CHAPTER XVIII
A RUN FOR IT
Phil leapt up the side of the gully, with a view to finding which was the safest and quickest way back to the chateau. The scene before him, so clear in its meaning even to his unknowing civilian eye, held his attention for the instant to the exclusion of his object. Those little moving spots coming over a hill this side of the town, scattering under puffs of shrapnel, must be the French rearguard; and the shells from the battery behind the woods bursting over the hill beyond must be aimed at German infantry. To the end of the gully and then sharp to the right across the open was the best route for the chateau.
"And for us it is double quick, before we get more shells!" he called to the girls as he dropped back into the gully and gave his hand to Henriette to assist her to rise. Helen was already on her feet, quite herself again.
"As they say in America, we must beat it!" she exclaimed.
So they ran to the end of the gully and then across the field. The German guns seemed to have lost interest in that part of the world. They stopped on the terrace by common impulse, so keen is curiosity when danger seems out of reach but is still at large within view; the girls breathless and flushed and Phil with that indescribable relief of a man who has been under fire with women and sees them safely out of it. Of course they were only comparatively safe. They were within the range of many guns and at any minute that a German commander would choose, another tornado would break over their heads.
The French could be seen still more distinctly now, trickling over the landscape in retreat, in and out of the cover of valleys and woods, with puffs of shrapnel smoke in vicious pursuit. It all seemed like some game, until another one of those hideous screams ended in a crash in front of the woods that hid the French battery. The next was in the woods. This was enough to tell the battery commander that his hiding-place was located. In a race with death, the battery horses galloped up and away went the guns, with the German shells smashing the emplacements which had just been vacated. But the tenacious, skilful gunners did not go far—only behind the next ridge, where they began again to pour death into the advancing German infantry.
"I thought so!" came a voice breaking in upon the little group. "Nobody is so foolhardy as a woman!" said General Rousseau, shaking his finger at Helen and Henriette. "When I heard that you were staying behind I came at once to warn you. That is not fireworks out there; it's death. Any minute it may be turned on these woods or on the chateau. Your place is the cellar, both of you, till this is over, do you hear?" he thundered, "or I'll take my stick to you!" He was so peremptory that Henriette turned to go, but Helen hesitated.
"And you, too, Mademoiselle!" he commanded.
"Attention! About face! March!" said Helen, saluting and clicking her heels together.
"Promise me you will not go wandering about the village making sketches till all firing is stopped!"
"My business is making sketches, not making promises!" replied Helen.
"You——" The General made for her threateningly with his stick and she ran on down the path.
"This was her doing, sticking on here, wasn't it?" asked the General. "I've known her, Monsieur, since she was a child," he added thoughtfully.
Professional instinct crowded her out of mind as he swept the field with '70 field glasses which were slung over his shoulder.
"No rout—an orderly retreat!" he said. "We are not beaten. Joffre having failed to bar the way in Belgium is going to fight on the Marne. I have seen our corps commander and talked to him. Oh, it was very fortunate to find that I knew him. He was one of my lieutenants when I was a captain. I'm very happy, Monsieur, for I feel that I still serve—yes, serve France!"
"I wish I could!" exclaimed Phil. "It hurts to see those blue coats and red trousers coming back; but I don't believe they will go far."
"Then you are for France! I am glad! But only a Frenchman can know how a Frenchman is for France!"
A shrapnel broke over the woods, its bullets slittering through the leaves.
"We had better see if those young women have gone into the cellar," said the General. Another shrapnel crashed its ugly message even nearer, a fragment striking at his feet. "Women are the very devil under fire," he added. "They will never take cover. A soldier considers it duty. Now if that does not send them into the cellar," he continued, as a heavy reverberation came from the direction of the village, "they have no sense at all. You have young legs. Run on and look after them."
Phil found it no effort to run; his only regret was that he could not fly.
"Never did have much respect for shell-fire!" mumbled the General. "I hope they don't hit my pigeons. I'd better go home and look after them."
He walked on at a dignified pace, while the shells continued to burst over the woods and occasional high explosives in the village. Phil met him at the door of the house and reported:
"Your orders are obeyed, sir. They are in the cellar."
"Excellent!"
"And they have sent orders to you. You are to come into the cellar, too, sir!"
