Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 621
“But why... why are they all to be sent to Germany?” asks Mona.
“It’s the order of the congress, miss. No country wants to harbour its enemies — not a second time — unless they have something to make them friends.”
“But if they have?”
“Well, if a German has an English wife and an English business...”
“They let him remain — do they?”
I believe they do, miss.”
Mona’s heart leaps, and a new thought comes to her. If Oskar does not wish to go back to Germany, why shouldn’t he stay here and farm Knockaloe?
Next morning, after the third gang has gone, she is on her way to her landlord’s. Her last half-year’s rent is due, and then there’s the question of the lease, which runs out in November.
It is a beautiful morning with blue sky and bright sunshine. The snowdrops are beginning to peep and the yellow eyes of the gorse are showing. As she goes down the road with a high step she is thinking of her landlord’s answer to her father when, four years ago, he asked what was to happen to the farm after the war was over: “Don’t trouble about that. You are here for life, Robert — you and your children.”
She meets her landlord at the gate of his house. He is in his church-going clothes, having just returned from Peel, where he has been sitting on the bench as a magistrate.
“The rent, I suppose?” he says, and he leads her into the sitting-room.
She counts it out to him in Treasury notes, and he gives her a receipt for it. Then he rises and makes for the door, as if wishing to be rid of her. She keeps her seat and says:
“What about the lease, sir?”
“We’ll not talk about that to-day,” says the landlord.
“I’m afraid we must. I have to make important arrangements.”
The landlord looks embarrassed.
“But if you say it will be all right when the time comes, we can leave it for the present, sir,” says Mona.
The landlord, who has reached the door and is holding it open, puts on a bold front and says:
“Well, to tell you the truth, I’ve had to make other arrangements.”
Mona is thunderstruck, and she rises rigidly.
“You don’t mean to say, sir, that you are... are letting the farm over my head?”
“And if I am, why shouldn’t I? It’s mine, I suppose, and I can do what I like with it.”
“But you promised my father — faithfully promised him when the farm was turned into a camp..
“Circumstances alter cases. Your father is dead and so is his son....”
“But his daughter is alive, and what has she done...”
“Don’t ask me what she’s done, miss.”
“But I do, sir, I do.”
Then if you must have it, you must. I want a good man of my own race to farm my land, not an enemy alien.”
Mona is speechless for one moment, choking with anger; at the next she is back on the road, weeping bitterly.
Oskar is in the avenue when she returns to it, and seeing she is in trouble he speaks to her.
She tells him what has happened, omitting what was said about himself.
“Your family have lived in Knockaloe for generations, haven’t they?” he says.
“Four generations.”
“And you were born there, weren’t you?
“Yes.”
“It’s a shame — a damned shame,”
Mona is crushed. Knockaloe is lost to her. And this is the peace she has prayed and prayed for!
One day passes, then another. Every morning Mona sees a fresh batch of prisoners leaving the camp, and her heart sinks at the sight of them. Oskar’s turn will come some day. It tears her to pieces to think of it — Oskar going off at that melancholy pace, down the avenue and round by Kirk Patrick.
At length a spirit of defiance takes possession of her. Knockaloe is dear to her by a thousand memories, but it is not the only place on the island. She has heard of a farm in the north that is to be let in November. It is large, therefore it is not everybody who can stock it, but she can, because she has always thought it her duty to put everything she has earned during the war into cattle to meet the requirements of the camp.
She is upstairs in her bedroom, making ready for a visit to the northern landlord, when she hears the loud clatter of hoofs in the avenue. Long John Corlett, who used to come courting her for the sake of the stock, is riding a heavy cart-horse up to the house. He sees her and, without troubling to dismount, he calls to her to come down. Resenting his impudence, she makes him wait, but at length she goes out to him.
“Well, what is it, John Corlett?”
“You’ll have heard, my girl, that I’m the new tenant of Knockaloe?”
“I haven’t; but if you are, what of it?”
“I’ve come to ask you how long you want to stay.”
“Until the lease runs out — what else do you expect, sir?”
“But why should you? The camp will be empty before that time comes, and what can you do with your milk when the men are gone?”
“I can do what I did before they came, if you want to know.”
“Oh, no, you can’t. You’ve lost your milk run, and you can never get it back again.”
“Who says I can’t?”
“I say so. Everybody says so. Ask anybody you like, woman — any of your old customers.”
Mona is colouring up to the eyes.
“Then tell them I don’t care if I never can,” she says, and turns back to the house.
“Wait! There’s something else, though. What about the dilapidations?”
“Dilapidations?”
“According to the agreement with the Government the landlord has to make good the damage to the houses and the tenant the injury to the land.”
It is true — she had forgotten all about it.
“Twenty-five thousand men here for four years — it will take something to put the land into cultivation.”
In a halting voice she asks Corlett what he thinks it will cost, and he mentions a monstrous figure.
“Three years’ rent of the farm — that’s the best I can make it.”
Mona gasps and her face becomes white.
“But that would leave me without a shilling,” she says.
