6
When I came to, the fire was invisible; but the battle was still raging. My glasses were gone; my head ached savagely; and an ungentle foot had trodden my left hand to a bleeding pulp. I felt overpoweringly sick; and I wanted to crawl away from all this din till I had recovered my nerve. I did not know why I was there at all.
Then I remembered O’Rane and the stable-door.
During the war, I was told by many of my friends that, in the first moments after being slightly wounded, they became wholly demoralized: they might have been facing intensive fire for several hours on end without undue discomfort, but, when once they had been hit, they dodged and cowered their way back to the clearing-station as though the heavens were raining shrapnel upon them. My own demoralization, as I slunk away and made for the stable-door by the other side of the house, was more complete than I care to remember: I ducked, I sidestepped, I ran, I hid, everywhere pursued by the reek and roar of struggling humanity, convinced against all reason that I alone was visible in the darkness and that every missile was deliberately aimed at me.
The stable-door was locked; I could see no one near it; and I sank to the ground till I should faint again or be trampled to death. There was some challenge, some pass-word for me to remember; but, when I heard a whistle, I forgot my orders and called out: “Here I am! All clear.”
There was a precautionary pause before the door was opened. Then O’Rane pushed a small, muffled figure towards me and stepped into the road with a second figure, slightly larger and equally muffled, in his arms.
“Shut the door quietly and follow me,” he whispered. “It locks itself.”
“Where’s Sonia?,” I asked.
“I must go back for her. She’s rather rattled.”
I cannot say whether my recovery was the natural result of time or whether I was infected by O’Rane’s unruffled calm. His companionship meant much; his air of authority more; and, if I was still frightened, I hope at least that I did not shew it. A very few steps, moreover, brought us into comparative quiet; and I could forget the red-hot pain in my head.
“The fog is lifting,” I told O’Rane.
“The deuce it is!” He stopped suddenly and lowered his burden to the ground. “You must take Daniel as well, while I go back. Sonia wouldn’t face the fire-escape; and I must carry her down. There’s no time to lose, because these fellows have been filling up on neat spirit; and I came across a dud incendiary-bomb . . . which doesn’t look like clean fighting. You’re in Smith Square now. Feel your way round the church railings, then straight ahead, then to the left as far as you can go. Knock up any of the Abbey people and say these children must be taken in. Give them your address and beat it for home. We shall join you as soon as we can. Go carefully,” he added in a whisper. “There’s some one coming. Oh, it’s only a woman. She won’t hurt you.”
As he turned back to The Sanctuary, I gave Daniel my undamaged hand while I hoisted little David half on to my shoulder. I had heard no footsteps, but somewhere in this bewildering darkness I heard a woman’s light cough. Then a voice said:
“Don’t look round! I’ll take the baby as soon as we’re safe, but I want to keep my hands free just in case . . .”
Then we came into a narrow circle of lamp-light and I saw Barbara in tweed jacket and trousers. She had tidied her hair away under one of my hats; and the fingers of her right hand gripped a service revolver.
“When you didn’t come . . .” she began.
“You’ve no right to be here,” I exclaimed in horror.
“Just as much right as you, darling. I drove the car here in case any one was . . . hurt. It’s in that street by the Church House.”
“Then will you shew me the way and take these infants to Seymour Street? Raney will follow as soon as he can bring Sonia down.”
“And you?”
“I’m going back to give him a hand.”
“Must you?”
“There may be other people in the house. Servants.”
Barbara lifted the child off my shoulders into her arms and hurried down a side street. The fog was lifting rapidly, too rapidly; I could see across the street and I wondered how much could be seen on the battlefield outside The Sanctuary.
“If you must . . .” Barbara murmured. “George, I told Robson I was coming to see if I could help you; but . . . I brought the car to take back your dead body.”
“I’ve no intention of being killed,” I said, “but we can’t leave people to be burnt alive.”
“Well, . . . take the revolver,” said Barbara helplessly.
When we had put the children inside the car, I went back at a run down Great College Street to Smith Square. The fog lay in pockets so that I could see thirty yards at one moment and less than three at another. I fancied, as I neared The Sanctuary, that the noise had diminished; I could see neither fire nor smoke; and, though my own road was deserted, I thought I could hear the patter of running feet. It was more than time for the reinforcements to have arrived; it was more than a likelihood that, with the increasing light, experience and discipline were favouring the police. I was halfway through Smith Square when I heard a sound of crying and saw a woman’s figure cowering against the railings. As I went forward, I was greeted with a scream of terror; the figure turned to run, and I recognized Sonia.
Calling her by name, I started in pursuit and brought her back from the scene of riot for which she was blindly heading. Her nerve was gone; and I had dragged and carried her halfway to the car before she could speak coherently. Then I learned that the battle was over, the fire out and Griffiths’ army in full flight; but all this was nothing to the unforgettable agony of the bombardment, and she sobbed hysterically as she tried to describe her own sufferings from the moment when she received my message from Hampstead to the moment when her husband climbed through the nursery-window.
“Where is Raney?,” I asked.
“He’s following. He said it was dangerous for us to go together; and I should get along quicker without him. Oh, George, it was so awful! I believe I’m going to faint.” . . .
Though I tried to comfort her, I should have had an easier task if she had composed herself wholly or wholly collapsed. Though I had not shared her ordeal, I felt that Sonia was making rather a pitiful exhibition of herself. She was frightened, but so was I; so—under his Gasconnade—was O’Rane; so—without disguise—had Barbara been. When, however, an emergency wrested the direction of her daily life from her own hands, Barbara behaved as tradition and inherited instinct taught her. Though her body might play her false, the dauntless strength of breeding came out in her spirit; she might break down in private; but, once on the public scaffold, she shewed an Elizabethan daring and feared death less than the ague which might make her enemies think she feared death. Alone of us four, Sonia was more concerned for her personal alarms than for the dignity of the order in which we had been brought up.
“It’s only a few yards to the car,” I told her. “Barbara will look after you. And you’ll find the children quite safe. . . . D’you know which way David was coming?”
“No. . . . I just ran for my life. He said he’d follow.” . . .
I handed her over to my wife’s keeping with no more comment than that she was badly shaken in nerve. There might have been a noticeable contraction of sympathy if Barbara, who had superfluously ventured into this maelstrom through loyalty to me, heard that Sonia had run for her life and left her blind husband to extricate herself from the danger in which she had involved him.
“I’m just going to meet Raney,” I said. “He’s expecting us either in Dean’s Yard or Seymour Street.”
“If we’ve gone before you come back, it’ll mean that he’s found us first,” said Barbara. “Then you’ll come home independently. Take care of yourself.”
“It’s all over now. Even the fog’s almost gone.”