University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XIX
BERTIE ADAMS

One day, early in April, 1917, Vivie was standing in a corridor of the Hôpital de St. Pierre talking to Minna von Stachelberg. She had just come from the railway station, where in common with the few British and Americans who remained in Brussels she had been to take a respectful and grateful farewell of the American Minister and his wife, who were leaving Belgium for Holland, prior to the American declaration of war. American diplomacy had done little for her or her mother, but it had been the shield, the salvation, the only hope of Belgium. Moreover, the break-off of diplomatic relations initiated the certain hope of a happier future. American intervention in the war must lead to Peace and Freedom. Germany must now be beaten and Belgium set free.

So she had contributed her mite to the fund which purchased spring flowers--hothouse-grown, for this April was a villainous prolongation of winter--with which to strew the approach to the station and fill the reserve compartment of the train.

As Vivie was nearing the end of her description--and Minna was hoping it was the end, as she wanted to get back to her patients--two German policemen marched up to Vivie, clicked their heels, saluted, and said in German, "Mademoiselle Varennes, nicht wahr? Be good enough to accompany us to the Kommandantur."

At this dread summons, Vivie turned pale, and Minna dismayed began to ask questions. The Polizei answered that they had none to give.... Might she accompany

her friend? She might not. Then followed a ride in a military motor, with the two silent policemen.

They arrived outside the Kommandantur.... More clanking, clicking, and gruff conversation in German. She got out, in response to a tight pressure on her arm, a grip in fact, and accompanied her grim guide through halls and corridors, and at last entered a severely furnished office, a kind of magistrate's court, and was confronted with--Bertie Adams! A whiskered, bearded, moustached, shabbily dressed (in a quasi-military uniform) Bertie Adams: lean, and hollow-eyed, but with the love-light in his eyes. He turned on her such a look of dog-like fealty, of happy recognition that although, by instinct and for his safety, she was about to deny all knowledge of him, she could not force her eyes or tongue to tell the lie.

"Oh miss, oh my dear Miss Warren! How I have hungered and thirsted for a sight of you all these months and years! To see you once more is worth all and more I've gone through to get here. They may shoot me now, if they've got the heart--Not that I've done anything to deserve it--I've simply had one object in view: To come here and help you."

He looked around as if instinctively to claim the sympathy of the policemen. To say he met with none would be to make them out more inhuman than they were. But as all this speech was in English they understood but little of what he had said. They guessed he loved the woman to whom he spake, but he may have been pleading with her not to give him away, to palliate his acts of espionage.

Vivie replied:

"Dear Bertie! You can't be gladder to see me than I am you. I greet you with all my heart. But you must be aware that in coming here like this you--" her words stuck in her throat--she knew not what to say lest she might incriminate him farther--

A police officer broke in on her embarrassment and said in German: "Es ist genug--You recognize him, Madame? He was arrested this morning at the Hotel Impérial, enquiring for you. Meantime, you also are under arrest. Please follow that officer."

"May I communicate with my friends?" said Vivie, with a dry tongue in a dry mouth.

"Who are your friends?"

"Gräfin von Stachelberg, at the Hôpital de St. Pierre; le Pasteur Walcker, Rue Haute, 33--"

"I will let them know that you are arrested on a charge of high treason--in league with an English spy," he hissed.

Then Vivie was pushed out of the room and Bertie was seized by two policemen--

They did not meet again for three days. It was a Saturday, and a police agent came into the improvised cell where Vivie was confined--who had never taken off her clothes since her arrest and had passed three days of such mental distress as she had never known, unable to sleep on the bug-infested pallet, unable to eat a morsel of the filthy food--and invited her to follow him. "By the grace of the military governor of the prison of Saint-Gilles"--he said this in French as she understood German imperfectly--"you are permitted to proceed there to take farewell of your English friend, the prisoner A-dams, who has been condemned to death."

Bertie had been tried by court-martial in the Senate, on the Friday. He followed all the proceedings in a dazed condition. Everything was carried on in German, but the parts that most concerned him were grotesquely translated by a ferocious-looking interpreter, who likewise turned Bertie's stupid, involved, self-condemnatory answers into German--no doubt very incorrectly.

