NEAR THE SACRED GROTTO
Argensola had found a new occupation even more exciting than marking out
on the map the manoeuvres of the armies.
“I am now devoting myself to the taube,” he announced. “It appears from
four to five with the precision a punctilious guest coming to take tea.”
Every afternoon at the appointed hour, a German aeroplane was flying
over Paris dropping bombs. This would-be intimidation was producing
no terror, the people accepting the visit as an interesting and
extraordinary spectacle. In vain the aviators were flinging in the city
streets German flags bearing ironic messages, giving accounts of the
defeat of the retreating army and the failures of the Russian offensive.
Lies, all lies! In vain they were dropping bombs, destroying garrets,
killing or wounding old men, women and babes. “Ah, the bandits!” The
crowds would threaten with their fists the malign mosquito, scarcely
visible 6,000 feet above them, and after this outburst, they would
follow it with straining eyes from street to street, or stand motionless
in the square in order to study its evolutions.
The most punctual of all the spectators was Argensola. At four o’clock
he was in the place de la Concorde with upturned face and wide-open
eyes, in most cordial good-fellowship with all the bystanders. It was
as though they were holding season tickets at the same theatre, becoming
acquainted through seeing each other so often. “Will it come? . . . Will
it not come to-day?” The women appeared to be the most vehement, some
of them rushing up, flushed and breathless, fearing that they might have
arrived too late for the show. . . . A great cry--“There it comes! . . .
There it is!” And thousands of hands were pointing to a vague spot on
the horizon. With field glasses and telescopes they were aiding their
vision, the popular venders offering every kind of optical instruments
and for an hour the thrilling spectacle of an aerial hunt was played
out, noisy and useless.
The great insect was trying to reach the Eiffel Tower, and from its base
would come sharp reports, at the same time that the different platforms
spit out a fierce stream of shrapnel. As it zigzagged over the city, the
discharge of rifles would crackle from roof and street. Everyone that
had arms in his house was firing--the soldiers of the guard, and the
English and Belgians on their way through Paris. They knew that their
shots were perfectly useless, but they were firing for the fun of
retorting, hoping at the same time that one of their chance shots might
achieve a miracle; but the only miracle was that the shooters did not
kill each other with their precipitate and ineffectual fire. As it was,
a few passers-by did fall, wounded by balls from unknown sources.
Argensola would tear from street to street following the evolutions of
the inimical bird, trying to guess where its projectiles would fall,
anxious to be the first to reach the bombarded house, excited by the
shots that were answering from below. And to think that he had no gun
like those khaki-clad Englishmen or those Belgians in barrick cap, with
tassel over the front! . . . Finally the taube tired of manoeuvering,
would disappear. “Until to-morrow!” ejaculated the Spaniard. “Perhaps
to-morrow’s show may be even more interesting!”
He employed his free hours between his geographical observations and his
aerial contemplations in making the rounds of the stations, watching the
crowds of travellers making their escape from Paris. The sudden vision
of the truth--after the illusion which the Government had been creating
with its optimistic dispatches, the certainty that the Germans were
actually near when a week before they had imagined them completely
routed, the taubes flying over Paris, the mysterious threat of the
Zeppelins--all these dangerous signs were filling a part of the
community with frenzied desperation. The railroad stations, guarded
by the soldiery, were only admitting those who had secured tickets in
advance. Some had been waiting entire days for their turn to depart. The
most impatient were starting to walk, eager to get outside of the city
as soon as possible. The roads were black with the crowds all going in
the same directions. Toward the South they were fleeing by automobile,
in carriages, in gardeners’ carts, on foot.
Argensola surveyed this hegira with serenity. He would remain because he
had always admired those men who witnessed the Siege of Paris in 1870.
Now it was going to be his good fortune to observe an historical drama,
perhaps even more interesting. The wonders that he would be able to
relate in the future! . . . But the distraction and indifference of his
present audience were annoying him greatly. He would hasten back to the
studio, in feverish excitement, to communicate the latest gratifying
news to Desnoyers who would listen as though he did not hear him.
The night that he informed him that the Government, the Chambers, the
Diplomatic Corps, and even the actors of the Comedie Francaise were
going that very hour on special trains for Bordeaux, his companion
merely replied with a shrug of indifference.
Desnoyers was worrying about other things. That morning he had received
a note from Marguerite--only two lines scrawled in great haste. She was
leaving, starting immediately, accompanied by her mother. Adieu! . . .
and nothing more. The panic had caused many love-affairs to be
forgotten, had broken off long intimacies, but Marguerite’s temperament
was above such incoherencies from mere flight. Julio felt that her
terseness was very ominous. Why not mention the place to which she was
going? . . .
In the afternoon, he took a bold step which she had always forbidden. He
went to her home and talked a long time with the concierge in order
to get some news. The good woman was delighted to work off on him the
loquacity so brusquely cut short by the flight of tenants and servants.
The lady on the first floor (Marguerite’s mother) had been the last to
abandon the house in spite of the fact that she was really sick over her
son’s departure. They had left the day before without saying where they
were going. The only thing that she knew was that they took the train in
the Gare d’Orsay. They were going toward the South like all the rest of
the rich.
And she supplemented her revelations with the vague news that the
daughter had seemed very much upset by the information that she had
received from the front. Someone in the family was wounded. Perhaps it
was the brother, but she really didn’t know. With so many surprises and
strange things happening, it was difficult to keep track of everything.
