Bretherton

by Morris, W. F. ;

  Invitations to dine at the beautiful house in Godesberg were coveted by every officer in Cologne, but they were given sparingly; and the only man who was pressed to come whenever he wished, never used his privilege. Colonel von Wahnheim was too busy for petticoat soldiering, he said. The beautiful Duchess he had never seen, and he could not forgive her the demoralization she had caused among his staff.

  VI

  Late one evening some documents requiring immediate attention arrived unexpectedly at the Headquarters in Cologne. They concerned matters that came under the control of Lieutenant von Arnberg, and Colonel von Wahnheim informed that young man that he would have to stay probably the greater part of the night. The sudden look of consternation that flitted across his subordinate’s face caused von Wahnheim to exclaim sharply, “Well, what is the matter? Cannot be helped, you know. War.”

  “I know, sir, but…”

  “But what?”

  “Nothing, sir.’

  The Colonel looked at his subordinate keenly and then asked more kindly, “What is it Leo? Tell me.”

  “My sister, sir.”

  The Colonel frowned. “Look here, Arnberg, I am getting a little tired of your sister. Since the Duchess has been here the efficiency of my staff has deteriorated nearly fifty per cent. There is only one job for a woman in war-time, and that is rearing sons to be soldiers. If she cannot let my officers get on with their jobs, she must go.”

  Young Arnberg flushed all over his handsome face. The Colonel laid his hand on the younger man’s shoulder.

  “Sorry, Leo,” he said. “I am sure it is not her fault; but we have got to get on with the war, and men are such fools where women are concerned. But what has she to do with this job of yours?”

  “I shall not be able to take her home,” replied Leo von Arnberg.

  The Colonel swung round on him sharply. “From all I hear you will not have any difficulty in finding a substitute,” he retorted.

  “That’s just it, sir.”

  “Well!”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  Colonel von Wahnheim walked across the room, and then, turning back, saw that von Arnberg had not moved and was still standing rigidly to attention.

  “Damn it all!” exclaimed the Colonel. “You don’t expect me to take her home!”

  “It is very good of you to suggest it, sir,” replied young Arnberg imperturbably.

  Von Wahnheim stared at his subordinate in amazement. “Suggest it!” he echoed. “Well…!”

  “You see, sir,” continued von Arnberg, “there is only about one man in a hundred I would trust with a woman—such as Sonia.”

  Von Wahnheim looked grim, and then suddenly he laughed. “And I am the one in a hundred, eh?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You are right, Arnberg. I have no time for women.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “All right, I will take her back. You are right to be careful of your sister with these young scoundrels of mine. When and where shall I fetch her?”

  Lieutenant von Arnberg overwhelmed his chief with gratitude. He picked up the telephone and gave the number of a fashionable hotel. “Please tell the Duchess of Wittelsberg-Strelitz I wish to speak to her,” von Wahnheim heard him say. “Hullo, Sonia! Leo speaking. I cannot get away to take you back to-night; lot of stuff just come in and must be attended to. But Colonel von Wahnheim has kindly offered to do so.”

  “Offered!” exclaimed von Wahnheim.

  “Do not keep him waiting,” continued von Arnberg. “He will be there in half an hour. What? Yes, isn’t it! Good-bye.”

  Colonel von Wahnheim’s car stopped outside the hotel. He did not enter the building, but sent a message to the Duchess. He was gratified to find that she obeyed her brother’s warning not to keep him waiting. In a very short time she appeared, surrounded by a throng of admirers, and von Wahnheim, seeing her for the first time standing in the lighted portico at the top of the hotel steps, decided that report as to her beauty had not lied. He held open the door of the car for her to enter, and then followed and sank on to the seat beside her. The car slid silently across the deserted Dom Platz and down to the Rhine bank.

  “It was very good of you to come.” Her voice came from beside him in the darkness. He was aware of a faint perfume and a pale shimmer of white. “That is not conventional gratitude,” she continued, guessing his thoughts. “I really mean it. Do you hate it very much?”

