Chapter III: Part 3

When the hymn comes to an end Mona sits and the pastor begins his sermon. She can understand only a word of it now and again, and her eyes wander to the door. Oskar is there. His head is up and his eyes are shining.

“O Lord, stop the war, stop it, stop it!”

Summer has come again; the sun rises and sets, the birds sing and nest, the landscape preserves its solemn peace, but still the war goes on. The last kick of the enemy, which the Swiss doctors had foreseen, has been made and it is over. After a devastating advance, there has been a still more devastating retreat.

The prisoners in the camp know all about it. Their spirits had risen and fallen according to the fortunes of their armies at the front. At first they were truculent. They talked braggingly about vast German forces marching upon London, blowing up Buckingham Palace, putting an end to the British Empire, and then turning their attention to America. Afterwards they were sceptical. If the English newspapers reported German defeats they knew better, having received their German newspapers which reported German victories. Now they are sullen. What is the war about, anyway? Nothing at all! In ten years’ time nobody will know what was the cause of it!

Mona is in a fever of excitement. Is the war coming to an end at last? What does Oskar think? Why doesn’t he come to her? Is he still thinking he has brought trouble enough on her already?

At length he comes. It is late at night. She hears his voice calling to her in a tremulous tone from the other side of the open door.

“Mona!”

He has never called her by that name before.

“Yes?”

She is standing on the threshold, trembling from head to foot, never before having been face to face with him since the night of her father’s seizure.

“It’s all over, Mona.”

“What is, Oskar?”

“Germany is beaten. The Hindenburg line is broken, and revolution has begun in Berlin.”

“Does that mean that the war will soon be at an end?”

“It must be.”

She hesitates for a moment, then she says, with a quivering at her heart:

“But surely you are glad of that, Oskar--that the war will soon be at an end?”

He looks into her face and then turns away his own.

“I don’t know. I can’t say,” he answers.

She looks after him as he goes off. Her eyes gleam and her heart throbs.

_TENTH CHAPTER_

The tenth of November, nineteen hundred and eighteen. All day long there has been great commotion in the officers’ quarters. The telephone with Government Office has been going constantly since early morning, and there has been much hurrying to and fro.

An internment camp is like a desert in one thing--rumour passes over it on the wings of the wind. Before midday every prisoner knows everything. The Kaiser has been hurled from his throne by his own people; the German command have asked for an armistice, and the Allied Commander-in-Chief has given them until nine o’clock to-morrow to sign the terms of peace he has prepared for them.

If they do not sign within that time the war will go on to extermination. If they do, the news will be flashed over the world immediately. At eleven o’clock they will have it at Knockaloe. The guns will be fired in the fort at Douglas, the sirens will be sounded from the steamers in the bay, and the church bells will be rung all over the island.

Mona is in raptures. The war is near to an end, and all she has prayed for is about to come to pass. Yet even at that moment she is conscious of conflicting feelings. When she thinks of Robbie, she wants to shout with joy that the war has come to a right ending, and the cruel enemy who made it, with all its barbarities and horrors, is humbled to the dust. But when she thinks of Oskar, she feels ... she does not know what she feels.

Where _is_ Oskar?

She awakes next morning before the day has dawned and while the arc-lamps are still burning. The first thing she is aware of is a deep murmur, like that of the sea on a quiet but sullen day, which seems to come from all parts of the camp. It was the last thing she had been conscious of when she fell asleep the night before. The prisoners were then walking to and fro in their compounds, in and out of the sinister shadows, and talking, talking, talking. Could it be possible that they had walked and talked all night long?

What wonder? The day that was about to dawn might be the day of doom for them. When night came again their Fatherland might have fallen; they might be men without a country--mere outcasts thrown on to an overburdened world.

When the day breaks and the arc-lamps are put out, Mona sees the men moving about like wraiths in the grey light. But silence has now fallen on them. The ordinary regulations of the camp have been relaxed for the day, and they are not required to go to their workshops. When the bell rings for breakfast some of them forget they are hungry and remain in the open.

It is a November day like many another, fine and clear and cold and with occasional gleams of sunshine on the sea. The cows in the cow-house are lowing, the sheep on the hill are bleating. Nature is going on as usual.

Mona goes to her work in the dairy. When the men come for the milk, she can hardly bear to look into their drawn faces. The prisoners in the First Compound are standing in groups, and if they are talking at all it can only be in whispers. The sailors in the Second Compound are standing together in crowds, but the old riotous spirit is gone; there is no more shouting or swearing.

