Complete works of hall c.., p.616
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 616
“But what about the farm, sir, when the war is over?”
“Don’t trouble about that,” says the landlord. “You are here for life, Robert — you and your children.”
Mona puts up her horse and goes into the house, and when the gentlemen have gone her father comes in to her. With a halting embarrassment he tells her what has happened. One of the gentlemen had been the Governor of the island, the strangers had been officials from the Home Office.
“It seems the Government in London have come to your opinion, girl.”
“What’s that?” says Mona.
“That the civilian Germans must be interned.”
“Interned? What does that mean?” Shut up in camps to keep them out of mischief.”
“Prison camps?”
“That’s so.”
“Serve them right, the spies and sneaks! But why did the gentlemen come here?”
“The Governor brought them. He thinks Knockaloe is the best place in the island for an internment camp.”
Mona is aghast.
“What? Those creatures! Are we to be turned out of the farm for the like of them?”
“Not that exactly,” says the old man, and he explains the plan that had been proposed to him by the gentlemen from London. He and his family are to remain in the farm-house and keep that part of the pasture land that lies on the hill-side in order to provide the fresh milk that Kill be required for the camp.
Mona is indignant.
“Do you mean that we are to work to keep alive those Germans whose brothers are killing our boys in France? Never! Never in this world.”
Her father must refuse. Of course he must. The farm is theirs — for as long as the lease lasts, anyway.
“Tell the Governor to find some other place for his internment camp.”
The old man explains that he has no choice. What the Government wants in a time of war it must have.
“Very well,” says Mona; “let them have the farm and we’ll go elsewhere.”
The old man tells her that he must remain. He is practically conscripted.
“They don’t want me, though, do they?”
“Well, yes, they do. They are not for having other women about the camp, but under the circumstances they must have one woman anyway.”
“It won’t be me, then. Not likely!”
The old man pleads with the girl. Is she going to leave him alone?
“Me growing old, too, and Robbie at the war!”
At length Mona consents. She will remain for her father’s sake, but she hates the thought of living in the midst of Germans and helping to provide for them.
“It will be worse than being at the war — a thousand times worse.”
It is a fortnight later. Huge wagons, full of bricks and timber and other building materials, with vast rolls of barbed wire, have been arriving at the farm, and a multitude of bricklayers and carpenters have been working all day long and half the night. Ugly stone-paved paths have been cut through the green fields; the grass-grown lane from the farm-house to the high road has been made into a broad bare avenue; gorse-covered hedges, already beginning to bloom, have been torn down, and long rows of hideous wooden booths have been thrown up and then tarred and pitched on their faces and roofs. It has been like magic — black magic, Mona calls it.
Already a large area on the left of the avenue, encompassed by double lines of barbed wire, which look like cages for wild beasts, is ready for occupation. It is called Compound Number One.
Mona is now the only woman on the land, the maids being dismissed, and men and boys employed to take their places. The last of the girls to go is a pert young thing from Peel. Her name is Liza Kinnish, and before the war she used to make eyes at Robbie. Now that other men are to come she wants to remain, but Mona packs her off with the rest.
It is evening. Mona hears the whistle of the last train pulling up in the railway station, and a little later the cadenced tramp, tramp, tramp, as of an advancing army on the high road.
It is the first of the Germans. From the door of the house she looks at them as they come up the avenue — a long procession of men in dark civilian clothes, marching in double file, with a thinner line of British soldiers on either side of them. Mona shudders. She thinks they look like a long black serpent.
Next morning from the window of her bedroom Mona sees more of them. They are a sullen-looking lot, but generally well-dressed and with a certain air of breeding. On going towards the cow-house she speaks to one of the guard. He tells her they are the best she is likely to see. Many of them are well-to-do men. Some are rich, and have been carrying on great businesses in London and living in large houses and even mansions. Later she hears from her father that they are grumbling about their quarters and the food provided for them.
“Let them,” she says. “They deserve no better.”
In a half-hearted way the old man excuses them. After all they are prisoners, cut off from their wives and children.
“Well, and what worse off are they than our men who are fighting at the front? The hypocrites! The traitors!”
“You’re hard, woman, you’re hard,” says the old man.
It is another fortnight later. The black magic has been going on as before, and Compound Number Two, on the right of the avenue, is ready for occupation.
At the same hour in the evening Mona hears the tramp, tramp, tramp, as of another army coming up the high road. It is the second company of the Germans, and they are a hundredfold worse-looking than the first. A coarse, dirty, brutal lot, some of them in rags — sailors, chiefly, who have been captured at the docks in Liverpool and Glasgow and in certain cases taken off ships at sea. But they are all in high spirits, or pretend to be so. They come up the avenue laughing, singing and swearing.
Mona is standing at the door to look at them. They see her, address her with coarse pleasantries which she does not understand, and finally make noises with their lips as if they were kissing her. She turns indoors.
“The scum! The beasts!” she says.
“You’re hard, woman, you’re hard,” says the old man.