Her husband, too, was in the army and she had her own affairs to worry
about.
“Where can she have gone?” Julio asked himself all day long. “Why does
she wish to keep me in ignorance of her whereabouts?”
When his comrade told him that night about the transfer of the seat of
government, with all the mystery of news not yet made public, Desnoyers
merely replied:
“They are doing the best thing. . . . I, too, will go tomorrow if I
can.”
Why remain longer in Paris? His family was away. His father, according
to Argensola’s investigations, also had gone off without saying whither.
Now Marguerite’s mysterious flight was leaving him entirely alone, in a
solitude that was filling him with remorse.
That afternoon, when strolling through the boulevards, he had stumbled
across a friend considerably older than himself, an acquaintance in the
fencing club which he used to frequent. This was the first time they had
met since the beginning of the war, and they ran over the list of their
companions in the army. Desnoyers’ inquiries were answered by the older
man. So-and-so? . . . He had been wounded in Lorraine and was now in
a hospital in the South. Another friend? . . . Dead in the Vosges.
Another? . . . Disappeared at Charleroi. And thus had continued the
heroic and mournful roll-call. The others were still living, doing brave
things. The members of foreign birth, young Poles, English residents in
Paris and South Americans, had finally enlisted as volunteers. The club
might well be proud of its young men who had practised arms in times of
peace, for now they were all jeopardizing their existence at the front.
Desnoyers turned his face away as though he feared to meet in the eyes
of his friend, an ironical and questioning expression. Why had he not
gone with the others to defend the land in which he was living? . . .
“To-morrow I will go,” repeated Julio, depressed by this recollection.
But he went toward the South like all those who were fleeing from the
war. The following morning Argensola was charged to get him a railroad
ticket for Bordeaux. The value of money had greatly increased, but fifty
francs, opportunely bestowed, wrought the miracle and procured a bit of
numbered cardboard whose conquest represented many days of waiting.
“It is good only for to-day,” said the Spaniard, “you will have to take
the night train.”
Packing was not a very serious matter, as the trains were refusing to
admit anything more than hand-luggage. Argensola did not wish to accept
the liberality of Julio who tried to leave all his money with him.
Heroes need very little and the painter of souls was inspired with
heroic resolution, The brief harangue of Gallieni in taking charge of
the defense of Paris, he had adopted as his own. He intended to keep up
his courage to the last, just like the hardy general.
“Let them come,” he exclaimed with a tragic expression. “They will find
me at my post!” . . .
His post was the studio from which he could witness the happenings which
he proposed relating to coming generations. He would entrench himself
there with the eatables and wines. Besides he had the plan--just as
soon as his partner should disappear--of bringing to live there with
him certain lady-friends who were wandering around in search of a
problematical dinner, and feeling timid in the solitude of their own
quarters. Danger often gathers congenial folk together and adds a new
attractiveness to the pleasures of a community. The tender affections of
the prisoners of the Terror, when they were expecting momentarily to
be conducted to the guillotine, flashed through his mind. Let us drain
Life’s goblet at one draught since we have to die! . . . The studio of
the rue de la Pompe was about to witness the mad and desperate revels of
a castaway bark well-stocked with provisions.
Desnoyers left the Gare d’Orsay in a first-class compartment, mentally
praising the good order with which the authorities had arranged
everything, so that every traveller could have his own seat. At the
Austerlitz station, however, a human avalanche assaulted the train.
The doors were broken open, packages and children came in through the
windows like projectiles. The people pushed with the unreason of a crowd
fleeing before a fire. In the space reserved for eight persons, fourteen
installed themselves; the passageways were heaped with mountains of
bags and valises that served later travellers for seats. All class
distinctions had disappeared. The villagers invaded by preference the
best coaches, believing that they would there find more room. Those
holding first-class tickets hunted up the plainer coaches in the vain
hope of travelling without being crowded. On the cross roads were
waiting from the day before long trains made up of cattle cars. All the
stables on wheels were filled with people seated on the wooden floor or
in chairs brought from their homes. Every train load was an encampment
eager to take up its march; whenever it halted, layers of greasy papers,
hulls and fruit skins collected along its entire length.
The invaders, pushing their way in, put up with many annoyances and
pardoned one another in a brotherly way. “In war times, war measures,”
they would always say as a last excuse. And each one was pressing closer
to his neighbor in order to make a few more inches of room, and helping
to wedge his scanty baggage among the other bundles swaying most
precariously above. Little by little, Desnoyers was losing all his
advantage as a first comer. These poor people who had been waiting for
the train from four in the morning till eight at night, awakened
his pity. The women, groaning with weariness, were standing in the
corridors, looking with ferocious envy at those who had seats. The
children were bleating like hungry kids. Julio finally gave up his
place, sharing with the needy and improvident the bountiful supply of
eatables with which Argensola had provided him. The station restaurants
had all been emptied of food.
During the train’s long wait, soldiers only were seen on the platform,
soldiers who were hastening at the call of the trumpet, to take their
places again in the strings of cars which were constantly steaming
toward Paris. At the signal stations, long war trains were waiting
for the road to be clear that they might continue their journey. The
cuirassiers, wearing a yellow vest over their steel breastplate, were
seated with hanging legs in the doorways of the stable cars, from whose
interior came repeated neighing. Upon the flat cars were rows of gun
carriages. The slender throats of the cannon of ‘75 were pointed upwards
like telescopes.
