Complete works of hall c.., p.618
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 618
“Innocent? They’ll not be long innocent. They’ll grow up and do the same themselves. Oh my God, do Thou to them as with the Midianites who perished at Endor, and became as the dung of the earth!”
“Hush! Hush! Father! Father!”
“Why not? What’s coming over thee, woman? What’s been happening downstairs to change thee?”
At that word Mona feels as if a sword has pierced her heart, and she hurries out of the room.
After a while the mother-instinct in her comes uppermost. Her father is right. To make war on children is the crime of crimes. The people who do such things must belong to the race of the devil.
That evening she is crossing to the “haggard” when she meets Oskar Heine coming out of his compound. She does not look his way, but he stops her and speaks.
“You’ve heard what’s in the papers?”
“Indeed I have.”
“I’m ashamed. I’m sorry.”
“Never mind about sorry. Wait until the same is done to your own people, and then we’ll see, we’ll see.”
He is about to tell her something, but she will not listen, and goes off with uplifted head.
A week passes. Mona has seen nothing more of Oskar Heine. Being free to come and go as he likes, he must be keeping out of her way. She is feeling less bitter about that shocking thing in London. After all, it was war. It is true that all the victories of war are as nothing against the golden head of one darling child, but then nobody sees that now. Nobody in the world has ever seen it — nobody but He....
“Suffer the little children to come unto me...”
But only think! That was said two thousand years ago, and yet... and yet...
Christmas is near, the third Christmas. Mona reads in the newspaper that it has been agreed by the Marshal and generals commanding on both sides of the Western Front that there shall be a four hours’ truce of the battlefields on Christmas Eve. How splendid! A truce of God in memory of what happened two thousand years ago! Why couldn’t they have it in the camp also? She suggests the idea to Oskar.
“Glorious! Why can’t we?” he says.
He will find a way to put the matter up to the Commandant, and then he will speak to the prisoners.
Since the prisoners have been set to work they have been living a more human life in their amusements also. Every compound has its band. The guards have their band, too. Mona hears from Oskar that the Commandant consents.
“It’s Christmas! God bless me, yes, why not?” he says.
The prisoners are delighted, and the guards agree to play with them.
“Oh, they’re not such bad chaps after all,” the captain says.
At the beginning of Christmas week there is the muffled sound at night of the bands in various parts of the camp practising inside their booths. Oskar comes to the door of the farm-house to say that they intend to play in unison, and want the “Woman of Knockaloe” to choose the carols and hymns for them. Mona chooses what she knows.
“Noel,”
“The Feast of Stephen,” and “Lead, Kindly Light.”
“Splendid!” says Oskar. He is to be the conductor in Compound Three.
Snow falls, then comes frost, and on Christmas Eve the ground of the black camp is white and hard, and a moon is shining — a typical Christmas.
Mona has had a bustling day, but at nine she is finished and goes upstairs to sit with her father. The old man, who is in bed, has heard something of her activities, and is not too well pleased with them.
“What’s coming over thee, girl?” he keeps on repeating. “What’s coming over thee anyway?”
“Goodness sakes, why ask me that, dad? It’s Christmas, isn’t it?”
Having three hours to wait, she sits by the fire and reads to him — from the Gospels this time:
“And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and they were sore afraid.
“And the angel said unto them, Fear not; for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
“For unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord....
“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.”
Mona stops. The old man is breathing heavily. He has fallen asleep.
At eleven o’clock Mona is in her own room. What a magnificent night! The moon is shining full through the window, making its pattern on the carpet. Outside it is so bright that the entire camp is lit up by it, and there had been no need to switch on the big arc-lamps.
The camp lies white in the sparkling snow. For the first time for more than three years it is not distinguishable from the country round about. The white mantle of winter has made camp and country one.
It is quiet out there in the night. Not a breath of wind is stirring. A dog is barking in the Fifth Compound, which is half a mile away. There is no other sound except a kind of smothered hum from the insides of the booths, where twenty-five thousand men are waiting for the first hour of Christmas Day — only this and the rhythmical throb of the tide on the distant shore. The old man in the next room is still breathing heavily.
Mona, too, is waiting. She is sitting up on her bed, half-covered by the counterpane. At one moment she remembers Robbie’s watch and thinks of taking it out of the drawer and winding it up and putting it on, but something says “Not yet.” Although Peel church is nearly a mile away, she tells herself that on this silent night she will hear the striking of the clock.
She thinks of the battlefront in France. The truce of God is there too. No booming of cannon, no shrieking of shells, only the low murmur of a sea of men in the underground trenches and the bright moon over the white waste about them. Thank God! Thank God!
At a quarter to twelve she is up again and at the window. A dim, mysterious, divine majesty seems to have come down on all the troubled world. The moon is shining full on her face. She hears marching on the crinkling snow — the band of the guard are crossing the avenue to take up the place assigned to them on the officers’ tennis-court. Behind them there is the shuffling of irregular feet — her farm-hands are following.