Bertie however protested, over and over again, that Miss Warren knew nothing of his projects, and that his only object in posing as an American and travelling with false passports was to rescue Miss Warren from Brussels and enable her to pass into Holland, "or get out of the country some 'ow." As to the Emperor, and taking his life--"why lor' bless you, I don't want to take any one's life. I 'ate war, more than ever after all I've seen of it. Upon my honour, gentlemen, all I want is Miss Warren." Here one member of the court made a facetious remark in German to a colleague who sniggered, while, with his insolent light blue eyes, he surveyed Bertie's honest, earnest face, thin and hollowed with privations and fatigue....

He was perfunctorily defended by a languid Belgian barrister, tired of the invidious rôle of mechanical pleading for the lives of prisoners, especially where, as in this case, they were foredoomed, and eloquence was waste of breath, and even got you disliked by the impatient ogres, thirsty for the blood of an English man or woman.... "Du reste," he said to a colleague, "agissait-il d'un Belge, mon cher, tu sais que l'on se sentirait forcé à risquer le déplaisir de ces ogres: tandis que, pour un pauvre bougre d'Anglais...? Et qu'ont-ils fait pour nous, les Anglais? Nous avons tâché de leur boucher le trou à Liège--et--il--nous--ont--abandonné. Enfin--allons boire un coup--"

Verdict: as translated by the ferocious interpreter:--

"Ze Court faind you Geeltee. You are condemned to Dess, and you will be shot on Monday."

In the prison of Saint-Gilles--as I believe elsewhere in Belgium--though there might be a military governor in control who was a German, the general direction remained in the hands of the Belgian staff which was there when the German occupation began. These

Belgian directors and their subordinates were as kind and humane to the prisoners under their charge as the Germans were the reverse. Everything was done at Saint-Gilles to alleviate the mental agony of the condemned-to-death. The German courts tried to prolong and enhance the agony as much as possible, by sentencing the prisoners three days, six days, a week before the time of execution (though for fear of a reprieve this sentence was not immediately published) and letting them know that they had just so many days or hours to live: consequently most of them wasted away in prison with mind-agony, inability to sleep or eat; and even opiates or soporifics administered surreptitiously by the Belgian prison doctors were but slight alleviations.

Bertie when first placed in his cell at Saint-Gilles asked for pen, ink, and paper. They were supplied to him. He was allowed to keep on the electric light all night, and he distracted his mind--with some dreadful intervals of horror at his fate--by trying to set forth on paper for Vivie to read an explanation and an account of his adventures. He intended to wind up with an appeal for his wife and children.

Vivie never quite knew how Bertie had managed to cross the War zone from France into Belgium, and reach Brussels without being arrested. When they met in prison they had so little time to discuss such details, in face of the one awful fact that he was there, and was in all probability going to die in two days. But from this incomplete, tear-stained scribble that he left behind and from the answers he gave to her few questions, she gathered that the story of his quest was something like this:--

He had planned an attempt to reach her in Brussels or wherever she might be, from the autumn of 1914 onwards. The most practicable way of doing so seemed to be to pass as an American engaged in Belgian relief

work, in the distribution of food. Direct attempts to be enrolled for such work proved fruitless, only caused suspicion; so he lay low. In course of time he made the acquaintance of one of those American agents of Mr. Hoover--a tousle-haired, hatless, happy-go-lucky, lawless individual, who made mock of laws, rules, precedents, and regulations. He concealed under a dry, taciturn, unemotional manner an intense hatred of the Germans. But he was either himself of enormous wealth or he had access to unlimited national funds. He spent money like water to carry out his relief work and was lavishly generous to German soldiers or civilians if thereby he might save time and set aside impediments. He took a strong liking to Bertie, though he showed it little outwardly. The latter probably in his naïveté and directness unveiled his full purpose to this gum-chewing, grey-eyed American. When the news of Mrs. Warren's death had reached Bertie through a circuitous course--Praed-Honoria-Rossiter--he had modified his scheme and at the same time had become still more ardent about carrying it into execution. In fact he felt that Mrs. Warren's death was opportune, as with her still living and impossible to include in a flight, Vivie would probably have refused to come away.

Therefore in the summer of 1916, he asked his American friend to obtain two American passports, one for himself and one for "his wife, Mrs. Violet Adams." Mr. Praed had sent him a credit for Five hundred pounds in case he could get it conveyed to Vivie. Bertie turned the credit into American bank notes. This money would help him to reach Brussels and once there, if Vivie would consent to pass as his wife, he might convey her out of Belgium into Holland, as two Americans working under the Relief Committee.

It had been excessively difficult and dangerous crossing the War zone and getting into occupied Belgium.