Young Desnoyers passed the night in the aisle, seated on a valise,
noting the sodden sleep of those around him, worn out by weariness and
exhaustion. It was a cruel and endless night of jerks, shrieks and
stops punctuated by snores. At every station, the trumpets were sounding
precipitously as though the enemy were right upon them. The soldiers
from the South were hurrying to their posts, and at brief intervals
another detachment of men was dragged along the rails toward Paris. They
all appeared gay, and anxious to reach the scene of slaughter as soon
as possible. Many were regretting the delays, fearing that they might
arrive too late. Leaning out of the window, Julio heard the dialogues
and shouts on the platforms impregnated with the acrid odor of men and
mules. All were evincing an unquenchable confidence. “The Boches! very
numerous, with huge cannons, with many mitrailleuse . . . but we only
have to charge with our bayonets to make them run like rabbits!”
The attitude of those going to meet death was in sharp contrast to
the panic and doubt of those who were deserting Paris. An old
and much-decorated gentleman, type of a jubilee functionary, kept
questioning Desnoyers whenever the train started on again--“Do you
believe that they will get as far as Tours?” Before receiving his reply,
he would fall asleep. Brutish sleep was marching down the aisles with
leaden feet. At every junction, the old man would start up and suddenly
ask, “Do you believe that we will get as far as Bordeaux?” . . . And
his great desire not to halt until, with his family, he had reached
an absolutely secure refuge, made him accept as oracles all the vague
responses.
At daybreak, they saw the Territorialists guarding the roads. They were
armed with old muskets, and were wearing the red kepis as their only
military distinction. They were following the opposite course of the
military trains.
In the station at Bordeaux, the civilian crowds struggling to get out
or to enter other cars, were mingling with the troops. The trumpets were
incessantly sounding their brazen notes, calling the soldiers together.
Many were men of darkest coloring, natives with wide gray breeches and
red caps above their black or bronzed faces.
Julio saw a train bearing wounded from the battles of Flanders and
Lorraine. Their worn and dirty uniforms were enlivened by the whiteness
of the bandages sustaining the wounded limbs or protecting the broken
heads. All were trying to smile, although with livid mouths and feverish
eyes, at their first glimpse of the land of the South as it emerged from
the mist bathed in the sunlight, and covered with the regal vestures of
its vineyards. The men from the North stretched out their hands for the
fruit that the women were offering them, tasting with delight the sweet
grapes of the country.
For four days the distracted lover lived in Bordeaux, stunned and
bewildered by the agitation of a provincial city suddenly converted
into a capital. The hotels were overcrowded, many notables contenting
themselves with servants’ quarters. There was not a vacant seat in the
cafes; the sidewalks could not accommodate the extraordinary assemblage.
The President was installed in the Prefecture; the State Departments
were established in the schools and museums; two theatres were fitted up
for the future reunions of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. Julio
was lodged in a filthy, disreputable hotel at the end of a foul-smelling
alley. A little Cupid adorned the crystals of the door, and the
looking-glass in his room was scratched with names and unspeakable
phrases--souvenirs of the occupants of an hour . . . and yet many grand
ladies, hunting in vain for temporary residence, would have envied him
his good fortune.
All his investigations proved fruitless. The friends whom he encountered
in the fugitive crowd were thinking only of their own affairs. They
could talk of nothing but incidents of the installation, repeating the
news gathered from the ministers with whom they were living on familiar
terms, or mentioning with a mysterious air, the great battle which was
going on stretching from the vicinity of Paris to Verdun. A pupil of his
days of glory, whose former elegance was now attired in the uniform of a
nurse, gave him some vague information. “The little Madame Laurier?
. . . I remember hearing that she was living somewhere near here. . . .
Perhaps in Biarritz.” Julio needed no more than this to continue his
journey. To Biarritz!
The first person that he encountered on his arrival was Chichi. She
declared that the town was impossible because of the families of rich
Spaniards who were summering there. “The Boches are in the majority,
and I pass a miserable existence quarrelling with them. . . . I shall
finally have to live alone.” Then he met his mother--embraces and tears.
Afterwards he saw his Aunt Elena in the hotel parlors, most enthusiastic
over the country and the summer colony.
She could talk at great length with many of them about the decadence of
France. They were all expecting to receive the news from one moment to
another, that the Kaiser had entered the Capital. Ponderous men who had
never done anything in all their lives, were criticizing the defects
and indolence of the Republic. Young men whose aristocracy aroused Dona
Elena’s enthusiasm, broke forth into apostrophes against the corruption
of Paris, corruption that they had studied thoroughly, from sunset to
sunrise, in the virtuous schools of Montmartre. They all adored Germany
where they had never been, or which they knew only through the reels
of the moving picture films. They criticized events as though they were
witnessing a bull fight. “The Germans have the snap! You can’t fool with
them! They are fine brutes!” And they appeared to admire this inhumanity
as the most admirable characteristic. “Why will they not say that in
their own home on the other side of the frontier?” Chichi would
protest. “Why do they come into their neighbor’s country to ridicule
his troubles? . . . Possibly they consider it a sign of their wonderful
good-breeding!”
But Julio had not gone to Biarritz to live with his family. . . . The
very day of his arrival, he saw Marguerite’s mother in the distance. She
was alone. His inquiries developed the information that her daughter was
living in Pau. She was a trained nurse taking care of a wounded member
of the family. “Her brother . . . undoubtedly it is her brother,”
thought Julio. And he again continued his trip, this time going to Pau.