“Tut, woman! With the big rent you’ve had from the Government you must have a nice little nest-egg somewhere.”
“But I haven’t. I’ve put everything into stock.”
The hulking fellow slaps his leg with his riding whip and makes a long whistle.
“Well, so much the better if it’s all on the land.”
Then he drops from his saddle to the ground, and comes close to Mona as if to coax her.
“Look here, Mona woman, no one shall say John Corlett is a hard man. Leave everything on the farm as it stands, and we’ll cry quits this very minute.”
Mona looks at him in silence for a moment. Then she says, breathing rapidly:
“John Corlett, do you want to turn me out of my father’s farm a beggar and a pauper?”
“Chut, girl, what’s the odds? There’s somebody will be wanting you to follow him to foreign parts when he goes himself — though you might have done better at home, I’m thinking.”
Mona’s breath comes hot and fast and her face grows crimson. Then she falls on the man like a fury.
“Out of this, you robber, you thief, you dirt!”
The big bully leaps back into his saddle. Snatching at his reins, he shouts that if she won’t listen to reason he will “put the law on her,” and not a beast shall she take off the land until his dues as incoming tenant are paid to him.
Out of it!” cries Mona, and she lifts up a stick that lies near to her.
Seeing it swinging in the air and likely to fall on him, the man tugs at his reins to swirl out of reach of the blow, and the stick falls on his horse’s flank. The horse throws up her hind legs, leaps forward, and goes down the avenue at a gallop.
The rider has as much as he can do to keep his seat, and the last that is seen of him (shouting something about “you and your Boche”) is of his hindmost parts bobbing up and down as his horse dashes through the gate and up the road towards home.
Some of the guard who have been looking on and listening burst into roars of laughter. Mona bursts into tears and goes indoors. If her stock is to be taken, the island, as well as Knockaloe, is lost to her!
Late that night Oskar comes again.
His eyes are fierce and his face is twitching.
“I’ve heard what happened,” he says, “and if I were a free man I should break every bone in the blackguard’s skin. But I can’t let you go on suffering like this for me. You must give me up, Mona.”
It is the first time an open acknowledgment of their love has passed between them. Mona is confused for a moment. Then she says, “Do you want me to give you up, Oskar?”
He does not answer.
“To see you go away with the rest, and to think no more about you?”
Still he does not answer.
“Do you?”
“God knows I don’t,” he says, and at the next moment he is gone.
TWELFTH CHAPTER
THREE nights later Oskar comes again. As usual he will not enter the house, so she has to stand at the door to speak to him. His eyes are bright and he is eager and excited.
“Mona, I have something to suggest to you.”
“Yes?”
“It’s not to be wondered at that people brought up in a little island like this should have these hard feelings and narrow ideas. But the English are not like that. They are a great, great people, and if you are willing to go with me to England....”
“What are you thinking of, Oskar?”
He tells her more about himself than she has ever yet heard. He is an electrical engineer, and before being brought to Knockaloe he had been chief engineer to a big English company on the Mersey, at a salary of a thousand a year. When the war broke out his sympathies had been dead against his own country, chiefly because of “that quack, the Kaiser.”
“Oskar!”
“It’s true. I can’t account for it. I was secretly ashamed of it in those days, but I would have joined up in the British Army if they would have had me. They wouldn’t!”
On the contrary, the authorities had called him up for internment. Then his firm, which had been loath to lose him, had tried to obtain his exemption. They had failed, and when the time came for him to go the chairman of the company had said: “Heine, we’re sorry you have to leave us, but if you want to come back when the war is over, your place will be waiting for you.”
“But could he... do you think it possible....”
“Certain! Oh, he’s a great old man, Mona, and if he were to break his word to me I should lose faith in human nature. So I... I...
“Wen?”
“I intend to write to him, telling him I shall soon be at liberty, and if you will only agree to go with me....”
He stops, seeing tears in her eyes. Then, in a husky voice, he says:
“I’m sorry to ask you to leave your island.”
“It is turning me out, Oskar; that’s the bitterest part of it.”
“Then you will go to England with me?”
“Yes,” she says, and he hurries off in high spirits to write his letter.
During the next week Mona tries hard to feel happy, but little by little vague doubts oppress her. One day she overhears scraps of a conversation between the Commandant and the Governor, who are arranging for the breaking up of the camp and the disposal of its portable property. As they stand in the avenue they are talking about the Peace Conference.
“It’s a pity,” the Commandant is saying, “but it has always been my experience that the first years of a peace are worse than the last years of a war.”
And the Governor is answering: “All the same, we should be fools to trust those traitors again. We have beaten the German brutes, and what we have got to do now is to keep them beaten.”
“I’m not like that, your Excellency,” says the Commandant. “I’ll fight my enemy with the best, but when the fighting is over I want to forget and, if I can, forgive. I was at the front in the early days, and after a bad bit of an engagement I came upon a German officer in a shell hole. He was in a terrible state, poor fellow, and we couldn’t take him in, so I decided to stay with him. His mind was perfectly clear, and he said, ‘Colonel’ (I was colonel in those days), ‘don’t you think this is strange?’
