Edward E. Hunt

“ The swarming spirits grew till they darkened the mist. We flew through the empty corridors of Malines, and on to Waelhem—first of the Antwerp forts to fall—up the ridge to Waerloos and Contich, toward Oude God and the inner forts. Still the swarms grew, crowding closer and closer. The eyes of the dead peered like cats’ eyes in the yellow dark, and my soul chilled to ice. The odour of dead clay was so strong I nearly fainted, and bony fingers seemed to press against my back and shoulders as if heavy wires were freezing into the flesh. “Light the dash-light, for God’s sake, Pierre!” ”

“ The Baas was a man from the Province of Liége, and he preferred to speak French with me rather than Flemish. He had, too, a Walloon lightness of wit which went sometimes incongruously with his heavy frame, as when he said to me once when we were debating the joys of youth versus age, “To be old has its advantages, monsieur. One can then be virtuous, and it is not hard!”
“There is a soul in trees,” he repeated. “All together the trees have a soul. A forest is one spirit. These trees are old men and old women, very patient and kindly and sluggish of blood. ”

“ The motor roared and the frightened swallows flew. The innkeeper flung open the double gates, removing his cap and bowing low, and we rolled slowly into the square.
There was a patter of slippers on the cobblestones behind us, a gasp and a choking cry, and madame was hanging to the running-board beside Alexis, pouring forth a torrent of passionate Flemish. The German sentries before the Stadthuis across the square stared anxiously, passersby stopped as if thunder-struck, I looked back and saw the old innkeeper standing open-mouthed and motionless in the doorway. ”

“ He had dashed us alongside a field of over-ripe wheat, through a long avenue of stunted willows, across an acre of barbed-wire entanglements, and into the town of Zandt, its gray walls gleaming in the splashing sunlight which had just followed the customary morning shower, its claret-red [169] roofs burnished like the morocco binding of old books.
We stepped stiffly from the car on to the slippery cobblestones and stared about us.
“The Germans shell Zandt almost every day,” said the Commissaire coolly. “That French battery we just passed will probably wake them up. ”

“ You must know that Father Guido loved gardening, mynheer. The soul could see his favourite mulberry tree, and acolytes in gray gowns walking beneath, meditating. One of the acolytes lifted a hand and stole a [125] berry. ‘Rogue!’ the soul thought. It was about to walk down into the garden and remonstrate with the thief when suddenly it leaped into the air as if a wasp had stung it. The heavy monastery bell just below it clanged like an explosion. Bang! went the bell; then again, bang! and after a pause, again, bang! ‘Some one is dead,’ thought the soul. It licked its lips thoughtfully. ”

“ Pah!”
“Oh, la, la, la, la!”
“Do not mind, monsieur,” the dancing-master whispered ecstatically, as if he feared such sentiments might offend me, “it is a poet, n’est-ce pas? Art—art—that is a world of itself.” He mopped his forehead, beaded with drops of perspiration, his little black eyes rolled in his head, and he drummed on the tablecloth as if his fingertips would do the office of his toes. The man was a genuine enthusiast. To dance and to teach others to dance—that was life!
“Yvette, you have brought your ballet costume so you can dance for messieurs the Americans?” ”

“ SAINT DYMPNA’S MIRACLE Pierre, the chauffeur, launched a savage kick at the newly punctured tire and swore into the night. “Three quarters of an hour, monsieur, to repair it,” he said reluctantly, switching off the motor. “Do you wish——”
Into the sudden silence stole the slow, incessant roar of the Yser cannon. The level stretches of the Campine, alternating black vistas of scrub evergreens with little fields, peat bogs, and kitchen gardens, lay fragrant and silent in the moonlight. ”

“ A couple of minutes before a Flemish newsboy had rushed into the restaurant and shouted, “Aeroplane! The Germans are shooting it!” And the restaurant had emptied like a hive, filling the boulevard, where every one gazed at the dull gray dragonfly droning at an immense height over the city, pursued [115] with soft white smoke-flowers which thudded as they bloomed in the upper air. While we watched, an old peasant in wooden shoes and padded black petticoats dropped her market basket on the director’s toes. He forgot aeroplane and anti-aircraft guns, war, the crowds, and me, his guest. ”