The hours drag on. Looking beyond the barbed wire boundary of the encampment, Mona sees country carts rattling down the high road at a fast trot as if going to a fair. Somebody is on the church tower of Kirk Patrick doing something with the flagstaff.

At half-past ten the world seems to be standing still. The camp is on tiptoe. All over it men are looking towards Douglas. Their faces are grim, almost ghastly. They seem to be rooted to the ground. Sometimes one of them digs his foot into the earth like a restless horse tired of waiting, but that is the only movement.

Where is Oskar? What is he doing?

At length, at long length, there is a certain activity in the officers’ quarters. Mona distinctly hears the ringing of the telephone bell in the Commandant’s tent, which is not far from the farm-house. In the quiet air and the dead silence she believes she hears the Commandant’s voice.

“Hello! Who’s there? Government office?... Well?... Signed, is it? Good!”

At the same moment she hears the striking of the clock at Peel. And before the clock has finished striking there comes the deep boom of a gun.

There can be no mistaking that. It rolls down the valley from the direction of Douglas, strikes the hills on either side, and then sweeps over the black camp towards the sea.

A moment later comes the screaming of sirens, deadened by distance, then the ringing of church bells, now far, now near, and then the dull sound of wild cheering at Peel, where the people, who have been waiting from early morning in the market place, are going frantic in their joy, clasping each other’s hands and kissing.

The twenty-five thousand prisoners in the camp stand silent and breathless for a moment. The worst has happened to them--their Fatherland has fallen.

The strain is broken by a ridiculous incident. A terrier bitch belonging to a German baron in the “millionaires’” quarters leaps up to the roof of his tent and begins to bark furiously at the tumult in the air. The little creature’s anger becomes amusing. The men look at the dog and then burst into peals of laughter.

A few minutes afterwards the prisoners of the First Compound have recovered themselves and are shaking hands and congratulating each other. After all the war is over and they will soon be free! Free to leave this place and go back home--home to their houses and their wives and children.

The sailors in the Second Compound are going crazy with delight, and behaving like demented creatures. They are laughing and singing at the top of their lungs, punching each other and boxing, playing leap-frog and turning cart-wheels. What does it matter about country? Who cares about the Fatherland, anyway? All the world is their country--all the world and the sea.

Mona is standing at the door of her dairy, quivering with emotion. She is like a woman possessed. What she has hoped for and prayed for has come to pass at last. Peace! Peace! Peace over all the earth! Never has the world had such a chance before. Never will it have such a chance again. The cruelties and barbarities of war will be no more heard of, and the senseless jealousies and hatreds of races will be wiped out for ever. And then ... and then....

All at once she becomes aware of somebody behind her. She knows who it is, but she does not turn. There is a moment of silence between them, and then, in a voice which she can scarcely control, she says, half-crying, half laughing:

“You, too, will be free to go home soon, Oskar. Aren’t you glad?”

There is another moment of silence between them, and then in a low, tremulous voice Oskar answers:

“No, you know I’m not, Mona.”

Mona drops her hand to her side, partly behind her, and at the next moment she feels it tightened in a quivering grasp.

_ELEVENTH CHAPTER_

A month has passed, yet the camp looks much the same as before. Mona had expected that the prisoners would be liberated by this time, but they are here still. The Commandant is said to be waiting for orders.

Meantime regulations have been relaxed. The men are no longer restricted to the various compounds. There is no limit to their liberty of moving about, except the big gates, guarded by soldiers, and the three lines of barbed wire by which the camp is surrounded. Why not? Nobody is likely to attempt to escape. Within a few weeks everybody will be free.

Mona has all the help she can do with now. The prisoners are constantly about the farm-house, doing anything they can for her. They show her photographs of their wives and children and get her to count up the savings that are coming to them.

At length comes word that the Peace Congress has begun and that the Commandant has received his orders. Two hundred and fifty of the prisoners are to be sent over the water every day until the camp is empty.

But there is a condition attaching to the liberation. Mona hears of it first from three prisoners belonging to distant compounds, who are talking outside the house. To her surprise they are speaking not only in English, but in British dialects.

“They ca’ me a Jarmin,” says one, “but what am I? I were browt to Owdham when I were five year owd and now ’am fifty, so ’am five year Jarmin and forty-five English. Yet they’re sending me back to Jarmany.”

