Now and at the hour of our death,
Amen
Between each prayer there rose another sound, the strangest, most terrible sound of a human kind that Bertram had ever heard beyond a battlefield. It was the wailing of women. It was like the cry of the Banshee, as he had imagined it with horror in childhood. It rose and fell in rhythmic anguish, from all those shawl-covered women, kneeling with bowed heads, or raising their heads and hands like a Greek chorus, to the heavens above. The search-light moved above them, touched their white hands, searched along the line of upturned faces, seemed to search their souls and reveal their passion. Between the “decades” of the Rosary, and the wail of the women, other voices rose, crying out ejaculatory prayers and sacred names.
“Holy Mother o’ God! . . . Sweet Jesus, have mercy on him! . . . Christ be with him to the end! . . . Saint Joseph, comfort him! . . . God help him!”
The soldiers in their shrapnel helmets and field kit stood motionless. Their helmets—the old “tin hats” of France and Flanders,—were touched at times by the white finger of light, and their faces were sharply illumined in those moments. Young, square-jawed, English faces. Now and again one of them pushed back some one in the crowd with the butt-end of his rifle, sharply, but without brutality. An officer passed down their lines, occasionally spoke a word of command. Bertram was edged amidst a group of women. When they knelt, he felt himself isolated and too prominent, as the only man among them, and standing. He decided to kneel, and he too bowed his head when the prayers rose again for a soul shortly to be hurled into eternity at the end of a hangman’s rope. Frightful thought! That man had been a comrade of his in the war. They had touched hands. Only a few weeks ago he had sat in Bertram’s study in Holland Street with Susan, his young wife, Bertram’s sister. Now this!
Holy Mary, Mother o’ God,
Pray for us sinners,
Now and at the hour of our death,
Amen.
For the hundredth or thousandth time the words of the Rosary came from the kneeling crowd. A woman close to Bertram fell all huddled in a faint on the cold stones. Other women bent over her, loosened her shawl. A girl was sobbing loudly, with her face in her hands. A boy—a mere child—ended his prayer with a curse. “To Hell with England!”