imperturbable voice, "in this matter is the probable action of the French--your charming compatriots--er--compatriots, _that were_, Fraulein. We antic.i.p.ate this offensive in about a month or six weeks; and the matter on which we require all the confirmation we can is whether the French, after their hideous losses at Verdun, can play any important part in this operation of the enemy. That is where you can help us."

For a moment there was dead silence, and then the girl turned her stricken face to the man beside her. "Dear G.o.d!" she muttered, "is this why you made love to me? To make me a spy?"

"Marie--no, on my honour; I swear it!" Forgetful of the man sitting at the table Fritz stretched out his hand in an agony of supplication.

"Lieutenant Rutter." With a snarl the Colonel stood up. "You forget yourself. I am speaking. A truce to this fooling. Mademoiselle"--he turned again on the girl--"we have other things to do beside babble of love. Call it spying if you will, but we want information, and you can help us to get it--_must_ help us to get it."

"And what if I refuse?" Superbly she confronted him; her voice had come back; her head was thrown up.

"In the first place you will not marry Lieutenant Rutter; and in the second place--have you heard that the Comte de St. Jean was taken prisoner at Verdun?"

"Philippe. Oh, monsieur, where is he?" The girl threw herself on her knees before him. "I implore you--he is my only brother."

"Indeed. Well, if you ever desire to see him again you will carry out my suggestion. Otherwise----" he paused significantly.

"Oh, you could not! You could not be so cruel, so vile as to harm him if he is a prisoner. It would break my mother's heart."

"Mademoiselle, there is nothing which I would scruple to do--nothing--if by so doing I advanced the glorious cause of our Fatherland." The man's small eyes gleamed with the fire of a fanatic; revolting though he was, yet was there an element of grandeur about him. Even the Kid, watching silently from the bed, felt conscious of the power which seemed to spring from him as he stood there, squat and repulsive, with the lovely French girl kneeling at his feet. He saw her throw her arms around his knees, and turn up her face to his in an agony of pleading; and then of a sudden came the tragedy.

Discipline or no discipline, a man is a man, and Fritz Rutter had reached the breaking-point. Perhaps it was the sight of the woman he loved kneeling at the feet of one of the grossest sensualists in Europe, perhaps---- But who knows?

"Marie," he cried hoa.r.s.ely, "it's not true. Philippe is dead; they cannot hurt him now. Get up, my dear, get up." With folded arms he faced the other man as the girl staggered to her feet. Heedless of the blazing pa.s.sion on the Colonel's face, she crept to Fritz and hid her face against his chest. And as she stood there she heard the voice of her tormentor, thick and twisted with hate.

"For that, Lieutenant Rutter, I will have you disgraced. And then I will look after your Marie. Orderly!" His voice rose to a shout as he strode to the door.

"Good-bye, my love." Fritz strained her to him, and the Kid saw her kiss him once on the lips. Then she disengaged herself from his arms, and walked steadily to where the Colonel still shouted up the entrance.

Outside there was the sound of many footsteps, and the girl paused just behind the cursing maniac in the door.

"So you will look after me, will you, monsieur?" Her voice rose clear above the noise, and the man turned round, his malignant face quivering. The Kid watched it fascinated, and suddenly he saw it change. "I think not," went on the same clear voice; and the guttural cry of fear rang out simultaneously with the sharp crack of a revolver.

"My G.o.d!" Rutter stood watching the crumpling figure as it slipped to the ground in front of the girl; and then with a great cry he sprang forward. And with that cry, which seemed to ring through his brain, there came the power of movement to the Kid. He hurled himself off the bed towards the girl--his girl--his lady of the jasmine. But he was too late. The second shot was even truer than the first, and as her head hit the floor she was dead.

Regardless of Rutter the Kid knelt down beside her, and as he did so, he got it--in the face.

"What the blazes are you doing?" roared an infuriated voice. "d.a.m.n you! you young fool--you've nearly killed me."

Stupefied the boy looked around. The same dug-out; the same officers of B company; the same beer bottles; but where was the lady of the jasmine? Where was the man who lay dead in the doorway? Where was Rutter?

He blinked foolishly, and looked round to find the lamp still burning and his brother officers roaring with laughter. All, that is, except the Doctor on whose stomach he had apparently landed.

But the Kid was not to be put off by laughter. "I tell you it happened in this very dug-out," he cried excitedly. "She killed the swine in the doorway there, and then she killed herself. This is where she fell, Doc, just where you're lying, and her head hit the wall there.

Look, there's a board there, nailed over the wall--where her head went.

Don't laugh, you fool! don't laugh--it happened. I dreamed it. I know that now; but it happened for all that--before the big advance. I tell you she had light golden hair--ah! look." The Doctor had prised off the board, and there on the wall an ominous red stain showed dull in the candlelight. Slowly the Doctor bent down and picked up something with his fingers. Getting up he laid it on the table. And when the officers of B Company had looked at it, the laughter ceased. It was a little wisp of light golden hair--and the end was thick and clotted.

