She yielded: it was plainly useless to resist. But for the surgeon's
resistance, her devotion to the wounded men might have stopped her
on the downward way that she was going. If she could only have been
absorbed again, mind and body, in her good work as a nurse, the
temptation might even yet have found her strong enough to resist it. The
fatal severity of the German discipline had snapped asunder the last tie
that bound her to her better self. Her face hardened as she walked away
proudly from Surgeon Wetzel, and took a chair.
The Englishman followed her, and reverted to the question of her present
situation in the cottage.
"Don't suppose that I want to alarm you," he said. "There is, I repeat,
no need to be anxious about the Frenchmen, but there is serious reason
for anxiety on your own account. The action will be renewed round this
village by daylight; you ought really to be in a place of safety. I am
an officer in the English army--my name is Horace Holmcroft. I shall be
delighted to be of use to you, and I _can_ be of use, if you will let
me. May I ask if you are traveling?"
Mercy gathered the cloak which concealed her nurse's dress more closely
round her, and committed herself silently to her first overt act of
deception. She bowed her head in the affirmative.
"Are you on your way to England?"
"Yes."
"In that case I can pass you through the German lines, and forward you
at once on your journey."
Mercy looked at him in unconcealed surprise. His strongly-felt interest
in her was restrained within the strictest limits of good-breeding: he
was unmistakably a gentleman. Did he really mean what he had just said?
"You can pass me through the German lines?" she repeated. "You must
possess extraordinary influence, sir, to be able to do that."
Mr. Horace Holmcroft smiled.
"I possess the influence that no one can resist," he answered--"the
influence of the Press. I am serving here as war correspondent of one of
our great English newspapers. If I ask him, the commanding officer will
grant you a pass. He is close to this cottage. What do you say?"
She summoned her resolution--not without difficulty, even now--and took
him at his word.
"I gratefully accept your offer, sir."
He advanced a step toward the kitchen, and stopped.
"It may be well to make the application as privately as possible," he
said. "I shall be questioned if I pass through that room. Is there no
other way out of the cottage?"
Mercy showed him the door leading into the yard. He bowed--and left her.
She looked furtively toward the German surgeon. Ignatius Wetzel was
still at the bed, bending over the body, and apparently absorbed in
examining the wound which had been inflicted by the shell. Mercy's
instinctive aversion to the old man increased tenfold, now that she was
left alone with him. She withdrew uneasily to the window, and looked out
at the moonlight.