There was some hint in his talk of an Alsatian spy who helped him at this stage, one of those "sanspatries" who spied impartially for both sides and sold any one they could sell (Fortunately after the Armistice most of these Judases were caught and shot). The spy had probably at first blackmailed him when he was in Belgium--which is why of the Five hundred pounds in dollar notes there only remained about a third in his possession when he reached Brussels--and then denounced him to the authorities, for a reward.

But his main misfortune lay in the long delay before he reached Brussels. During that time, the entire American diplomatic and consular staff was leaving Belgium; and the Emperor was arriving more or less secretly in Brussels (it was said in the hope that a personal talk with Brand Whitlock might stave off the American declaration of war).

Bertie on his arrival dared not to go to the American legation for fear of being found out and disavowed. So he had asked his way in very "English" French, and wearing the semi-military uniform of an American Relief officer--to the Hotel "Edward-Sett," where he supposed Vivie would be or could be heard of. When he reached the Hotel Impérial and asked for "Miss Warren," he had been at once arrested. Indeed probably his steps had been followed all the way from the railway station to the door of the hotel by a plain-clothes German policeman. The Germans were convinced just then that many Englishmen and some American cranks were out to assassinate the Kaiser. They took Bertie's appearance at the door of the Hotel Impérial as a proof of his intention. They considered him to have been caught red-handed, especially as he had a revolver concealed on his person and was obviously travelling with false passports.

"Ah, Bertie," said Vivie, when they first met in his

cell at Saint-Gilles prison. "If only I had not led you into this! I am mad with myself..."

"Are you, miss? But 'oo could 'a foreseen this war would come along! We thought all we 'ad to fight was the Police and the 'Ome Office to get the Vote. And then, you'd 'a bin able to come out into the open and practise as a barrister--and me, again, as your clerk. It was our damned Government that made you go abroad and get locked up 'ere. And once I realized you couldn't get away, thinks I to meself, I'll find a way..."

It was here that Vivie began questioning him as to how he had reached Brussels from the War zone; and as, towards the end of his story--some of which he said she would find he had written down in case they wouldn't let him see her--the reference to the Emperor came in, she sprang up and tried the door of the cell. It was fastened without, but a face covered the small, square opening through which prisoners were watched; and a rough voice asked her what she wanted. It was the German police agent or spy, who, perched on a stool outside, next this small window, was there to listen to all they said. As they naturally spoke in English and the rough creature only knew "God-dam," and a few unrepeatable words, he was not much the wiser for his vigil.

"I want--I must see the Director," said Vivie.

Presently the Director came.

"Oh, sir," said Vivie, "give me paper and an envelope, I implore you. There is pen and ink here and I will write a letter to the Emperor, a petition. I will tell him briefly the true story of this poor young man; and then, if you will only forward it he may grant a reprieve."

The Director said he would do his best. After all, you never knew; and the Kaiser, though he said he hated them always, had a greater regard for the English than

for any other nation. As he glanced from Vivie and her face of agonized appeal to the steadfast gaze which Bertie fixed on her, as on some fairy godmother, his own eyes filled with tears--as indeed they did many, many times over the tragic scenes of the German Terror.

Another request. Could Vivie see or communicate with Gräfin von Stachelberg?--with Pasteur Walcker?

Here the police agent intervened--"Nothing of the kind! You're not going to hold a salon here. Far too many concessions already. Much more fuss and trouble, and I shall take you back to the Kommandantur and report. Write your letter to the All Highest, who may deign to receive it. As to Pastor Walcker, he shall come to-morrow, Sunday, to prepare the Englishman for his death, on Monday--"

Vivie wrote her letter--probably in very incoherent language. It was handed to the German police agent. He smiled sardonically as he took it in his horny hand with its dirty broken nails. The Governor General disliked these appeals to the All Highest. Indeed, in most cases executions that were intended to take place were only announced at the same time as the condemnation, to obviate the worry of these appeals. Besides, he knew the Emperor had left that morning for Charleville, after having bestowed several decorations on the police officials who told him they had just frustrated an English plot for his assassination.

Vivie and Bertie were at length alone, for the police agent was bored, couldn't understand their talk, and gave himself an afternoon off. In this prison of Saint-Gilles, the cells were in many ways superior to those of English prisons. They were well lit through a long window, not so high up but that by standing on a chair you could look out on the prison garden. Through this window the rays of the sun could penetrate into and light up

the cell. There was no unpleasant smell--one of the horrors of Holloway. The floor was a polished parquet. The bed was comfortable. There was a table, even a book-shelf. The toilet arrangements were in no way repulsive or obvious.

