Tales of War Part 9

They talked the whole thing over. They must struggle and make an effort. The officer would be there for one evening. He would leave in the morning quite early in order to make things ready for the return to Potsdam: he had charge of the imperial car. So for one evening they must be merry. They would suppose, it was Herr Schnitzelhaaser's suggestion, they would think all the evening that Belgium and France and Luxemburg all attacked the Fatherland, and that the Kaiser, utterly unprepared, quite unprepared, called on the Germans to defend their land against Belgium.

Yes, the old woman could imagine that; she could think it all the evening.

And then,--it was no use not being cheerful altogether,--then one must imagine a little more, just for the evening: it would come quite easy; one must think that the four boys were alive.

Hans too? (Hans was the youngest).

Yes, all four. Just for the evening.

But if the officer asks?

He will not ask. What are four soldiers?

So it was all arranged; and at evening the officer came. He brought his own rations, so hunger came no nearer. Hunger just lay down outside the door and did not notice the officer.

A this supper the officer began to talk. The Kaiser himself, he said, was at the Schartzhaus.

"So," said Herr Schnitzelhaaser; "just over the way." So close.

Such an honour.

And indeed the shadow of the Schartzhaus darkened their garden in the morning.

It was such an honour, said Frau Schnitzelhaaser too. And they began to praise the Kaiser. So great a War Lord, she said; the most glorious war there had ever been.

Of course, said the officer, it would end on the first of July.

Of course, said Frau Schnitzelhaaser. And so great an admiral, too.

One must remember that also. And how fortunate we were to have him: one must not forget that. Had it not been for him the crafty Belgians would have attacked the Fatherland, but they were struck down before they could do it. So much better to prevent a bad deed like that than merely to punish after. So wise. And had it not been for him, if it had not been for him...

The old man saw that she was breaking down and hastily he took up that feverish praise. Feverish it was, for their hunger and bitter loss affected their minds no less than illness does, and the things they did they did hastily and intemperately. His praise of the War Lord raced on as the officer ate. He spoke of him as of those that benefit man, as of monarchs who bring happiness to their people. And now, he said, he is here in the Schartzhaus beside us, listening to the guns just like a common soldier.

Finally the guns, as he spoke, coughed beyond ominous hills.

Contentedly the officer went on eating. He suspected nothing of the thoughts his host and hostess were hiding. At last he went upstairs to bed.

As fierce exertion is easy to the fevered, so they had spoken; and it wears them, so they were worn. The old woman wept when the officer went out of hearing. But old Herr Schnitzelhaaser picked up a big butcher's knife. "I will bear it no more," he said.

His wife watched him in silence as he went away with his knife. Out of the house he went and into the night. Through the open door she saw nothing; all was dark; even the Schartzhaus, where all was gay to-night, stood dark for fear of aeroplanes. The old woman waited in silence.

When Herr Schnitzelhaaser returned there was blood on his knife.

"What have you done?" the old woman asked him quite calmly. "I have killed our pig," he said.

She broke out then, all the more recklessly for the long restraint of the evening; the officer must have heard her.

"We are lost! We are lost!" she cried. "We may not kill our pig.

Hunger has made you mad. You have ruined us."

"I will bear it no longer," he said. "I have killed our pig."

"But they will never let us eat it," she cried. "Oh, you have ruined us!"

"If you did not dare to kill our pig," he said, "why did you not stop me when you saw me go? You saw me go with the knife?"

"I thought," she said, "you were going to kill the Kaiser."

A Deed of Mercy

As Hindenburg and the Kaiser came down, as we read, from Mont d'Hiver, during the recent offensive, they saw on the edge of a crater two wounded British soldiers. The Kaiser ordered that they should be cared for: their wounds were bound up and they were given brandy, and brought round from unconsciousness. That is the German account of it, and it may well be true. It was a kindly act.

Probably had it not been for this the two men would have died among those desolate craters; no one would have known, and no one could have been blamed for it.

The contrast of this spark of imperial kindness against the gloom of the background of the war that the Kaiser made is a pleasant thing to see, even though it illuminates for only a moment the savage darkness in which our days are plunged. It was a kindness that probably will long be remembered to him. Even we, his enemies, will remember it. And who knows but that when most he needs it his reward for the act will be given him.

