Part 21 (1/2)

”All right, dear,” said the vicar; ”this is Madame Brandes, who is staying with the Whitakers. She wants to consult me on some personal matter.” Then he turned to Dr. Reynolds. ”Well, doctor; how do you find our boy?”

”Quite all right. Quite all right,” said the doctor. ”We shall have him up and playing football again in no time. It is nothing but a strained tendon. Absolutely nothing at all.”

Mrs. Yule had gone towards Louise with outstretched hand. ”How do you do? I am glad to meet you,” she said cordially. ”You will stay for tea with us, I hope. My daughter, too, will be so pleased to see you.

Not”--she added, with a little break in her voice--”that she really can see you. Perhaps you have heard that my dear daughter is blind.”

”Blind!” Like a tidal wave the sorrow of the world seemed to overwhelm Louise. She felt that the sadness of life was too great to be borne.

”Blind,” she said. Then she covered her face and burst into tears.

Mrs. Yule's maternal heart melted; her maternal eyes noted the broken att.i.tude, the tell-tale line of the figure! she stepped quickly forward, holding out both her hands.

”Come, my dear; sit down. Will you let me take your hat off? This English weather is so trying if one is not used to it,” murmured Mrs.

Yule with Anglo-Saxon shyness before the stranger's unexpected display of feeling, while the two men turned away and talked together near the window. Mrs. Yule pressed Louise's black-gloved hand in hers. What though this outburst were due, as it probably was, to the woman's condition, to her overwrought nerves, or to who knows what grief and misery of her own? The fact remained--and Mrs. Yule never forgot it--that this storm of tears was evoked by the news of her dear child's affliction. Mrs. Yule's heart was touched.

”You are Belgian, I know,” she said in French, sitting down beside Louise and taking one of the black-gloved hands in her own. ”I myself was at school in Brussels.” And indeed her French was perfect, with just a little touch of Walloon closing the vowels in some of her words. ”I would have called on you long ago--I would have asked you to make friends with my daughter whose affliction has so distressed your kind heart; but as you may have heard, my boy met with an accident, and I have not left the house for many days.... Do wait a moment, Dr.

Reynolds,” she added as the doctor approached to bid her good-bye. And turning to Louise she introduced him to her as ”the kindest of friends and the best of doctors.”

”We have met,” said Dr. Reynolds, shaking hands with Louise and looking keenly into her face with his piercing, short-sighted eyes. ”Madame Brandes's little daughter,” he added, turning to Mrs. Yule, ”is a patient of mine.” There was a moment's silence; then the doctor, turning to the vicar, added in a lower voice: ”It seems that their home was invaded, and the child terribly frightened. It is a very sad case.

She has lost her reason and her power of speech.”

Mrs. Yule in her turn was deeply moved and quick tears of sympathy gathered in her eyes. With an impulse of tenderest pity she bent suddenly forward and kissed the exile's pale cheek.

Like a flash of lightning in the night, it was revealed to Louise that now or never she must make her confession, now or never attempt a supreme, ultimate effort. This must be her last struggle for life. As she looked from Mrs. Yule's kind, tear-filled eyes to the calm, keen face of the physician hope bounded within her like a living thing. The blood rushed to her cheeks and she rose to her feet.

”Doctor!...” she gasped. Then she turned to Mrs. Yule again, it seemed almost easier to say what must be said, to a woman. ”I want to say something.... I must speak....” And again turning to the doctor--”Do you understand me if I speak French?”

Doctor Reynolds looked rather like a timid schoolboy, notwithstanding his spectacles and his red beard, as he replied: ”Oh ... _oui, Madame.

Je comp.r.o.ng._”

The vicar stepped forward. Looking from Louise to his wife and to the doctor he said: ”Perhaps I had better leave you....”

But Louise quickly extended a trembling hand. ”No! Please stay,” she pleaded. ”You are a priest. You are the doctor of the soul. And my soul is sick unto death.”

The vicar took her extended hand. ”I shall be honoured by your confidence,” he said in courtly fas.h.i.+on, and seating himself beside her waited for her to speak.

Nor did he wait in vain. In eloquent pa.s.sionate words, in the burning accents of her own language, the story of her martyrdom was revealed, her torn and outraged soul laid bare.

In that quiet room in the old-fas.h.i.+oned English vicarage the ghastly scenes of butchery and debauch were enacted again; the foul violence of the enemy, the treason, the drunkenness, the ribaldry of the men who with ”mud and blood” on their feet, had trampled on these women's souls--all lived before the horrified listeners, and the martyrdom of the three helpless victims wrung their honest British hearts.

Louise had risen to her feet--a long black figure with a spectral face.

She was Tragedy itself; she was the Spirit of Womanhood crushed and ruined by the war; she was the Grief of the World.

And now she flung herself at the doctor's feet, her arms outstretched, her eyes starting from their orbits, imploring him, in a paroxysm of agony and despair, to release and save her.

She fell face-downwards at his feet, shaken with spasmodic sobs, writhing and quaking as if in the throes of an epileptic fit. Mrs. Yule and the doctor raised her and placed her tenderly on the couch. Water and vinegar were brought, and wet cloths laid on her forehead.

There followed a prolonged silence.