Vivie insisted on Bertie lying down on the bed; she would sit on the chair by his side. He must be so exhausted....

"And what about you, miss? I'll lay you ain't slept these last three nights. What a mess I've made of the 'ole thing!"

"Bertie! Why did you do this? Why did you risk your life to come here; oh why, oh why?" wailed Vivie.

"Because I loved you, because I've always loved you, better'n any one else on earth--since I was a boy of fourteen and you spoke so kind to me and encouraged me to get on and improve myself; and giv' me books, and encouraged me about me cricket. I suppose I'm going to die, so I ain't got any shame about tellin' you all this. Though if I thought I was goin' to live, I'd cut my tongue out sooner'n offend you--Oh,"--he gave a kind of groan--"When the news come about Mrs. Warren bein' dead an' you p'raps without money and at the mercy of these Germans ... well!--all I wonder at is I didn't steal an airyplane, and come in that. I tell you I had to exercise great self-control to stay week after week fiddling with the food distribution and pretendin' to be an American....

"Well! There it is! We must all die sooner or later. It's a wonder I ain't dead already. I've bin in some tight places since I come out for the Y.M.C.A....

"And talkin' about the Y.M.C.A., miss, I do beg of you, if you get out of this--an' I'm sure you will--they'll never kill you," said Bertie adoringly, looking up at the grave, beautiful face that bent over him--"I do

beg of you to make matters right with the Y.M.C.A. I ain't taken away one penny of their money--I served 'em faithfully up to the last day before I saw my chance of hooking it across the lines--They must think me dead--and so must poor Nance, my wife. For I haven't dared to write to any one since I've bin in Belgium. But I did send her a line 'fore I started, sayin', 'Don't be surprised if you get no letter from me for some time. I'll turn up all right, you bet your boots--'

"That may 'ave kept 'er 'opin'. An' soon you'll be able to let 'er know. Who can say? I dunno! But Peace, you'd think, must come soon--Seems like our poor old world is comin' to an end, don't it? What times we've 'ad--if you don't mind me puttin' it like that! I remember when I had to be awful careful always to say 'Sir' to you, and 'Mr. David' or 'Mr. Williams'"--and a roguish look, a gleam of merriment came into Bertie's eyes, and he laughed a laugh that was half sob. "If you was to write your life, no one 'ud believe it, miss. It licks any novel I ever read--and I've read a tidy few, looking after the Y.M.C.A. libraries....

"My! But you was wonderful as a pleader in the courts! I used sometimes to reg'lar cry when I heard you takin' up the case of some poor girl as 'ad bin deserted by 'er feller, and killed 'er baby. 'Tricks of the trade,' says some other barrister's clerk, sneerin' because you wasn't 'is boss. An' then I'd punch 'is 'ead.... An' I don't reckon myself a soft-'earted feller as a rule.... Reklect that Shillito Case--?"

"Don't, Bertie! Don't say such things in praise of me. I'm not worth such love. I'm just an arrogant, vain, quarrelsome woman.... Look how many people I've deceived, what little good I've really done in the world--"

"Rub--bish! You done good wherever you went.

... to my pore mother--wonder, by the bye, what she thinks and 'ow she's gettin' on? Sons are awful ungrateful and forgettin'. What with you--and Nance--and the little 'uns, I ain't scarcely give a thought to poor mother. But you'll let her know, won't you, miss?...

"Think 'ow good you was to your old father down in Wales, 'im as you called your father--an' 'oo's to say 'e wasn't? You never know.... Miss Warren! what a pity it is you never married. There's lots was sweet on you, I'll bet. Yet I remember I used to 'ate the idea of your doin' so, and was glad you dressed up as a man, an' took 'em all in.... I may tell you all, miss, now I'm goin' to die, day after to-morrow. My poor Nance! She see there was some one that always occupied my mind, and she used to get jealous-like, at times. But never did I let on it was you. Why I wouldn't even 'av said it to myself--I respected you more than--than--"

And Bertie, at a loss for a parallel, ceased speaking for a time, and gulped down the sobs that were mastering him.

Then, after this pause--"I haven't a word to say against Nance. No one could 'a bin a better wife. I know, miss, if you get away from here you'll look after her and my kids? I ain't bin much of a father to 'em lately. P'raps this is a punishment for neglecting my home duties--As they used to say to you when you was Suffragin'." He gave a bitter laugh--"Two such nice kids.... I ain't seen 'em since last February twelve-month ... more'n a year ago ... I got a bit of leave then.... There's little Vivie--the one we called after you.... She's growin' up so pretty ... and Bert! 'E'll be a bigger and a better man than me, some day. 'E's started in life with better chances. I 'ope 'e'll be a cricketer. There's no game comes up to cricket, in my opinion..."