  “I am sure that any of my officers would give three months’ pay to change places with me now,” he countered.

  “Perhaps. But one man’s meat is another man’s poison.”

  His grim face relaxed in the darkness. “I am not expected to be polite then?” he asked.

  “Heaven forbid! I would much prefer to quarrel with you. Nobody ever quarrels with me. They agree with everything I say and do. They deny their most sacred vows to agree with me. Everything I say or do is right. It is like being God. I think God must get very tired of being omniscient. He must long sometimes for an incorrigible heretic to argue with. Perhaps that is why He created Satan.”

  Von Wahnheim laughed softly.

  “Yes, I should prefer to quarrel with you,” she sighed. “But really we have more in common than one might think. I am told that you always say what you think—and so do I. You dislike women, and I dislike men—particularly the Prussian officer type. Will not you quarrel with me over that?”

  “Why that type particularly?” he asked amusedly.

  “They are so polite and yet so brutal,” she answered; “so callous and so sentimental; so fond of heroics, swaggering, and sword-rattling. Ugh! Nasty little boys!”

  “And your own countrymen, what of them?”

  “All men are insupportable, but some are more so than others. My own countrymen are perhaps a degree better.”

  “And who are the least insupportable?”

  “It is a choice of evils. The English or Americans, I think. Most of them are boors, but a few are nice—as men go.”

  “But this is treason! They are our deadly foes,” exclaimed von Wahnheim with mock horror.

  “And the unspeakable Turk is our very dear friend!” she retorted.

  Von Wahnheim shrugged his shoulders. “He is a good soldier,” he apologized.

  “No doubt—he excels in destructiveness. I don’t admire his treatment of women.”

  “Autres pays, autres mœurs, you know,” misquoted von Wahnheim tolerantly. “You prefer your English and Americans?”

  “They treat one as a human being—neither as a chattel nor a Chinese joss. You don’t like them?”

  He made an expressive gesture with his hands. “The English are our bitter enemies. It is my duty to hate them.”

  “Man, the master of his fate, the captain of his soul!” she cried mockingly. “But you liked the Englishman who shared your rooms in Berlin.”

  “Shared my rooms in Berlin!” he echoed in surprise.

  The Duchess laughed softly. “This is not the first time we have met, Colonel.”

  “Ah, this shirking memory of mine! One could hardly forget such an occasion. But tell me, where did we meet before? I go about picking up fragments of my past history like a dog nosing for scraps.”

  “It was a long time ago, in Berlin. I was staying there with my father during my school holidays. You came to dinner and brought the Englishman with you. What was his name? I have have forgotten it.”

  “But you have the advantage of me. I do not even remember the man, much less his name,” replied von Wahnheim whimsically.

  “I am sorry. Forgive me.” Her voice betrayed real sympathy for his affliction. “I do not remember his name, and I did not remember your name either. I remember the incident because you and the Englishman were so alike. And yet you were so different. You were the stiff, bowing, polite Prussian officer, and he was the reserved, rather charming English boy. And yet you were so alike facially. It amused me. I liked him much better than you. He seemed like—like your real self surprised on a hol
iday.”

  “I sit an interested spectator of my own shortcomings,” smiled von Wahnheim. “This wretched memory of mine! What was he, this Englishman, do you know?”

  “No. I saw you both that evening only. It was only that incongruous resemblance that caused the incident to remain in my memory. He played the piano very well and had a good voice—delightful little songs he sang, but at that time I did not understand English well enough to follow them. He will be fighting on the other side now!”

  “Probably. And if we meet, I shall not know him.”

  “But he will know you.”

  “The chances of meeting are small.”

  “Very.”

  The car was travelling swiftly over the tree-bordered road between Bonn and Godesberg. A full moon sailed above a silver-edged cloud, shimmering on the broad surface of the Rhine that lay upon the left and silhouetting the black scalloped mass of the Seven Mountains ahead. They were travelling without lights, for Allied aircraft had been reported approaching the river. Von Wahnheim was staring abstractedly at the broad back of the chauffeur that cut darkly across the front windows of the car.