For Judas, they say, once in his youth, gave his cloak, out of compa.s.sion, to a s.h.i.+vering beggar, who sat shaken with ague, in rags, in bitter need. And the years went by and Judas forgot his deed. And long after, in h.e.l.l, Judas they say was given one day's respite at the end of every year because of this one kindness he had done so long since in his youth. And every year he goes, they say, for a day and cools himself among the Arctic bergs; once every year for century after century.

Perhaps some sailor on watch on a misty evening blown far out of his course away to the north saw something ghostly once on an iceberg floating by, or heard some voice in the dimness that seemed like the voice of man, and came home with this weird story. And perhaps, as the story pa.s.sed from lip to lip, men found enough justice in it to believe it true. So it came down the centuries.

Will seafarers ages hence on dim October evenings, or on nights when the moon is ominous through mist, red and huge and uncanny, see a lonely figure sometimes on the loneliest part of the sea, far north of where the Lusitania sank, gathering all the cold it can? Will they see it hugging a crag of iceberg wan as itself, helmet, cuira.s.s and ice pale-blue in the mist together? Will it look towards them with ice-blue eyes through the mist, and will they question it, meeting on those bleak seas? Will it answer--or will the North wind howl like voices? Will the cry of seals be heard, and ice floes grinding, and strange birds lost upon the wind that night, or will it speak to them in those distant years and tell them how it sinned, betraying man?

It will be a grim, dark story in that lonely part of the sea, when he confesses to sailors, blown too far north, the dreadful thing he plotted against man. The date on which he is seen will be told from sailor to sailor. Queer taverns of distant harbours will know it well.

Not many will care to be at sea that day, and few will risk being driven by stress of weather on the Kaiser's night to the bergs of the haunted part of sea.

And yet for all the grimness of the pale-blue phantom, with cuira.s.s and helmet and eyes s.h.i.+mmering on deadly icebergs, and yet for all the sorrow of the wrong he did against man, the women drowned and the children, and all the good s.h.i.+ps gone, yet will the horrified mariners meeting him in the mist grudge him no moment of the day he has earned, or the coolness he gains from the bergs, because of the kindness he did to the wounded men. For the mariners in their hearts are kindly men, and what a soul gains from kindness will seem to them well deserved.

Last Scene of All

After John Calleron was. .h.i.t he carried on in a kind of twilight of the mind. Things grew dimmer and calmer; harsh outlines of events became blurred; memories came to him; there was a singing in his ears like far-off bells. Things seemed more beautiful than they had a while ago; to him it was for all the world like evening after some quiet sunset, when lawns and shrubs and woods and some old spire look lovely in the late light, and one reflects on past days. Thus he carried on, seeing things dimly. And what is sometimes called "the roar of battle,"

those aerial voices that snarl and moan and whine and rage at soldiers, had grown dimmer too. It all seemed further away, and littler, as far things are. He still heard the bullets: there is something so violently and intensely sharp in the snap of pa.s.sing bullets at short ranges that you hear them in deepest thought, and even in dreams. He heard them, tearing by, above all things else. The rest seemed fainter and dimmer, and smaller and further away.

He did not think he was very badly hit, but nothing seemed to matter as it did a while ago. Yet he carried on.

And then he opened his eyes very wide and found he was back in London again in an underground train. He knew it at once by the look of it.

He had made hundreds of journeys, long ago, by those trains. He knew by the dark, outside, that it had not yet left London; but what was odder than that, if one stopped to think of it, was that he knew exactly where it was going. It was the train that went away out into the country where he used to live as a boy. He was sure of that without thinking.

When he began to think how he came to be there he remembered the war as a very far-off thing. He supposed he had been unconscious a very long time. He was all right now.

Other people were sitting beside him on the same seat. They all seemed like people he remembered a very long time ago. In the darkness opposite, beyond the windows of the train, he could see their reflections clearly. He looked at the reflections but could not quite remember.

A woman was sitting on his left. She was quite young. She was more like some one that he most deeply remembered than all the others were.

He gazed at her, and tried to clear his mind.