IT was with difficulty that she reached the little French town, and it
was with infinitely more difficulty that she overcame military obstacles
and penetrated into the poor little whitewashed school that did duty as
a hospital. It was a great bare room with a double row of iron
bedsteads, a gangway between them. Here and there an ominous screen shut
off a bed. A few bandaged men half dressed were sitting up smoking and
playing cards. An odour of disinfectant caught her by the throat. A
human form lying by the door with but little face visible, was moaning
piteously. She shrank on the threshold, aghast at this abode of mangled
men. The young _aide-major_ escorting her, pointed up the ward.
“You will find him there, Mademoiselle, Number Seventeen.”
“How is he?” she asked.
“The day before yesterday he nearly went,” he snapped his finger and
thumb. “A hemorrhage which we stopped. But the old French stock is solid
as oak, Mademoiselle. A hole or two doesn’t matter. He is going along
pretty well.”
“Thank God!” said Corinna.
A nurse with red-cross badge met them. “Ah, it is the lady for Sergeant
Bigourdin. He has been expecting you ever since your letter.”
His eyes were all of him that she recognised at first. His great, hearty
face had grown hollow and the lower part was concealed by a thick, black
beard. She remembered having heard of _les poilus_, the hairy-ones, as
the Territorial Troops were affectionately termed in France. But his
kind, dark eyes were full of gladness. The nurse set a stool for Corinna
by the bedside. On her left lay another black-bearded man who looked at
her wistfully. He had been Bigourdin’s amanuensis.
“This angel of tyranny forbids me to move my arms,” whispered Bigourdin
apologetically. The little whimsical phrase struck the note of the man’s
unconquerable spirit. Corinna smiled through tears. The nurse said:
“Talk to him and don’t let him talk to you. You can only have ten
minutes.” She retired.
“_Cela vous fait beaucoup souffrir, mon pauvre ami?_” said Corinna.
He shook his head. “Not now that you are here. It is wonderful of you to
come. You have a heart of gold. And it is that little talisman, _ce
petit cœur d’or_, that is going to make me well. You cannot imagine—it
is like a fairy tale to see you here.”
Instinctively Corinna put out her hand and touched his lips. She had
never done so feminine and tender a thing to a man. She let her fingers
remain, while he kissed them. She flushed and smiled.
“You mustn’t talk. It is for me who have sound lungs. I have come
because I have been a little imbecile, and only at the eleventh hour I
have repented of my folly. If I had been sensible a year ago, this would
not have happened.”
He turned happy eyes on her; but he said with his Frenchman’s clear
logic:
“All my love and all the happiness that might have been would not have
altered the destinies of Europe. I should have been brought here, all
the same, with a ridiculous little hole through my great body.”
Corinna admitted the truth of his statement. “But,” said she, “I might
have been of some comfort to you.”
His eyebrows expressed the shrug of which his maimed frame was
incapable. “It is all for the best. If I had left you at Brantôme, my
heart would have been torn in two. I might have been cautious to the
detriment of France. As it was, I didn’t care much what happened to me.
And now they have awarded me the _médaille militaire_; and you are here,
to make, as Baudelaire says, ‘_ma joie et ma santé_.’ What more can a
man desire?”
Now all this bravery was spoken in a voice so weak that the woman in
Corinna was stirred to its depths. She bent over him and whispered—for
she knew that the man with the wistful gaze in the next bed was
listening:
“_C’est vrai que tu m’aimes toujours?_”
She saw her question answered by the quick illumination of his eyes, and
she went on quickly: “And I, I love you too, and I will give you all my
poor life for what it is worth. Oh!” she cried, “I can’t imagine what
you can see in me. Beside you I feel so small, of so little account. I
can do nothing—nothing but love you.”
“That’s everything in the world,” said Bigourdin.
They were silent for a moment. Then he said: “I should like to meet the
_Boche_ who fired that rifle.”
“So should I,” she cried fiercely. “I should like to tear him limb from
limb.”
“I shouldn’t,” said Bigourdin. “I should like to decorate him with a
pair of wings and a little bow and arrow. . . .”
The nurse came up. “You must go now, mademoiselle. The patient is
becoming too excited. It is not your fault. Nothing but a bolster across
their mouths will prevent these Périgordins from talking.”
