CHAPTER XVII

Louise stood in the doorway waiting for Cherie, and watched her coming up the stairs rather slowly with fluttering breath. She drew her into the room and shut the door.

Mireille sat quietly in her usual armchair by the window, with her small face lifted to the sky.

"Cherie," said Louise, drawing the girl down beside her on the wide old divan on which the little Whitakers had sprawled to learn their lessons in years gone by. "I have something to say to you."

"I knew you had," exclaimed Cherie, flushing. "I knew it yesterday when I saw you. It is good news!"

Louise hesitated. "Yes ... for me," she said falteringly, "it is good news. For you, my dear little sister, for you ... unless you realize what has befallen us--it may be very terrible news."

Cherie looked at her with startled eyes. "What do you mean?" she asked under her breath.

Louise put her hand to her neck as if something were choking her. Her throat was dry; she could find neither words nor voice in which to give to the waiting girl her message of two-fold shame.

"Cherie ... my darling ... I must speak to you about that night ... your birthday-night----"

Cherie started back. "No!" she cried. "You said when we came here that we were to forget it--that it was a dream! Why--why should you speak of it again?"

"Cherie," said Louise in a low voice, "perhaps for you." ... She faltered, "for you it may have been a dream. But not for me."

The girl sat straight upright, tense and alert. "What do you mean, Louise?"

"I mean that for me that night has borne its evil fruit. Cherie! I thought of killing myself. But yesterday ... I spoke to Dr. Reynolds. He has promised to save me."

"To save you!" gasped Cherie. "Louise! Louise! Are you so ill?"

"My darling, my own dear child, I am worse than ill. But there is help for me; I shall be saved--saved from dishonour and despair." She lowered her voice. "Cherie!"--her voice fell so low that it could hardly be heard by the trembling girl beside her--"can you not understand? The shame I am called upon to face--the doom that awaits me--is maternity."

_Maternity!_ Slowly, as if an unseen force uplifted her, Cherie had risen to her feet. Maternity!... The veil of the mystery was rent, the wonder was revealed! Maternity! That was the key to all her own strange and marvellous sensations, to the throb and the thrill within her!

Maternity.

She stood motionless, amazed. A shaft of sunlight from the open window beat upon her, turning her hair to gold and her wide eyes to pools of wondering light. Such wonder and such light were about her that Louise gazed in awed silence at the ethereal figure, standing with pale hands extended and virginal face upturned.

She seemed to be listening.... To what voice? What annunciation did she harken to with those rapt eyes?

Louise called her by her name. But Cherie did not answer. Her lips were mute, her eyes were distant and unseeing. She heard no other voice but a child-voice asking from her the gift of life.

And to that voice her trembling spirit answered.

CHAPTER XVIII

Dr. Reynolds kept his promise to Louise.

In a private nursing-home in London the deed of mercy and of ruthlessness was accomplished. The pitiable spark of life was quenched.

Out of the depths of darkness and despair Louise, after wavering for many days on the threshold of death, came slowly back to life once more.

During the many weeks she was in the nursing-home she saw neither Cherie nor Mireille; but Mrs. Yule came nearly every day and brought good news of them both, saying how happy she and her husband were to have them at the Vicarage.

For Mr. Yule himself had gone to the Whitakers' house, an hour after Louise had left it with Dr. Reynolds, and had taken the two forlorn young creatures away. Their stricken youth found shelter in his house, where Mireille's affliction and Cherie's tragic condition were alike sacred to his generous heart.

The little blind girl, Lilian, adored them both. She used to sit between them--often resting her face against Mireille's arm, or holding the child's hand in hers--listening to Cherie's tales of their childhood in Belgium. She was never tired of hearing about Cherie's school-days at Mademoiselle Thibaut's _pensionnat_; of her trips to Brussels and Antwerp, and the horrors of the dungeons of Chateau Steen; of her bicycle-lessons on the sands of Westende under the instruction of the monkey-man; and above all of her visits to Braine l'Alleude and the battle-field of Waterloo, where she had actually drunk coffee in Wellington's sitting-room, and rested in his very own armchair....

Lilian, with her closed eyes and intent face--always turned slightly upward as if yearning towards the light--listened eagerly, exclaiming every now and then with a little excited laugh, "I see ... I see...."

And those words and the sweet expression of the small ecstatic face made Cherie's voice falter and the tears suffuse her eyes.

One day a letter came. It was from Claude. He had almost completely recovered from his wound and was leaving the hospital in Dunkirk to go to the front again. He sent all his love and all G.o.d's blessings to Louise and to his little Mireille and to Cherie. They would meet again in the happier days soon to come. Had they news of Florian? The last he had heard of him was a card from the trenches at Loos....

And that same day--a snowy day in December--Louise at length returned from her ordeal and stood, a pale and ghostly figure, at the Vicarage door. To her also it opened wide, and her faltering footsteps were led with love and tenderness to the firelight of the hospitable hearth.

There in the vicar's leather armchair, with the vicar's favourite collie curled at her feet, sat Mireille; her soft hair parted in the middle and tied with a blue ribbon by Mrs. Yule; a gold bangle, given her by Lilian, on her slim wrist. With a cry of joy and grat.i.tude Louise knelt before her, kissing the soft chill hands, the silent mouth, the eyes that did not recognize her.

"Mireille, Mireille! Can you not say a word to me? Not a word? Say, 'Welcome, mother!' Say it, darling! Say, '_Maman, bonjour_.'"

But the child's lips remained closed; the singing fountain of her voice was sealed.

The door opened, and Cherie entered the room--a Cherie altered and strange in her new and tragic dignity.

Louise involuntarily drew back, gazing in amazement at the significant change of form and feature; then with a sob of pa.s.sionate pity she went to her and folded her in her arms.

Cherie, with a smile and a sigh, bowed her head upon Louise's breast.

CHAPTER XIX

To see Christmas in an English vicarage is to see Christmas indeed; and the love and charity and beauty of it sank deeply into the exiles'

wounded hearts.

But one day came the summons to return to Belgium. It was a peremptory order from the German Governor of Brussels to all owners of house or property to return to their country with the least possible delay. The penalty of disregarding this summons would be the confiscation of all and any property owned by them in Belgium.

Louise stood in Cherie's room with the open letter in her hand, aghast and trembling.

"To return to Belgium? They ask us to return to Belgium?" Louise could scarcely p.r.o.nounce the words. "Do you realize what it means, Cherie?"

"It means--going home," whispered the girl, with downcast eyes and a delicate flush mounting to her pale cheeks.