His visits to the hospitals there were also unavailing. Nobody seemed
to know Marguerite. Every day a train was arriving with a new load of
bleeding flesh, but her brother was not among the wounded. A Sister of
Charity, believing that he was in search of someone of his family, took
pity on him and gave him some helpful directions. He ought to go to
Lourdes; there were many of the wounded there and many of the military
nurses. So Desnoyers immediately took the short cut between Pau and
Lourdes.
He had never visited the sacred city whose name was so frequently on
his mother’s lips. For Dona Luisa, the French nation was Lourdes. In her
discussions with her sister and other foreign ladies who were praying
that France might be exterminated for its impiety, the good senora
always summed up her opinions in the same words:--“When the Virgin
wished to make her appearance in our day, she chose France. This
country, therefore, cannot be as bad as you say. . . . When I see that
she appears in Berlin, we will then re-discuss the matter.”
But Desnoyers was not there to confirm his mother’s artless opinions.
Just as soon as he had found a room in a hotel near the river, he had
hastened to the big hostelry, now converted into a hospital. The guard
told him that he could not speak to the Director until the afternoon. In
order to curb his impatience he walked through the street leading to
the basilica, past all the booths and shops with pictures and pious
souvenirs which have converted the place into a big bazaar. Here and
in the gardens adjoining the church, he saw wounded convalescents with
uniforms stained with traces of the combat. Their cloaks were greatly
soiled in spite of repeated brushings. The mud, the blood and the rain
had left indelible spots and made them as stiff as cardboard. Some of
the wounded had cut their sleeves in order to avoid the cruel friction
on their shattered arms, others still showed on their trousers the rents
made by the devastating shells.
They were fighters of all ranks and of many races--infantry, cavalry,
artillerymen; soldiers from the metropolis and from the colonies; French
farmers and African sharpshooters; red heads, faces of Mohammedan olive
and the black countenances of the Sengalese, with eyes of fire, and
thick, bluish blubber lips; some showing the good-nature and sedentary
obesity of the middle-class man suddenly converted into a warrior;
others sinewy, alert, with the aggressive profile of men born to fight,
and experienced in foreign fields.
The city, formerly visited by the hopeful, Catholic sick, was now
invaded by a crowd no less dolorous but clad in carnival colors. All,
in spite of their physical distress, had a certain air of good cheer and
satisfaction. They had seen Death very near, slipping out from his bony
claws into a new joy and zest in life. With their cloaks adorned with
medals, their theatrical Moorish garments, their kepis and their African
headdresses, this heroic band presented, nevertheless, a lamentable
aspect.
Very few still preserved the noble vertical carriage, the pride of
the superior human being. They were walking along bent almost double,
limping, dragging themselves forward by the help of a staff or friendly
arm. Others had to let themselves be pushed along, stretched out on the
hand-carts which had so often conducted the devout sick from the station
to the Grotto of the Virgin. Some were feeling their way along, blindly,
leaning on a child or nurse. The first encounters in Belgium and in
the East, a mere half-dozen battles, had been enough to produce these
physical wrecks still showing a manly nobility in spite of the most
horrible outrages. These organisms, struggling so tenaciously to regain
their hold on life, bringing their reviving energies out into the
sunlight, represented but the most minute part of the number mowed down
by the scythe of Death. Back of them were thousands and thousands of
comrades groaning on hospital beds from which they would probably never
rise. Thousands and thousands were hidden forever in the bosom of the
Earth moistened by their death agony--fatal land which, upon receiving a
hail of projectiles, brought forth a harvest of bristling crosses!
War now showed itself to Desnoyers with all its cruel hideousness. He
had been accustomed to speak of it heretofore as those in robust health
speak of death, knowing that it exists and is horrible, but seeing it
afar off . . . so far off that it arouses no real emotion. The explosion
of the shells were accompanying their destructive brutality with a
ferocious mockery, grotesquely disfiguring the human body. He saw
wounded objects just beginning to recover their vital force who were but
rough skeletons of men, frightful caricatures, human rags, saved from
the tomb by the audacities of science--trunks with heads which were
dragged along on wheeled platforms; fragments of skulls whose brains
were throbbing under an artificial cap; beings without arms and without
legs, resting in the bottom of little wagons, like bits of plaster
models or scraps from the dissecting room; faces without noses that
looked like skulls with great, black nasal openings. And these half-men
were talking, smoking, laughing, satisfied to see the sky, to feel
the caress of the sun, to have come back to life, dominated by that
sovereign desire to live which trustingly forgets present misery in the
confident hope of something better.
So strongly was Julio impressed that for a little while he forgot the
purpose which had brought him thither. . . . If those who provoke war
from diplomatic chambers or from the tables of the Military Staff could
but see it--not in the field of battle fired with the enthusiasm which
prejudices judgments--but in cold blood, as it is seen in the hospitals
and cemeteries, in the wrecks left in its trail! . . .
To Julio’s imagination this terrestrial globe appeared like an enormous
ship sailing through infinity. Its crews--poor humanity--had spent
century after century in exterminating each other on the deck. They did
not even know what existed under their feet, in the hold of the vessel.