Then, through the thin air comes the silvery sound of the clock of Peel church striking midnight, and then, clear and distinct, from the guards’ band the first bar of “The Feast of Stephen.”
“When the snow lay on the ground...” After that another bar of it from the Third Compound (Oskar must be conducting):
“Deep and crisp and even...”
Then comes another bar from the First Compound, and then another and another from the distant Compounds Four and Five.
After that there is a second carol:
“Noel, Noel, born is the King of Israel....”
Then another carol and another, all played like the first, and finally, verse by verse, from near and far, the hymn she had selected:
“Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom.”
Mona is crying. Now she understands herself — why she suggested this to Oskar and why Oskar has carried it out. If only peace would come the barrier that divides them would be broken down! God send it! God send it I Her breath on the window-pane has frosted the cold glass, but she is sure she sees somebody coming towards the house. It is a man, and he is stumbling along, half doubled up as if drunk or wounded. He is making for the front door. Trembling with half-conscious apprehension of the truth, Mona runs downstairs to open it.
The man is Oskar Heine. By the light of the lamp she had left burning on the table she sees him. He is clutching with one hand a bough of the trammon tree that grows by the porch, and in the other he holds a sheet of blue paper. His cap is pushed back from his forehead, which is wet with perspiration, his eyes are wild, and his face is ashen.
“May I come in?”
“Indeed yes.”
He comes into the house, never having done so before, and drops heavily into the old man’s seat by the fire, which is dying out.
“What is it?” she asks.
“Look,” he says, and hands her the paper. “It has just come. The post was late to-night.” His voice seems to be dying out also.
Mona takes the paper. It is in English, and, standing by the lamp, she begins to read it aloud:
“American Consulate — Mannheim.”
“That’s my home — Mannheim.”
“I regret to inform you...”
“Don’t! Don’t!”
Mona reads the rest of the letter to herself. It is from the American Consul, and tells Oskar that in a British air raid in the middle of the night the house in which his mother had lived with his sister had been struck by a bomb, and the wing in which his sister slept had been utterly destroyed.
Mona makes a cry and involuntarily reads aloud again:
“The child is missing and it is believed “Don’t! Don’t!”
There is silence between them for a moment, only broken by Oskar’s low sobs and Mona’s quick breathing.
“Your sister?”
“Yes, I wanted to tell you about her that night of..”
“I know,” says Mona. With a stab of remorse the memory of what she had said has come back to her.
“Only ten. Such a sweet little thing — the sweetest darling in the world. Used to write every week and send me her sketches. My father died when she was a baby, and since then she has looked on me as father and brother too. And now... Oh, it is too stupid! It is too stupid!”
Mona cannot speak, and he goes on saying:
“It is too stupid. It is too stupid!”
He drops his head into his hands, and Mona sees the tears oozing out between his fingers.
“Mignon! My little Mignon!”
Still Mona does not utter a word, and at last he gets up and says:
“I had to tell you. There was no one else.”
His face is broken up and he is turning to go. Mona can bear no more. By a swift, irresistible, unconquerable, almighty impulse she flings her arms about his neck.
Meantime, the old man upstairs had been awakened by the bands. He had raised himself in bed to listen. The carols out there in the night touched him at first, but after a while they made him feel still more bitter. He was thinking about Robbie. What was the good of singing about peace in the midst of war? Peace? There would be no peace until the righteous God, with His mighty hand and outstretched arm, had hewn His enemies to pieces!
He heard a heavy thud at the door downstairs, and then a man’s voice, with Mona’s, in the kitchen. His first thought was of “The Waits,” for which Manx girls stayed up on Christmas Eve, and then a blacker thought came to him.
He struggled out of bed, pulled on his dressing-gown, fumbled for his walking-stick, and made for the stairs. It was dark on the landing, but there was light below coming from the kitchen, and, making a great effort, he staggered down.
How long Mona and Oskar were in each other’s arms they did not know. It might have been only for a moment. But all at once they became aware of a shuffling step behind them. Mona turns to look. Her father is on the threshold.
The old man’s face is ghastly. His eyes blaze, his mouth is open and his lips quiver, as if he is struggling for breath and voice. At length both come, and he falls on Mona with fearful cries.
“Harlot! Strumpet! So this is what has been changing thee! Thy brother dead in France, and thou in the arms of this German! May God punish thee! May thy brother’s spirit follow thee day and night and destroy thee! Curse thee! Curse thee! May the curse of God..
The old man’s voice chokes in his throat. His face changes colour, and he totters and falls.
Before Mona is aware of it some of the farm-hands are in the house picking the old man up. She had left the outer door open, and they had heard her father’s cries.
They carry him back to bed, limp and unconscious. Mona stands for some moments as if smitten by a blow on the brain. A horror of great darkness has fallen on her. When she recovers self-possession she looks round for Oskar. He has gone.
