CHAPTER XVII
UNDER FIRE
Yes, an awkward business, this, of a man and two girl cousins in a country house. Phil was sensible of it as he started to walk back from the station with Henriette, carrying her bag and his own.
"We have Jacqueline," she said, as if divining what was in his mind. "A most dependable person, Jacqueline. Mother is quite safe and we shall see the war. Besides, we simply could not leave Helen alone."
Coming to the top of a rise they stopped short. The steady thunder of the guns became suddenly audible and against the green background of distant woods little puffs of smoke that seemed born of nothing were breaking and spreading into a mist which was as innocent-looking as a fleecy cloud on a summer day.
"One cannot realise what is going on there," remarked Phil, "though we shall if it comes to us."
"Then we go into the cellar, don't we, and wait?"
"I believe that is the rule," he said. "You've a good spirit."
"That is easy when a woman has a man along whom she can rely upon," she replied cheerfully. "We have not been used to having a man at Mervaux."
When they entered the house they found that Helen was still absent. Jacqueline did not know where she had gone.
"I suppose the first thing is to settle down again," said Henriette.
Phil took her bag upstairs. When he returned to the sitting-room Helen was just entering.
"You!" she exclaimed. "I——" and she paused, no words coming to her. When she had thought that the house, the world, and the battle were hers came this intrusion by the one person whom she did not wish to see again! She ought to welcome him and she could not break silence.
"We could not let you remain here alone when we heard that you were going to stay," he explained. "In fact, could you expect any decent cousin to do otherwise?" he added.
Her eyes which had been stonily dull gave their first signal. It was smiling mischief, which developed into one of her laughs.
"It was such a surprise that I must have looked as if I were seeing ghosts," she said. "It's a tribute to Jacqueline's omelets. You see, I relied on them to keep the Germans from looting the house. I meant to meet the invader with an omelet instead of an olive branch."
She carried the part off well once she was started, leaving him puzzled and wishing that she would continue her mood—any mood that livened her features.
"Oh, I didn't think I could stand at the door and defy the German hosts!" he explained. "Only, being a man, well—I——"
"You were going to play the masculine part of protector. I do feel more safe. Any woman must, being a woman and subject to conventional sex inheritances"—this with a trifle of condescension, which was shattered by utter astonishment as Henriette appeared.
"I did not mean to make you jump out of your shoes," said Henriette.
"Mother was aboard the train all right?" Helen asked.
"Yes; quite."
"Did she want you to come back, too?"
"No. What kind of a sister did you think I was, you brave, foolish Helen? Did you think I would go to Paris and leave you here?"
She had slipped her arm around Helen's waist with a rallying burst of affection, which concluded with a kiss and a nestling of her cheek against Helen's as she looked at Phil. The two faces were close together, Henriette smiling devotedly and Helen quite still in contrast; the one at her best and the other at her worst. Then Helen looked around at her sister studiously and back at Phil.
"I'm glad you both came," she said. "I—is there another train to Paris?" she asked abruptly.
"No, that was the last," Phil answered.
"So we are here together, come what will," she said slowly, with an odd emphasis. "I just came back for my drawing things. The French are retreating along the road and the German shells are coming nearer. I can't afford to waste a minute."
She took up her drawing materials from the table. As she turned to leave the room, something in her attitude made Phil arrest her.
"You are not going into danger?"
"No, not in the least; to sketch is all," she replied.
"I think that my part is to keep watch of you," he said. "May I go with you?"
"And I want to see, too!" Henriette put in.
"Come on, then. If you are going to look after us both we must not be separated," said Helen.
She walked ahead, however, leaving them to follow. From the terrace they cut across the fields behind the battery. Its commander was too busy to pay any attention to them and the rider with the caissons galloping over the field with more shells, careening and slewing as the knowing hands guided the horses, did not give even passing notice to the young man and two young women.
Helen dropped on the ground with her back to a shock of wheat and began to sketch the battery. She was in action no less than the gunners of the soixante-quinze, whom she made live in lines drawn by her swift fingers on white paper. Phil, unable to tell what was the gunners' target or which if any of the white balls of smoke in the distance were made by the screaming messengers they sent, looked around at her and it seemed quite in keeping that she should be present, her shoulders drawn in, her lips moving, as she sketched, with Phil and Henriette in the role of spectators.
"Now for the road!" she said, rising.
There, mistily through the dust, blue coats and red trousers showed in a moving stream to the rear between intervals of transport. The guns had had something of the splendour of war, but not these weary men leaving the soil of France behind to the enemy, beards from four weeks' campaigning white and brown with dust, eyes sunken, feet hobbling and sore, plodding on to the rear.
From this point of high ground a small town was visible in another lap of the hills, where French towns prefer to lie snug from the wind. The air was clear; sound carried far. A scream different from that of the shells from the mouth of French guns was heard; a scream that came toward them and ended in a crash, as if a steel ball had split into fragments, as it had. Over the house-tops of the town rose a cloud of dust and black smoke. Then another, and, sound travelling slower than sight, they again heard the rush of the projectile and its burst. Henriette gripped Phil's arm, but said nothing.
An officer of infantry looked around and nodded at the burst over the town in understanding. He spoke to an old colonel with white moustache who seemed asleep on his horse. The colonel shook his head as much as to say that there was no danger; that nothing could reach them at that range.