A tiny bedroom in a house over a grocer’s shop was all the accommodation
that she had been able to secure, as the town was full of troops
billeted on the inhabitants. As it was, that bedroom had been given up
to her by a young officer who took pity on her distress. She felt her
presence impertinent in this stern atmosphere of war. After seeing
Bigourdin, she wandered for a while about the rainy streets and then
retired to her chilly and comfortless room, where she ate her meal of
sardines and sausage. The next day she presented herself at the hospital
and saw the _aide-major_.
“Can you give me some work to do?” she asked. “I don’t pretend to be
able to nurse. But I could fetch and carry and do odd jobs.”
But it was a French hospital, and the _règlement_ made no provision for
affording prepossessing young Englishwomen romantic employment.
Of course, said the _aide-major_, if Mademoiselle was bent upon it, she
could write an application which would be forwarded to the proper
quarter. But it would have to pass through the _bureaux_—and she, who
knew France so well, was aware what the passing through the _bureaux_
meant. Unless she had the ear of high personages, it would take weeks
and perhaps months.
“And in the meantime,” said Corinna, “my _grand ami_, Number 17 down
there, will have got well and departed from the hospital.”
“Mademoiselle,” said he, “you have already saved the life of one gallant
Frenchman. Don’t you think that should give you a sentiment of duty
accomplished?”
She blushed. He was kind. For he was young and she was pretty.
“I can let you see your _gros heureux_ to-day,” said he. “It is a
favour. It is against the _règlement_. If the _major_ hears of it, there
will be trouble. By the grace of God he has a bilious attack which
confines him to his quarters. But, _bien entendu_, it is for this time
only.”
She thanked him and again found herself by Bigourdin’s bedside. The
moment of her first sight of him was the happiest in her life. She had
wrought a miracle. He was a different man inspired with the supreme will
to live. The young doctor had spoken truly. A spasm of joy shook her. At
last she had been of some use in the world. . . . She saw too the
Bigourdin whom she had known. His great, black beard had vanished. One
of the _camarades_, with two disposable arms, had hunted through the
kits of the patients for a razor and had shaved him.
“They tell me I am getting on magnificently,” said he. “This morning
there is no longer any danger. In a few months I shall be as solid as
ever I was. It is happiness that has cured me.”
They talked. She told him of her conversation with the _aide-major_. He
reflected for a moment. Then he said:
“Do you wish to please me?”
“What am I here for?” asked Corinna.
“You are here to spoil me. Anyhow—if you wish to please me, go to
Brantôme, and await me. To know that you are there, _chez-moi_, will
give me the courage of a thousand lions, and you will be able to console
my poor Félise who every night is praying for Martin by the side of her
little white bed.”
And so it was arranged. After two days extraordinary travel, advancing
from point to point by any train that happened to run, shunted on
sidings for interminable periods, in order to allow the unimpeded
progress of military trains, waiting weary hours at night in cold,
desolate stations, hungry and broken, but her heart aglow with a new and
wonderful happiness, she reached Brantôme.
She threw her arms round the neck of an astonished, but ever urbane
elderly gentleman in the vestibule of the Hôtel des Grottes and kissed
him.
“He’s getting well,” she cried a little hysterically. “He sent me here
to wait for him. I’m so happy and I’m just about dead.”
“But yet there’s that spark of life in you, my dear Corinna,” said
Fortinbras, “which, according to the saying, distinctly justifies hope.
Félise and I will see to it that you live.”
* * * * *
It was winter before Bigourdin was well enough to return. By that time
Corinna had settled down to her new life wherein she found the making of
_foie gras_ an enticing mystery. Also, in a town where every woman had
her man—husband, brother, son or lover—either in hourly peril of
death, or dead or wounded, there was infinite scope for help and
consolation. And when a woman said: “_Hélas! Mon pauvre homme. Il est
blessé là-bas_,” she could reply with a new, thrilling sympathy and a
poignant throb of the heart: “And my man too.” For like all the other
women there, she had “_son homme_.” Her man! Corinna tasted the fierce
joy of being elemental.
There was much distress in the little town. The municipality did its
best. In many cases the wives valiantly carried on the husband’s
business. But in the row of cave dwellings where the quarrymen lived no
muscular arms hewed the week’s wages from the rocks. Boucabeille,
Martin’s Bacchanalian friend, had purged all his offences in heroic
battle, and was lying in an unknown grave. Corinna, learning how Martin
had carried the child home on his shoulders, brought her to the hotel
and cared for her, and obtained work for the mother in the _fabrique_.
Never before had Corinna had days so full; never before had she awakened
in the morning with love in her heart. Félise, grown gentler and happier
since the canonisation of her father, gave her unstinted affection.
