"Done, mein Vater!" echoed the one-legged man.
He went to the head-board where it was near the door leading to the chapel, leaned his crutches against the wall, and began cautiously and painfully to let himself down. Monseigneur and the Aumonier hurried to his assistance, saw him safely squatted upon his folded sack, took leave of the Sister, who knelt to receive the blessing of the hand that wore the amethyst ring,—and vanished through the farther door at the urgent summons of a bell.
The Sister turned again to her big ledger. A list of articles appertaining to the deceased would have to be checked and verified. Two pairs of binoculars—surely the one bearing the name and address of an officer in a British Guards regiment ought to be sent to the Allies' Headquarters at St. O—. Two purses, one full of English sovereigns, a stout roll of French bank-notes in a pigskin case, and so forth. When next she looked round, the Bavarian was wiping his brushes. The finished inscription now stood:
"HIER RUHT IM GOTT
EIN DEUTSCHER FLIEGENDE OFFIZIER
T. v. H.
30 YAHRE ALT."
"You are sorry for him, are you not, my good Kühler?" the nun asked mildly as the Bavarian scrambled to his solitary foot, and stood supporting himself against the wall.
"Sorry, my Sister?" He spoke in thick Teutonic French, and looked at her under his lowering black brows as he reached his crutches out of the corner and tucked them under his arms. "Why should I be sorry? He's dead—and so an end of him. Total kaput for another officer!" He saluted the Sister and stumped out.
CHAPTER LXXII
LOVE THAT HAS WINGS
Under a blue sky—the forget-me-not blue of April—tiny blizzards—mere dust of snow—alternated with slashes of sleet. The road running east from Pophereele was villainous; bad pavé in the centre, and on either side morasses of mud from which rose at irregular intervals, scraggy poplars hacked by shell-fire and barked by the impact of innumerable iron-shod wheels.
An almost continuous line of transports bumped over the abominable pavé. Staff cars with British Brass Hats and red French képis gold-braided, motor-guns and caissons, motor-lorries, motor-ambulances, motor-cyclists, pedestrians—chiefly Belgian peasants in tall peaked caps and long blue blouses, caked to the knees in sticky mire. Odd detachments of French Artillery, a squadron of Chasseurs in the new uniform of sallow blue—a half-battalion of magnificent, singing Canadians, loaded on the dark green motor-buses that used to run from Holloway to Westminster Bridge.