At this juncture, the Belgian Directeur of the jail opened the door and asked Vivie to follow him, telling Bertie she would return in the afternoon. At the same time, a warder escorting two good conduct prisoners who did the food distribution proceeded to place quite an appetizing meal in Bertie's cell. "Dear miss," said the Directeur in French, "You are so wise, I know, you will do what I wish...?"

(Vivie bowed.)

"I shall not send you back to the Kommandantur. I will take that on myself. But I must regard you while here as my prisoner"--he smiled sadly--"Come with me. I will give you a nice cell where you shall eat and sleep, and--yes--and my wife shall come and see you..."

In the evening of that day, Vivie was led back to Bertie's cell. There she found kind Pasteur Walcker. In some way he had heard of Bertie's condemnation--perhaps seen it posted up on a Red Placard--and in his quiet assumption that whatever he did was right, had not waited for an official summons but had presented himself at the prison of Saint-Gilles and asked to see the Directeur. He constituted himself Bertie's spiritual director from that time onwards.... He spoke very little English but he was there more to sympathize than to preach--

"Ce n'est pas, chère Mamselle que je suis venu le troubler sur les questions de réligion. J'ai voulu le rassurer--et vous aussi--que j'ai déjà mis en train tous les precédés possibles, et que je connais, pour obtenir sa grace.... But," he went on, "I have spoken to the prison doctor and begged him meantime to give the poor young man an injection or a dose of something to make him sleep a little while..."

Then he withdrew.

The daylight turned pink and faded to grey whilst Vivie sat by the bed holding the left hand of the sleeping man. Exhausted with emotion, she dropped off to sleep herself, slid off the chair on to the parquet, laid her head on the angle of his pillow and slept likewise....

The electric light suddenly shone out from a globe in the angle of the wall which served two cells. She awoke; Bertie awoke. He was still happy in some opiate dream and his eyes in his haggard face looked at her with a sleepy, happy affection. Loth to awaken him to reality she kissed him on the cheek and withdrew from the cell--for the Directeur, out of delicacy, had withdrawn and left the door ajar. She rejoined him in the corridor and he led her to her own quarters for the night; where, worn out with sorrow and fatigue, she undressed and slept dreamlessly.

But the hour of the awakening on that wintry Sunday morning! It was snowing intermittently and the sky, seen from the high window, was lead-coloured. Owing to the scarcity of fuel, the cell was unwarmed. She dressed hurriedly, feeling still untidy and dishevelled when she had finished. Her breakfast, and with it a little packet of white powder from the prison doctor, to be taken with the breakfast. She swallowed it. If it were poison sent by the German Government, what matter? But it was in reality some drug which took the edge off sorrow.

Bertie had evidently been given a similar dose. They spent the morning and the afternoon of that Sunday together, almost happily. With intervals of dreamy silence, they talked of old times. Neither would have been surprised had the cell walls dissolved as in a transformation scene and they had been able to step out into the Fountain Court of the Temple or into the cheerful traffic of Chancery Lane.

When however she returned to his cell after her evening

meal, his mood had changed; the effect of the drug had passed. He had moods of despair and wild crying. No response had come, no answer to Vivie's appeal, no result from Monsieur Walcker's activities. Bertie reproached himself for cowardice ... then the doctor came in. "An injection in the arm? So! He will sleep now till morning. Espérons toujours! Et vous, ma pauvre Mademoiselle. Vous êtes excédée. Permettez que je vous fasse la meme piqure?"

But she thanked him and said she wanted all her wits about her, though she promised "se maîtriser"--to keep calm.

What a night! Her ears had a sense of hearing that was preternaturally acute. The most distant step in the corridors was audible. Was it a reprieve? One such sound multiplied itself into the footsteps of two men walking, coming ever nearer--nearer--nearer till they stopped outside her cell door. With a clank it was opened. She sprang up. Fortunately she had not undressed. "You've brought a reprieve?" she gasped. But the Directeur and Monsieur Walcker only stood with downcast faces. "It will soon be morning," the Directeur said. "There is no hope of a reprieve. He is to be executed at seven at the Tir National. All we have secured for you is permission to accompany him to the end. But if you think that too painful, too great a strain, I would suggest that you--"

"Nothing could overstrain me," said Vivie, "or rather I don't care if anything kills me. I will go with him and stay with him, till the very last moment, stay with him till he is buried if you permit!"

