Part 9

"Very sorry," explained he. "I had hoped to stay with you, and go out again. Very interesting and all that. But K. is strict, you know, so I must leave you."

He bowed himself away.

"Oh, welcome intervention," breathed Mrs. Bracher.

* * * * *

A few weeks had passed with their angry weather, and now all was green again and sunny. Seldom had the central square of Poperinghe looked gayer than on this afternoon, when soldiers were lined up in the middle, and on all the sides the people were standing by the tens and hundreds. High overhead from every window and on every pole, flags were streaming in the spring wind. Why shouldn't the populace rejoice, for had not this town of theirs held out through all the cruel winter: refuge and rest for their weary troops, and citadel of their King? And was not that their King, standing over yonder on the pavement, higher than the generals and statesmen on the steps of the Town-hall back of him? Tall and slender, crowned with youth and beauty, did he not hold in his hand the hearts of all his people? And to-day he was passing on merit to two English dames, and the people were glad of this, for the two English dames had been kind to their soldiers in sickness, and had undergone no little peril to carry them comfort and healing. Yes, they were glad to shout and clap hands, when, as Chevaliers of the Order of Leopold, the ribbon and star pendant were pinned on the breast of the sturdy Mrs. Bracher, and the silent, charming Scotch. The band bashed the cymbals and beat the drum, and the wind instruments roared approval. And the modest young King saluted the two brave ladies.

In a shop door, a couple of hundred yards from the ceremony, Hilda was standing quietly watching the joyous crowds and their King. Pushing through the throng that hemmed her in, a massive man came and stood by her.

"Ah, Mr. Barkleigh," said Hilda, "this is a surprise."

"It's a shame," he began.

"What's a shame?" asked Hilda.

"Why aren't they decorating you? You're the bravest of the lot."

"By no means," said Hilda; "those two women deserve all that is coming to them. I am glad they are getting their pretty ribbon."

With a sudden nervous gesture, Barkleigh unfastened the bright decorations on his chest, and placed them in Hilda's hand.

"Take them and wear them," he said, "I have no heart for them any more. They are yours."

"I didn't win them, so I can't wear them," she answered, and started to hand them back.

"No, I won't take them back," he said harshly, brushing her hand from him, "if you won't wear them, keep them. Hide them, throw them away. I'm done with them. I can't wear them any more since that afternoon in Nieuport."

Hilda pinned the ribbons upon his coat.

"I decorate you," she said, "for, verily, you are now worthy."

THE BELGIAN REFUGEE

By acts not his own, his consciousness is crowded with horror. Names of his ancient cities which should ring pleasantly in his ear--Louvain, Dinant, Malines: there is an echo of the sound of bells in the very names--recall him to his suffering. No indemnity will cleanse his mind of the vileness committed on what he loved. By every aspect of a once-prized beauty, the face of his torment is made more clear. Of all that fills the life of memory--the secure home, the fruitful village and the well-loved land--there is no acre remaining where his thought can rest. Each remembered place brings a sharper stroke of poignancy to the mind that is dispossessed.

His is a mental life uprooted and flung out into a vast loneliness. Where can his thought turn when it would heal itself? To the disconsolate there has always been comfort in recalling the early home where childhood was nourished, the orchard and the meadow where first love came to the meeting, the eager city where ambition, full-panoplied, sprang from the brain. The mind is hung with pictures of what once was. But there must always be a local habitation for these rekindled heats. Somewhere, in scene and setting, the boy played, the youth loved, the man struggled. That richness of feeling is interwoven with a place. No passion or gladness comes out of the buried years without some bit of the soil clinging to it.

Now, in a passing autumn, for a nation of people, all places are alike to them bitter in the recollection. The Belgian, disinherited, can never summon a presence out of the past which will not, in its coming, bring burning and slaughter. All that was fair in his consciousness has been seared with horror. Where can he go to be at home? To England? To a new continent? What stranger-city will give him back his memories? He is condemned forever to live in the moment, never to let his mind stray over the past. For, in the past, in gracious prospect, lie village and city of Flanders, and the name of the ravaged place will suddenly release a cloud of darkness with voices of pain.

III

ROLLO, THE APOLLO

Mrs. Bracher was just starting on one of her excursions from Pervyse into Furnes. Her tiny first-aid hospital, hidden in the battered house, needed food, clothing, and dressings for the wounded. One morning when the three nurses were up in the trenches, a shell had dug down into their cellar and spilled ruin. Now, it is not well to live in a place which a gun has located, because modern artillery is fine in its workings to a hair's-breadth, and can repeat its performance to a fractional inch. So the little household had removed themselves from the famous cellar to a half-shattered house, which had one whole living-room on the ground floor, good for wounded and for the serving of meals; and one unbroken bedroom on the first floor, large enough for three tired women.

"Any errands, girls?" she called to her two assistants as she mounted to her seat on the motor ambulance.

"Bring me a man," begged Hilda. "Bring back some one to stir things up."

Indeed, it had been slow for the nurses during the last fortnight. They were "at the front," but the front was peaceful. After the hot toil of the autumn attack and counter-attack, there had come a deadlock to the wearied troops. They were eaten up with the chill of the moist earth, and the perpetual drizzle. So they laid by their machine guns, and silently wore through the grey days.

Victor, the orderly, cranked the engine for Mrs. Bracher, and she hummed merrily away. She drove the car. She was not going to have any fumbling male hand spoil that sweetly running motor. She had chosen the battle-front in Flanders as the perfect place for vindicating woman's courage, coolness, and capacity for roughing it. She was determined to leave not one quality of initiative and daring to man's monopoly. If he had worn a decoration for some "nervy" hazardous trait, she came prepared to pluck it from his swelling pride, cut it in two pieces and wear her half of it.