A month later Compound Number Three is ready, and once more there is the sound of marching on the high road. Mona, who is in the house, will not go to the door again. She is sour of heart and stomach at the thought that she has to live among the Germans and help to provide for them.
She hears the new batch pass through to their compound, which is on the seaward side of the farm-house, and is compelled to notice that, unlike their predecessors, they make no noise. Next morning her father tells her they are young men for the most part, young clerks, young doctors, young professional men of many sorts.
“Quite a decent-looking lot,” the old man says.
Mona curls her lips. They are Germans. That’s enough for her.
“You’re hard, woman, you’re hard,” the old man says. “What did the old Book teach thee to pray? — Our Father!”
Mona’s hatred of the Germans is deepening every hour, yet twice a day she has to meet with some of them. Morning and evening she serves the regulated supply of milk to the men who come from the compounds, attended by their guard. They try to engage her in conversation, but she rarely answers them, and she tries not to listen.
Always the last to come is a pale-faced young fellow from the Third Compound. He has a hacking cough, and Mona thinks he must be consumptive. An impulse of pity sometimes seizes her, but she fights it down. After all, what matter? He belongs to the breed of the brutes who plotted the War.
The newspapers continue to come, and every night after supper the old man reads the war news to his household. The Germans, who seem to have been always advancing, are beginning to fall back. The armies of the Allies are co-operating, and it is hoped that before long a decisive blow will be struck. The old man’s voice, which has usually had a certain tremor, grows strong and triumphant to-night. And when he has come to the end of his reading of the Gospel, which always follows the reading of the newspaper, he closes the big book, drops his head over it, shuts his eyes and, putting his hands together, says:
“Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”
When the farm-servants have gone out of the kitchen, Mona, who has been standing by the fireplace leaning one hand on the high mantelpiece, says, in a vibrant voice:
“Father, do you really want peace?”
“Goodness sakes, girl, why not?”
“I don’t. I want war and more war until those demons are driven home or wiped out of the world.”
A few days later a letter comes from Robbie. He has been made lieutenant, and is in high spirits. They have had a pretty rotten time thus far, but things are coming round now. He has heard it whispered that there is to be a great offensive soon, and that he himself is to go, for the first time, up to the front trenches. He is in a hurry now, preparations going forward so furiously, but they’ll hear of him again before long.
“So bye-bye for the present, dad, and wish me luck! And, by the way, tell Mona I read a part of her last letter to some of the officers at the mess last night, and when I had finished they all cried out, like one man, My God! That’s girl’s a stunner!’ And then the major said, ‘If we had a thousand men with the spirit of your sister the war wouldn’t last a month longer.’”
A week has passed since Robbie’s letter, and the newspapers report a wonderful victory — the enemy is on the run. Every evening, at the hour when the postman is expected to arrive at the camp, the old man, who has said nothing, has been out on the paved way in front of the farm-house (the “street,” as the Manx call it), in his sleeve waistcoat, smoking his pipe and with the setting sun from over the sea on his face.
The other letter Robbie promised has not come yet. But this evening through the kitchen window Mona sees the postman striding slowly up the garden path with his head down and a letter in his hand, and something grips at her heart. The postman gives the letter to her father, and goes off without speaking. The old man fumbles it, turning the envelope over and over in his hands. It is a large one, and it has printing across the top. At length, as if making a call on his resolution, he opens it with a trembling hand, tearing the letter as he drags it out of the envelope. He looks at it, seems to be trying to read it and finding himself unable to do so. Mona goes out to him, and he gives her the torn sheet of typewriting.
“Read it, girl,” he says helplessly, and then he lays hold of the trammon tree that grows by the porch. Mona begins, “The Secretary of State for War regrets...”
She stops. There is no need to go farther. Robbie has fallen in action.
The truth dawns on the old man in a moment. An unseen flash as of lightning seems to strike him, and he reels as if about to fall. Mona calls to some of the farm hands, and they help her father indoors and up to bed, and then run for the nearest doctor — the English doctor of the First Compound.
T he old man has had a stroke. It is a slight one, but he must stay in bed for a long time and be kept absolutely quiet. No more letters or newspapers — nothing that will startle or distress him. It is his only chance.
Mona does not cry, but her eyes flash and her nostrils quiver. Her hatred of the Germans is now fiercer than ever. They have killed her brother and stricken her father. May God punish them — every one of them! Not their Kings and Kaisers only, but every man, woman and child! If He does not, there is no God at all — there cannot be.
THIRD CHAPTER
THREE months pass. The Internment Camp has been growing larger and larger. There are five compounds in it now, and twenty-five thousand civilian prisoners, besides the British Commandant and his officers and guard — two thousand more. It is a big ugly blotch of booths and tents and bare ground, surrounded by barbed wire and covering with black ashes like a black hand the green pastures where the sweetsmelling farm had been. In the middle of the camp, cut off from the compounds, is the farm-house, and its outhouses, with their many cows, and its farm-servants who sleep in the rooms over the dairy.