"I must look after my pigeons. I never had much respect for shell-fire——" He stopped short, struck by a thought. "If I were hit it would be just as serious as if my pigeons were hit. I——"
"Quite so!" put in Phil. He had taken a liking to the General, whom war, to his mind, had transformed from a gallant old fussbudget of a beau to a brave and simple gentleman.
"You have guessed my secret—the secret of my pigeons?" gasped the General in alarm.
"Have I? Yes, I'm afraid I have, and I——" Something caught in his throat as he looked into the piercing grey eyes of the General. "I hope you know that the secret is safe."
"I do. You are a man of honour and you have said that you are for France. And the only way to do my duty to France is to keep alive. I go into the cellar."
As they passed through the kitchen a pane of glass fell with a tinkling crash as a shell-fragment hit it and a saucepan rattled.
"Jacqueline will object to the Germans making omelets in her kitchen," said the General. "No one has ever appreciated Madame Ribot's cellar more than myself," he remarked as he descended the stairs. "Her wines are excellent. H-m, they are shelling the village pretty freely, though we have no troops there—a joke on the Germans."
"But the people—what of them? Are they safe? Will they know enough to take cover?" asked Helen.
"Of course," said the General.
"It's horrible to think that Mère Perigord and the children should be exposed out of ignorance!" Helen sprang past the General and up the stairs.
"This is where I intervene!" said Phil, starting after her.
"I told you women were the very devil under fire," murmured the General. "No sense of fear like men."
"And why not I?" Henriette, too, was going.
But the General stopped the way.
"No, young woman," he said. "I'm looking after you and if I had been your mother——"
"You'd have spanked me!" put in Henriette, making a charming grimace and dropping back into her seat against the wine bin. "Helen will be the death of Cousin Phil yet," she added. "She's in an awful state of nerves."
"Seems perfectly normal," remarked the General. "I've always liked Helen," he added tartly.
When Helen and Phil came out into the village street not a soul was in sight. The little community of peasants' houses with its old church was as dead as Pompeii. They went into Mère Perigord's living-room and looked into the bedroom without finding her. When Helen called down into the cellar a quavering voice answered:
"Of course, you goose, and do you go right back to your own cellar or come down here. What do you think we are—fools? Why, one goes to a cellar as naturally as one puts up an umbrella in a rain!"
The shelling had stopped when Helen and Phil reached the street again. Soon faces began to appear in the doorways and the village came to life.
"It reminds me of prairie dogs ducking for their burrows," said Phil. "I ought to explain that——"
"Oh, I know what prairie dogs are," replied Helen. "But, seriously, there is a question I want to ask." She was smiling faintly, but her eyes had a defiant spark. "Are you going to follow me wherever I go?"
"Yes, if you are in danger."
"Is that fair?" she demanded.
"It's cousinly," he replied.
"But what if Henriette and I go in different directions?" she continued methodically.
"In that case, I see that you prefer that I go with Henriette. I—I think you know better how to take care of yourself."
She flushed and looked down. It had not occurred to her whither the questions were leading.
"Yes, of course," she said.
"Then I shall follow her, unless she remains in the cellar. In that case I'll follow you."
"Very well," she assented, with a shrug; and looking up again: "I'm ashamed of myself for fainting this afternoon. It was the sight of blood. I haven't thought of that. It makes me afraid, and war means that, and I had wanted to see war."
They met the General coming out of the chateau, and Phil noted again how straight he was and how confident and happy. It was a picture of the old warrior which he was ever to remember. Indoors they found Jacqueline, now that the shell-fire had ceased, busy preparing déjeuner, while she abused the Germans for having dented a saucepan. War or no war, people must eat. Her business was to cook and she went about her business, French fashion. The result of being up all night and under fire, as the General or any other old campaigner could have told them, was that the three cousins were ravenously hungry. They had a surprising sense of security, though guns and rifle-fire could be heard around them. In a few hours they had become habituated to war.
Helen was silent, thinking in pictures, the multitude of pictures that she had seen that morning. It seemed to her that she had enough material to keep her drawing for a lifetime.
"That black hole is the place where we sat beside the road," said Henriette, looking across to Phil with a grateful smile. Then she referred to the scene in the gully and spoke of how brave and cheery the wounded soldier had been, even as blood was dropping from his cheeks.
"Don't!" exclaimed Helen, with a shudder.
"Sorry, dear!" said Henriette, and changed the subject.