To occupy the same portion of the surface in the sunlight seemed to be
the ruling desire of each group. Men, considered superior human beings,
were pushing these masses to extermination in order to scale the last
bridge and hold the helm, controlling the course of the boat. And all
those who felt the overmastering ambition for absolute command knew the
same thing . . . nothing. Not one of them could say with certainty what
lay beyond the visible horizon, nor whither the ship was drifting.
The sullen hostility of mystery surrounded them all; their life was
precarious, necessitating incessant care in order to maintain it, yet in
spite of that, the crew for ages and ages, had never known an instant
of agreement, of team work, of clear reason. Periodically half of them
would clash with the other half. They killed each other that they might
enslave the vanquished on the rolling deck floating over the abyss; they
fought that they might cast their victims from the vessel, filling
its wake with cadavers. And from the demented throng there were still
springing up gloomy sophistries to prove that a state of war was the
perfect state, that it ought to go on forever, that it was a bad dream
on the part of the crew to wish to regard each other as brothers with a
common destiny, enveloped in the same unsteady environment of mystery.
. . . Ah, human misery!
Julio was drawn out of these pessimistic reflections by the childish
glee which many of the convalescents were evincing. Some were
Mussulmans, sharpshooters from Algeria and Morocco. In Lourdes, as they
might be anywhere, they were interested only in the gifts which the
people were showering upon them with patriotic affection. They all
surveyed with indifference the basilica inhabited by “the white lady,”
their only preoccupation being to beg for cigars and sweets.
Finding themselves regaled by the dominant race, they became greatly
puffed up, daring everything like mischievous children. What pleased
them most was the fact that the ladies would take them by the hand.
Blessed war that permitted them to approach and touch these white women,
perfumed and smiling as they appeared in their dreams of the paradise
of the blest! “Lady . . . Lady,” they would sigh, looking at them with
dark, sparkling eyes. And not content with the hand, their dark paws
would venture the length of the entire arm while the ladies laughed at
this tremulous adoration. Others would go through the crowds, offering
their right hand to all the women. “We touch hands.” . . . And then they
would go away satisfied after receiving the hand clasp.
Desnoyers wandered a long time around the basilica where, in the shadow
of the trees, were long rows of wheeled chairs occupied by the wounded.
Officers and soldiers rested many hours in the blue shade, watching
their comrades who were able to use their legs. The sacred grotto was
resplendent with the lights from hundreds of candles. Devout crowds
were kneeling in the open air, fixing their eyes in supplication on the
sacred stones whilst their thoughts were flying far away to the fields
of battle, making their petitions with that confidence in divinity which
accompanies every distress. Among the kneeling mass were many soldiers
with bandaged heads, kepis in hand and tearful eyes.
Up and down the double staircase of the basilica were flitting women,
clad in white, with spotless headdresses that fluttered in such a way
that they appeared like flying doves. These were the nurses and Sisters
of Charity guiding the steps of the injured. Desnoyers thought he
recognized Marguerite in every one of them, but the prompt disillusion
following each of these discoveries soon made him doubtful about the
outcome of his journey. She was not in Lourdes, either. He would never
find her in that France so immeasurably expanded by the war that it had
converted every town into a hospital.
His afternoon explorations were no more successful. The employees
listened to his interrogations with a distraught air. He could come back
again; just now they were taken up with the announcement that another
hospital train was on the way. The great battle was still going on
near Paris. They had to improvise lodgings for the new consignment of
mutilated humanity. In order to pass away the time until his return,
Desnoyers went back to the garden near the grotto. He was planning to
return to Pau that night; there was evidently nothing more to do at
Lourdes. In what direction should he now continue his search?
Suddenly he felt a thrill down his back--the same indefinable sensation
which used to warn him of her presence when they were meeting in the
gardens of Paris. Marguerite was going to present herself unexpectedly
as in the old days without his knowing from exactly what spot--as though
she came up out of the earth or descended from the clouds.
After a second’s thought he smiled bitterly. Mere tricks of his desire!
Illusions! . . . Upon turning his head he recognized the falsity of his
hope. Nobody was following his footsteps; he was the only being going
down the center of the avenue. Near him, in the diaphanous white of a
guardian angel, was a nurse. Poor blind man! . . . Desnoyers was passing
on when a quick movement on the part of the white-clad woman, an evident
desire to escape notice, to hide her face by looking at the plants,
attracted his attention. He was slow in recognizing her. Two little
ringlets escaping from the band of her cap made him guess the hidden
head of hair; the feet shod in white were the signs which enabled him
to reconstruct the person somewhat disfigured by the severe uniform.
Her face was pale and sad. There wasn’t a trace left in it of the old
vanities that used to give it its childish, doll-like beauty. In the
depths of those great, dark-circled eyes life seemed to be reflected in
new forms. . . . Marguerite!
They stared at one another for a long while, as though hypnotized with
surprise. She looked alarmed when Desnoyers advanced a step toward her.
No . . . No! Her eyes, her hands, her entire body seemed to protest, to
repel his approach, to hold him motionless. Fear that he might come near
her, made her go toward him. She said a few words to the soldier who
remained on the bench, receiving across the bandage on his face a ray of
sunlight which he did not appear to feel. Then she rose, going to meet
Julio, and continued forward, indicating by a gesture that they must
find some place further on where the wounded man could not hear them.
She led the way to a side path from which she could see the blind man
confided to her care. They stood motionless, face to face. Desnoyers
wished to say many things; many . . . but he hesitated, not knowing how
to frame his complaints, his pleadings, his endearments. Far above all
these thoughts towered one, fatal, dominant and wrathful.
