“Rupert, you are hurt!” she cried, and flashed the light out.
“Mind the ventilation holes!” he said, but not before she and Gill had both seen what he was doing. He was trying to tie something round an ankle that looked all a red mess.
“It’s nothing,” he asserted. “One of their beastly bullets has smashed the bone up a bit— if you could just fix it, so that I can get on now. …”
Again Gillian had cause to wonder at Carina’s courage. She made Gill hold the light close and herself handled the split bone, though Gill guessed it made her sick to hurt Rupert-George as she was doing. A kind of splint was improvised from the stiff lining of her motor bonnet, and Rupert-George, with a fine disregard for truth, announced himself very comfortable, and insisted upon hobbling on, the moment she had finished the rough-and-ready bandage with handkerchiefs under her motor veil.
They went on, through that tomb-like passage, till Gill began to feel as though this dreadful journey had been going on for more hours than she could count.
The passage was hardly ever high enough for even Carina, the shortest of the three, to stand upright—as to Rupert-George, he was doubled in two the whole way, as he hobbled painfully on, with the help of Carina’s arm. Gill had the torch, and went in front, holding it so as to guide the two behind. Its light showed her walls of great stones, with earth between. Here and there earth had caved in, but this underground passage had been made by someone who understood his business. Gill wondered in what troublous times it had been excavated, and whether there had ever been more need for it than there was now. Nothing else could have saved them, with Cartaret wounded and the searchlights of the enemy all around. It had been a near, a terribly near thing; but at the other end of that interminable passage was an English-held village. Nothing really mattered in that knowledge.
So Rupert-George seemed to think. His voice was remarkably cheerful as he struggled on by Carina’s side. His one anxiety now, he assured her, was lest ill-luck should have sent his own C.O. to Yssonnek!
“The only person that you seem to be afraid of!” said Carina.
“Not at all. There is someone else whom I am going to be much more afraid of presently,” Rupert-George assured her. “Carina, I’ve got something to confess to you, and I rather think I had better hurry up and do it.”
“Do you want me to get out of hearing?” Gill asked, turning her head. She hurried her footsteps a little and blundered straight into a heavy wooden door, clamped with iron.
“Oh, I say! I believe we’re there!” she cried. Confessions might wait till they could breathe properly again.
“By Jove! I believe you’re right—I didn’t know we were so near,” Cartaret said eagerly.
“Shall I open the door?”
“Wait a second. I’m coming. You don’t know what’s behind it!”
Gill stood by the door, fumbling with her free hand to see if there were bolt or latch of any kind. The solid wood had actually mouldered away from the iron clamping in more than one place, she noticed, and she held the torch low, lest its light should shine through. Not that it could really matter now, when the old door gave the entry to an English-held village; but caution had almost become second nature.
Rupert-George took the torch away from her, and pushed the knob back so as to leave the passage in darkness. It was not quite the utter darkness that Gill had expected, however—something came through the chinks in the old door; a faint pale light. And something else came too; now that the three in the passage were standing still and silent, almost against the door, they heard it—a curious sound that seemed like an oddly monotonous voice.
Cartaret hobbled in front of the two girls, and put his shoulder to the door. It opened, wheezily, but only a little way. Gill, looking over Cartaret’s shoulder, saw that a pile of wood was heaped before the door upon the other side, and it was that which hindered it from opening fully, and also shielded it and themselves from observation from within.
The curious monotonous sound that they had noticed before the door was open was much clearer now, and Gill knew that it was a faint and toneless voice, that said something over and over again, with unvarying regularity.
“Notre Père qui être aux cieux … que votre volonté soit faite au terre … comme dans le ciel. …”
Rupert-George listened for a moment to that odd toneless voice with a troubled frown; then he began to move the logs very quietly, so that he could see into the room.
Carina slipped her hand into Gill’s as they stood together behind him. An inexplicable uneasiness was with them both.