“I’m no so sure but my case isna war’ nor that, though,” says the other. “I came to Glasgie when I was a bairn in my mither’s arms, and I’ve lived there all my life. I married there and my two sons were born there. And now that I’ve lost both of them fighting in the British army, and my wife’s dead of a broken heart and I’ve nobody left belonging to me, they’re for sending me back to a foreign country.”

“Aw well,” says the third man, speaking with a snatch of the Anglo-Manx, “I wouldn’t trust but my case is worse nor either of yours. I’m German born, that’s truth enough, but I’ve lived in this very island since I was a lump of a lad, and maybe I’m as Manx myself as some ones they make magistrates and judges of. More than that, my only son was born here, and when he grew up to be a fine young fellow, and they said his King and country needed him, he was one of the first to join up and go off to the war. Well, what d’ye think? Twelve month ago he was wounded and invalided home, and then, being no use for foreign service, they sent him to Knockaloe as one of the guard--to guard, among others, his own father. Think of that now! My son outside the barbed wire and me inside! And one of these days he’ll have to march me down to Douglas and ship me off to Germany, where I’ve neither chick nor child, no kith nor kin.... Yes, _my_ lad, that I used to carry on my back and rock in his cradle!”

Mona is aghast. Something seems to creep between her skin and flesh. Never before, in all the long agony of the war, with its blood and tears and terror, has she heard of anything so cruel. What a mockery of the Almighty! Race, race, race! Mother and author of half the wars of the world--when, oh when would the Father of all living wipe the blasphemous word out of the mouths of Christian men?

But the conversation Mona has overheard cuts deeper and closer than that even. If all German-born prisoners are to be sent back to Germany, Oskar will have to go, and what _then?_

That night a knock comes to her door. It is Oskar himself. His eyes are wild and his lips are trembling.

“You’ve heard of the new order?” he asks.

“Yes. Will you have to go back also?”

“I must. I suppose I must.”

The first batch to go are from the “millionaires’” quarters. Being rich they have reconciled themselves to the conditions. Park Lane or the Thiergarten--what matter which? In their black clothes, their spats and fur-lined coats, and with their suit-cases packed in a truck, they march off merrily.

The next to go are from the Second Compound, and they make a different picture--ill-clad, ill-shod, without an overcoat among them, with nothing in their pockets except the little money they have drawn at the last moment from the camp bank, and nothing in their hands except the canvas bags which contain all their belongings.

It is a miserable January morning, with drizzling rain and a thick mist over the mountains. At a sharp word of command the men go tramping towards the gate, a silent and melancholy lot, totally unlike the singing and swaggering gang who came up the avenue four years ago.

Later in the day the captain of the guard (the new captain) who has seen the men off by the steamer tells Mona a wretched story. The prisoners had passed through Douglas with heads down like men going to execution; they had been drawn up like sheep on the pier, while the ordinary passengers went aboard to their cabins, and then they had been hurried down the gangway to the steerage quarters. And as the steamer moved away they had looked back with longing eyes at the island they were leaving behind them.

“Poor devils! They used to talk about the camp as a hell, but inside six months they’ll be ready to crawl on their stomachs to get back to it.”

“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 ... 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 loathe 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....”

“Well?”

“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 ... 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 Oskar 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 be 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.

“I mustn’t go empty-handed, though,” she thinks.

That brings back the memory of Long John Corlett and his threat of “putting the law” on her.

It must have been stuff and nonsense about the dilapidations eating up the stock, but she will see an advocate and have things settled up immediately.

“I’m afraid the man is right, miss.”

It is the advocate whom Mona is consulting.

“It was a bad bargain your poor father made with the Government, and the only people likely to profit by it are the landlord and the incoming tenant.”

“Then what do you advise me to do, sir?”

“Sell up your stock, have the dilapidations valued, pay the money due, and start afresh on whatever is left.”

“Do it for me at once, please,” says Mona, and she sets off home with an easy, if not a happy, mind.

But hardly has she got there and changed into her dairy clothes, and begun on her evening milking in the cow-house, with the watery winter sun coming in on her through the open door, when she sees Oskar approaching with a look that strikes to her heart. His face is white, almost ghastly, and he is walking like an old man, bent and feeble.

“What has happened?”

“There! What do you think of that?” he says, and with a grating laugh he gives her a letter.

“Is it from your mother?”

“Look at it.”

“Is she refusing to receive me?”

