Perhaps the dim light of the one small lamp, perhaps his utter war weariness, induced Jefferson to overlook the coarseness of the girl’s skin, her ugly hands, and large feet. Perhaps Martha was looking unusually pretty.
At all events he suddenly decided that she was desirable. Putting his arm around her waist as she brought him his coffee, he drew her, unresisting, on to his knee. Then he kissed her.
Heaven knows what possessed Martha that evening. She not only allowed his kisses, but returned them, stroking his curly hair with a tenderness that surprised herself as much as it surprised him.
Thereafter Martha had two souls. A soul for business and a soul for Jefferson.
The bleak winter rolled on and spring came.
About the beginning of April old Beduys received, secretly, a letter from a relative in Frankfurt. The contents of the letter were such that the small pupils of the old man’s eyes dilated with fear. He hid the document away, and his temper for that day was execrable. That night he slept but little. Beduys lay in bed and pictured the sails of a windmill—HIS windmill—and he thought also of ten thousand francs and his own safety. He thought of the distance to the mill—a full two kilometres—and of the martial law which dictated, among other things, that he be in his home after a certain hour at night, and that his mill’s sails be set at a certain angle when at rest. Then he thought of Martha. Martha of the commercial mind. Martha the obedient. Yes! That was it, obedient! Hans Beduys rose from his bed softly, without disturbing his heavily-sleeping wife, and read and re-read his brother’s letter. One page he kept, and the rest he tore to shreds, and burned, bit by bit, in the candle flame.
High up on the hill stood the windmill—the Beduys windmill. Far over in the German lines an Intelligence Officer peered at it in the gathering dusk through a night-glass. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the sails of the mill turned, and stopped for a full minute. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, they turned again, and stopped again. This happened perhaps twenty times. The German made some notes and went to the nearest signalling station.
Five minutes later a salvo of great shells trundled, with a noise like distant express trains, over to the left of the mill.
There were heavy casualties in a newly-arrived battalion bivouacked not half a mile from the baker’s shop. The inhabitants of the village awoke and trembled. “Hurrumph-umph!” Again the big shells trundled over the village, and again. There was confusion, and death and wounding.
In his bed lay Hans Beduys, sweating from head to foot, while his brain hammered out with ever-increasing force: “Ten thousand francs—Ten Thousand Francs.”