  Suddenly his eye caught a rapidly moving sparkle of moonlight on the road close ahead. Something dark shot past the window, and there came a brief sharp sound of rending metal. The car swerved with a violence that flung the Duchess against his shoulder; it shot precariously between the trees that bordered the road; slithered uncertainly upon the gleaming electric tramrails beyond; slowed; recovered; and bumped gently over the grass back between the trees on to the road again.

  Mumbling maledictions against the other car, the driver climbed out into the road. Von Wahnheim opened the door and found him surveying the twisted shred of metal that had been one of the rear wings.

  “Narrow shave, that,” said Von Wahnheim.

  The Duchess had followed him from the car, and as he turned, a sharp cry escaped her lips. The hand that held the cloak shot up towards her throat, revealing the shimmering evening gown beneath, and her head with its helmet of tawny hair tilted backwards till the moonlight fell upon her face. Von Wahnheim saw that it was very pale and that her eyes were closed. He took a quick step forward and caught her as she swayed.

  “Lend a hand,” he cried to the chauffeur. “She has fainted.”

  He lowered her gently upon the rug the man spread beneath the trees whose trunks striped the silver river with sombre bars. Slowly the colour crept back to the pale cheeks in response to their efforts. Her eyes opened, and she smiled wryly at the man kneeling beside her.

  “You a shirking memory: I a shirking heart,” she murmured in a strangled voice.

  He helped her to her feet, and she stood a moment holding to his sleeve for support.

  “It is nothing,” she said presently in her natural voice. “I am all right now.”

  He helped her into the car, and they rode for some minutes in silence.

  “It was unselfish of you to bring me back to-night,” she said at last; “and therefore I am the more distressed that this foolish infirmity of mine should have obtruded itself and embarrassed you.”

  He made a vague motion with his hand. “Dear lady,” he said, “I am willing to quarrel with you over anything in reason, but with regard to our infirmities I would like to be friends.”

  She held out her hand to him impulsively, and he gripped it. “Thank you,” she said.

  He left her at the doorway of the rose-covered palace overlooking the Rhine, and presently was speeding back towards Cologne.

  VII

  Contrary to the expectations of many of the younger officers, Colonel von Wahnheim’s night ride with the Duchess worked no change, outwardly at least, in his character or habits. His robot-like personality persisted. As before, he shunned dances, dinners, and the society of women. He lived only for his work. And his work was meeting with recognition. The doctors pronounced him sound in body and in mind, sound as an intelligent animal is sound. Spiritually he was maimed; but with the abstract they were not concerned. He was fit for active service again, and the high command, satisfied with his work at Cologne, appointed him Chief Staff Officer to a division on the Western Front. He said good-bye to his only friend, Lieutenant Leo von Arnberg, promising to do all that was possible to get that young man a post on his staff, and set his face westwards, where eight million fighting men strove in the fields of France and Flanders, and the sullen voices of the guns echoed from the Alps to the sea.

  He had no conscious remembrance of his former service on the Western Front, yet it seemed that the tree-girdled château that was Divisional Headquarters, the straight, white, poplar-bordered road, and the colourless jungle grass that flourished over the forward area as stubble upon an unshaven chin, were all familiar. And at the end of a week he was performing his duties with the sureness and confidence of a veteran.

  He was a tireless worker, efficient and imperturbable. He was unmoved either by success or failure, uninfluenced by the deflecting magnetics of fear, glory, or sentiment—a machine that worked smoothly in circumstances and amid surroundings that caused less perfect mechanism to function irregularly. From many points of view he was the ideal staff-officer; and the General considered himself very fortunate in having such a subordinate in those days, when, as he affirmed, the army was going to the dogs.

  The divisional front faced the Vimy Ridge, that long, low, war-scarred hill that stretched north of Arras to the Lens coalfields. A few weeks previously the British had concentrated troops in the cellars of the city and had launched that great offensive known as the Third Battle of Arras. North of the city the Canadian Corps had swept over the coveted ridge and down the other side. Bad weather, however, and its attendant transport difficulties had slowed this offensive as it had done so many others, and finally brought it to a halt. Both the British and German front lines now lay at the foot of the ridge on the plain that stretched eastward to Douai, and it was the opinion of the Higher Command that no further thrust would be made in this sector.