The moon had risen while the fugitives had been making their slow and painful way through that interminable passage, and what its light, coming through high gratings on a level with the street, showed, as the logs were moved, was a sight that Gill would never forget while she lived. Unconsciously, she moved a little to one side in the hope that she might be in time to stand between it and Carina.
It was an old, a very old priest who was praying—he was crouching against the wall of the cellar as though he had tried to kneel upright and was not able to do so. His cassock was ripped in many places, and it was soaked with blood. At least three ghastly bayonet wounds were visible through its tattered folds.
But it was not that sight, frightful though it was, that burnt itself most upon Gillian’s brain; it was something else.
Exactly opposite to the wood-stack and the door was the naked body of a tiny baby, fastened to the wall by an enormous nail driven right through the breast into an interstice between two stones, fixing the little form like a ferret to a barn door.
Against the wood-stack lay the body of a woman. Her poor mouth was propped horribly wide by a brutal gag of wood; her body was crushed down beneath a heavy log. Her eyes, staring terribly, held in their once soft blueness a look of stony terror awful to behold.
Gill heard Cartaret say something quickly under his breath. Then he pushed the door to sharply, almost in the faces of the two girls, and crept through the opening he had made in the wood-stack. They heard him speak. “Father, for God’s sake, what does this mean? Who holds this village?”
There was a second’s pause of sickening suspense before the old priest answered him.
“This morning the English. Now again the Germans. Behold their work!”
CHAPTER XXIX
S.O.S.
It was Carina who took action in those first terrible moments of realisation, when Gill felt too desperately sick to stir or speak in the sheer horror of it, and even Cartaret had nothing to say.
Gill thought that she would always remember how Carina put her arm round her and told her they must both be brave and able to help Captain Cartaret now, instead of letting him do everything for them. Then she pushed the door resolutely open and squeezed through the hole in the wood-pile where Cartaret had gone first.
Gill followed her, with eyes averted from the poor young mother, dead there by the pile. She was fighting desperately not to shiver.
It looked as though even the cheery and resourceful Rupert-George had come to the end of his tether for the moment. Gill guessed that the knowledge that he only had to last out for a short time had had a good deal to do towards making that journey possible for his shattered ankle. Now that the looked-for safety had slipped away beyond his grasp to an illimitable distance, he seemed to have come quite suddenly to the end of his powers.
There was a small cask standing on end against the wall; he had sat down upon it, his head in his hands.
Carina went straight to him, laying her hand on his shoulder.
“Rupert, do not be troubled for me—for us. I am assured that God, who has brought us safely through so many perils, has us in His keeping still. Perhaps the English will retake the village once more.”
Rupert-George raised his head and caught Carina’s fingers, kissing them passionately.
“You’re an angel,” Gill heard him say, and then he seemed to recover himself to a considerable extent.
He hobbled over to the old priest and helped him into an easier position, making the Hun’s victim sip a little brandy from the silver flask he carried in his pocket. To deal with the terrible injuries the old man had suffered was a hopeless task; he could only try to staunch the blood a little; even Gill’s inexperience knew instinctively that the end was very near.
But the stimulant revived the old man a little, and in broken faltering accents he told of the poor young mother, whom he had married only a year ago in the church of which German shells had left so little standing. He had found her lying in a shattered house, too ill to move when the villagers had fled from the German advance, and had carried her to his cellar, where, twenty-four hours ago, her baby had been born.