“Read it. It’s written in English--for your benefit, apparently.”

Mona reads:

“OSKAR,--The contents of your letter have distressed me beyond
measure. That a son of mine should think of marrying an
Englishwoman--one of the vile and wicked race that killed his
sister--is the most shocking thing that has ever happened to me in
my life.”

There is more of the same kind--that if Oskar attempts to bring his Englishwoman to Germany his mother will refuse to receive her; that if she did receive her every self-respecting German woman would cry shame on her and shun her house for ever; that the feeling in Germany against the abominable English is so bitter, because of their brutal methods of warfare and their barbarous ideas of peace (starving hundreds of German children by their infamous blockade, drowning German sailors under the sea in their submarines, burning German airmen alive in the air, and now ruining everybody by crushing demands for reparations which will leave Germany a nation of beggars), that no decent house would shelter any of them.

“Tell your Englishwoman from me that if she marries you and comes
to this country she will be as a leper whom nobody will touch.
Never shall she cross this threshold! Oskar, my son, I love you,
and I have waited all this time for you; I am old, too, and have
not much longer to live, but rather than hear you had married an
Englishwoman I would see you dead and buried.”

When Mona looks up from the letter, Oskar is gazing into her face with a ghastly smile.

“That’s a nice thing to send a fellow after four years’ imprisonment, isn’t it?” he says, and then he breaks into heart-breaking laughter.

“I was so sure of her, too. I thought she would do anything for me--anything.”

Again he laughs--wildly, fiercely.

“What has happened to the woman? Has the accursed war taken all the heart out of her? The German people, too--have they all gone mad? Starving German children, drowning German sailors, burning German airmen! Good Lord, has the whole nation gone crazy?”

Mona feels as if she were choking.

“She is old and hasn’t much longer to live, and just because I’m going to marry the best girl in the world and take her home with me....”

But his laughter breaks into sobs and he can say no more. Mona feels the tears in her throat as well as in her eyes, but at length she says:

“Oskar, it’s all my fault. I’ve come between you. You must go home without me--to your country and your mother.”

Oskar lifts his broken face and cries:

“Country? Mother? I’ve got no country and no mother either. Go home to them? Never! Never in this world!”

At the next moment he has gone off, with long strides, before Mona can reach out her hand to stop him.

Being alone, she has to go on with her work as usual--the “creatures” have to be milked and foddered. But after the men from the compounds have been served (only three of them now) she has time to think out her situation.

Since Oskar’s mother refuses to receive her, Germany also is closed to them. Because she loves Oskar, and Oskar loves her, and they are of different races and their nations have been at war, they are to be hunted through the world as outcasts, and no place is to be left for them.

“Poor Oskar! It’s hardest for him, though,” she thinks.

_THIRTEENTH CHAPTER_

The men of the Fourth and Fifth Compounds, three-quarters of the guard and many of the officers have gone, when a stranger comes to the camp to make a bid for the purchase of the booths and huts.

After a tour of the wooden buildings he arrives at the farm-yard, and steps on to the mounting-block to take a general view, and at the same moment Mona comes to the door of her dairy.

He is an American, a cheerful and rather free-spoken person, and he says, with a smile on his lips, by way of excuse for opening a conversation:

“I guess the farm-house is not for sale, is it?”

“You must ask the landlord about that, sir,” says Mona.

“Not you also? You’re the tenant of the farm, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but I’m leaving it presently.”

“Ah, I remember! I’ve heard something about you. And where are you going to when you leave here?”

“I don’t know yet, sir.”

He looks at her as if measuring her from head to foot, and then says, with another smile:

“Come to my country, girlie. We have some strapping young women out west, but we can do with a few more of the same sort, I guess.”

Mona is startled. Obvious as the word is, it comes like an inspiration. America! “The melting-pot of the nations!” All the races of the world are there. They must live in peace together or life could not go on.

When Oskar comes that night she tells him what the stranger has said, and his big, heavy, sleepless eyes become bright and excited.

“Why not? Why shouldn’t we? That great free country! What a relief to leave all the d----d mess of this life in Europe behind us!”

There is a difficulty, though. He has heard that America refuses to admit people who have been in prison. He has been four years in an internment camp--will America allow him to land? He must ask the chaplain.

The following night Oskar comes back with a still brighter face.

“It’s all right, Mona. Internment is not imprisonment in the eyes of American law.”