She made some hasty toilette, more because she wanted to look a fit companion for him, and not a wretched derelict. They summoned her, proffering a cup of acorn coffee, which she waved aside. The bitter cold air of the snowy April morning braced her. She entered the

shuttered, armoured prison taxi in which Bertie and a soldier were placed already. Bertie had his arms tied, but not too painfully. He was shivering with the cold, but as he said, "Not afraid, miss. It'll come out allright, some'ow. That Mr. Walcker, 'e done me a lot of good. At any rate I'll show how an Englishman can die. 'Sides 'e says reprieves sometimes comes at the last moment. They takes a pleasure in tantalizin' you. And the doctor put somethin' in me cup of coffee, sort of keeps me spirits up."

But for Vivie, that drive was an unforgettable agony. They went through suburbs where the roads had been unrepaired or torn up by shrapnel. The snow lay in places so thickly that it nearly stopped the motor. Still, it came to an end at last. The door on one side was wrenched open; she was pulled out rather unceremoniously; then, the pinioned Bertie, who was handed over to a guard; and the soldier escort after him, who took his place promptly by his side. Vivie had just time to note the ugly red-brick exterior of the main building of the Tir National. It reminded her vaguely of some hastily-constructed Exhibition at Earl's Court or Olympia. Then she was pushed inside a swinging door, into a freezing corridor; where the Prison Directeur and Monsieur Walcker were standing--irresolute, weeping....

"Where is Bertie?" she asked.

"He is being prepared for the shooting party," they answered. "It will soon be over ... dear dear lady ... try to be calm--"

"I will be as calm as you like," she said, "I will behave with the utmost correctitude or whatever you call it, if you--if they--the soldiers--the officer--will let me see him--as you promised--up to the last, the very last. But by God--if there is a God--if you or they prevent me, I'll--"

Inexplicably, sheer mind-force prevailed, without the

need for formulating the threat the poor grief-maddened woman might have uttered--she moved unresisted to a swing door which opened on to a kind of verandah. Here was drawn up the firing party, and in front of them, fifteen feet away on snow-sodden, trampled grass, stood Bertie. He caught sight of Vivie passing in, behind the firing party, and standing beyond them at the verandah rail. He straightened himself; ducked his head aside from the handkerchief with which they were going to bandage his eyes, and shouted "Take away your blasted handkerchief! I ain't afraid o' the guns. If you'll let me look at HER, I'll stand as quiet as quiet."

The officer in command of the firing party shrugged his shoulders. The soldier escort desisted from his attempts to blindfold the Englishman and stood aside, out of range. Bertie fixed his glowing eyes on the woman he had loved from his youth up, the rifles rang out with a reverberating bellow, and he fell out of her sight, screened by the soldiers, a crumpled body over which they threw a sheet.

What happened then to Vivie? I suppose you expect the time-worn trick of the weary novelist, anxious to put his pen down and go to his tea: "Then she seemed swallowed up in a cloud of blackness and knew no more"--till it was convenient to the narrator to begin a fresh chapter. But with me it must be the relentless truth and nothing but the truth, in all its aspects. Vivie was deafened, nearly stunned by the frightful noise of the volley in a confined space. Next, she was being unceremoniously pushed out of the verandah, into the corridor, and so out into the snow-covered space in front of the brick building; whilst the officer was examining the dead body of the fallen man, ready to give the coup-de-grâce, if he were not dead. But he was. Vivie was next conscious that she had the most dreadful, blinding headache she had ever known, and with it felt an irresistible

nausea. The prison Directeur was taking her hand and saying: "Mademoiselle: it is my duty to inform you that you are no longer under arrest. You are free to return to your lodging." Minna von Stachelberg had come from somewhere and was taking her right arm, to lead her Brussels-ward; and Pasteur Walcker was ranging himself alongside to be her escort. Unable to reply to any of them, she strode forward by herself to where under the snow lay an ill-kept grass plot, and there was violently sick. The anæsthetics and soporifics of the last two days were having their usual aftermath. After that came on a shuddering faintness and a rigor of shivers, under which her teeth clacked. Some doctor came forward with a little brandy. She put the glass to her lips, then pushed it aside, took Pasteur Walcker's proffered arm, and walked towards the tram terminus.