And then Bigourdin arrived, nominally on sick-leave, but with private
intimation that his active services would be required no longer. This
gave a touch of sadness to his otherwise joyous home-coming.
“I have not killed half enough Boches,” said he.
A few days after his return came a letter from Martin. And it was
written from a hospital.
My Dearest Félise:
I am well and sound and in perfect health. But a bullet got me
in the left arm while we were attacking a German trench, and a
spent bit of shrapnel caught me on the head and stunned me. When
I recovered I was midway between the trenches in the zone of
fire and I had to lie still between the dead bodies of two of
our brave soldiers. I thought much, my dear, while I was lying
there expecting every minute a bullet to finish me. And some of
what I thought I will tell you, when I see you, for I shall see
you very soon. After some thirty-six hours I was collected and
brought to the field hospital, where I was patched up, and in
the course of a day or so sent on to the base. I lay on straw
during the journey in a row of other wounded. France has the
defects of her qualities. Her soil is so fertile that her stalks
of straw are like young oak saplings. When I arrived I had such
a temperature and was so silly with pain that I don’t very well
remember what happened. When I got sensible they told me that
gangrene had set in and that they had chopped off my arm above
the elbow. I always thought I was an incomplete human being,
dear, but I have never been so idiotically incomplete as I am
now. Although I am getting along splendidly I want to do all
sorts of things with the fingers that aren’t there. I turn to
pick up something and there’s nothing to pick it up with. A week
before I was wounded, I had a finger nail torn off, and it still
hurts me, somewhere in space, about a foot away from what is
_me_. You would laugh if you knew what a nuisance it is. . . . I
make no excuses for asking you to receive me at Brantôme; all
that is dear to me in the world is there—and what other spot in
the wide universe have I to fly to?
“But _sacré nom d’une pipe_!” cried Bigourdin—for Félise, after private
and tearful perusal of the letter, was reading such parts of it aloud as
were essential for family information—“What is the imbecile talking of?
Where else, indeed, should he go?”
Félise continued. Martin as yet unaware of Bigourdin’s return, sent him
messages.
“When you write, will you tell him I have given to France as much of
myself as I’ve been allowed to? Half an arm isn’t much. _Mais c’est déjà
quelque chose._”
“_Quelque chose!_” cried Bigourdin. “But it is a sacred sacrifice. If I
could get hold of that little bit of courageous arm I would give it to
Monsieur le Curé and bid him nail it up as an object venerable and
heroic in his parish church. _Ah! le pauvre garçon, le pauvre garçon_,”
said he. “_Mais voyez-vous_, it is the English character that comes out
in his letter. I have seen many English up there in the North. No longer
can we Frenchmen talk of _le phlègme britannique_. The astounding
revelation is the unconquerable English gaiety. _Jamais de longs
visages._ If a decapitated English head could speak, it would launch you
a whimsical smile and say: “What annoys me is that I can’t inhale a
cigarette.” And here our good Martin makes a joke about the straw in the
ambulance-train. _Mon Dieu!_ I know what it is, but it has never
occurred to me to jest about it.”
In the course of time Martin returned to Brantôme. The railway system of
the country had been fairly adjusted in the parts of France that were
distant from scenes of military operations. Bigourdin borrowed Monsieur
le Maire’s big limousine which had not been commandeered—for the Mayor
was on many committees in the Department and had to fly about from place
to place and with Corinna and Félise and Fortinbras he met Martin’s
train at Périgueux. As it steamed in a hand waved from a window below a
familiar face. They rushed to the carriage steps and in a moment he was
among them—in a woollen Kepi and incredibly torn blue-grey greatcoat
and ragged red trousers, the unfilled arm of the coat dangling down
idly. But it was a bronzed, clear-eyed man who met them, for all his war
battering.
Bigourdin welcomed him first, in his exuberant way, called him _mon
brave, mon petit héros_, and hugged him. Fortinbras gripped his hand,
after the English manner. Corinna, happy and smiling through glistening
eyes, he kissed without more ado. And then he was free to greet Félise,
who had remained a pace or two in the background. Her great, dark eyes
were fixed upon him questioningly. She put out a hand and touched the
empty sleeve. She read in his face what she had never read before. His
one poor arm, stretched in an instinctive curve—with a little sobbing
cry she threw herself blindly into his embrace.
