Because there could be no mistake now. The face, so mournful, so benign, so pitying, bore on the forehead a crown of thorns! Even while the blood coursed in Dalroy’s veins with the awe of it, he knew that he was looking at the figure of Christ on the Cross. This, then, was the calvary spoken of by Joos, and invisible in the earlier murk. The beams of the risen moon etched the painted carving in most realistic lights and shadows. The pallid skin glistened as though in agony. The big, piercing eyes gazed down at the passing soldiers as the Man of Sorrows might have looked at the heedless legionaries of Rome.
The travelled Briton, to whom the wayside calvary is a familiar object in many a continental landscape, can seldom pass the twisted, tortured figure on the Cross without a feeling of awe, tempered by insular non-comprehension of the religious motive which thrusts into prominence the most solemn emblem of Christianity in unexpected and often incongruous places. Seen as Dalroy saw it, a hunted fugitive crouching in a ditch, while the Huns who would again destroy Europe were lurching past in thousands within a few feet of where he lay, the image of Christ crucified had a new and overwhelming significance. It induced a vague uneasiness of spirit, almost a doubt. That very day he had killed four men and gravely wounded a fifth, and there was no shred of compunction in his soul. Yet, in body and mind, he was worthy of his class, and this gray old world has failed to evolve any finer human type than that which is summed up in the phrase, an officer and a gentleman. For the foulest of crimes, either committed or contemplated, he had been forced to use both the scales and the sword of justice; but there was something wholly disturbing and abhorrent in the knowledge that two thousand years after the Great Atonement men professedly Christian should so wantonly disregard every principle that Christ taught and practised and died for. He reflected bitterly that the German soldier, whether officer or private, is enjoined to keep a diary. What sort of record would “Heinrich,” or Busch, or the three Westphalian lieutenants have left of that day’s doings if they had lived and told the truth?
The answer to these vexed questionings came with the swift clarity of a lightning flash. Another rift in the dust-clouds revealed the upper part of the Cross, and the moonbeams shone on a gilded scroll. Dalroy knew his Bible. “And a superscription also was written over Him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew: ‘This is the King of the Jews.’ And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on Him, saying, ‘If Thou be Christ, save Thyself and us.’”
From that instant one God-fearing Briton, at least, never again allowed the shadow of a doubt to darken his faith in the divine if inscrutable purpose. He had passed already through dark and deadly hours, while others were then near at hand; but he was steadfast in doing what he conceived his duty without seeking to interpret the ways of Providence. “If Thou be Christ?” It was the last taunt of the unbeliever, though the veil of the temple would be rent in twain, and the earth would quake, and the graves be opened, and the bodies of the saints arise and be seen by many!
A harsh command silenced the singing. An officer had reined in his horse, and was demanding the nature of the errand which brought a squad of men from Visé.
“Sergeant Karl Schwartz, Herr Hauptmann,” reported the leader of the party. “An Englishman, assisted by a miller named Joos and his man, Maertz, has killed three of our officers. He also wounded Herr Leutnant von Huntzel, of the 7th Westphalian regiment, who has recovered sufficiently to say what happened. The general-major has ordered a strict search. I, being acquainted with the district, am bringing these men to a wood where the rascals may be hiding.”
“Killed three, you say? The fiend take all such schwein-hunds and their helpers! Good luck to you.—Vorwärts!”
The column moved on. Schwartz, the treacherous barber of Visé, led his men into the lane. There were eleven, all told—hopeless odds—because this gang of hunters was ready for a fight and itching to capture a verdammt Engländer. And Joos’s “safe retreat” had been guessed by the spy who knew what every inhabitant of Visé did, who had watched and noted even such a harmless occupation as Léontine’s bilberry-picking, who was acquainted with each footpath for miles around, from whose crafty eyes not a cow-byre on any remote farm in the whole countryside was concealed.
This misfortune marked the end, Dalroy thought. But there was a chance of escape, if only for the few remaining hours of the night, and he took it with the same high courage he displayed in going back to the rescue of Irene Beresford in the railway station at Aix. He had a rifle with five rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. At the worst, he might be able to add another couple of casualties to the formidable total already piled up during the German advance on Liège.
The sabots offered a serious handicap to rapid and silent movement, but he dared not dispense with them, and made shift to follow Schwartz and the others as quietly as might be. He was helped, of course, by the din of the guns and the rustling of the leaves; but there was an open space in the narrow road before it merged in the wood which he could not cross until the Germans were among the trees, and precisely in that locality Schwartz halted his men to explain his project. Try as he might, Dalroy, crouched behind a pollard oak, could not overhear the spy’s words. But he smiled when the party went on in Indian file, Schwartz leading, because the enemy was acting just as he hoped the enemy would act.