Helen had not seen the bursts in the town. She was trying to get the old colonel, the wounded men on the tops of wagons, the wounded on foot, in lines which should tell of the meaning of retreat in the suggestiveness of types.
"I'm not sure that we ought to remain here," said Phil.
"Why not?" asked Helen.
He pointed to the bursting shells.
"Oh, I couldn't go away!" was her only response.
Then the pencil dropped from her hand. Phil ducked as instinctively as if some one had struck the back of his neck and Henriette clung close to him with a cry of terror, for that approaching scream which had been distant was coming straight for them in the growing volume of a horror that froze the marrow. All the men on the road struck for one side or the other, their ducking forms flashing immutably on the retina of the eye in that awful second before a cloud of earth and dust spouted from an explosion on the other side of the road.
They were still alive. It was miraculous that they should be when they had died a score of deaths in that second. Helen tried to pick up her pencil and Henriette moaned: this much of an impression before the second shell came. It was nearer; death this time, without doubt. But it burst a hundred yards in front of them and some fragments whizzed by their ears.
Phil looked around for cover; for anything which would give them some protection. There was nothing near except wheat shocks. He swung Henriette around on the other side of him from the direction of the shells and called out to lie down. He could think of nothing else unless they ran. But which way should they run? The next burst was between them and the house; the next on the other side of the road. That was four. He remembered that batteries had four guns and fired in salvos. The target was evidently the road and the thing to do, then, must be to get away from the road.
"Run for it!" he cried. "That gully!"
Helen sprang up. Henriette tried to rise and could not. She was numbed with terror. Her eyes in mortal appeal spoke her helplessness. He was almost glad of this. It made him seem of some use as a masculine being in face of this hellish burst of destruction, which made unarmed men as feeble as a fly under a hammer. He did the natural thing, picked her up in his arms. She seemed very light, very yielding and trembling and strangely pale, beautiful, and trusting.
"Hurry on, Helen! I'll keep up with you, I'm so scared!" he called.
His voice sounded quite merry, as he meant it should. What travesty! He wished that he were back in Longfield or Mexico, anywhere than in that particular portion of France which a German battery was pounding. Other figures were running, too. The world seemed full of skurrying figures. Flight was the fashion.
More screams, ending in explosions, and with every one the figure in his arms trembled. But each scream was farther behind them as they hurried on. When he reached the gully he laid his burden on the grass at the bottom of it. If the target were the road they ought to be safe. At least, he could take a minute to decide what next to do. He looked back toward the road and saw the soldiers forming line in the fields under the direction of their officers. The old colonel sitting erect on his horse still remained beside the road, shouting his commands. A black cloud hid him and when it cleared away he and the horse were gone and there was a hole in the road where they had been. Then a crack overhead drew Phil's attention from the road. There was a whizzing through the air and little spurts of dust rose from the earth, and over all a puff of smoke like those he had seen in the distance against the green hills. Phil understood that this was shrapnel and the other which burst in the earth was a high explosive.
What next? The gully was not long. Should he attempt another run? But a shrapnel bursting over the other end of the gully made him hesitate. The two girls were hugging the bank and he dropped down beside Henriette, who caught his hand in hers, trembling again with new fear. Helen was lying face downward, holding fast to her portfolio. She looked toward him and in her eyes was the mischievous challenge and on her lips was playing the same humour he had seen across the table at Truckleford.
"Now don't you wish you had gone on to Paris?" she asked.
"Not unless you came," he answered. "Look there!"
Another high explosive had burst, and where they had been sitting beside the road a rising column of smoke showed a hole.
"I—I——" whispered Henriette, and her eyes spoke what her lips could not.
But was the road the target? Another scream straight for them and again they thought: "This is death!" The explosion twenty or thirty yards short of the gully covered them with dust. A human something, red and blue, half rolled, half tumbled down the bank at their feet and lay there inert, stunned. A gash showed on the soldier's cheek and his hand reached for his arm where the torn flesh was trickling red. With the other he fumbled instinctively for a first field dressing.
Here was something positive to do. Phil, who had envied the cool officers directing their men in the preoccupation of action, tore down the sleeve and opened the dressing. There was silence now; no screams in the air; no explosions. Yes, utter silence had settled over the field except for the officer's commands. Drops of blood fell from the soldier's cheek on Phil's hands as he applied the first aid and Henriette's fingers were aimlessly hovering about trying to assist.
"You are a good spirit, Mademoiselle," said the soldier, happy in the realisation of life and the cessation of the shell-fire.
"Yes, Henriette," Phil added.
"I will go on," said the soldier, scrambling to his feet. "It is nothing."
"But are you strong enough?" Phil protested.
"I was not hit in the legs. A little farther along the road I'll get on a wagon," he said. "And you, Monsieur, you and the ladies run to the nearest cellar. That one has fainted, Monsieur—and thank you!" He was gone.
Phil turned to see Helen prostrate, her head on her portfolio. But she recovered herself as he started toward her, looking up at him vaguely; then with a surge of vitality and a gesture of disgust she sat up.
"It was the sight of blood," she said. "I could not bear that. I'm very ashamed, but quite all right, now," she concluded, with a toss of her head and a smile.
"I helped dress his wound, poor fellow!" Henriette murmured.