But there is one other difficulty. America requires that every immigrant shall have something in his pocket to prevent him from becoming a burden on the new country.

“It’s not much, but I have too little. If I had been a free man I should have earned four thousand pounds in the time I’ve been here, but when I leave the camp I shall only have fifty.”

Mona is overjoyed--at length _she_ can do something.

“That’s no difficulty at all, Oskar. The auction is to come off soon, and after I’ve paid what I owe I shall have enough for both of us.”

It is the day before the auction, and Mona is gathering up the stock and bringing them down to the houses--the beasts she had put out on the grass, the “dry” cows that are stretched on their bellies chewing the cud, the sheep that are bleating, and the early lambs that are baa-ing.

She is going up the mountain to fetch the young bull to which she has taken a bowl of wheat twice a week throughout the winter. A new wave of hope has come to her, a golden radiance is shining in the future, and she is singing to herself as she climbs through the heather.

Suddenly, when she reaches the top of the hill, by the tower called “Corrin’s Folly,” she hears fierce animals snorting, and at the next moment sees that three bulls are fighting. One of them is her own young bull, small and lithe, the two others are old and large and black and have iron rings in their nostrils. She remembers the old ones. They belong to John Corlett, and must have leapt over the boundary to get at the young one, and are now goring it fearfully.

The fight is frightful. The young bull is bleeding horribly and trying to escape. It leaps over the wall of the little cemetery around the tower and makes for the land on the other side of it which goes down by a steep descent to precipitous cliffs, with the broad sea lying below at a terrible depth. But the old bulls, making hoarse noises from their nostrils, are following it up on either side and intercepting it. As often as the hunted animal runs to the right they gore it back to the left, and when it flies to the left they gore it back to the right.

At length the young bull stands for a moment, with its wild eyes flashing fire and its face towards the cliffs. And then, with a loud snort as of despair and defiance, it bounds forward, gallops straight ahead, and leaps clear over the cliff-head into the sea. The old bulls look after it for a moment with heaving nostrils and dilated eyes, and then begin to graze as if nothing had happened.

Mona has stood helpless and trembling while the fight has lasted, and when it is over and she comes to herself she finds Oskar standing behind her. He has been working on the roof of the tower, to remove the electric wires which have been attached to it, and from there he has seen everything.

“It was horrible, wasn’t it?”

“Horrible!”

“So cruel and cowardly.”

“Yes,” he says, from between his clenched teeth, “and so damnably human.”

Mona looks at him. They go down the hill together without saying any more.

At last it has come, the day of the sale. The Commandant has permitted it to be held at the farm, although the camp is not yet entirely cleared. It is his last act before leaving, for he is going away that morning. Mona sees him driving off in his motor car, hardly recognizable in his civilian clothes. As he passes the farm-house he raises his hat to her--an English gentleman, every inch of him.

Towards eleven o’clock there is much commotion about the farmstead. The guards (they have had orders to help) are bringing the big beasts out of the houses into the “haggard” and driving the sheep and lambs into pens. There is a great deal of bleating and lowing. Mona, who is compelled to hear, but cannot bring herself to see what is going on, is indoors, trying not to look or listen.

At length there is the sound of voices. The Advocate, with the auctioneer and his clerk, are coming up the avenue, and behind them are many farmers. Long John Corlett, in his chapel clothes, is prominent among the latter, talking and laughing and hobnobbing with everybody. Mona sees the look of impudent certainty in the man’s empty face. She also sees Oskar, who is behind the barbed wire of the Third Compound, with a face that is white and fierce.

After a short period for inspection the auction begins. The Advocate reads the conditions of sale (the whole of the stock on the farm is to be sold without reserve), and then the auctioneer steps up to the top of the mounting-block, while the clerk takes his place at the foot of it, and the farmers form a circle around them. There are the usual facetiæ.

“Now, gentlemen, you’ve got the chance of your lives this morning. John Corlett, I know you’ve come to buy up everything, so get your purse-strings loosened. Mr. Lace, thou knows a good beast if anybody on the island does, and there are lashings of them here, I can tell thee.”

The first animal to be led out by the guard into the circle of the spectators is a fine milch cow, five years old. Mona remembers that she gave forty pounds for it in the middle of the war. It is knocked down for twenty.

“What name?”

“John Corlett.”

For a long half-hour there are scenes of the same kind. Every fresh beast put up is knocked down at half its value, and always, after the crack of the auctioneer’s hammer, there comes the same name--“John Corlett.”