“Who is that man?”
The spiteful accent, the harsh voice with which he said these words
surprised him as though they came from someone else’s mouth.
The nurse looked at him with her great limpid eyes, eyes that seemed
forever freed from contractions of surprise or fear. Her response
slipped from her with equal directness.
“It is Laurier. . . . It is my husband.”
Laurier! . . . Julio looked doubtfully and for a long time at the
soldier before he could be convinced. That blind officer motionless
on the bench, that figure of heroic grief, was Laurier! . . . At first
glance, he appeared prematurely old with roughened and bronzed skin
so furrowed with lines that they converged like rays around all the
openings of his face. His hair was beginning to whiten on the temples
and in the beard which covered his cheeks. He had lived twenty years
in that one month. . . . At the same time he appeared younger, with a
youthfulness that was radiating an inward vigor, with the strength of a
soul which has suffered the most violent emotions and, firm and serene
in the satisfaction of duty fulfilled, can no longer know fear.
As Desnoyers contemplated him, he felt both admiration and jealousy. He
was ashamed to admit the aversion inspired by the wounded man, so sorely
wounded that he was unable to see what was going on around him. His
hatred was a form of cowardice, terrifying in its persistence. How
pensive were Marguerite’s eyes if she took them off her patient for a
few seconds! . . . She had never looked at him in that way. He knew all
the amorous gradations of her glance, but her fixed gaze at this injured
man was something entirely different, something that he had never seen
before.
He spoke with the fury of a lover who discovers an infidelity.
“And for this thing you have run away without warning, without a word!
. . . You have abandoned me in order to go in search of him. . . . Tell
me, why did you come? . . . Why did you come?”. . .
“I came because it was my duty.”
Then she spoke like a mother who takes advantage of a parenthesis
of surprise in an irascible child’s temper, in order to counsel
self-control, and explained how it had all happened. She had received
the news of Laurier’s wounding just as she and her mother were preparing
to leave Paris. She had not hesitated an instant; her duty was to hasten
to the aid of this man. She had been doing a great deal of thinking in
the last few weeks; the war had made her ponder much on the values in
life. Her eyes had been getting glimpses of new horizons; our destiny is
not mere pleasure and selfish satisfaction; we ought to take our part in
pain and sacrifice.
She had wanted to work for her country, to share the general stress, to
serve as other women did; and since she was disposed to devote herself
to strangers, was it not natural that she should prefer to help this man
whom she had so greatly wronged? . . . There still lived in her memory
the moment in which she had seen him approach the station, completely
alone among so many who had the consolation of loving arms when
departing in search of death. Her pity had become still more acute on
hearing of his misfortune. A shell had exploded near him, killing all
those around him. Of his many wounds, the only serious one was that on
his face. He had completely lost the sight of one eye; and the doctors
were keeping the other bound up hoping to save it. But she was very
doubtful about it; she was almost sure that Laurier would be blind.
Marguerite’s voice trembled when saying this as if she were going
to cry, although her eyes were tearless. They did not now feel
the irresistible necessity for tears. Weeping had become something
superfluous, like many other luxuries of peaceful days. Her eyes had
seen so much in so few days! . . .
“How you love him!” exclaimed Julio.
Fearing that they might be overheard and in order to keep him at a
distance, she had been speaking as though to a friend. But her lover’s
sadness broke down her reserve.
“No, I love you. . . . I shall always love you.”
The simplicity with which she said this and her sudden tenderness of
tone revived Desnoyers’ hopes.
“And the other one?” he asked anxiously.
Upon receiving her reply, it seemed to him as though something had just
passed across the sun, veiling its light temporarily. It was as though
a cloud had drifted over the land and over his thoughts, enveloping them
in an unbearable chill.
“I love him, too.”
She said it with a look that seemed to implore pardon, with the sad
sincerity of one who has given up lying and weeps in foreseeing the
injury that the truth must inflict.
He felt his hard wrath suddenly dwindling like a crumbling mountain. Ah,
Marguerite! His voice was tremulous and despairing. Could it be possible
that everything between these two was going to end thus simply? Were her
former vows mere lies? . . . They had been attracted to each other by an
irresistible affinity in order to be together forever, to be one. . . .
And now, suddenly hardened by indifference, were they to drift apart
like two unfriendly bodies? . . . What did this absurdity about loving
him at the same time that she loved her former husband mean, anyway?
Marguerite hung her head, murmuring desperately:
“You are a man, I am a woman. You would never understand me, no
matter what I might say. Men are not able to comprehend certain of
our mysteries. . . . A woman would be better able to appreciate the
complexity.”
Desnoyers felt that he must know his fate in all its cruelty. She might
speak without fear. He felt strong enough to bear the blow. . . . What
had Laurier said when he found that he was being so tenderly cared for
by Marguerite? . . .
“He does not know who I am. . . . He believes me to be a war-nurse, like
the rest, who pities him seeing him alone and blind with no relatives
to write to him or visit him. . . . At certain times, I have almost
suspected that he guesses the truth. My voice, the touch of my hands
made him shiver at first, as though with an unpleasant sensation. I have
told him that I am a Beigian lady who has lost her loved ones and is
alone in the world. He has told me his life story very sketchily, as
if he desired to forget a hated past. . . . Never one disagreeable word
about his former wife. There are nights when I think that he knows me,
that he takes advantage of his blindness in order to prolong his feigned
ignorance, and that distresses me. I long for him to recover his sight,
for the doctors to save that doubtful eye--and yet at the same time, I
feel afraid. What will he say when he recognizes me? . . . But no; it
is better that he should see, no matter what may result. You cannot
understand my anxiety, you cannot know what I am suffering.”