‘What’s strange?’ I asked. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘if you and I had met in the trenches I suppose you would have tried to kill me for the sake of Motherland, and I should have tried to kill you for the sake of Fatherland, yet here you are trying to save me for the sake of... Brotherland.’ More of the same kind he said in those last hours, and when the end came he was in my arms and his head was on my breast, and I don’t mind telling you I... I kissed him.”
Mona felt a thrill going through and through her. Brotherland! That was what all the world would be soon. And then Oskar and she, living in Liverpool, in their great love would be happy and unashamed.
That night Oskar comes back. His face is pale and his lips are quivering. He tries to speak, but finding it hard to do so he hands her a letter. It is from the engineering firm on the Mersey.
SIR, — We have received your letter of the 10th inst addressed to our late chairman, who died during the war, and regret to say in reply to your request that you should be taken back in your former position, that it is now filled to our satisfaction by another engineer, and that even if it were vacant we should find it impossible to re-engage you for the reason that feeling against the Germans is so strong among British workmen that none of them would be willing to serve under you, and the fact that you had married an English wife, as you say, would increase, not lessen, their hostility.
Yours, etc.
“I wouldn’t have believed it,” says Oskar.
“It’s the war,” says Mona. “Will it never, never end?”
“Never,” says Oskar, and he turns away with clenched teeth.
Mona goes to bed that night with a heavy heart. If English workmen will not work with Oskar, England, also, is closed to them, and Brotherland is a cruel dream.
Another week passes. The disbanding of the camp goes on as usual, with its toll of two hundred and fifty men daily. The Fourth and Second Compounds are now beginning to be called upon. The men of the Third are being kept to the last, because many of them, like Oskar, are engineers, and therefore useful in removing the electric plant, which is to be sold separately. But their turn will come soon and then... what then?
A week later Oskai comes again. His face is thin and pinched and his eyes are bleared as from want of sleep, but his spirits are high, almost hysterical.
“Mona,” he says, “I know what we have to do.”
“What?”
“The English may be hard and unforgiving, but the Germans are not like that.”
“The Germans?”
“Oh, I know my people. They may fight like fiends and demons — they do, I know they do — but when the fighting is over they are willing to be friends with their enemies.”
“What are you thinking of now, Oskar?” says Mona, but she sees what is coming.
“If you were willing if you could only find it possible to go with me to Germany ..”
“Germany?”
Mona feels dizzy.
“It’s a sin and a shame to ask you to leave your native country, Mona, but since it is turning you out, as you say...”
Mona is covering her ears.
“Don’t speak of it, Oskar. I can’t listen to you! It’s impossible.”
Oskar is silent for a moment, then he says in a tremulous voice:
“I would make it up to you, Mona. Yes, I swear to God I should make it up to you. I should dedicate every day and hour of my life to make it up to you. You should never regret it — never for one single moment.”
“But how could I go...”
“Just as other women are going. Lots of the men are taking their German wives back with them. Why shouldn’t I take my English wife?”
“Wife?”
“Certainly. The chaplain would marry us.”
“The chaplain?”
“Yes, in the camp chapel, late at night or early in the morning, with two of my comrades as witnesses.”
“Have you spoken to him, then?”
“I have, and he says that being made in a Lutheran church by a Lutheran clergyman, it would be a good marriage according to German law, so Germany would receive you.”
“But where... where should we go to?”
“My mother’s first.”
“Your mother’s?”
“Where else? Oh, she’d love it! She’s the best mother a man ever had. Do you know, she has written to me every single week since I came here. And now she’s only living to welcome me home.”
“But, Oskar, are you sure she will...”
“Welcome you? Of course she will. She’s growing old, poor soul, and has been lonely since my sister’s death. After we’re married I’ll write to say I’m bringing another daughter home to love and comfort her....”
“Write first, Oskar.”
“As you please. It isn’t necessary, though. I know quite well what she’ll say. But even if she couldn’t welcome you for yourself — and why shouldn’t she? — she would for my sake, anyway.”
“All the same, write first, Oskar.”
“Very well, I will. And if her answer is all right, you’ll go?”
“Ye-s.”
“Heavens, how happy I am! What have I done to deserve to be so happy?”
Mona watches him as he goes off, with his quick step, until he is lost in the sinister shadows cast by the big arc-lamps that cut through the night. Then she goes indoors and tries to compose herself. It takes her a long time to do so, but at length, being in bed, she remembers a beautiful thing she had read to her father in the days when he lay upstairs:
“Whither thou goest, I will go. Thy people shall he my people, and thy God my God.”
For days after that Mona finds herself singing as she goes about her work. And at night, when she is alone, she is always thinking of her forthcoming life in Oskar’s home. She can scarcely remember her own mother, except that she was an invalid for years, but she sees herself nursing Oskar’s mother, now that she is old and has lost her daughter.
