The Outrage Part 18

I stagger blindly on. I will go to my room, I will lock myself in there, and open the window and call for help....

I turn the handle and open my door. On the threshold I stop.... There is something lying there--a black heap, with blood trickling from it.

Amour! It is Amour, with his skull crushed in.

As I stand looking down at it I hear a man's footsteps running up the stairs--I know it is the tall man--he is coming to find me! I stagger blindly forward, my feet slipping in Amour's blood. I draw the door after me. I rush forward and hide behind the curtained alcove where my dresses hang. The man stops at the door and looks in. He sees the dead dog on the threshold; he says "_Pfui_" and tries to push it aside with his foot. He glances round the apparently empty room, then he turns away and I hear him going down the pa.s.sage, opening other doors, thumping at Louise's door, where the voice of a man answers him.... Then I hear him running upstairs to the top floor in search of me.

I slip from my hiding-place, I stumble again over the horrible thing that was Amour, and I rush down the stairs and into the drawing-room.

Mireille is still there, tied to the banister, her face thrown back, the tears streaming from her eyes. She is alone, but for the red-haired officer asleep and snoring on the sofa. A thought has come to me. I cross the room, which swims round me, and I go to the sideboard--I take the bottle of corrosive sublimate from the shelf where Louise had put it--I open it and shake some of the little pink tablets into my hand--then I run to the table where the wine-gla.s.ses stand. One of them is still half-filled with champagne. I drop the tablets into it. Even as I do so I hear the man coming downstairs. He appears on the top of the short flight, near Mireille, and laughs as he sees me. "Ha, ha! the dovelet who tried to escape!"

I smile up at him. I smile, moving back towards that side of the table where his wine-gla.s.s stands. He pa.s.ses his hand over his forehead and hair; his face is hot; I know he is going to drink again. Then he lurches towards me; he puts one hand round my waist and with the other grasps the gla.s.s on the table.... Now this again I see, clear-cut in my memory as if carved into it with a knife; the tall man standing beside me raising the wine-gla.s.s to his lips....

He stops--he looks down into the gla.s.s. His face is motionless, expressionless. He merely stares at the little bright pink heap at the bottom of the gla.s.s from which spiral streaks of colour slowly curl up and tint the pale-gold wine.

For what seems to me hours or eternities he stares at the gla.s.s; then his light eyes turn slowly upon me. And this is the last thing I see.

I carry the gaze of those light eyes with me as I slip suddenly into unconsciousness. I hear a crash--is it the gla.s.s that has fallen?... I feel the grasp of two strong hot hands on my arms--is he holding me, or crus.h.i.+ng me down? I hear Mireille shriek as I try madly to beat back the enveloping darkness. Mireille's piercing voice follows me into oblivion.

Then nothing more....

Nothing more.

The cloud that blots out consciousness lifts for an instant--is it a moment later? or hours later? Or years later?... I have no idea.

I feel that I am being lifted ... carried along ... then flung down. I feel my head thrown far back, my hair dragged from my forehead.... The world is full of rus.h.i.+ng horrors, of tearing, racking pain.... Then again nothing more.

Fritz?... Is it then that I see him laughing as he looks at me? He is standing near a red curtain--he is speaking to some one, but his eyes are upon me and he laughs....

Once more unconsciousness like a black velvet tunnel engulfs me.

Out of the darkness comes Louise's voice calling me softly ... then louder ... then screaming my name. I open my eyes. She is bending over me. She lifts me up ... she wraps a shawl round my head, she drags me along ... drags me down the steps and out of the house and down a stony road that leads to the woods.

It is not day and it is not night; it is dawn perhaps.

Thirst and a deathly sickness are upon me.... I can go no farther. I lean my head against a tree, the rough bark of it wounds my forehead as I slip to the ground and fall on the damp leaves and moss.

I moan and cry.

"Hus.h.!.+ for the love of heaven! Hus.h.!.+" ... It is Louise's voice. "Hide, hide, lie down!"

And she drags me into a deep ditch overgrown with brambles. We hear horses gallop past and men's voices, full guttural voices that we know and dread. They ride on. They are gone. No--they stop.

