“Is the wagon re-packed all right?”
“All correct, sir.”
“Just loosen the flap of the tarpaulin at the back; I want to see for myself.”
The rope securing the flap is untied and we slip our heads under the tarpaulin. Carefully, so that none of the light may spill on to the road and give us away to aeroplanes, Heming turns on his flash. At first the illumination is blinding; then one sees that the bales of hay have been so stacked as to leave a hollow. Inside the hollow someone stirs, sighs and turns over, disturbed by the light. The figure is slight and covered by an officer’s trench-coat. Heming shifts the flash, so that it creeps along the body and reveals the face. Suzette! Her khaki tunic is unhooked and unbuttoned at the neck. Bully Beef lies snuggled in her arms, with his small head hidden against her breast. Her soldier’s cap has slipped aside and her hair, which was like honey and sunshine, has been cut square against the neck. From beneath the trench-coat I see that she is wearing puttees. I understand—she will pass for a man now. But why does she want to accompany us into danger? Is she so desperately alone and fed-up with life? And Heming, why does he——? She opens her eyes and smiles sleepily, knowing that we are friends.
From farther up the column we hear the order being shouted back, “Get mounted the drivers.” The flash goes out. “Good-night, Suzette.” The tarpaulin is lowered anil tied into place. From far ahead comes the groaning of guns and ammunition-wagons taking up the march.
All night as I ride, there burns in my brain the picture of that refugee French girl with her fatherless child, journeying with us towards the Calvary from which all the civilian world is fleeing. She is escaping towards death. And I think of another mother, no less a soldier-woman, who fled by Eastern highways that she might bring her son back to the death from which she fled, in order that men might live better.
Suzette! Why does she accompany us? She knows that we need her love, perhaps. That knowledge brings her very near to the peasant mother of Nazareth.