Complete weird tales of.., p.943
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 943
“The trenches at Nivelle are being emptied,” said the airman.
“And do you mean that you and I are to go there, to Nivelle?” she asked.
“That is exactly what I mean. In an hour I shall be in the Nivelle belfry. Will you be there with me?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent!” he exclaimed. “You can play ‘La Brabançonne’ on the bells while I blow hell out of them in the redoubt below us!”
The infantry from the Nivelle trenches began to pass. There were a few wagons, a battery of seventy-fives, a soup kitchen or two and a long column of mules from Fontanes.
Two American muleteers knocked at the inn door and came stamping into the hallway, asking for a loaf and a bottle of red wine. Maryette rose from the table to find provisions; the airman got up also, saying in English:
“Where do you come from, boys?”
“From Fontanes corral,” they replied, surprised to hear their own tongue spoken.
“Do you know Jack Burley, one of your people?”
“Sure. He’s just been winged bad.”
“The Huns done him up something fierce,” added the other.
“Very bad?”
Maryette came back with a loaf and two bottles.
“I seen him at Fontanes,” replied the muleteer, taking the provisions from the girl. “He’s all shot to pieces, but they say he’ll pull through.”
The airman turned to Maryette:
“Jack will get well,” he translated bluntly.
The girl, who had just refused the money offered by the American muleteer, turned sharply, became deadly white for a second, then her face flamed with a hot and splendid colour.
One of the muleteers said:
“Is this here his girl?”
“Yes,” nodded the airman.
The muleteer became voluble, patting Maryette on one arm and then on the other:
“J’ai vue Jack Burley, mamzelle, toot a l’heure! Il est bien, savvy voo! Il est tray, tray bien! Bocoo de trou! N’importe! Il va tray bien! Savvy voo? Jack Burley, l’ami de voo! Comprenny? On va le guerir toot sweet! Wee! Wee! Wee! — —”
The girl flung her arms around the amazed muleteer’s neck and kissed him impetuously on both cheeks. The muleteer blushed and his comrade fidgeted. Only the girl remained unembarrassed.
Half laughing, half crying, terribly excited, and very lovely to look upon, she caught both muleteers by their sleeves and poured out a torrent of questions. With the airman’s aid she extracted what information they had to offer; and they went their way, flustered, still blushing, clasping bread and bottles to their agitated breasts.
The airman looked her keenly in the eyes as she came back from the door, still intensely excited, adorably transfigured. She opened her lips to speak — the happy exclamation on her lips, already half uttered, died there.
“Well?” inquired the airman quietly.
Dumb, still breathing rapidly, she returned his gaze in silence.
“Now that your friend Jack is going to live — what next?” asked the airman pleasantly.
For a full minute she continued to stare at him without a word.
“No need to avenge him now,” added the airman, watching her.
“No.” She turned, gazed vaguely into space. After a moment she said, as though to herself: “But his country’s honour — and mine? That reckoning still remains! Is it not true?”
The airman said, with a trace of pity in his voice, for the girl seemed very young:
“You need not go with me to Nivelle just because you promised.”
“Oh,” she said simply, “I must go, of course — it being a question of our country’s honour.”
“I do not ask it. Nor would Jack, your friend. Nor would your own country ask it of you, Maryette Courtray.”
She replied serenely:
“But I ask it — of myself. Do you understand, monsieur?”
“Perfectly.” He glanced mechanically at his useless wrist watch, then inquired the time. She went to her room, returned, wearing a little jacket and carrying a pair of big, wooden gloves.
“It is after eleven o’clock,” she said. “I brought my jacket because it is cold in all belfries. It will be cold in Nivelle, up there in the tower under Clovis.”
“You really mean to go with me?”
She did not even trouble to reply to the question. So he picked up his packet and his sack of bombs, and they went out, side by side, under the tunnelled wall.
Infantry from Nivelle trenches were still plodding along the dark street under the trees; dull gleams came from their helmets and bayonets in the obscure light of the stars.
The girl stood watching them for a few moments, then her hand sought the airman’s arm:
“If there is to be a battle in the street here, my father cannot remain.”
The airman nodded, went out into the street and spoke to a passing officer. He, in turn, signalled the driver of a motor omnibus to halt.
The little bell-mistress entered the tavern, followed by two soldiers. In a few moments they came out bearing, chair-fashion between them, the crippled innkeeper.
The old man was much alarmed, but his daughter followed beside him to the omnibus, in which were several lamed soldiers.
“Et toi?” he quavered as they lifted him in. “What of thee, Maryette?”
“I follow,” she called out cheerily. “I rejoin thee—” the bus moved on— “God knows when or where!” she added under her breath.
The airman was whispering to a fat staff officer when she rejoined him. All three looked up in silence at the belfry of Sainte Lesse, looming above them, a monstrous shadow athwart the stars. A moment later an automobile, arriving from the south, drew up in front of the inn.
“Bonne chance,” said the fat officer abruptly; he turned and waddled swiftly away in the darkness. They saw him mount his horse. His legs stuck out sideways.
