CHAPTER XXXV

"FIRE, FIRE!"

"An enemy bath done this." --PARABLE OF THE TARES.

We ran, taking a short cut to the farm over the stubble of the cornfield which had been reaped that afternoon.

As we ran I kept saying to myself: "The big barn! Can it be the big barn that's on fire?"

For that would have meant nearly all the wheat of this whole big field destroyed and done for.

We ran, passing the gate beside which lay the dumpy little gleaners' sheaves of every ear that the children had found after our heel-rakes had combed out the field. Oh! would that represent all that was left of this afternoon's harvesting?

The wind in our faces brought us a drift of smoke, a smell of wood burning, the sound of shouting.

"Beat that down!" called Dick Holiday's voice. "Never mind about that other. Leave that shed! It's done."

We came up, panting, to find the dear, familiar farmyard in a pandemonium such as it had never known before. It was full of people, and the sound of their feet and voices mingling with that deep, ominous roar of the fire.

Something was fiercely ablaze. Was--oh! was it? No, thank heaven, it was not the big barn after all!

A harvest so good had overflowed the great tithe-barn for which I had feared. Part of today's wheat had been stacked into a smaller shed, but a few feet off from the great barn. It was this shed that blazed and blazed, sending up clouds of blue-grey smoke, fountains of sparks, and that smell which was something between that of an autumn bonfire and of malt and bread.

Yes, it was England's bread that was being destroyed there before our eyes. But only a part of that afternoon's harvesting of it. For the other part a fight was being put up; the big barn, perilously near, must not be allowed to catch.

People had formed themselves into a chain to hand down buckets full of water from the canal that meandered by at the top-end of the farmyard to where the fire went flashing up, licking up even to the branches of the elms. Dick Holiday in his shirtsleeves, close to the taller figure of Mr. Price, was dashing water, bucket after bucket of it, not on to the flames at all, but on to the walls and woodwork of the great barn.

"Sand," I heard him call. "Sand in that pit over there. Mix it with the water!"

I scarcely know how it was that I found myself with one of my best milking-pails full of wet sand, racing down the yard beside Colonel Fielding. All together we were working presently, as we had worked before in the field. Even as I toiled strenuously with my pails I noticed such odd little details in the midst of the turmoil; I noticed the way Ivor and Colonel Fielding turned their faces, as they threw the water, away from the burning walls of the shed, now hot as a furnace; I noticed Mrs. Price's little flying feet under her grey overall; I noticed the frightened twitter of the birds who had been scared out of their usual roosting places in the hedge near by, and the angry calling of the rooks whose nests were in those elms. And on Dick Holiday's forehead, under a hank of his short, brown hair, I even noticed a great smudge of black from the charred wood.

I was standing near enough to him to see this when he, who had been looking up at the roof of the shed, grasped my arm and pulled me back a step suddenly. I thought he had not noticed who it was. But he exclaimed, "Joan, look out! It's going to fall in now."

And at the word the roof of that shed collapsed. It fell in like a house of cards, or like (alas!) one of the many French homes of which black ruin marks the trace. Up went a great spurt of flames, crackling and roaring to the skies again.

Captain Holiday loosed my arm. "The wind's shifted," he said, in relief, watching the direction of those flames. Then, raising his voice, he added: "I say, Mr. Price, the wind's turned again. That'll be all right now, I think."

"All right, Captain Holiday; thank goodness," came from the farmer, turning his heated, school-boy's face with a look of relief also. "The fire will blow right away from the barn now. Quite safe now. Ah! I didn't think we should stop it. I thought it was done for, indeed! Leave it now, we can----"

For the flames, full fed, seemed to be sinking as suddenly as they had leapt.

The labourers, land girls, a detachment of wounded boys from the Hospital, and villagers drew back; faces were mopped, sleeves rolled down again, hands placed on hips, and deep ejaculations breathed out in Welsh and English.

"Well, oh!" ... "I never saw such a thing." "Saved more than three-quarters of the corn, whatever! ... In where did that fire start, Mr. Price?"

Then, quickly, a brusque voice rapped out curtly, "What the deuce is this? Mr. Price! Come here, will you? Look at this----"

"This" was something that Captain Holiday seemed to have found just within the opening to the big barn to which he had turned. A group of us pressed nearer to look.

"A very neatly arranged packet of shavings, by Jove!" came from Dick Holiday, on his knees. He sniffed. "Smelling of paraffin.... And here's another of 'em, and another! ... Mr. Price, where is the paraffin kept on this place?"