She was silent for an instant, trying to regain her self-control, again
tortured with the agony of her soul.
“Oh, the war!” she resumed. “What changes in our life! Two months ago,
my present situation would have appeared impossible, unimaginable. . . .
I caring for my husband, fearing that he would discover my identity and
leave me, yet at the same time, wishing that he would recognize me
and pardon me. . . . It is only one week that I have been with him. I
disguise my voice when I can, and avoid words that may reveal the truth
. . . but this cannot keep up much longer. It is only in novels that
such painful situations turn out happily.”
Doubt suddenly overwhelmed her.
“I believe,” she continued, “that he has recognized me from the first.
. . . He is silent and feigns ignorance because he despises me . . .
because he can never bring himself to pardon me. I have been so bad!
. . . I have wronged him so!”. . .
She was recalling the long and reflective silences of the wounded man
after she had dropped some imprudent words. After two days of submission
to her care, he had been somewhat rebellious, avoiding going out with
her for a walk. Because of his blind helplessness, and comprehending
the uselessness of his resistance, he had finally yielded in passive
silence.
“Let him think what he will!” concluded Marguerite courageously. “Let
him despise me! I am here where I ought to be. I need his forgiveness,
but if he does not pardon me, I shall stay with him just the same.
. . . There are moments when I wish that he may never recover his sight,
so that he may always need me, so that I may pass my life at his side,
sacrificing everything for him.”
“And I?” said Desnoyers.
Marguerite looked at him with clouded eyes as though she were just
awaking. It was true--and the other one? . . . Kindled by the proposed
sacrifice which was to be her expiation, she had forgotten the man
before her.
“You!” she said after a long pause. “You must leave me. . . . Life is
not what we have thought it. Had it not been for the war, we might,
perhaps, have realized our dream, but now! . . . Listen carefully and
try to understand. For the remainder of my life, I shall carry the
heaviest burden, and yet at the same time it will be sweet, since the
more it weighs me down the greater will my atonement be. Never will I
leave this man whom I have so grievously wronged, now that he is more
alone in the world and will need protection like a child. Why do you
come to share my fate? How could it be possible for you to live with
a nurse constantly at the side of a blind and worthy man whom we would
constantly offend with our passion? . . . No, it is better for us to
part. Go your way, alone and untrammelled. Leave me; you will meet other
women who will make you more happy than I. Yours is the temperament that
finds new pleasures at every step.”
She stood firmly to her decision. Her voice was calm, but back of it
trembled the emotion of a last farewell to a joy which was going from
her forever. The man would be loved by others . . . and she was giving
him up! . . . But the noble sadness of the sacrifice restored her
courage. Only by this renunciation could she expiate her sins.
Julio dropped his eyes, vanquished and perplexed. The picture of the
future outlined by Marguerite terrified him. To live with her as a nurse
taking advantage of her patient’s blindness would be to offer him fresh
insult every day. . . . Ah, no! That would be villainy, indeed! He was
now ashamed to recall the malignity with which, a little while before,
he had regarded this innocent unfortunate. He realized that he was
powerless to contend with him. Weak and helpless as he was sitting there
on the garden bench, he was stronger and more deserving of respect than
Julio Desnoyers with all his youth and elegance. The victim had amounted
to something in his life; he had done what Julio had not dared to do.
This sudden conviction of his inferiority made him cry out like an
abandoned child, “What will become of me?” . . .
Marguerite, too--contemplating the love which was going from her
forever, her vanished hopes, the future illumined by the satisfaction of
duty fulfilled but monotonous and painful--cried out:
“And I. . . . What will become of me?” . . .
As though he had suddenly found a solution which was reviving his
courage, Desnoyers said:
“Listen, Marguerite: I can read your soul. You love this man, and you
do well. He is superior to me, and women are always attracted by
superiority. . . . I am a coward. Yes, do not protest, I am a coward
with all my youth, with all my strength. Why should you not have been
impressed by the conduct of this man! . . . But I will atone for past
wrongs. This country is yours, Marguerite; I will fight for it. Do not
say no. . . .”
And moved by his hasty heroism, he outlined the plan more definitely. He
was going to be a soldier. Soon she would hear him well spoken of.
His idea was either to be stretched on the battlefield in his first
encounter, or to astound the world by his bravery. In this way the
impossible situation would settle itself--either the oblivion of death
or glory.
“No, no!” interrupted Marguerite in an anguished tone. “You, no! One
is enough. . . . How horrible! You, too, wounded, mutilated forever,
perhaps dead! . . . No, you must live. I want you to live, even though
you might belong to another. . . . Let me know that you exist, let me
see you sometimes, even though you may have forgotten me, even though
you may pass me with indifference, as if you did not know me.”
In this outburst her deep love for him rang true--her heroic and
inflexible love which would accept all penalties for herself, if only
the beloved one might continue to live.
But then, in order that Julio might not feel any false hopes, she
added:--“Live; you must not die; that would be for me another torment.