  Von Wahnheim’s General, however, did not share the opinion of his superiors. He believed that the comparative quietness of his front was but a lull preceding another great offensive by the British. He was therefore anxious to obtain identification of the units facing him. But attempts to gain prisoners for this purpose had been unsuccessful. The first raid had found the trenches unoccupied, a discovery that increased the General’s uneasiness. The second raid had been driven back without reaching the enemy’s trench. A third was planned, and, to ensure its success, Colonel von Wahnheim was to direct operations from the German front line.

  VIII

  Colonel von Wahnheim dined early at Divisional Headquarters and then drove through the gathering dusk to the trenches. Night was falling when he reached the front line. Before him the dark swell of the Vimy Ridge lay outlined against the fast-falling, pearly-grey, after-sunset light; behind stretched the shadowed plain merging into the purple sky. Overhead two weary planes droned home to roost and left the sky deserted in the after-twilight hour before the black, night-bombing planes set out upon their errands of destruction. From behind the fast-vanishing outline of the ridge a gun banged occasionally, and the fast, high-travelling shell passed overhead with a noise like that of a tube train leaving a tunnel and detonated grumpily and with a smothered flash in the darkness behind. The cool night breeze carried intermittently the sound of distant wheels and hoofs, the ration parties on the roads behind.

  The night was dark and quiet. Verey lights rose and fell languidly, casting ghostly running shadows on the rugged ground. The three officers and fifty men of the raiding party stood with blackened faces in the fire-trench awaiting the crash of the box-barrage that would be the signal for them to set out. Colonel von Wahnheim in the close-fitting regulation steel helmet stood in the angle of a traverse, watch in hand. In a few seconds now it would begin.

  It began. The darkness behind him was slit by a multitude of flashes as of summer lightning; a rolling of big drums b
roke from the silent plain, and with a noise like that of a covey of birds the first shells tore overhead and detonated in spouts of flame on the British line. The raiding party climbed out, were seen intermittently as dark moving figures against the orange shell-bursts, and disappeared.

  Von Wahnheim in the angle of the traverse, straining his eyes across no-man’s-land, saw little spits of fire punctuate the shell flashes, and heard the vicious crack of rifles and the hurried stutter of Lewis guns. Bullets smacked into the parapet, twanged vibrantly on the rusty wire, hissed viciously across the trench. Verey lights soared up in endless procession. A rocket traced a dull line of sparks against the blackness of the ridge and broke into a pendant of coloured lights that floated for a few moments and was extinguished jewel by jewel. The moments fled by.

  Three figures loomed up above the trench. The raiding party returning—too soon. They had met a pitiless fire; their officers were dead; they had become entangled in wire; they had not reached the British trench. Other figures drifted back, limped back, crawled back. The noise continued: hundreds of blocks of stone rolling down a wooden stairway; and the fireworks—kaleidoscopic flashes, ever shifting and multi-coloured, white, orange, blood-red.

  Colonel von Wahnheim collected a score of unwounded survivors of the raid, issued fresh bombs, and led them back over the top. Shells were now bursting in no-man’s-land and on the German front line, the artillery support for which the attacked had signalled. A Lewis gun was traversing, and its bullets went hissing and whispering into the darkness. Some of von Wahnheim’s men were hit, but the little party moved steadily forward under the eye of their leader. Ten yards from the British trench they were greeted with a burst of rapid fire, and several men fell. Von Wahnheim, pistol in hand, led on the remainder at the double. More men fell; he could not tell how many. One man outstripped him to the enemy’s parapet and took a flying leap into the trench. Von Wahnheim saw the narrow gulley open up in front of him and the pale flicker of a Verey light on three or four wet, shining steel helmets and tense white faces. He fired twice at the faces and two of them sank from view. And then he jumped.