Mona is the only woman among twenty-seven thousand men. The Commandant, who is kind, calls her “The Woman of Knockaloe.” The first shock of her brother’s loss and her father’s seizure is over and she is going on with her work as before. After all the “creatures” of the cow-house have to be attended to, and if she could not leave Knockaloe before the Germans came she cannot leave it now when her father lies half-paralysed upstairs.
As often as she can do so during the day she runs up to him, and at night, after she has given the men their supper, she reads to him. It is only the Bible now, and by the old man’s choice no longer the Gospels, but the Old Testament — Job with its lamentations, and afterwards the Psalms, but not the joyful ones, only those in which David calls on the Lord to revenge him upon his enemies. Her father is a changed man. His heart has grown bitter. He takes a fierce joy in David’s denunciations and mutters them to himself when he is alone.
The girl was right. Those spawn of the Pit — what fate is too bad for them?
Christmas comes, the second Christmas, then spring, the second spring. Mona watches the life of the camp with loathing. Rising in the grey of the morning, she sees the prisoners ranging round their compounds like beasts in a cage, and on going to bed in the dark she sees the white light of the arc-lamps which have been set up at the far corners of the camp to prevent their escape during the night. She hears of frequent rioting, rigorously put down, and then of an attempt at insurrection in the messroom of the First Compound and of four prisoners being shot down by the guard. Serve them right! She has no pity.
She overhears the guards talking of indescribable vices among the men of the Third Compound and then of terrible punishments. Her work sometimes requires that she should pass this compound, and as often as she does so she becomes conscious that behind the barbed wires the men are looking at her with evil eyes and laughing like monkeys. Her flesh creeps — she feels as if they were stripping her naked. The beasts! The monsters!
One sunny morning in the early summer Mona is awakened by the loud boom of a gun from the sea. Looking out she sees a warship coming to anchor in the bay. Later she sees great activity in the officers’ quarters and hears that the Home Secretary has come from London to make an inspection of the camp and that the Commandant has sent for the Governor. Still later she sees the three going the rounds of the compounds. Towards noon they pass the farm on their way to the Commandant’s dining-room, and, the kitchen window being open, Mona hears what the stranger, who looks angry, is saying:
“What can you expect? Shut men up like dogs and what wonder if they develop the vices of dogs! The only remedy is work, work, work.”
A few days after that the joiners and bricklayers are building workshops all over the camp and within a month there is the sound of hammering and sawing and planing from inside these places, as if the prisoners were working. Mona laughs. They will never turn these creatures into human beings — never!
Autumn comes and the fields outside the camp are waving yellow and red to the harvest, but the Manx boys, nearly all that are worth anything, are away at the war, and the farmers are saying the corn will lie down uncut and rot on the ground if they cannot get help to gather it.
One night she hears that the better-behaved of the prisoners are to be sent out to the neighbouring farms to work at the harvesting, and next morning she sees a batch of them going off with their guard down the avenue and through the gates. There’ll be trouble coming of this,” she thinks. “Such men are not to be trusted.”
Inside a month the camp is ringing with a scandal. The letters arriving at the camp for the prisoners have always been examined by censors. Most of the letters have come from friends in their own country, but now it is found that some are from Manx girls who, having met with German prisoners while working on the land, have struck up friendships. One of these girls has written to tell her German lover that she is in “trouble” and that the wife of her master is turning her out. Her name is Liza Kinnish.
Mona’s anger is unbounded. The slut! She has a brother at the war too! Mona has no pity for such creatures. While their boys out there at the front are fighting and dying for them they are carrying on at home with these German reptiles! Serve them right, whatever the disgrace that falls on them!
“I’d have such women whipped — yes, whipped in the public market-place.”
From that time forward Mona hates the prisoners as she had never hated them before. She cannot bear to look into their German faces or to hear the sound of their German voices. All the same she has to live among them for her father’s sake and even to serve them twice a day with the milk from the dairy.
Late in the year, at seven in the morning, she is measuring the milk into the cans, which are marked with the numbers of the various compounds. The prisoners come to carry them away, saluting her with the mist about their mouths as they do so, but she makes no answer. When she thinks they have all gone she finds the can of the Third Compound still standing by the dairy door where she had left it.
The pale-faced boy who coughed always came for that, and was generally the last to arrive. After a while, when she has her back to the door, she hears a voice behind her.
“Is this for me, miss?”
She starts. Something in his voice arrests her. It is not harsh and guttural, like that of the other prisoners, but soft, deep and human. For one dizzy moment she almost thinks it is Robbie’s.
She turns. A young man, whom she has never seen before, is on the threshold. He is about thirty years of age, tall, slim, erect, fair-haired, with hazel eyes and a clean-cut face that has an open expression. Can this be a German?
After a moment of silence Mona says:
“Who are you?”
He tells her. The young fellow who had fetched the milk before had broken a bloodvessel on awakening early that morning and been carried up to the hospital.