At length Mona’s anger becomes ungovernable. It is conspiracy, collusion! John Corlett has bought up all competitors! She rises from her seat by the fire with the intention of throwing up the window and shouting her protest. But while her hand is on the sash she sees Oskar at the other side of the barbed wire, striding hastily away, and she returns to her seat.

The auction goes on for an hour longer. Mona does not look out again, but she hears everything that is said outside, every word, almost every whisper.

The farmers are beginning to laugh at the monotony of the proceedings. At length there is a murmur of conversation between the auctioneer and the Advocate, and the auctioneer says, “Very well, if you wish, sir,” whereupon the Advocate raises his voice and cries:

“Gentlemen, this is going too far. If I hadn’t announced that the sale would be without reserve I should stop it on my own responsibility. Come now, be Manxmen. What’s doing on you anyway? Is it the war--or what? Men, we all knew old Robert Craine. He is dead. Let us be fair to his only daughter.”

After that there is no more laughter, but there is less bidding and the results are the same. The sale, which was expected to last until evening, is over by lunch-time.

“Gentlemen,” says the auctioneer, “I thank you for your attendance. It’s just as I expected--John Corlett has bought in all the stock on the farm.”

“And much good may it do him,” says the Advocate.

“I might have given her more for it without the auction, sir,” says John Corlett.

“And so you might, or you should have been d---- well ashamed of yourself.”

Then Mona hears the sound of trapesing feet on the avenue and the various voices of people passing under her window.

“Serve her right, though! We want no Huns settling here on the island.”

“No, nor no good Manx money going over to Germany neither.”

A moment later the Advocate comes into the house.

“I’m sorry the sale has not been as good as we expected, miss. The total receipts will scarcely cover the valuation.”

“Then there’s nothing left for me--nothing whatever?”

“Nothing! I’m sorry, very sorry.”

Mona, who had risen, sinks back into her seat as if stunned. After a while, the Advocate having gone, she hears the barking of dogs, the shouting of men, the bleating of sheep and the lowing of cattle. The stock are being driven back to the hill by the servants of their new owner.

At length there is silence. It is not at first that Mona is able to realize the full meaning of what has happened, but at last it falls on her. America is closed to her now. And that means that there is no place left to her in the world!

Oskar comes towards bed-time. He is biting his lips and his eyes are bloodshot. She looks up at him helplessly--all the strength of her soul has gone out of her.

“You’ve heard the result?”

“Yes, I have heard,” he says, speaking between his teeth.

“I can’t think how people could be so unkind.”

“Unkind!”

He is laughing bitterly, fiercely.

“One’s nearest neighbours--the people one has known all one’s life.”

“Oh, your people are no worse than any other--not an atom. People are the same everywhere. It’s the war, Mona. It has drained every drop of humanity out of them.”

He is laughing again, still more bitterly and fiercely.

“War! What a damned stupid, idiotic thing it is--and the people who make it! Patriots? Criminals, I call them! Crowned criminals and their mountebank crew conspiring against God and Nature.”

He smites the doorpost with his fist and says:

“But the war is not the worst by a long way.”

“What is, Oskar?”

“This damnable peace that has followed it. People thought when the peace came they could go to sleep and forget. What fools! Think of it! Miserable old men spouting about a table, gambling in the fate of the young and the unborn; forgetting their loss in precious human lives, but wrangling about their reparations, about land, about money, which the little mother rocking her baby’s cradle will have to pay the interest of in blood and tears some day; setting nation against nation; brewing a cauldron of hate which is hardening the hearts and poisoning the souls of men and women all the world over.”

Mona, who has hardly heard what he has said, is still looking up at him helplessly.

“We couldn’t help it, could we, Oskar?”

Oskar, recovering his self-command, pity-struck and ashamed, lifts up her work-stained hands and puts them to his lips.

“Forgive me, Mona.”

“We struggled hard, didn’t we?”

“Yes.”

“But since God had put it into our hearts we couldn’t resist it, could we?”

“No.”

“And now He doesn’t seem to care, does He?”

“No! He doesn’t seem to care,” says Oskar. And then he goes off with head down.

_FOURTEENTH CHAPTER_

It is the Saturday before Easter.

Looking out of her bedroom window in the morning, Mona sees nothing but a desolate black waste where the crowded compounds have been. Four unborn springs and summers buried in the bosom of the blackened fields--when, oh when will they grow green again?