“ Brussels to Antwerp, where Belgians and Britons a year before faced the German hordes in weeks of bitter fighting. We were in a terrible hurry. Pierre, the chauffeur, was driving the motor-car; I was seated beside him. The headlights blurred like drowned eyes, and the open windshield dripped with wet. If we met a belated cart, or if we misjudged distances on that winding road, we would never reach our destination alive! ”

“ Oh, how lonely the dead are! How lonely the dead are!
“Men do not know how many months or years or centuries the soul climbed up through the swarming stars, but at last it came to the foot of battlements shooting up into space—battlements that rose like flames rooted in clouds, and burning so brightly that the strained eyes [128] of the soul pinched with the bliss of gazing. And still the soul of Father Guido climbed and climbed and climbed. ”

“ A peculiar odour of decay, the odour of sour [88] soil in early spring when the grip of the ice is relaxed and the buried abominations of winter steal up into the sun, rose from the town and pursued us—a smell like rotten fungi in old crypts. Sounds like the flapping of garments on a clothesline stole through the steady bass roar of the motor, and to my heavy eyes, tortured with staring into the yellow blur ahead, a vague shape seemed to float beside the car, a shape which was strangely human; erect, but rigid, flying along like a dry leaf upright in a gale. ”

“ Monsieur, God’s will is strange, and the seed that God plants bears strange fruit. All men long for immortality; all men long for something which will bear their name to posterity, and he who had saved Mont César—do you blame him if he longed to be held in remembrance by the monks of our monastery? I promised to place his photograph here where you see it. I promised to write on it ‘The Saviour of Mont César’—as you see. ”

“ And I saw the world-wide war which is waged in every land against freedom and union—the fight of caste against caste, of class against class, of masters with slaves, of the state against its citizens, of the thousand and one Frankenstein monsters of commerce and industry and politics and religion, fighting against the human beings who have created them. ”

“ They try to describe the state of mind, the atmosphere in which History—both truth and fiction—is made; the atmosphere behind long lines of barbed-wire and bayonets, behind waves of poisoned gas, in a famished land where ten million heroic people, both French and Belgians, have silently and steadily fought to keep their self-respect, their sanity, and their courage. ”

“ Through little winding streets, dusky, sleepy, and sweltering we passed, and at length out beside the Maison du Roi and the golden Flemish splendours of the corporation halls and the Hôtel de Ville on the Grand’ Place. We wound through the lines of German sentries and up the steps of a new restaurant—the Café du Cid—up dirty, twisting stairs behind the bar rail, to the dancing-hall where Guilbert taught.
“Now,” he exclaimed in rapture, turning on his toes with a movement of astonishing grace for one so old and fat. “Monsieur le poète to the piano! Madame Yvette to the dressing-room, quick! ”

“ See!’ He thrust his hand into the bosom of his uniform and pulled out a crumpled paper, ‘See! Here is von Manteuffel’s order; it is dated August 26th. It directs me to burn Mont César. The paper shall be yours, and the monastery is saved!’
“‘You lie!’ I screamed again. ‘What is this new trick of a scrap of paper?’
“‘It is von Manteuffel’s order for me to burn Mont César.’
“‘Ha!’ I laughed at him. ‘A German is ordered to burn a monastery and he disobeys! That is indeed droll! A German who has murdered scores in Belgium, who has burned and pillaged and outraged, now saves a monastery! Ha, ha! ”

“ It seemed no time for the French or Flemish languages. In an emotional crisis, such as a deathbed repentance or losing one’s heart or one’s temper, the tongue turns to the speech of youth, and I fell to cursing in most excellent and idiomatic English. The shock-head stared. “For God’s sake, sir,” he exclaimed at last, in English like my own, “are you a British spy?”
[21]
“A spy, you idiot? I’m the American delegate of the Commission for Relief in Belgium. What do you mean by staring at me like that and letting your crazy dog bark his head off at me? ”

