With a cry like the cry of a wounded animal he raised his clenched fists to heaven, and the blood from his lacerated palms ran down his wrists, and the tears, the hot searing tears that corrode a man's soul, rolled down his gaunt, agonized face.
There she lay, the broken, helpless creature, there she lay—the symbol of his country, his wrecked and ruined country!
Lost, lost both of them—broken, outraged and defiled.
Not all his blood, not all his prayers, could ever undo the wrong that had been done to them, could ever raise them in their pristine glory and purity—the sullied soul of the woman, the outraged heart of his land.
In the grey gloaming that fell around them, veiling with its shadows the shame of her face, she told him what was still left to tell.
He said never a word. He sat with bowed head, his eyes hidden in his hands. He felt as if he were dead in a dead world. All the flames of his anger and despair were spent. His soul was turned to ashes. Nothing was left. Nothing was left to live for, to fight for, to pray for.
For a long time he seemed to hear none of the stricken woman's words, as she knelt sobbing at his feet. Then one word, constantly recurring, beat on his brain like a hammer on red-hot iron.
"The child … the child"—every other word that fell from her lips seemed to be "the child."
"If only I could die," she was crying, "I should love to die were it not for the child. It is such a forlorn and desolate little child. Nobody ever looks at it, nobody ever smiles at it or wishes it well.... Not even Louise, who is so kind.... No, she is cruel, she is like a fury when she looks at the child. Oh, God! what will our life be in the midst of so much scorn and hatred? Not that I care about myself; but what will become of the little child? Perhaps I should have done as Louise did.... I should have torn it from me before it came to life."
A deep shudder ran through Florian.
"But I seemed to hear a voice in my soul—the very voice of God, calling aloud to me: 'Thou shall not kill.'"
Florian rose to his feet and looked down at the bowed figure. This was Chérie, the laughing, dimpling, blushing Chérie—his betrothed!… He bent over her and laid his hand on her shoulder, but she paid no heed.
"Ah, if only we could slip out of life together, the child and I! But how? How? When he looks up at me and touches my face with his tiny hands, how can I hurt him?" Her tear-flooded eyes looked up at Florian without seeing him. "Should I strangle the little tender throat with my hands? Or stifle the soft breath of his mouth?… Why should he not live like other children, and laugh and play and be happy like every other child? What has he done, poor innocent, that he should be accursed, among children, an outcast, hated and despised?"
"Chérie!" he said, but she did not hear or heed him. Nor did she heed the braggart peal of trumpet and clarionet passing under the windows with the din of the "Wacht am Rhein." She heard nothing, she cared for nothing but her own and the enemy's child.
The soldier's blood rose within him.
"And is this all you have to say to me when I come to you out of the very jaws of death? Is this all you can think of when our land is wrung and wracked by the enemy, torn to pieces by the foul fiends that have violated her and you? A thousand curses on them and on–"
"No—no—no!" she screamed, springing to her feet and covering his mouth with her hands. "No—no—not on him, not on him!"
"In the name of Belgium," roared the maddened Florian, "in the name of our outraged women, our perishing children, our murdered men, I curse the child you have borne! In the name of our broken hearts, in the name of our burned and ravaged homesteads—Louvain, Lierre, Berlaer, Mortsel, Waehlen, Weerde, Hofstade, Herselt, Diest–" The names fell from his lips, fanning his heart to fury; but the woman closed her ears with her hands so as not to hear the tragic enumeration of those sacred and familiar names—Belgium's rosary of martyrdom and fire.
She held her hands over her ears and wept: "May God not hear you!… May God not hear you!"
But he raised his voice and continued the appalling litany: "Malines, Fleron, Wavre, Notre Dame, Rosbeck, Muysen–" Suddenly he stopped. A sound had struck his ear—what was it?
It was a cry—the short, shrill cry of an infant.
The man stood still as if turned to stone; his blood-shot eyes, starting from their sockets, stared at the red-draped door from which the sound had come.
Chérie was at his feet, sobbing and wailing, her arms flung round his knees. "Have pity, have pity!" she sobbed, shaking with terror of him, blind with the fear of his violence. "Do no harm, do no harm! Kill me, trample upon me, but do no harm to the child."
And still Florian stood motionless, as if turned to stone. He heard none of the wild words that fell from the terrified woman's lips; he heard nothing but that querulous cry, the cry of the newly-born. The world seemed to ring with it. Above the wailing voice of the woman, above the din of soldiery, the clash of arms, the roar of warfare, rose that shrill cry of life, the cry of humanity. And that cry pierced his heart like a sword. In it was all the helplessness and misery of the world. It seemed to tell him of the uselessness and hopelessness and sadness of all things.
Anger, grief and despair, the passion of vengeance and the desire to kill, all dropped out of his soul and left it silent and empty. The terrified woman before him saw those fierce eyes soften, saw the stern lips tremble.
He bent forward and raised her to her feet. "Poor Chérie!" he said. "Poor little Chérie!" He took her pale, disfigured face between his two hands and looked into her eyes. "Say good-bye to me. Say good-bye. And may the Saints protect you."
"Where are you going? What will you do?" she sobbed as she saw him turning away from her, making ready to go out into the darkness—out of her life for ever.
"There is much for me to do," he said and his eyes wandered to the window whence the sound of the German bugles could still be heard.
And as she looked at him she saw that Florian, the comrade and lover of her youth, had vanished—only the soldier stood before her, the soldier aloof from her, detached from her, the soldier alone with his stern great task to do.
But in her the woman, the eternal, helpless woman, was born again, and she clung to him and wept, for passion and love returned to her soul and overwhelmed her.
"You will leave me! You will leave me! Florian, oh, my love! What will become of me? What shall I do? What shall I do?"
As if in answer, the feeble cry of the infant rose again.
The man said not a word. He raised his hand and pointed silently to the red-draped door. Then he turned from her and went out into the night.
Chérie stood still, gazing at the empty doorway through which he had passed.
Then as the child still wept, she went to him.
Humbly she went, and took her woman's place beside the cradle.
CHAPTER XXVI
The bugle bidding the inhabitants of Bomal to enter their homes and lock their doors blew shrilly as Louise hurried through the darkening, deserted streets, holding Mireille's chilly hand in hers. She spoke in soft, hurried tones, as if the child could hear her, as if she could understand. "You shall see, Mireille, you shall see when you enter your home—you will recognize it and remember. When I open the door and you step suddenly into the familiar place, I shall see the light break in your eyes like a sudden dawn. You will turn to me and you will smile—or weep! I do not know which will give me the greater joy—your tears or your smile. Then you will open your sweet lips—and speak...."
"What will your first words be, Mireille? Will you say, 'Mother'? Will you greet me as one who returns from a long journey, as one who wakens from a long dream?… Or, even though your voice be given back to you, will you be silent awhile, able yet not daring to speak?… Or will the first sound from your lips be a cry of terror when you remember what you saw that night?… Mireille, Mireille, whatever it be, I know that this evening I shall hear your voice. It is as if God had told me so."