. . . But live without me. No matter how much we may talk about it, my
destiny beside the other one is marked out forever.”
“Ah, how you love him! . . . How you have deceived me!”
In a last desperate attempt at explanation she again repeated what she
had said at the beginning of their interview. She loved Julio . . . and
she loved her husband. They were different kinds of love. She could not
say which was the stronger, but misfortune was forcing her to choose
between the two, and she was accepting the most difficult, the one
demanding the greatest sacrifices.
“You are a man, and you will never be able to understand me. . . . A
woman would comprehend me.”
It seemed to Julio, as he looked around him, as though the afternoon
were undergoing some celestial phenomenon. The garden was still
illuminated by the sun, but the green of the trees, the yellow of the
ground, the blue of the sky, all appeared to him as dark and shadowy as
though a rain of ashes were falling.
“Then . . . all is over between us?”
His pleading, trembling voice charged with tears made her turn her head
to hide her emotion. Then in the painful silence the two despairs formed
one and the same question, as if interrogating the shades of the future:
“What will become of me?” murmured the man. And like an echo her lips
repeated, “What will become of me?”
All had been said. Hopeless words came between the two like an obstacle
momentarily increasing in size, impelling them in opposite directions.
Why prolong the painful interview? . . . Marguerite showed the ready and
energetic decision of a woman who wishes to bring a scene to a close.
“Good-bye!” Her face had assumed a yellowish cast, her pupils had become
dull and clouded like the glass of a lantern when the light dies out.
“Good-bye!” She must go to her patient.
She went away without looking at him, and Desnoyers instinctively went
in the opposite direction. As he became more self-controlled and turned
to look at her again, he saw her moving on and giving her arm to the
blind man, without once turning her head.
He now felt convinced that he should never see her again, and became
oppressed by an almost suffocating agony. And could two beings, who had
formerly considered the universe concentrated in their persons, thus
easily be separated forever? . . .
His desperation at finding himself alone made him accuse himself
of stupidity. Now his thoughts came tumbling over each other in a
tumultuous throng, and each one of them seemed to him sufficient to have
convinced Marguerite. He certainly had not known how to express himself.
He would have to talk with her again . . . and he decided to remain in
Lourdes.
He passed a night of torture in the hotel, listening to the ripple of
the river among its stones. Insomnia had him in his fierce jaws, gnawing
him with interminable agony. He turned on the light several times, but
was not able to read. His eyes looked with stupid fixity at the patterns
of the wall paper and the pious pictures around the room which had
evidently served as the lodging place of some rich traveller. He
remained motionless and as abstracted as an Oriental who thinks himself
into an absolute lack of thought. One idea only was dancing in the
vacuum in his skull--“I shall never see her again. . . . Can such a
thing be possible?”
He drowsed for a few seconds, only to be awakened with the sensation
that some horrible explosion was sending him through the air. And so,
with sweats of anguish, he wakefully passed the hours until in the gloom
of his room the dawn showed a milky rectangle of light, and began to be
reflected on the window curtains.
The velvet-like caress of day finally closed his eyes. Upon awaking he
found that the morning was well advanced, and he hurried to the garden
of the grotto. . . . Oh, the hours of tremulous and unavailing waiting,
believing that he recognized Marguerite in every white-clad lady that
came along, guiding a wounded patient!
By afternoon, after a lunch whose dishes filed past him untouched, he
returned to the garden in search of her. Beholding her in the distance
with the blind man leaning on her arm, a feeling of faintness came over
him. She looked to him taller, thinner, her face sharper, with two dark
hollows in her cheeks and her eyes bright with fever, the lids drawn
with weariness. He suspected that she, too, had passed an anguished
night of tenacious, self-centred thought, of grievous stupefaction like
his own, in the room of her hotel. Suddenly he felt all the weight
of insomnia and listlessness, all the depressing emotion of the cruel
sensations experienced in the last few hours. Oh, how miserable they
both were! . . .
She was walking warily, looking from one side to the other, as though
foreseeing danger. Upon discovering him she clung to her charge, casting
upon her former lover a look of entreaty, of desperation, imploring
pity. . . Ay, that look!
He felt ashamed of himself; his personality appeared to be unrolling
itself before him, and he surveyed himself with the eyes of a judge.
What was this seduced and useless man, called Julio Desnoyers, doing
there, tormenting with his presence a poor woman, trying to turn her
from her righteous repentance, insisting on his selfish and petty
desires when all humanity was thinking of other things? . . . His
cowardice angered him. Like a thief taking advantage of the sleep of his
victim, he was stalking around this brave and true man who could not
see him, who could not defend himself, in order to rob him of the only
affection that he had in the world which had so miraculously returned to
him! Very well, Gentleman Desnoyers! . . . Ah, what a scoundrel he was!
Such subconscious insults made him draw himself erect, in haughty, cruel
and inexorable defiance against that other I who so richly deserved the
judge’s scorn.
He turned his head away; he could not meet Marguerite’s piteous eyes; he
feared their mute reproach. Neither did he dare to look at the blind man
in his shabby and heroic uniform, with his countenance aged by duty and
glory. He feared him like remorse.
So the vanquished lover turned his back on the two and went away with a
firm step. Good-bye, Love! Goodbye, Happiness! . . . He marched quickly
and bravely on; a miracle had just taken place within him! he had found
the right road at last!
To Paris! . . . A new impetus was going to fill the vacuum of his
objectless existence.