“Now,” whispered the airman, with a nod to the chauffeur.
The little bell-mistress entered the car, her wooden gloves tucked under one arm. The airman followed with his packet and his sack of bombs. The chauffeur started his engine.
The middle of the road was free to him; the edges were occupied by the retreating infantry. As the car started, very slowly, cautiously feeling its way out of Sainte Lesse, the fat staff officer turned his horse and trotted up alongside. The car stopped, the engine still running.
“It’s understood?” asked the officer in a low voice. “It’s to be when we hear ‘La Brabançonne’?”
“When you hear ‘La Brabançonne.’”
“Understood,” said the staff officer crisply, saluted and drew bridle. And the car moved out into the starlit night along an endless column of retreating soldiers, who were laughing, smoking, and chatting as though not in the least depressed by their withdrawal from the dry and cosy trenches of Nivelle which they were abandoning.
CHAPTER XX
“LA BRABANÇONNE”
NO SHELLS WERE falling in Nivelle as they left the car on the outskirts of the town and entered the long main street. That was all of Nivelle, a long, treeless main street from which branched a few alleys.
Smouldering débris of what had been houses illuminated the street. There were no other lights. Nothing stirred except a gaunt cat flitting like a shadow along the gutter. There was not a sound save the faint stirring of the cinders over which pale flames played fitfully.
Abandoned trenches ditched the little town in every direction; temporary shelters made of boughs, sheds, and broken-down wagons stood along the street. Otherwise, all impedimenta, materials, and stores had apparently been removed by the retreating columns. There was little wreckage except the burning débris of the few shell-struck houses — a few rags, a few piles of firewood, a bundle of straw and hay here and there.
High, mounting toward the stars, the ancient tower with its gilded hippogriff dominated the place — a vast, vague shape brooding over the single mile-long street and grimy alleys branching from it.
Nobody guarded the portal; the ancient doors stood wide open; pitch darkness reigned within.
“Do you know the way?” whispered the airman.
“Yes. Take hold of my hand.”
He dared not use his flash. Carrying bundle and bombsack under one arm, he sought for her hand and encountered it. Cool, slim fingers closed over his.
After a few moments’ stealthy advance, she whispered:
“Here are the stairs. Be careful; they twist.”
She started upward, feeling with her feet for every stone step. The ascent appeared to be interminable; the narrowing stone spiral seemed to have no end. Her hand grew warm within his own.
But at last they felt a fresh wind blowing and caught a glimpse of stars above them.
Then, tier on tier, the bells of the carillon, fixed to their great beams, appeared above them — a shadowy, bewildering wilderness of bells, rising, rank above rank, until they vanished in the darkness overhead. Beside them, almost touching them, loomed the great bell Clovis, a gigantic mass bulking enormously in that shadowy place.
A sonorous wind flowed through the open tower, eddying among the bells — a strong, keen night wind blowing from the north.
The airman walked to the south parapet and looked down. Below him in the starlight, like an indistinct map spread out, lay the Nivelle redoubt and the trench with its gabions, its sand bags, its timbers, its dugouts.
Very far away to the southeast they could see the glare of rockets and exploding shells, but the sound of the bombardment did not reach them. North, a single searchlight played and switched across the clouds; west, all was dark.
“They’ll arrive just before dawn,” said the airman, placing his sack of bombs on the pavement under the parapet. “Come, little bell-mistress, take me to see your keyboard.”
“It is below — a few steps. This way — if you will follow me — —”
She turned to the stone stairs again, descended a dozen steps, opened a door on a narrow landing.
And there, in the starlight, he saw the keyboard and the bewildering maze of wires running up and branching like a huge web toward the tiers of bells above.
He looked at the keyboard curiously. The little mistress of the bells displayed the two wooden gloves with which she encased her hands when she played the carillon.
“It would be impossible for one to play unless one’s hands are armoured,” she explained.
“It is almost a lost art,” he mused aloud, “ — this playing the carillon — this wonderful bell-music of the middle ages. There are few great bell-masters in this day.”
“Few,” she said dreamily.
“And” — he turned and stared at her— “few mistresses of the bells, I imagine.”
“I think I am the only one in France or in Flanders.... And there are few carillons left. The Huns are battering them down. Towers of the ancient ages are falling everywhere in Flanders and in France under their shell fire. Very soon there will be no more of the old carillons left; no more bell-music in the world.” She sighed heavily. “It is a pity.”
She seated herself at the keyboard.
“Dare I play?” she asked, looking up over her shoulder.
“No; it would only mean a shell from the Huns.”
She nodded, laid the wooden gloves beside her and let her delicate hands wander over the mute keys.
Leaning beside her the airman quietly explained the plan they were to follow.
“With dawn they will come creeping into Nivelle — the Huns,” he said. “I have one of their officers’ uniforms in that bundle above. I shall try to pass as a general officer. You see, I speak German. My education was partly ruined in Germany. So I’ll get on very well, I expect.