"To-morrow, Kid, you can tell us the yarn," said the Doctor quietly.

"Just now you're going to have a quarter-grain of sleep dope and go to bed again."

The following evening the officers of B Company, less the Kid, who was out, sat round the table and talked.

"What do you make of it, Doc?" asked the Company Commander. "Do you really think there is anything in the Kid's yarn? I mean, we know he dreamed it--but do you think it's true? I suppose that tired as he was he would be in a receptive mood for his imagination to run riot."

For a long while the Doctor puffed stolidly at his pipe without answering. Then he leaned forward and put his hand in his pocket.

"Imagination, you say. Do you call that imagination?" He produced the lock of hair from a matchbox. "Further, do you call that imagination?

I found it under the pillow this morning." On the table beside the match-box he placed a small pocket handkerchief, and from it there came the faint, elusive scent of jasmine. "And last of all, do you call that imagination? I found it in one of the books yonder." He placed an old envelope in front of him, and the others crowded round. It was addressed to Ober-Lieutenant Fritz Rutter.

VI

MORPHIA

The man stirred uneasily, and a faint moan came from his lips. A numbness seemed to envelop his body from the waist downwards, and in the intervals of a stabbing pain in his head, he seemed to hear people whispering near by. A figure pa.s.sed close to him, the figure of a girl with fair hair, in a grey dress--the figure of a girl like Molly. A red-hot iron stabbed his brain; his teeth clenched on his lips; he fought with all his will, but once again he moaned; he couldn't help it--it was involuntary. The girl stopped and came towards him; she was speaking to him, for he heard her voice. But what was she saying? Why did she speak so indistinctly? Why--ah, but her hand on his forehead was cool. It seemed to quiet those raging devils in his head; it helped him, as Molly always helped him. It seemed to--why, surely, it must be Molly herself, with her dear, soft touch, and her lips ready to kiss, and the sweet smell of her hair mounting to his brain like wine.

Something p.r.i.c.ked his arm: something that felt like the needle of a syringe; something that . . . But anyway, what the deuce was she doing? Then suddenly he recalled that pin at the back of her dress, where he'd p.r.i.c.ked his wrist so badly the first time he'd kissed her.

He laughed gently at the remembrance; and the hand on his forehead trembled. For laughter to be a pleasant thing to hear it is essential that the person who laughs should be in full possession of--well, it is better, at any rate, that his head should not have been hit by a bomb, especially if it was his lower jaw that bore the brunt.

"What are you trembling for, Molly?" The voice was tender. "The pain has quite gone--I must have had a touch of the sun."

But for a question to be answered it must be audible; and the girl whose hand was on his forehead heard no words. Merely was there a great and wonderful pity in her eyes, for the remnant--the torn-up remnant--who had fought and suffered for her. And the remnant, well, he was way back in the Land of Has-been. Did I not say that the pin was at the back of Molly's waist?

The woods were just at their best, with the glorious yellow and brown of early autumn, touched with the gold of the setting sun. In a clearing a boy was sitting on a fallen tree-trunk, puffing furiously at a cigarette. Twice had the smoke gone the wrong way, and once had it got into his eyes; but when one is aged sixteen such trifles are merely there to be overcome. The annoying thing was that he was still engaged in absorbing the overflowing moisture from his eyes, with a handkerchief of doubtful cleanliness, when a girl came into the glade and started to laugh.

"There's no good pretending, Billy. The smoke has got into your eyes, and your handkerchief is dirty, and you aren't impressing me in the slightest."

"Hallo, Molly! I wasn't expecting you so soon." The smoker looked a little sheepish.

"Indeed! Then if I'm not wanted, I'll go away again."

"No, no, Molly--don't do that." The boy rose eagerly, and went towards her. Then he stopped awkwardly, and putting his hands in his pocket, fidgeted with his feet.

"Well--why not?" The girl smiled provokingly. "And what are you hopping about for? Are you going to try to learn to dance, as I suggested?"

"I will if you will teach me, Molly--dear." He took a step forward eagerly--and then paused again, aghast at the audacity of that "dear."

Something in the cool, fresh young girl standing so easily in front of him, smiling with faint derision, seemed to knock on the head all that carefully thought out plan which had matured in his mind during the silent watches of the previous night. It had all seemed so easy then.

Johnson major's philosophy on life in general and girls in particular was one thing in the abstract, and quite another when viewed in the concrete, with a real, live specimen to practice on. And yet Johnson major was a man of much experience--and a prefect of some standing at school.

"My dear fellows," he had said on one occasion when holding the floor in his study, "I don't want to brag, and _we_ do not speak about these things." The accent on the _we_ had been wonderful. It implied members.h.i.+p of that great body of youthful dare-devils to whom the wiles of women present no terrors. "But women, my dear fellows, why--good lord, there's nothing in it when one knows the way to manage them.

They adore being kissed--provided it's done the right way. And if you don't know the right way instinctively, it comes with practice, old boy, it comes with practice." Billy had listened in awe, though preserving sufficient presence of mind to agree with the speaker in words of suitable nonchalance.