Part 39 (1/2)
He drew off both shoes, descended the stairs on the flat pads of his large, bony feet, listening all the while.
Candle-light streamed out into the corridor from her open bedroom door; and he crept to the sill and peered in, searching the place with small, pale eyes.
At first he noticed nothing to interest him, then, all in an instant, his gaze fell upon Madam Death under her prison of gla.s.s.
There she sat, her great bulging abdomen distended with eggs, her lambent eyes s.h.i.+ning with the terrible pa.s.sion of antic.i.p.ation. For one thing only she had been created. That accomplished she died. And there she crouched awaiting the fulfillment of her life's cycle with the blazing eyes of a demon.
From the cafe below came the cautious murmur of voices. The young man already knew what they were whispering about; or, if he did not know he no longer cared.
The patches of bright colour in his sunken cheeks had died out in an ashen pallor. As far as he was concerned the world was now ended. And he knew it.
He went into the bedroom and sat down on the bed's edge. His little, pale eyes wandered about the white room; the murmur of voices below was audible all the while.
After a few moments' patient waiting, his gaze rested again on Madam Death, squatting there with wings sloped, and the skull and bones staring at him from her head and distended abdomen.
After all there was an odd resemblance between himself and Madam Death. He had been born to fulfill one function, it appeared. So had she. And now, in his case as in hers, death was immediately to follow. This was sentiment, not science--the blind lobe of the German brain balancing grotesquely the reasoning lobe.
The voices below had ceased. Presently he heard a cautious step on the stair.
He had a little pill-box in his pocket. Methodically, without haste, he drew it out, chose one white pellet, and, holding it between his bony thumb and forefinger, listened.
Yes, somebody was coming up the stairs, very careful to make no sound.
Well--there were various ways for a Death's Head Hussar to die for his War Lord. All were equally laudable. G.o.d--the G.o.d of Germany--the celestial friend and comrade of his War Lord--would presently correct him if he was transgressing military discipline or the etiquette of Kultur. As for the levelled rifles of the execution squad, he preferred another way....
_This_ way!...
His eyes were already glazing when the burly form of Sticky Smith filled the doorway.
He looked down at Madam Death under the tumbler beside him, then lifted his head and gazed at Smith with blinded eyes.
”Swine!” he said complacently, swaying gently forward and striking the floor with his face.
CHAPTER XXIV
BUBBLES
An east wind was very likely to bring gas to the trenches north of the Sainte Lesse salient. A north wind, according to season, brought snow or rain or fog upon British, French, Belgian and Boche alike. Winds of the south carried distant exhalations from orchards and green fields into the pitted waste of ashes where that monstrous desolation stretched away beneath a thundering iron rain which beat all day, all night upon the dead flesh of the world.
But the west wind was the vital wind, flowing melodiously through the trees--a clean, aromatic, refres.h.i.+ng wind, filling the sickened world with life again.
Sometimes, too, it brought the pleasant music of the bells into far-away trenches, when the little bell-mistress of Sainte Lesse played the carillon. And when her friend, the great bell, Bayard, spoke through the resounding sky of France to a million men-at-arms in blue and steel, who were steadily forging h.e.l.l's manacles for the uncaged Hun, the loyal western wind carried far beyond the trenches an ominous iron vibration that meant doom for the Beast.
And the Beast heard, leering skyward out of pale pig-eyes, but did not comprehend.
At the base corral down in the meadow, mules had been scarce recently, because a transport had been torpedoed. But the next transport from New Orleans escaped; the dusty column had arrived at Sainte Lesse from the Channel port, convoyed by American muleteers, as usual; new mules, new negroes, new Yankee faces invaded the town once more.