what's death?—you'll love me yet!
pippa passes.
"lettice, i've been down to poupehan!"
lettice was darning her stockings in the shade of the tower. lettice would have darned her stockings on the judgment day. she suspended her work to look up, slowly, at dorothea. rose-brown, panting from the steep hill, lips laughing, eyes sparkling with excitement, she flung herself down among the stubble and the pink convolvuluses and fanned her face with her handkerchief.
"oh, i'm so hot! i ran nearly the whole way. i went to try for a paper, and i fell over m. lapouse, and oh, lettice, what do you think he told me? there's been a french plane brought down near florenville, and the pilot's escaped, and they're hunting him all over the place! oh! don't you hope he'll get away?"
lettice remained looking at her for a minute, then lowered her eyes and slowly resumed her work. dorothea flounced away with an energy that upset madame hasquin's workbasket.
"well, you are a fish! i did think you'd be interested in this. don't you want to hear about it? don't you care?"
"was—was the man hurt?" asked lettice.
"no, they don't think so, or not much—he managed to burn his machine, anyway. oh! don't i wish i'd been there! we might have patched her up between us, and flown her to the french lines. oh! it would have been sport!"
"it's, it's—it's twenty miles to florenville, isn't it?"[pg 266] lettice pursued her train of thought in her own undeviating way.
"yes, about. why?"
"and when did it happen?"
"when did she come down, do you mean? yesterday morning. oh, were you thinking he might have come up here? he never would, lettice. no such luck! he would make for the dutch frontier, they always do, m. lapouse was saying so. they're hardly even searching west of bouillon."
"o-oh."
lettice went on darning. lettice in those days was hardly a personality. withdrawn into herself, ensimismada, as gardiner would have said, for hours on end she did not speak, she scarcely thought; she brooded. her mind had been bruised and it was numb. she was like an automaton; the one definite feeling that emerged was an unwavering hostility to the destroyers of the bellevue. dorothea was compassionate to a fair young hussar who limped to the door one day after a fall from his horse; she gave him breakfast, put his sprained arm in a sling, and sent him on his way with good wishes in valiant german. lettice made his coffee and broiled his ham—if thine enemy hunger, feed him; but he remained her enemy still. there were no good wishes from her.
dorothea with an enormous sigh pulled over a bunch of stockings for a pillow, and lay back, still panting, hands clasped behind her head. she did not find lettice a very satisfactory companion in those days. she was not an automaton, far from it! they had been at the farm for several weeks now, and she was wondering how much longer she could stand it. the same view, day after day—the steep down-slope of the meadow, the green velvet crease where the brook ran, the steep up-slope of the harvest field, silvery, with its slowly discoloring sheaves, the spires of the wood against the uneventful azure of the sky—oh dear! she wanted to fight, to defend her country, to stick bayonets into germans, as they had stuck them into that dead girl[pg 267] in the woods—as she had already stuck a knife into the uhlan. she held up her little brown hand; it didn't seem possible, yet it was true, that that hand had accounted for one of the enemy, and she wasn't sorry, no, she couldn't feel one little bit ashamed, though she knew in her heart that at the moment when she pushed the body over the lip of the well she hadn't been quite sure that it wasn't still breathing....
she tucked the hand back with a little shudder. that didn't bear thinking about. "well, why didn't i stick a knife into lieutenant müller, then?" she reflected. müller was the hussar. "there's no sense in me!" hot and cold was dorothea, charlotte corday one hour, florence nightingale the next. inaction, presumably the woman's natural lot, was not natural to her. but for lettice she would long ago have dressed up in one of achille's suits and made a dash for the french lines—
"'tis but the coat of a page to borrow
and tie my hair in a horse-boy's trim—"
she didn't love skirts at the best of times—
"and i sit by his side, and laugh at sorrow—"
denis. all her thoughts always came back to him.
denis was fighting, and she wanted news; oh! she did want news so badly! tears came hot in her eyes; she turned over and buried her face in the grass, struggling with the sudden pain. denis was fighting; any one of these blue days he might be dying; he might be already dead. and he hadn't forgiven her. oh! she, with this vulture at her heart, how could she sit quiet, brood on still anger, like lettice? she must be white-washing the kitchen, or helping wounded germans, or exciting herself over stranded french aeroplanes twenty miles away—anything, anything to get away from her thoughts!
"there's a man in the wood," observed lettice.
she had dropped her work and sat immobile, her intent[pg 268] gaze probing the shadows of the distant trees. dorothea with an impatient sigh rolled over and sat up too.
"where?"
"there, under that fir-tree—don't you see him? now he, he, he's stooping down behind the bush."
"what eyes you have, lettice!" said dorothea, screwing up her own. "i can't see any old thing!"
"i've been watching him for some time. i think he's hiding."
"hiding?"
"he was there before you came back, and then he got down out of sight. i don't think he can get away. i think he's hurt."
"hurt?" dorothea repeated wonderingly.
"there's been a lot of firing this morning down by the river."