"I'll show you, Captain Holiday," said the farmer, perturbed.

He turned towards the house, followed by the two young officers from the Lodge, with the rest of us bringing up a straggling procession in the rear.

At the back-door of the farm Mrs. Price had already joined the one onlooker of this scene who had not ventured down into the yard--an elegant onlooker, in a semi-evening toilette of mauve georgette, half-hidden beneath a creamy wrap.

Muriel, excited and amused, hardly seemed to realize the gravity of what she had been watching.

"Oh, Dick, have you got the fire out, nearly?" she chattered. "I should have come down to see you all near to, only I didn't want to ruin these shoes. I'd just dashed out as I was! Thrilling, isn't it? What is this about paraffin?" she added, quickly. "Did they say you found paraffin thrown about? Oh! I wonder"--more excitedly--"I wonder if it was that man I saw with the can?"

Sharply her cousin rapped out, "What man?'

"That nice-looking sailor with the blue eyes who said I spoke German so well----"

Dick Holiday gave a very quick movement. "The German? You saw him with a can of paraffin? What's this, Muriel? When?"

"Today--at lunch-time, I think it was," returned Muriel, while we all listened eagerly. "I was coming back from taking a letter to the post-box, and I met that German I was talking to the other day, close to the little well in the field----"

"Yes?"

"Well, that's all; he just had a tin of paraffin showing out of his jacket pocket, and I asked him, in German, what he was going to do with it."

"What did he say?" asked Dick Holiday, more than curtly.

"He said he was going to put a little paraffin in the ditches to destroy the mosquitoes' nests there are hereabouts," explained Muriel. "He said the farmer had ordered him to do it."

"Did you give him that order, Mr. Price?"

"Never in my life!" returned the farmer.

"Do they know where your paraffin barrel is in that shed? Would they be able to get to it; should you notice them if they were round about it, Mrs. Price? Have you noticed any of them there?"

"Really, Captain Holiday, I couldn't say," returned the farmer's wife, with concern. "I've got so used to them, I haven't thought very much about them---"

"Ah! the fault of all of us!" declared Dick Holiday, with a sternness I had not before heard in his voice. "There's very little doubt in my mind what to think about them now!" He turned to the farmer again. "Don't let any of your men touch those heaps of shavings, Mr. Price, please. Leave everything just as it is, will you? The evidence will have to be looked to. No telephone on the farm, have you? I shall have to send over to the camp, then. I say, Fielding----"

Elizabeth's "Falconer," his golden hair rumpled and his delicate face very flushed turned, from where he was having a murmured talk with the Man-hater.

"Sorry to trouble you, but I'd like you to drive over in the dog-cart to the prison camp," said Dick Holiday. "I'll stay here till the commandant comes. My compliments to him (he's a Major Russell), and I'd be obliged if he'd let you bring him back here at once."

"Right," said Colonel Fielding, and was off.

In a worried murmur Mr. Price was saying: "Well, indeed, I wouldn't have believed it of our Germans! That sailor, you can't deny that he seemed a pleasant young fellow!"

"Can't deny the paraffin-smell on his jacket, if it was he," retorted Dick Holiday, with a resigned shrug of his flannelled shoulders. Then he turned to Muriel. I suppose it wasn't in masculine human nature to resist saying what he did to her.

"Perhaps you'll believe me now when I say a German is--always a German? You see why I told you you weren't to speak to 'em?"

A sudden change came over Muriel's face. I suppose there isn't a girl alive who likes being shown, before a little crowd of people, that she is in the wrong. Muriel, I remembered from our Berlin days, hated it more than most people. By chance I caught her eye as her cousin spoke.

That tiny thing seemed like a lighted match in corn stalks as dry as those which had just been blazing.

For now Muriel blazed up. Temper flashed from the big eyes she turned upon her cousin.

"I don't think I'm letting you 'tell' me what I am or am not to do, Dick, thank you," she informed him with a high-pitched little laugh. "I don't take that, even from----"

Here she looked straight at me for a change.

"I don't take orders, even from the man I am going to marry. And, by the way, I don't think you have heard the news yet. I am engaged to be married, you know."

She paused for a moment, lifted her neat little head, still looking hard at me. In her pretty eyes I saw, with surprise, the expression of the woman who wants to scratch somebody; wants to hurt.

She announced, "I am writing today to promise to marry Captain Markham!"