The unwitting Miss Price was just rising from an attitude of genuflexion with a rapturous smile and two black marks on her knees, when she caught sight of the Pitou boy writhing with silent merriment at the end of the first row. Her eye wandered along that row and the next one and she saw all the bowed and quivering figures, the flushed faces hidden in handkerchiefs, and the heaving shoulders.
Casting upon them a glance of ineffable disdain she walked haughtily with her bare legs into the wings. Mr. Mellon rippled on at the piano for a little while, then he, too, stopped and hurried off the stage at the nearest exit.
Behind the scenes the artists were assembled in an indignation-meeting. There were eleven numbers still to come, but no one would go on. It was proposed that the curate should go out and make a short but cutting speech; and he went half-way out and then came back again, not having anything ready to say. Besides the sight of the refugees still convulsed with laughter upset him. For their part his appearance and disappearance did nothing to allay their condition, now bordering on collective hysteria.
Finally, after rapid consultation in the wings, the good-natured Miss Johnson was prevailed upon to go out and sing the "Merry Pipes of Pan." She was not nervous and did not care whether the silly refugees laughed or not.
When she stepped out she saw that Mr. Mellon was not there to accompany her, so after a long wait she went off into the wings on one side, just as Mr. Mellon—wiping his mouth after a hasty refreshment—came hurrying in on the other.
Miss Johnson had to be coaxed and driven and pushed out again, and this so flustered her that she forgot most of her words and had to make a series of inarticulate sounds until she came to the refrain.
Here she felt safe.
she warbled,
There seemed to be something wrong with the words, but she could not get them right
"Gracious goodness," murmured the husky Miss Snelgrove to Mrs. Whitaker, who sat near her, "what a strident voice!"
"Yes," assented Mrs. Whitaker. "And what are the 'perrimipes,' I wonder?"
There was no denying it. The concert was a fiasco. Owing to the execrable behaviour of the refugees and the contagion of their senseless laughter, a kind of hysteria gained the hall and half the audience was soon in a condition of brainless and uncontrollable hilarity.
Every new number was greeted with suffocated giggles, sometimes even with screams of laughter from the younger portion of the audience.
The curate—who had himself been found holding both his sides in one of the empty schoolrooms—made a caustic speech at the close of the performance about "our well-meant efforts, our perchance too modest talents," having appealed mainly to the risible faculties of their foreign guests, and he had pleasure in stating that the sum collected was eighteen pounds seven shillings and sixpence.
The refugees slunk home and were treated like pariahs for many weeks afterwards; while the word "Concert" was not pronounced for months in the homes of Mrs. Mellon, of Miss Johnson, or of Miss Price.
CHAPTER XI
Loulou is ill, and I am very anxious about her. It must be the English climate perhaps, for I also do not feel as I used to feel in Bomal. I often am deathly sick, and faint and giddy; I cannot bear the sight of things and of people that before I did not mind, or even liked. Certain puddings, for instance, and all kinds of dishes which I thought so extraordinarily nice to eat when we first came here, now I cannot bear to see them when they are brought on the table. Something makes me grind my teeth and I feel as if I must get up and run out of the room. And I have the same inexplicable aversion to people; for instance the nice kind Monsieur George Whitaker—I cannot say what I feel when he comes near to me; a sort of shuddering terror that makes me turn away so as not to see him. I cannot bear to look at his strong brown hands with the little short fair hairs on his wrist. I cannot look at his clear grey eyes, or at his mouth which always laughs, or at his broad shoulders, or anything.... There is something in me that shrinks and shudders away from the sight of him. Have the sorrows and troubles we have passed through unhinged my reason?…
But to return to Louise. I thought that what made her look so pale and wild was the anxiety of not hearing from Claude; but since his first dear letter ten days ago telling us that he is safe, she seems even worse than before. It is true he has been wounded; but that is almost a blessing, for the wound is not serious and yet it will keep him safely in the hospital at Dunkirk for months to come. He may remain slightly lame as he has been shot in the knee, but that does not matter, and he says his health is perfect.
Of course I thought Loulou would start at once to go and visit him, as she can get permission to see him and he has sent her plenty of money for the journey; but she will not hear of it. She only weeps and raves when I speak of it; and I do not think she ever sleeps at night. I can hear her in her room, which is next to mine, moaning and whispering and praying whenever I wake up. I have asked her why, why she will not go to see Claude—ah, if only I knew where to find Florian, how I should fly to his side!—but she shakes her head and weeps and her eyes are full of terror and madness. I ask her, "Is it because of Mireille? Are you afraid of telling him about her?" "Yes, yes, yes," she cries. "I am afraid, afraid of telling him what has made her as she is."
"But, Loulou, dearest, what do you mean? Was it not her fear that the Germans would kill us that took away her speech? Why should you not tell Claude? He would comfort you. He knows the Germans were in Bomal! He knows that they ransacked our house, that they killed Monsieur le Curé and poor André...."
"Yes, he knows that," answers Louise slowly with her eyes fixed on mine. "But he does not know–"
Then she is silent.
"What does he not know?"
She grasps my shoulders. "Chérie, Chérie. Are you demented? Have you forgotten—have you forgotten?"
Forgotten!… In truth, I have forgotten many things. There are gaps in my memory, wide blank spaces that, no matter how I try to remember, I cannot fill. Now and then something flashes into those blank spaces, a fleeting recollection, a transient vision, then the blankness closes down again and when I try to remember what I have remembered, it is gone.
I ask Louise to tell me what she means, to tell me what I have forgotten; but she only stares at me with those horror-haunted eyes and whispers, "Hush! hush, my poor Chérie!" Then she places her cold hand on my lips as if to close them.
I will try to remember. I will write down in this book all that remains in my memory of those terrible days and nights when we fled from home; when we hid starving and trembling in the woods, and saw through the trees our church-tower burn like a torch, saw it list over and crash down in a cloud of smoke and flame; when, crouching in a ditch, we heard the Uhlans gallop past us and saw them drag two little boys, César and Émile Duroc, out of their hiding-places in the bushes only a few yards from us.
We saw them—we saw them!—crush the children's feet with the butts of their rifles, and then taunt them, telling them to "run away!" I can see them now—two of the men standing behind the children, holding them upright by their small shoulders, while a third beat and crunched and ground their feet into the earth....
But stay … the wide blank spaces in my brain go back much further than that.
What is it that Louise says I have forgotten? Let me try to remember. Let me try to remember.
I will go back to the evening of my birthday. August the fourth. Our friends come. We dance.