“You milk, Heinrich,” he said, “while I show a glim.”
He advanced a pace, as Dalroy expected he would, so the swing of the stool caught him on the right side of the head, partly on the ear and partly on the rim of his Pickel-haube. But his skull was fractured for all that. Heinrich fared no better, though the torch was shattered on the rough paving of the stable. A thrust floored him, and he fell with a fearsome clatter of accoutrements. A second blow on the temple stilled the startled oath on his lips. Dalroy divested him of the rifle, and stuffed a few clips of cartridges into his own pockets.
Then, ready for any others of a cut-throat crew, he listened. One of the pair on the ground was gasping for breath. The cow began lowing again. That was all. There was neither sight nor sound of Irene, though she must have heard enough to frighten her badly.
“Miss Beresford!” he said, in a sibilant hiss which would carry easily to the point where he had left her. No answer. Nature was still. It was as though inanimate things were awake, but quaking. The breathing of the unnamed German changed abruptly into a gurgling croak. Heinrich had traversed that stage swiftly under the second blow. From the roads came the sharp rattle of horses’ feet, the panting of motors. The thud of gun-fire smote the air incessantly. It suggested the monstrous pulse-beat of an alarmed world. Over a hilltop the beam of a searchlight hovered for an instant, and vanished. Belgium, little Belgium, was in a death-grapple with mighty Germany. Even in her agony she was crying, “What of England? Will England help?” Well, one Englishman had lessened by two the swarm of her enemies that night.
Dalroy was only vaguely conscious of the scope and magnitude of events in which he was bearing so small a part. He knew enough of German methods in his immediate surroundings, however, to reck as little of having killed two men as though they were rats. His sole and very real concern was for the girl who answered not. Before going in search of her he was tempted to don a Pickel-haube, which, with the rifle and bayonet, would, in the misty light, deceive any new-comers. But the field appeared to be untenanted, and it occurred to him that his companion might actually endeavour to hide if she took him for a German soldier. So he did not even carry the weapon.
He found Irene at once. She had simply fainted, and the man who now lifted her limp form tenderly in his arms was vexed at his own forgetfulness. The girl had slept but little during two nights. Meals were irregular and scanty. She had lived in a constant and increasing strain, while the real danger and great physical exertion of the past few minutes had provided a climax beyond her powers.
Like the mass of young officers in the British army, Dalroy kept himself fit, even during furlough, by long walks, daily exercises, and systematic abstention from sleep, food, and drink. If a bed was too comfortable he changed it. If an undertaking could be accomplished equally well in conditions of hardship or luxury he chose hardship. Soldiering was his profession, and he held the theory that a soldier must always be ready to withstand the severest tax on brain and physique. Therefore the minor privations of the journey from Berlin, with its decidedly strenuous sequel at Aix-la-Chapelle, and this D’Artagnan episode in the neighbourhood of Visé, had made no material drain on his resources.
A girl like Irene Beresford, swept into the sirocco of war from the ordered and sheltered life of a young Englishwoman of the middle-classes, was an altogether different case. He believed her one of the small army of British-born women who find independence and fair remuneration for their services by acting as governesses and ladies’ companions on the Continent. Nearly every German family of wealth and social pretensions counted the Englische Fräulein as a member of the household; even in autocratic Prussia, Kultur is not always spelt with a “K.” She was well-dressed, and supplied with ample means for travelling; but plenty of such girls owned secured incomes, treating a salary as an “extra.” Moreover, she spoke German like a native, had a small sister in Brussels, and had evidently met Von Halwig in one of the great houses of the capital. Undoubtedly, she was a superior type of governess, or, it might be, English mistress in a girls’ high school.
These considerations did not crowd in on Dalroy while he was holding her in close embrace in a field near Visé at dawn on the morning of Wednesday, 5th August. They were the outcome of nebulous ideas formed in the train. At present, his one thought was the welfare of a hapless woman of his own race, be she a peer’s daughter or a postman’s.