“ But there was no sound anywhere, mynheer. Father Guido’s soul held its breath with holy awe and fear. In spite of the warmth of the eternal sunlight sluicing its bare limbs, cold perspiration came out on its neck and face, and goose-flesh pricked its legs. The soul hid itself in a rose hedge and [131] waited breathlessly. Nothing appeared. Still there was no sound. Presently the soul crept out again and pattered cautiously up the golden avenue, picking little rose thorns from its sides and back as it marched. ”

“ The stress of towns has bred these fantastic ideas in men’s brains. This country woman knew she was no different from birds and beasts, and she knew that it did not really matter to anybody—not even to herself. In a few slow words, still smiling, she sketched the dull drama of her life: peasant-born, unbeautiful, bought from her family by the old innkeeper as soon as the Church permitted her to marry, twice a mother, but both her children dead, pregnant again: that was the whole story. ”

“ And the women! white-armed Briseïs, motherly Hecuba, Andromache and gentle Cressida, Chryseïs, grave Cassandra, Penelope, Polyxena, Iphigenia, the lithe, dark-eyed beauty of Myrine the Amazon, and the golden radiance of Helen, her face like noon sunlight—Helen of Sparta, for whose sake the Greeks are forever named Hellenes, at whose shrine all men worship, and shall worship so long as beauty endures—these came into the high-roofed hall ”

“ For they go mad, monsieur, by dozens, by hundreds, by thousands. Have you seen their eyes? They are mad. And their lips? They work like the lips of men always talking to themselves. When the war began, I, too, was mad. I dreamed terrible dreams. For two months I was mad—like all the world.”
“But the woman there?” I asked, pointing to the figure beside the turf glow.
The man clattered over to her and laid his hand gently on her shoulder. “Madame,” he said, “there is a gentleman here to speak with you.”
“Nay, mynheer,” she answered quietly, “not until midnight.” ”

“ We were swallowed, lost in mist, with only a square yard of paved road visible before us. “Go on, Pierre,” I said softly.
Then gradually I saw the ghosts more plainly. A woman, bent like an old hinge, flung along beside the flying motor-car, and a naked, frightened child ran fearfully before her. “Ask him, Grutje, ask him about home!” a thin child-voice sobbed. A younger woman whose head had been hacked from her shoulders floated along with them, fondling the severed member and wailing, “De Deutschers—the Germans!” ”

“ A hawk circled in space, and the soul turned and climbed in the direction of the swinging bird. It got within two meters of the hawk and hailed him in Flemish—for all the birds understand Flemish, mynheer—but the hawk sailed by unheeding, its eye on the distant earth. Father Guido’s soul was disappointed. ”

“ Next morning Wilson’s motor car arrived an hour late at the office, and I noticed that from a staff wired to the wind-shield there floated a little American flag.
“Yes,” he said, defiantly, “I say kill patriotism and you kill war. I’m taking the first step. I used to be for the South against the world, now I’m for America against the world, and maybe some day I’ll be for all the world against the world. ”

“ Look at that old fool out there!” he continued, bitterly, pointing toward a gray-bearded Landsturm soldier in shapeless flat service cap, faded gray-green uniform and high hob-nailed boots, who, with gun on shoulder, strode along the pavement of the Graanmarkt on his way to the Kommandantur: “That old fellow is probably a toy-maker in Nuremberg or a barber in Munich, and here he is wandering round Belgium ready to die for Kaiser and Vaterland!”
“Mankind’s a failure,” I acknowledged cheerfully. “Go on, Wilson.” ”

“ God gave me these three graves instead of the grave of my boy. I could not tend them so well if they were in the churchyard. It is too far from my house. Nay, nay, let the three sleep here.”
“But you have not the room, madame.”
“There is room in my heart and in my garden, mynheer. I shall keep these three graves, and maybe in Germany there is some one who will keep the grave of my boy.”
“Messieurs, there is no use arguing with a Belgian peasant,” said the Commissaire of Metseys, as we walked back through the Street of the Spy to our waiting automobile. ”