The tremendous issues of existence with which for five months he had
been grappling had wiped out from his consciousness, almost from his
memory, the first enthralling kiss of another woman. Caked with mud,
deafened by the roar of shells, sleeping in the earth of his trench, an
intimate of blood and death day after day, he had learned that Lucilla
had been but an _ignis fatuus_ leading him astray from the essential
meaning of his life. He knew, as he lay wounded beneath the hell of
machine-gun fire between the trenches that there was only one sweet,
steadfast soul in the world who called him to the accomplishment of his
being.
When, in the abandonment of her joy and grief his lips met the soft,
quivering mouth of Félise, care, like a garment, fell from him. He
whispered: “You have a great heart. I’ve not deserved this. But you’re
the only thing that matters to me in the world.”
Félise was content. She knew that the war had swept his soul clean of
false gods. Out of that furnace nothing but Truth could come.
And so Martin returned for ever to the land of his adoption, which on
the morrow was to take him after its generous and expansive way as a
hero to its bosom. The Englishman who had given a limb for Périgord was
to be held in high honour for the rest of his days.
He was a man now who had passed through most human experiences. A man of
fine honour, of courage tested in a thousand ways, of stiffened will, of
high ideals. The life that lay before him was far dearer than any other
he could have chosen. For it matters not so much the life one leads as
the knowledge of the perfect way to live it. And that knowledge, based
on wisdom, had Martin achieved. He knew that if the glittering prizes of
the earth are locked away behind golden bars opening but to golden keys,
there are others far more precious lying to the hand of him who will but
seek them in the folds of the familiar hills.
The five sat down to dinner that evening in the empty _salle-à-manger_;
for not a guest, even the most decrepit commercial traveller, was
staying at the hotel. Yet never had they met at a happier meal. Félise
cut up Martin’s food as though it had been blessed bread. In the middle
of it Fortinbras poured out half a glass of wine.
“My children,” said he, “I am going to break through the habit of years.
This old wine of Burgundy is too generous to betray me on an occasion so
beautiful and so solemn. I drink to your happiness.”
“But to whom do Martin and I owe our happiness?” cried Corinna, with a
flush on her cheek, and a glistening in her blue eyes. “It is to
you—from the first to last to you, _Marchand de Bonheur_!”
“My God! Yes,” said Martin, extending his one arm to Fortinbras.
The ex-Dealer in Happiness regarded them both benevolently. “For the
first time in my life,” said he, “I think I have reason to be proud of
my late profession. Like the artist who has toiled and struggled, I can,
without immodesty, recognise my masterpiece. It was my original
conception that Martin and Corinna, crude but honest souls, should find
an incentive to the working out of their destiny by falling in love.
Therefore I sent them out together. That they should have an honourable
asylum, I sent them to my own kin. When I found they wouldn’t fall in
love at all, I imagined the present felicitous combination. I have been
aided by the little accident of a European war. But what matter? The
Gods willed it, the Gods were on my side. Out of evil there inscrutably
and divinely cometh good. My children, my heart is very full of the
consolation that, at the end of many years that the locust hath eaten, I
have perhaps justified my existence.”
“_Mon père_,” cried Félise, “all my life long your existence has had the
justification of heroic sacrifice.”
“My dear,” said he, “if I hadn’t met adversity with a brave face, I
should not have been a man—still less a philosopher. And now that my
duty here is over, if I don’t go back to Paris and find some means of
helping in the great conflict, I shall be unworthy of the name of
Englishman. So as soon as I see you safely and exquisitely married, I
shall leave you. I shall, however, come and visit you from time to time.
But when I die”—he paused and fishing out a stump of pencil scribbled
on the back of the menu card—“when I die, bury me in Paris on the south
side of the Seine and put this inscription on my tombstone. One little
vanity is accorded by the gods to every human being.”
He threw the card on the table. On it was written:
“_Ci-gît_
_Fortinbras_
_Marchand de Bonheur._”
When the meal was over they went up to the prim and plushily furnished
salon, where a wood fire was burning gaily. Bigourdin brought up a
cobwebbed bottle of the Old Brandy of the Brigadier and uncorked it
reverently.
“We are going to drink to France,” said he.
He produced from the cupboard whose doors were veiled with green-pleated
silk, half a dozen of the great glass goblets and into each he poured a
little of the golden liquid, which, as he had once said, contained the
soul of the _Grande Armée_.
“Stop a bit,” said Martin. “You’re making a mistake. There are only five
of us.”
“I am making no mistake at all,” said Bigourdin. “The sixth glass is for
the shade of the brave old Brigadier. If he is not here now among us to
honour the toast, I am no Christian man.”
THE END
THE
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