They have found widow Duroc's two little boys hiding in the bushes....

Little Cesar is shouldering a wooden gun and points it at them. In a moment three of the men are off their horses.... The children must be punished.

The children are punished.

... Then the men ride on. But the torture of those children has reminded me of Mireille. "Mireille--" I cry. "We must go back and fetch Mireille!"

"Hus.h.!.+ Mireille is here."

Mireille is here! She is not dead? Then who is dead?

"No one, no one is dead," says Louise, "we are all three here."

No--no--no! Somebody is dead. Somebody has been killed, I know it. I know it. Who is it? Is it I--is it Cherie who is dead? Louise's arms are about me, her tears fall on my face.

Then once again the velvet mist falls, and the world is blotted out.

We are on board a s.h.i.+p, dipping and rising on green-grey waters....

Many people are around us; derelicts like ourselves....

Soon the white cliffs of England s.h.i.+ne and welcome us.

CHAPTER XII

CHeRIE'S DIARY

November 2nd (_All Souls_).--It is strange, but even yet the feeling comes over me now and again that somebody was murdered on that night.

And, strangest of all, I cannot free myself of the thought that it was I--I, who was killed, I, who am no more. I cannot describe the feeling.

Doubtless it is folly. It is weakness and shock. It is what the good English doctor who has been called in to see us all--especially to try and cure Mireille--calls "psychic trauma." He says Mireille is suffering from psychic trauma; that means that her soul has been wounded.

Sometimes I feel as if my soul had not only been wounded but that it had been killed--murdered while I was unconscious. I feel as if it were only a ghost, a spectre that resembles me and bears my name, but not the real Cherie, that wanders in this English garden, that speaks and smiles, kisses and comforts Louise, prays for Claude and for Florian.

Florian! Florian! Where are you? Are you dead, too? Is this sense of annihilation, of unreality in me but an omen, a warning of your real death? My brave young lover, blue-eyed and gay, have you gone from life? If I wander through all the world, if I journey to the ends of the earth, shall I never meet you again?

Oh G.o.d! I wish we were all safely dead, Louise and I and poor little Mireille; all lying silent and at peace, with closed eyes and quiet folded hands. I often think how good it would be if we could all three escape from life, as we escaped from the foe-haunted wood that night; if we could silently slip away, out of the long days and the dark nights; out of the hot summers and the dreary winters; out of feverish youth and desolate old age; out of hunger and thirst, out of exile and home-sickness, out of the past and out of the future, out of love and out of hate. Oh! to lie in peace under the waving trees of the little cemetery in Bomal, all with quiet heart and closed eyes. And by our side like a marble hero, Florian, Florian as I have known and loved him, Florian faithful and brave and true.

... But what of Claude? What would he do alone in the world, poor lame Claude, whose country is ravaged, whose home is devastated, whose wife fears him, whose child cannot speak to him ... and whose sister, though she lives, has been murdered in her sleep?

_November 15th._--Doctor Reynolds called today. Louise said she wanted him. Then when he came she would not see him. She locked herself in her room, and n.o.body could persuade her to come down.

So it was I who took Mireille into the drawing-room where Mrs. Whitaker and the doctor were waiting for us. They were talking rather excitedly when I knocked at the door--at least Mrs. Whitaker was--but when we entered she did not say a word.

She looked me up and down and I felt sorry that I had Louise's old black frock on instead of the new navy suit they had made for me a month ago.

But I cannot fasten it, it is so tight round my throat and waist. That reminds me that when Mrs. Whitaker said the other day that she wished Doctor Reynolds to see me, I laughed and told her about my dresses being so tight, a.s.suring her therefore that there could not be much wrong with me. She did not laugh, however; on the contrary, she stared at me very strangely and fixedly, and did not answer.

I don't know what is wrong in the house, but everybody seems silent and constrained and not so kind as they used to be. Eva has been sent away to stay with friends in Hastings, and George, who is at Aldershot, comes home for a day or so every now and then, but hardly ever speaks to us.