After exhaustion and hunger, food; and after food nature, even within sound of the guns, will assert itself on an August day. If one of the shells bursting half a mile away had burst in the garden, then nature would have yielded to nervous excitement, which may manifest itself in outward calm or in chattering teeth. In either instance, the strain is there.
"I confess to feeling sleepy," said Henriette, nodding, her long lashes drooping after the meal.
"And you, Helen?"
"Perhaps. I'd like to try."
"Then do try, both of you," said Phil. "There's no telling how much we shall be kept awake when the Germans come. And I am going to exact a promise from you," he added, as they rose from the table, "that you do not leave the house or run any further risk to-day."
"And you?" the girls exclaimed together. There was something more than the usual start of surprise on the part of both when two people find that they have the same thought and have given utterance to it. Helen slipped out of the room, leaving the scene to Henriette.
"There is no dodging those big shells," she said, "so you must agree to take care, too. You see," she lowered her lashes thoughtfully and then looked up at him with a world of frank solicitude, "as you saved my life I feel an interest in yours."
"Not to mention that I have an interest in yours!" he interjected.
"I'm glad if you feel that way," she said; then added, as he bent toward her, under the spell of her beauty, "I promise! You promise!" She gave him her hand in sealing the bargain, but drew it away before his closed too tightly and smiled over her shoulder, saying, "I'm really sleepy," as she withdrew.
Phil was left with this vision of her to compare with that of her as she rested in his arms while he carried her from the roadside to the gully. Then he marvelled once more at the situation. How long should he be here with these two cousins? What was going on out there amidst the sound of the guns? With all the world around in action, it was not in his nature to remain still.
"Jacqueline, if any more shells come," he said, putting his head in at the kitchen door, "will you see that those two girls go into the cellar and stay?"
"I'll take a saucepan to them if they don't!" Jacqueline replied. "As for you, I suppose you are going out to try to be killed, like all the other foolish men in the world," she added, without any effort to restrain him.
On reaching the terrace Phil found himself with the last line of the French. In wait as for game, dust-laden figures were lying behind trees and in the open behind little banks of earth which they had spaded. They were firing and the rattle of rifles and the penetrating rat-tat of a French machine-gun from the woods at the other side of the village joined in the refrain. A thousand yards away he saw something as green as the fields, but visible on the grey ribbon of the road, melt into the earth under this burst of bullets. These must be the Germans. Sharp whistles and cracks about his ears—the answer from the rifles of the German skirmish line—made him leap to the cover of the largest tree-trunk in sight.
"We forced them to deploy!" he heard an officer say.
Then commands were given and the Frenchmen slipped backward on all fours till they were below the skyline, when they became running red legs under humped backs of blue as they hurried away according to plan—and just in time. For now the German guns, which had the signal, loosed their wrath on the village and the neighbouring woodland, where it was thought that the French infantry meant to make a stand in force. Phil stuck to his tree-trunk. But it did not seem of much use when he saw another tree cut in half as by a lumberman's axe with a curling black burst of smoke; and bark and limbs in all directions were being gashed by shell-fragments and shrapnel bullets.
Were the girls in the cellar? He had a sense of deserting his post of duty. He did not care to make the run to the house, but felt that he must; when his honest desire was to drop into the centre of the earth and close an armoured door behind him. So he started, having in mind that he had been second in the hundred-yard dash at college, but might have been first if he had had the incentive of the present moment.
There seemed an end of the outburst—probably an airman had signalled that the French were out of the woods—when one belated, harrowing scream seemed to have the pit of his stomach as a target just as he saw the white of a woman's gown, the wearer's face hidden by a branch. Then the crash came in front of him. Black smoke and a fountain of earth and shivered tree-roots hid the approaching figure and enveloped it, for it was nearer to the burst than he. Stunned, half thrown off his feet, as he regained them and realised that he was alive it was with the dagger thrust of horrible foreboding.
The thing which he might have prevented must have happened. He rushed into the smoke, stumbled into the shell-crater and clambered wildly out of it, to see Helen rising unhurt and shaking the fresh, moist loam and splinters from her gown. Her hair had been blown almost free of its fastenings by the blast. She threw back her head at sight of him, her startled eyes glowing with the wonder of her escape and the supple figure drawn up as if testing the unscathed existence of muscle and nerve. She might be unnerved at the sight of blood, but she was not afraid of shells.
