Louise kissed his feet, kissed Claude's slippers, and wept, while Mireille smiled up at him with the smile of a seraph, and thanked and thanked him, not knowing what she thanked him for.
"But—what of Chérie?" gasped Louise, looking round at the frightened wild-rose figure in its white dress, trembling and weeping between the two ribald men.
"You shall take her with you," said Fischer, and he went resolutely across the room and took Chérie by the arm.
"What? What? You old reprobate," roared Feldmann, digging him in the ribs, with peals of coarse laughter. "You have two of them! What more do you want, you hedgehog, you? Leave this one alone."
"You leave her alone, too. I order her to go away." Fischer frowned and cleared his throat and tried to draw Chérie from Feldmann's and Von Wedel's grasp.
"What do you mean?" asked Von Wedel, going close up to Fischer and looking him up and down with provocative and menacing air.
"I mean that you leave her alone," puffed the captain. "Those are my orders, Lieutenant—and if they are not obeyed you shall answer for it."
"You old woman! you old head of a sheep," shouted Von Wedel; "answer for it, shall I? You are drunk; and I'm drunk; and I don't care a snap about your orders." And dragging Chérie's arm from Fischer's grasp he pushed him back and glowered at him.
"Your orders …" stuttered the intoxicated Feldmann, placing his hand on Fischer's shoulder to steady himself, "your orders … direct contradiction with other orders … higher orders …" He wagged his head at Fischer. "The German seal must be set upon the enemy's country.... Go away. Don't be a screeching owl."
"And don't be a head of a sheep," added Von Wedel. "Vae victis! If it isn't you, it'll be somebody else. It'll be old Glotz—look at him … sitting there, all agog, arrectis auribus! Or it will be our drunken men downstairs. Just listen to them!…"
The drunken men downstairs were roaring "Die Wacht am Rhein." Von Wedel's argument seemed to carry conviction.
"Vae victis!" sighed Fischer, swallowing another glass of brandy and looking across the room at the trembling Louise. "If it isn't I … then Glotz … or somebody else … drunken soldiers...."
He went unsteadily towards Louise, who stood clutching at the locked door. "Woe to the vanquished, my poor woman … seal of Germany … higher orders.... Why should I be a head of a sheep?…"
BOOK II
CHAPTER VI
It is pleasant to sit in a quiet English garden on a mild September afternoon, sipping tea and talking about the war and weather, while venturesome sparrows hop on the velvety lawn and a light breeze dances over the flower-beds stealing the breath of the mignonette to carry back at nightfall to the sea.
Thus mused the gentle sisters, Miss Jane and Julia Cony, as they gazed round with serene and satisfied blue eyes on the lawn, the sparrows, the silver tea-set, the buttered toast, and their best friend, Miss Lorena Marshall, who had dropped in to have tea with them and whose gentle brown eyes now smiled back into theirs with the self-same serenity and satisfaction. All three had youthful faces under their soft white hair; all three had tender hearts in their somewhat rigid breasts; all three had walked slender and tall through an unblemished life of undeviating conventionality. They were sublimely guileless, divinely charitable and inflexibly austere.
"It is pleasant indeed," repeated Julia in her rather querulous treble voice. Julia had been delicate in her teens and still retained some of the capricious ways of the petted child. She was the youngest, too—scarcely forty-five—and was considered very modern by her sister and her friend. "Of course the Continent is all very well in its way," she went on. "Switzerland in summer, and Monte Carlo in winter–"
"Oh, Julia," interrupted Miss Jane quickly, "why do you talk about Monte Carlo? We only stayed there forty-five minutes."
"Well, I'm sure I wish we could have stayed there longer," laughed the naughty Julia. "The sea was a dream, and the women's clothes were revelations. But, as I was saying, England is, after all–"
We all know what England is, after all. Still, it is always good to say it and to hear it said. Thus, in the enumeration of England's advantages and privileges a restful hour passed, until the neat maid, Barratt, came to announce the arrival of other visitors. Mrs. Mulholland and her daughter Kitty had driven round from Widford and came rustling across the lawn in beflowered hats and lace veils. Fresh tea was made for them and they brought a new note into the conversation.
"Are you not thinking of taking a refugee?" asked Mrs. Mulholland. "The Davidsons have got one."
"The Davidsons have got one?" exclaimed Miss Marshall.
"The Davidsons have got one?" echoed Miss Jane and Miss Julia Corry.
"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Mulholland somewhat acidly. "And I am sure if they can have one in their small house, you can; and we can."
"Refugees are all the rage just now," remarked Kitty. "Everybody who is anybody has them."
"Yes, but the Davidsons …" said Miss Marshall. "Surely they cannot afford it."
"They have dismissed their maid," explained Mrs. Mulholland, "and this poor Belgian woman has to do all their housework."
"Yes; and Molly Davidson says that she is really a countess," added Kitty, "and that she makes the beds very badly."
"Poor soul!" said Miss Jane.
"I certainly think," continued Mrs. Mulholland, "that the Davidsons of all people should not be putting on side with a foreign countess to make their beds for them, while others who have good houses and decent incomes simply look on. In fact," she added, "I have already written to the Committee in Kingsway offering hospitality to a family of two or three."
"That is very generous of you," said Miss Jane; and Miss Julia shyly patted the complacent white-gloved hands reposing in Mrs. Mulholland's lap.
"We had not thought of it ourselves, so far," said Miss Jane. "But if it is our duty to help these unfortunates, we shall certainly do so."
"Of course you will. You are such angels," exclaimed the impulsive Kitty, throwing a muscular arm around Miss Jane's prim shoulders and kissing her cheek. And Miss Jane liked it.
"How does one set about it?" asked Miss Marshall; "I might find room for one, too. In fact I should rather like it. The evenings are so lonely and I used to love to speak French."
Mrs. Mulholland, to whom she had turned, did not answer at once. Then she replied drily: "You can write to the Refugee Committee or the Belgian Consulate. The Davidsons got theirs from the Woman's Suffrage League."
Then there was a brief pause.
"But I hear that the committee is frightfully particular," she went on. "They don't send them just to any one who asks. One must give all sorts of references. In fact," she added, with a chilly little laugh, "it is almost as if one were asking for a situation oneself. They want to know all about you."
There was another brief silence, and then Mrs. Mulholland and Kitty took their leave.
To Miss Julia, who accompanied them to the gate, Mrs. Mulholland remarked, "The idea! Miss Marshall wanting a refugee! With her past!"
"What past?" inquired Miss Julia, wide-eyed and wondering.
"Oh," snapped Mrs. Mulholland, tossing her head, and the white lace veil floating round her sailor-hat waved playfully in the breeze, "when people live abroad so long, there is always something behind it."
She stepped into her motor, followed by the pink-faced, smiling Kitty, and they drove away to pay some other calls.
Miss Julia returned to the lawn with a puckered brow and a perturbed heart. Neither she nor her sister had ever thought of Miss Lorena Marshall's past; Miss Marshall did not convey the impression of having a past—especially not a foreign past, which was associated in Jessie's mind with ideas of the Moulin Rouge and Bal Tabarin. The neat black hat sitting firmly on Miss Marshall's smooth pepper-and-salt hair could never be a descendant of those naughty French petits bonnets which are flung over the mills in moments of youthful folly. Her sensible square-toed boots firmly repelled the idea that the feet they encased could ever have danced adown the flowery slopes of sin.