"but, lettice, you don't think—"
lettice did not say she thought anything. she stuck her needle in her stocking and prepared to get up. she stood a moment shading her eyes, piercing the depths of the pine wood with her far-searching look, and then got under way to descend the hill. dorothea seized her hand.
"oh, don't, lettice—it's sure to be some deserter, you know there are heaps, and you haven't even got your big scissors!"
"i am going to see if there are any mushrooms on the hill by the crucifix," said lettice in the softly distinct tones which admitted no discussion.
"well, wait half-a-minute for me, then!"
lettice did not wait; when dorothea came running out of the house with the carving-knife tucked inside her blouse, she was already at the white bridge over the brook. dorothea overtook her half-way across the stubble field. she was making better time up the hill than ever she had before.
"oh, darling lettice, don't, don't go! let me—it doesn't matter about me, i can take care of myself, and i don't mind things, but you know what it was to you last time! lettice darling—please!"
[pg 269]
lettice shook off her hand. "i saw him again just now," she said. "he was wearing those leather overall things."
"lettice!"
next moment dorothea loosed her hold on lettice and ran on alone. she had seen him too.
he came out of the woods towards them, lurching like a drunkard. and dorothea knew him, spite of disfiguring dust and blood, and his face—that face! his cheek had been sliced open; a flap of raw red flesh hung down over his jaw; his teeth showed white in the gap, like a skeleton's. he tried to wave back the girls, he tried to speak, a thick jumble of words; his feet dragged heavily together, and down he went, full length in the grass.
dorothea was beside him. she nursed him against her breast, mourning over him with dove-like sounds, kissing away the blood, murmuring exquisite love, warding off friends and foes alike with jealous protecting arms.
lettice knelt at a little distance, sobbing helplessly.
"lettice!"
what radiant eager purpose! here was the true dorothea, come to her own at last, risen to her full stature.
"help me to lift. they'll be up here directly, sure to, and we must hide him."
"the wood?"
"no, they'll search that first. into the house. take his feet; i can manage the head."
they could not have carried denis—a six-foot man, in his heavy accouterments—they could not have raised him from the ground, in ordinary circumstances. but extraordinary need calls out extraordinary powers. one-half a man's strength is his conviction of strength. dorothea lifted the man she loved with her love in addition to her muscles, and lettice had the strength of endurance, if not that of passion. so they carried him across the bridge and laid him in the round tower among the hay. dorothea spoke again.
"get my first-aid things out of the dresser drawer, lettice, while i see what's wrong. quick as you can; we haven't a second to lose."
[pg 270]
lettice obeyed orders. when she came back dorothea's uplifted face was sunshine unclouded.
"he's not going to die!" she cried, and her voice sang. "he isn't even dangerously hurt, it's only pain and loss of blood. and, lettice, he's been telling me—darling, no; don't, don't try to talk, it does hurt you so—he's been telling me he's been bombing the zeppelins at aix! they got them, too, they set one on fire, and the other man got off safe; but denis had a bullet through his tank. so he made for rochehaut, but he couldn't get farther than florenville, so he burnt his machine and came on on foot. and this morning he saw the bellevue, and while he was asking about it he was seen, and they hunted him, all among the woods by the river, and he was hit, this"—she touched the cheek she was bandaging with thistle-down finger—"i wish i were a doctor, then i'd put some stitches in; it'll spoil your looks, my darling. just think, lettice, he was hiding in the wood, he could actually see us, but he never meant to come out for fear of getting us into a scrape. he meant to lie there till dusk and then get away—if they hadn't caught him first, which they would have. watch how this bandage goes, you'll have to do it when i'm gone." she was working as she talked, with perfect swiftness and dexterity. "i wish, oh! i wish i could stay and see to you myself. never mind, it can't be helped. cover him up with the hay, lettice—careful! don't crush it, or it'll give the show away. they may possibly look in here, for form's sake."
she stood up, struggling into the bloodstained coat she had taken from denis. lettice stared, bewildered.
"what—what are you going to do?"
"lead them off on a false scent, of course," said dorothea—"the huns, i mean. goodness, i shall never get my hair under this cap—where are your scissors?"
"but—"
dorothea stamped, sawing at her thick plaits.
"they'll take me for him, don't you see? i'll lead them a lovely goose chase—i bet i know this country better than they do! there's the grotte des fées, if the worst[pg 271] comes to the worst. they'll think he's gone off quite in the other direction—else, do you imagine we'd ever possibly be able to hide him, with the hue and cry there'd be? good-by, darling, darling—" she flung herself down beside denis, lavishing her whole heart on him, baring her soul, unveiling the holy of holies, the white fire of very love. then, standing up, she held out both hands to lettice; and in her face, unearthly bright yet grave, lettice did visibly behold this mortal putting on immortality.
"it's—it's a frightful risk," she said.
dorothea's gravity broke up into a laugh of pure glee.
"yes, that's the very cream of it!" she cried. "oh! i have wanted to do something like a soldier, and now i've got the chance. oh! and denis has forgiven me, he's taken me back again—oh! i do think i'm the very luckiest girl in all the world!"
she caught lettice close and kissed her vehemently, and then fled down the hill, buckling her cap as she ran.