“She did so well,” the old man said, “and when the English took the village we thought that her troubles were wellnigh ended, pool soul. An English Tommee stand godfather to the baby, and tell her that he look out for her husband that fight in the Belgian army, and when the war is over he will send his godson English toys. We christen him George, after the English king … we are gay and happy … and then the Germans come … the Tommee that know we are in the cellar he is killed … and presently there come soldiers that are not like the English. No! … they regard it all as a jest that she is fearful for her little baby … they bring their officers to share the jest, and seek to make her think that they will kill the child. … By and by there come an officer that is but just arrived in Yssonnek. He is worse than all the rest. Ah! he is a bad, cruel young man, and in an evil temper also. He take delight in torment, and he have the poor young mother gagged, and nail her tender baby to the wall before her eyes. My prayers and entreaties are of no avail, and are met with thrusts of the bayonet by order of the Prince Waldemar …”
“Prince Waldemar!” The exclamation broke simultaneously from the three horrified listeners gathered round the dying man, and then Cartaret glanced rather grimly from Carina to his damaged ankle, and then back again to the girl he loved. Gill guessed what he was thinking: Waldemar here, in Yssonnek, and he practically powerless to protect her.
Carina looked up from her task—she had taken the baby’s body from the wall, while Cartaret was busy with the old priest, and had laid it in the mother’s arms. Now she was straightening the torn, disturbed nightdress and folding the poor swollen fingers over the baby’s form.
She spoke, with a little flush staining the whiteness of her face, but with an entire freedom from self-consciousness.
“Rupert, if Waldemar is here, let me be your wife before he finds us!”
Her pure eyes met his over the body of the woman whose sex and suffering had not saved her from the brutality of the man who was hunting down these fugitives.
Cartaret put his arm around her and drew her close to him, his lips quivering a little.
“Together, then, whether it is life or death before us, my darling!”
Gill had often thought of the wonderful pageant that the wedding of Insterburg’s Grand-Duchess would be. She could never, in her wildest dreams, have imagined the scene as it was actually set—the moonlit cellar, the dead bodies of the mother and her baby by the wood-stack—the dying priest, held up by herself against her shoulder to give him breath and strength to pronounce the service—the bride and bridegroom muddy, wet, dishevelled, kneeling as close as possible that they might catch the faltering words. And yet this was the manner in which Carina of Insterburg gave herself to the man she loved, for life, death, and eternity.
The queer dream-like sensation had returned to Gill, perhaps because she was so very tired. She was conscious of all that happened, only nothing seemed quite real. Probably part of this inertness was due to the noxious atmosphere of the passage in which she had been so long: though there were sounds overhead that made her wonder how long the cellar would prove a shelter, she really dreaded to be disturbed even from her cramped position supporting the old priest.
It was over at last—exchange of rings and all; Carina placing upon her finger Cartaret’s plain signet ring, where it hung loosely; Cartaret forcing with difficulty on the third finger of his left hand the magnificent diamond, which was the only ring that she had worn in her flight. They were man and wife—Marie Estella Carina Victoria and Rupert Alexander Edward—and then, while Gill was still trying to realise that astounding fact, she was conscious of a shadow at the grating, as someone in the street above peered down.
“Oh, look!” she gasped, and as she spoke the shadow was withdrawn.
Rupert-George had been kneeling nearest to the grating, but his back was turned to it. “What is it?” he asked quickly.
Carina held his sleeve. ‘Don’t move. We cannot be seen, I think, and if … there are always your last bullets for Gill and me.”
Cartaret clapped his hand to his pocket. “My revolver! it isn’t here. I must have let it fall that last time we halted. I fancied I heard something go, I remember now; fool that I was not to look!”
He had called a halt at that particular time, because he was too faint to go on, Gill fancied, but there was no time for finding excuses now.
“I think I remember; if you would light that stump of candle for me I would go and fetch it,” she volunteered. “No one seems coming, but I suppose we ought to be ready, and even if you could hobble, we couldn’t stay long in the passage.”
But before she could lay the old priest gently down Carina had caught up the candle, which was lying with a box of matches close beside the cask, which would seem to have been the Curé’s table in his hiding-place.
“No, Gill dear, that is my part,” she said, with authority, and crept through the opening in the wood-pile before either could stop her.
“Hadn’t I better take your torch and go after her?” Gill asked. “It’s a long way, you know, and the candle might blow out, and anyhow it’s hateful in that stuffy place alone.”