SEVENTH CHAPTER
THE old farmer died, without speaking, a few days after his second seizure. Mona watched with him constantly. Sometimes she prayed, with all the fervour of her soul, that he might recover consciousness. But the strange thing was that sometimes she found herself hoping that he might never do so.
When the end came she was overwhelmed with remorse, but still struggling to defend herself. It was early morning, and she was alone with him at the last. In the wild burstings of affection, mingled with self-reproach, she cried:
“I couldn’t help it, father. I couldn’t help it.”
They buried her father at Kirk Patrick in the family grave of the Craines, which was close to the German quarter. Her relations from all parts of the island came “to see the old man home.” There were uncles and aunts and cousins to the third and fourth degree, most of them quite unknown to her. When the service was over they went back to the farm-house, by permission of the camp authorities, to hear the will read by the vicar. It had been made shortly after the death of Robbie and consisted of one line only:
“I leave all I have to my dear daughter.” The uncles and aunts and cousins, who had no claim on the dead man, were shocked at his selfishness.
“Is there no legacy to anybody, parson?”
“None.”
“Not so much as a remembrance?”
“Nothing. Everything goes to Mona.”
“We’ll leave it with her, then,” they said, and rose to go. As they passed out of the house Mona heard one of them say to another:
“It will be enough to make the man turn in his grave, though, if the farm goes to a Boche some day.”
That night, sitting late over a dying fire, Mona overhears a group of men and boys talking on “the street” outside. They are her servants on the farm. Having heard her father’s denunciation of her on Christmas Eve they have since been circulating damaging reports, and now they are busy with their own plans for the future.
“She has killed the old man, that’s the long and short of it.”
“So it is.”
“I’m working no more for a woman that’s done a thing like that.”
“Me neither.”
A week later they came to Mona one by one with various lying excuses for leaving her. Asking no questions she pays them off and lets them go.
She has been alone for three days when the Commandant, with his kind eyes, comes to see what he can do. What if he sends some of the guard to help her?
“No, sir, no.”
“Some of the Germans, then?”
“N-o.”
“But, good gracious, girl, you can’t carry on the farm by yourself.”
“I’m strong. I’ll manage somehow, sir.”
“But sixteen cows — it’s utterly impossible — utterly!”
“Half of them are dry now and will have to go out to grass. I can attend to the rest, sir.”
“But won’t you be afraid to live in this house alone — a woman, with men like these about you?”
“I don’t think I will, sir.”
Half a year has passed. Mona has seen nothing of Oskar since Christmas. With a thrill of the heart she hears of the wide liberty he has won by his ability and good behaviour. But even in that there is a certain sting. He is free of the camp now as far as the barbed wire extends; why does he not come to see her? Sometimes she feels bitter that he does not come, but again the strange thing is that sometimes she is sure that if he did come she would run away from him.
All the same, she has a sense of his presence always about her. No matter how early she rises in the morning she finds that the rough work of the farm, unfit for a woman, has been done by other hands before she has reached the cow-house.
For a long time this sense as of a supernatural presence, unseen and unheard, helping her and caring for her and keeping guard over her, strengthens her days and sweetens her nights. But at length something happens which causes her courage to fail.
Rumour has come to the camp that a great enemy offensive is shortly to be made on the Western front. To meet the need of it the old guard of tried and trusted men are sent overseas, and their places filled by a new guard, which seem to have been recruited from the very sweepings of the streets.
The captain of this new guard assigned to the first three compounds (the nearest to the farmhouse) turns out to be a brute. His antecedents are doubtful. His own men, to whom he is a tyrant, say he has been a barman in a public-house somewhere, and that a few years before the war he was convicted of a criminal assault on a woman.
Mona becomes aware that she is attracting the attention of this ruffian. He is asking questions about her, following her with his evil eyes, and making coarse remarks that are intended to meet her ears.
(THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE book)
“Fine gal! Splendid! What a woman for a wife, too!”
During the day he finds excuses to call at the farm-house and engage her in conversation. At length he knocks at her door at night. It is late, the camp is quiet, nobody is in sight anywhere. Before knowing who knocked Mona has opened the door. The man makes an effort to enter, but she refuses to admit him. He pleads, coaxes, threatens and finally tries to force his way into the house.
“Don’t be a fool, girl. Let me in,” he whispers.
She struggles to shut the door in his face. Her strength is great, but his is greater, and he has almost conquered her resistance when the figure of another man comes from behind.
It is Oskar. With both hands he takes the blackguard by the throat, drags him from the door and flings him five yards back into the road, where he falls heavily and lies for a moment. Then he gets up and shambles off, saying nothing, and at the next instant Oskar himself, without a word to Mona, turns away.
It is midsummer. The insular horseracing has begun — an event in which the prisoners are keenly interested, but of which they are supposed to know nothing. Since the changing of the guard the moral of the camp has gone down headlong. Drink has been getting in — nobody knows how. It is first discovered in the First Compound, commonly called the millionaire’s quarter.