Then they were in the tram, going towards the heart of Brussels. How commonplace! Fat frowsy market women got in--or got out--with their baskets; clerks entered with portfolios--don't they call them "serviettes"?--under their arms; German policemen, Belgian gendarmes, German soldiers, a priest with his breviary came and went as though this Monday morning were like any other. Vivie walked quite firmly and staidly from the tram halt to the Walckers' house in the Rue Haute. There she was met by Madame Walcker, who at a sign from her husband took her upstairs, silently undressed her and put her to bed with a hot water bottle and a cup of some hot drink which tasted a little of coffee.

After that Vivie passed three days of great sickness and nausea, a furred tongue, and positively no appetite. Finally she arose a week after the execution and looked at herself in the mirror. She was terribly haggard, she looked at least fifty-five--"They must have taken me for his mother or his aunt; never for his sweetheart,"

she commented bitterly to herself. And her brown-gold hair was now distinctly a cinder grey.

The next day she went back to work at the hospital.

To Minna, she said: "I can never, never, never forget your kindness and sympathy. 'Sister' seems an insufficient name to call you by. Whatever happens, unless you cast me off, we shall be friends.... I dare say I even owe my life to you, if it is worth anything. But it is. I want to live--now--I want to live to be revenged. I want to live to help Bertie's"--her voice still shook over the name--"Bertie's wife and children. I expect but for you I should have been tried already in the Senate for complicity with ... Bertie ... and found guilty and shot..."

Minna: "I won't go so far as to say you are right. But I certainly was alarmed about you, when you were arrested. Of course I knew nothing--nothing--about that poor young man till just before his execution when Pastor Walcker came to me. Even then I could do nothing, and I understood so badly what had happened. But about you: I said to myself, if I do not do something, you can perhaps be sentenced to imprisonment ... and I did bestir myself, you can bet!" (Minna liked to show she knew a slangy phrase or two.) "So I telegraphed to the Emperor, I besieged von Bissing at the Ministère des Sciences et des Arts; wrote to him, telegraphed to him, telephoned to him, sat in his anterooms, neglected my hospital work entirely from Friday to Monday--

"I expect as a matter of fact they found nothing in that poor young's man's papers to implicate you. They just wanted--the brutes--to give you a good fright ... and I dare say ... such is the military mind--even wished you to see him shot.

"By the bye, I suppose you have heard that von Bissing is very ill? Dying, perhaps--"

Vivie: "I hope so. I am so glad. I hope it's a painful illness and that he'll die and find there really is a Hell, and an uncommonly hot one!"

It must not be supposed from the frequent quotations from Countess von Stachelberg's condemnations of German cruelties that she was an unpatriotic woman, repudiating, apostatizing from her own country. On the contrary: she held--mistakenly or not--that Germany had been the victim of secret diplomacy, had been encircled by a ring fence of enemies, refused the economic guarantees she required, and the colonial expansion she desired. Minna disliked the Slavs, did not believe in them, save as musicians, singers, painters, dancers, and actors. She believed Germany had a great civilizing, culture-spreading mission in South-east Europe; and that the germs of this war lay in the policy of Chamberlain, the protectionism of the United States, the revengeful spirit and colonial selfishness of France.

But she shuddered over the German cruelties in Belgium and France. The horrors of War were a revelation to her and she was henceforth a Pacifist before all things. "Your old statesmen and our old or middle-aged generals, my dear, are alike to blame. But you and I know where the real mischief lies. We are mis-ruled by an All-Man Government. I, certainly, don't want the other extreme, an All-Woman Government. What we want, and must have, is a Man-and-Woman--a Married--Government. Then we shall settle our differences without going to war."

Vivie agreed with her, cordially.

She--Vivie--I really ought to begin calling her "Vivien": she is forty-one by now--in resuming her duties at the Hôpital de St. Pierre found no repugnance in tending wounded German soldiers--the officers she did shrink from--She realized that the soldiers were but

the slaves of the officer class, of Kaiserdom. Her reward for this degree of Christianity was to have a batch of wounded English boys or men to look after. She saw again Bertie Adams in many of them, especially in the sergeants and corporals. They, in turn, thought her a very handsome, stately lady, but rather maudlin at times. "So easy to set 'er off a-cryin' as though 'er 'eart would break, poor thing.... And I says 'why ma'am, the pain's nuthin', nuthin' to what it use ter be.' 'Spec' she lost some son in the war. Wonder 'ow she came to be 'ere? Ain't the Germans afraid of 'er!"...