“And directly under us is the trench and the main redoubt. They’ll occupy that first thing. They’ll swarm there — the whole trench will be crawling with them. They’ll install their gas cylinders at once, this wind being their wind.
“But with sunrise the wind changes — and whether it changes or not, I don’t care,” he added. “I’ve got them at last where I want them.”
The girl looked up at him. He smiled that terrifying smile of his:
“With the explosion of my first bomb among their gas cylinders you are to start these bells above us. Are you afraid?”
“No.”
“You are to play ‘La Brabançonne.’ That is the signal to our trenches.”
“I have often played it,” she said coolly.
“Not in the teeth of a barbarian army. Not in the faces of a murderous soldiery.”
The girl sat quite still for a few moments; then looking up at him, and very pale in the starlight:
“Do you think they will tear me to pieces, monsieur?”
He said:
“I mean to hold those stairs with my sack of bombs until our people enter the trenches. If they can do it in an hour we will be all right.”
“Yes.”
“It is only a half-hour affair from our salient. I allow our people an hour.”
“Yes.”
“But if, even now, you had rather go back — —”
“No!”
“There is no disgrace in going back.”
“You said once, ‘anybody can weep for friend and country. Few avenge either.’ I am — happy — to be among the few.”
He nodded. After a moment he said:
“I’ll bet you something. My country is all right, but it’s sick. It’s
got a nauseous dose of verbiage to spew up — something it’s swallowed — something about being too proud to fight.... My brother and I couldn’t stand it, so we came to France.... He was in the photo air service. He was in mufti — and about two miles up, I believe. Six Huns went for him.... And winged him. He had to land behind their lines.... In mufti.... Well — I’ve never found courage to hear the details. I can’t stand them — yet.”
“Your brother — is dead, monsieur?” she asked timidly.
“Oh, yes. With — circumstances. Well, then — after that, from an ordinary, commonplace man I became a machine for the extermination of vermin. That’s all I am — an animated magazine of Persian powder — or I do it in any handy way. It’s not a sporting proposition, you see, just get rid of them any old way. You don’t understand, do you?”
“A — little.”
“But it’s slow work — slow work,” he muttered vaguely, “ — and the world is crawling — crawling with them. But if God guides my bomb this time and if I hit one of their gas cylinders — that ought to be worth while.”
In the starlight his features became tense and terrible; she shivered in her threadbare jacket.
After a few moments’ silence he went away up the steps to put on his German uniform. When he descended again she had a troubled question for him to answer:
“But how shall you account for me, a French girl, monsieur, if they come to the belfry?”
A heavy flush darkened his face:
“Little mistress of the bells, I shall pretend to be what the Huns are. Do you know how they treat French women?”
“I have heard,” she said faintly.
“Then if they come and find you here as my — prisoner — they will think they understand.”
The colour flamed in her face and she bowed it, resting her elbows on the keyboard.
“Come,” he said, “don’t be distressed. Does it matter what a Hun thinks? Come; let’s be cheerful. Can you hum for me ‘La Brabançonne’?”
She did not reply.
“Well, never mind,” he said. “But it’s a grand battle anthem.... We Americans have one.... It’s out of fashion. And after all, I had rather hear ‘La Brabançonne’ when the time comes.... What a terrible admission! But what Americans have done to my country is far more terrible. The nation’s sick — sick!... I prefer ‘La Brabançonne’ for the time being.”
* * *
The Prussians entered Nivelle a little before dawn. The airman had been watching the street below. Down there in the slight glow from the cinders of what once had been a cottage a cat had been squatting, staring at the bed of coals, as though she were once more installed upon the family hearthstone.
Then something unseen as yet by the airman attracted the animal’s attention. Alert, crouching, she stared down the vista of dark, deserted houses, then turned and fled like a ghost.
For a long while the airman perceived nothing. Suddenly close to the house façades on either side of the street, shadowy forms came gliding forward.
They passed the glowing embers and went on toward Sainte-Lesse; jägers, with knapsacks on back and rifles trailing; and on their heads oddly shaped pot helmets with battered looking visors.
One or two motorcyclists followed, whizzing through the desolate street and into the country beyond.
After a few minutes, out of the throat of the darkness emerged a solid column of infantry. In a moment, beneath the bell tower, the ground was swarming with Huns; every inch of the earth became infested with them; fields, hedges, alleys crawled alive with Germans. They overran every road, every street, every inch of open country; their wagons choked the main thoroughfare, they were already establishing themselves in the redoubt below, in the trench, running in and out of dugouts and all over scarp, counter-scarp, parades and parapet, ant-like in energy, busy with machine gun, trench mortar, installing telephones, searchlights, periscopes, machine guns.
Automobiles arrived — two armoured cars and grey passenger machines in which there were officers.
The airman laid his hand on Maryette’s arm.
“Little bell-mistress,” he said, “German officers are coming into the tower. I want them to find you in my arms when they come up into this belfry. Understand me, and forgive me.”
“I — understand,” she whispered.
“Play your part bravely. Will you?”
“Yes.”
He put his arms around her; they stood rigid, listening.