“No, she wouldn’t wish it,” Cartaret told her decisively, and then they were both quiet for a little. The old priest had ceased to groan and was lying back with closed eyes, his white head on Gill’s knee. Gill calculated that, with a guttering candle which must be shielded, Carina must take fully half an hour, probably more, to get to the place and back, and in the meantime there was nothing to be done but wait. There were no more alarms at the grating; but Cartaret dragged himself to the foot of the cellar steps and sat there, listening intently.
So perhaps ten minutes passed.
Gill was half asleep in the relief of inaction, when Cartaret’s strained, whispered words roused her with a jump. “Quick, Gill, into the passage!”
She looked down at the old priest. She knew too much about German treatment of the wounded and the dying. “Quick! I’ll see to him,” Cartaret urged almost angrily, as he came stumbling and shuffling to her side, and then Gill obeyed, flinging herself into the opening of the wood-pile at a headlong pace.
She looked back once, to see that Cartaret had got the old priest somehow gathered in his arms and was dragging him towards the wood-pile. Then all three were to take shelter—but would there be time? She saw that Cartaret was pushing the wood together behind him; then he put his burden into her hands. Carina had left the passage door ajar; Gill had the old priest very near to it, when, with a loud crash, the cellar door gave and a too-familiar voice cried, “Fire! There is something moving in the wood-stack.”
A bullet whizzed past Cartaret and buried itself in the old priest’s heart. He slipped down in Gill’s arms without a groan.
Cartaret did not wait for another bullet, nor for a search of the wood-stack. One tug of his hand seemed to Gill to bring down a whole avalanche of wood upon and in front of her. Bruised and dazed she was only just conscious of one thing, that he was crawling out. She heard him speak.
“Right-o, Von Posen—you needn’t waste your bullets. I’m unarmed and damaged and alone.”
Gill heard Von Posen’s guttural chuckle of satisfaction.
“It was you, then, I saw? Unarmed; w
e’ll see about that. Turn out his pockets! Purse, watch, flask—sterling silver, is it? I’ll keep all those, my flask is only plated. A photograph of the pretty Carina—that won’t mend your case with Waldemar—ah, Albrecht, go at once and acquaint His Imperial Highness that I have laid hands upon Cartaret the Englishman. An electric torch—I’ve no room in my pocket for that—you may keep it. No, no revolver; you were speaking truth, it seems. We’ll see if you were equally accurate about the wound; undo his ankle—there’s no need to be tender with you, Captain Cartaret—and while Hans here is finding out how much you are damaged I’ll just investigate your shelter in the wood-stack, and see if you were truthful too in saying that you are alone here.”
“Ah, do, there’s a good chap,” Cartaret begged, with a presence of mind that electrified Gill. “I’ve got the old curé dead there—your bullet got him as I was trying to save him from your fellows. You might have him out and give him decent burial—he’s done you no harm.”
Von Posen—Gill guessed he was almost at the wood-stack—must have stopped, for the sound of clanking, spurred footsteps ceased. “Himmel! do you suppose I care what happens to Belgian carrion?” he asked brutally, and Gill realised her frightful peril just as it was safely averted.
But Rupert-George was a prisoner in the hands of the Huns and Carina would be coming back before long. Gill felt that she must know what happened, and moved a very little, holding her breath, till her eyes found a chink in the stack through which she could see into the cellar.
Rupert-George was on his back on the floor, opposite the wood-pile, with Von Posen kneeling on his chest. A stolid soldier was engaged in dragging off Carina’s bandage from the injured ankle. Almost as Gill looked there was a hateful sneering laugh and Prince Waldemar appeared in the cellar doorway.
Von Posen got off his victim’s chest and sprang to attention. Cartaret spoke easily enough, though there was a straight line drawn between his eyebrows and hardly any colour in his face.
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