They were. The mental agony she had been through had etherialized her face, added to its look of age and gravity, but imparted likewise a sort of "awfulness." She exhaled an aura of righteous authority. She had been through the furnace, and foolishness and petulance had been burnt out of her ... though, thank goodness, she retained some sense of humour. She had probably never been so handsome from the painter's point of view, though one could not imagine a young man falling in love with her now.

Her personality was first definitely noted by the Bruxellois the day that von Bissing's funeral cortège passed through the streets of Brussels on its way to Germany. Vivien Warren was sufficiently restored to health then to stand on the steps of some monument and cry "Vive la Belgique! À bas les tyrans!" The policemen and the spies looked another way and affected deafness. They had orders not to arrest her unless she actually resorted to firearms or other lethal weapons.

It was said that her appeal for Bertie Adams did reach the Emperor, two days too late; that he pished and pshawed over von Bissing's cruel precipitancy. "Englishmen," he muttered to his entourage, "don't assassinate. The Irish do. But how I'm going to make peace with England, I don't know...!"

(His Hell on Earth must have been that few people admired the English character more than he did, and yet, unprovoked, he had blundered into war with England.)

However, though it was too late to save "this lunatic Adams," he gave orders that Vivie was to be let alone. He even, through Gräfin von Stachelberg, transmitted to her his regrets that she and her mother had been treated so cavalierly at the Hotel Impérial. It was not through any orders of his.

So: Vivie became quite a power in Brussels during that last anxious year and a half of waiting, between May, 1917, and November, 1918. German soldiers, still limping from their wounds, saluted her in the street, remembering her kindness in hospital, and the letters she unweariedly wrote at their dictation to their wives and families--for she had become quite a scholar in German. The scanty remains of the British Colony and the great ladies among the patriotic Belgians now realized how false were the stories that had circulated about her in the first year of the War; and extended to her their friendship. And the Spanish Minister who had taken the place of the American as protector of British subjects, invited her to all the fêtes he gave for Belgian charities and Red Cross funds. Through his Legation she endeavoured to send information to the Y.M.C.A. and to Bertie's widow that Albert Adams of the Y.M.C.A. "had died in Brussels from the consequences of the War."

I dare say in the autumn of 1917, if Vivien Warren had applied through the Spanish Minister for a passport to leave Belgium for some neutral country, it would have been accorded to her: the German authorities would have been thankful to see her no more. She reminded them of one of the cruellest acts of their administration. But she preferred to stay for the historical revenge of seeing the Germans driven out of Belgium, and Belgian independence

restored. And she could not go lest Bertie's grave should be forgotten. In common with Edith Cavell, Gabrielle Petit, Philippe Bauck, and the other forty or fifty victims of von Bissing's "Terror," he had been buried in the grassy slopes of the amphitheatre of the Rifle range, near where he had been executed. Every Sunday, wet or fine, Vivien went there with fresh flowers. She had marked the actual grave with a small wooden cross bearing his name, till the time should come when she could have his remains transferred to English soil.

One day, as she was leaving the hospital in the autumn of 1917, a shabby man pushed into her hand a soiled, way-worn copy of the Times, a fortnight old. "Three francs," he whispered. She paid him. It was no uncommon thing for her or one of her English or Belgian acquaintances to buy the Times or some other English daily at a price ranging from one franc to ten, and then pass it round the friendly circle of subscribers who apportioned the cost. On this occasion she opened her Times in the tram, going home, and glanced at its columns. In any one but "Mees Varennes" in these days of 1917, 1918, this would have been a punishable offence; but in her case no spy or policeman noted the infringement of regulations about the enemy press. On one of the pages she read the account of a bad air-raid on Portland Place, and a reference--with a short obituary notice elsewhere--to the death of one of the victims of the German bombs. This was "Linda, Lady Rossiter, the dearly loved wife of Sir Michael Rossiter, whose discoveries in the way of bone grafting and other forms of curative surgery had been among the outstanding achievements in etc., etc."

"Dear me!" said Vivien to herself, as the tram coursed on beyond her usual stopping place and the conductor obstinately looked the other way, "I'm glad she

lived to be Lady Rossiter. It must have given her such pleasure. Poor thing! And to think the knowledge that he's a widower hardly stirs my pulses one extra beat. And how I loved that man, seven years, six years, five years ago! Hullo! Where am I? Miles from the Rue Haute! Conducteur! Arrêtez, s'il vous plaît."