"Thank heaven!" gasped Phil, and admiringly. "But what are you doing here?" he demanded, in the reaction of anger over her folly.
"You—I came to see what you were doing—yes, what you were doing here!" she said, between deep breaths. "Why not?" She broke into laughter, that of the challenge across the table at Truckleford, that of even a more reckless humour.
"And your promise to stay in?" he asked.
"I made none!"
"And Henriette?"
"In the cellar."
"Thank heaven! But why are we talking here?" he added.
"Yes, why?" she said, turning to go.
Shells were still screaming far over the tree-tops.
"I think we are safe enough, for the German guns are firing over our heads at the French infantry," he said. "We are between the lines."
Helen said nothing, but walked on rapidly.
"We were very lucky," he continued. "I had a glimpse of you before the burst. It was an awful moment of suspense."
"If we had been a few yards further along or had started a few seconds sooner—how simple!" she added. "I mean, some more people would have been killed in this war—I mean—well, here we are!" and she looked up, smiling.
"None came near the house?" he asked.
"One burst outside the dining-room just as I was leaving," she answered, "but it couldn't have hurt anybody in the cellar. You see the house is quite intact," she added, as they came in sight of it. "I'm sure that Henriette is safe—and I must add another cartoon to the history of the surviving Sanford, how he dodged the shells!"
She gave him a full look this time which was all mischief. How could any woman be so cool after such a shock? But women can be cool even when their underlips are trembling, as Helen's was. In danger or out of danger, they keep to their parts. Phil could only feel that he had two wonderful cousins and that it was useless to speculate about anybody or anything. Splinters from the branches slashed by shells still clung to Helen's hair; they were a kind of crown of glory for her.
"Now for Henriette!" he said as they entered the house.
A moaning sob from below ceased when he called, and the answer came back, "All right!" an answer that was thick but genuine in its relief. Henriette met him at the foot of the cellar stairs trembling.
"It was awful being here alone!" she said convulsively. "One does like company. Do you think it's all over? And I was worried about Helen when that one burst so close and shook the whole house."
"Helen had a close call, but here she is," said Phil.
Jacqueline was in the dining-room. The wreckage of doors blown from their hinges by the explosion she had piled against the walls and was now engaged in sweeping up the earth and plaster.
"This is what a woman has to do when men go away to make war instead of staying at home and getting in the harvest!" she grumbled. "Nice mess they have made. So there you are, you foolish girls! I have about lost patience with you both. As I told Mademoiselle Henriette when she was moaning so, she might have been in Paris if she hadn't——"
"I was not moaning!" said Henriette sharply.
"No, ma chère, you were not. Thank God, you are alive! Though I don't know but we'd all be better dead than having our homes beaten down about our ears. Look at that!" as the broom disclosed a gash in the oak from a shell-fragment. "This floor I've been polishing for years. And you," she turned on Phil, "I thought that you were going to look after these young ladies and keep them from showing off! But like all men you had to go out and make war and show how brave you were."
"I give my word," said Phil, "that they will not escape again. If necessary I'll arm myself with one of your saucepans."
"The one that the Germans dented, if you wish," she replied. "I can't spare another."
"And the Germans will be here very soon," Phil added, to see what the effect would be.
"It's time. They've sent enough calling cards!" replied Jacqueline. "The dirty, worthless, murderous, savage beasts, eating, swilling, killing other women's boys and destroying other people's property! Now, if you don't bother me it's likely that you will get a better dinner after I've cleaned up."
Advisedly they withdrew into the sitting-room, where Phil became a Roman sentinel on guard. Soon they had glimpses of green figures with cloth-covered helmets working their way through the grounds and along the village streets. But the figures seemed to be too busy to pay any attention to the house. Then shells began to break over the village and grounds again, French shells into the advancing German infantry, which once more sent the cousins to the cellar. When they returned upstairs Jacqueline met them, highly excited.
"I saw it with my own eyes!" she exclaimed. "I couldn't keep indoors when our shells were coming. Yes, I saw one burst right in among the beasts and knock a lot of them over! Three never will get up again and they carried the others away, back to the Kaiser!"
Put a red cap on Jacqueline, and with the flashing of her black eyes she would have needed no further make-up for the storming of the Bastille.