SERENITY
I had fallen face downwards. I experienced a sensation of shattering
and laceration. My eyes closed. I made a convulsive effort to get up.
Impossible! But where was I wounded? My head was swimming, everything
was turning round me. I was dying.
"Your leg, isn't it?"
I succeeded in opening my eyes again.
Guillaumin!
"Yes--I think so!" I stammered.
"Hurts a bit, what?"
I tried to lift up my head and spit some soil out. Everything grew dim
again. I caught sight of a clown's face--Judsi, leaning over me, too.
"Carry on! Carry on!" I murmured.
They disappeared from my field of vision. I saw another line of men
pass in skirmishing order, then another. Was my brain affected? Why did
I think I was back in camp at Mailly and once more taking part in the
parade before the Bey of Tunis?
By some strange instinct, I dreaded being helped. I preferred to
die in peace. For I thought my hour had come, and abandoned myself
unregretfully.
Meanwhile, some time passed. Instead of agonising, I recovered my wits.
It was my right leg that had been hit--the bone to a certainty! For the
moment, the pain was not so intolerable. I felt as if my leg had been
substituted by a mass of lead.
Ah! The sun! Already high in the heavens!
I now began to wish for help, but the plateau was abandoned. Quite near
me there was a dead body--poor Prunelle--fallen in the posture of an
oriental suppliant. Farther on Gaufrèteau was drawing his last breath.
A tree stood a few yards off; a minute rise in the ground blocked out
all the horizon.
I was thinking, longing to find out what really had happened. I
struggled obstinately to turn over onto one side. At last I succeeded.
By raising myself up on my elbow, I was able to examine my leg. It made
a hideous angle under the trouser. The foot turned back towards the
knee. There would have been reason enough to shudder, if that inert
mass had not literally seemed a thing quite apart from me.
I thought of dressing my wound, but my strength was not up to undoing
my pack and slitting up the cloth round my leg.
What was the result of the engagement? Everything tended to show that
our masterly stroke at dawn had been successful. But were we following
up our advantage? And how far? If only I could have dragged myself
as far as that tree! I calculated the distance. What hope possessed
me? I succeeded at the cost of real torture in getting into a sitting
position. Now my plan was made. I must move backwards, propelling
myself by my fists!
Oh! what a ghastly journey that was! I watched the removal of my leg.
It was throbbing, but did not cause me acute pain, and seemed as if
paralysed; mis-shapen and swollen, like a great ball, pinning me to
the ground. I was as weak as a baby. Ten times over my head sank, my
clenched fingers relaxed. I allowed myself a good rest, first after
each half yard then after each foot, then even this latter distance
seemed to me excessive.
Having attained my end--how I do not know--I drew breath for a long
time.
It now remained for me--I was ambitious--to stand up--to see something.
I gripped the trunk with both arms, while my sound leg stiffened--in
vain--my God! The other was pinned to the ground!
I changed my tactics, and set about raising myself on one knee. When
I had got there, I exerted all the strength of my being, and began to
pull myself up slowly, oh, so slowly! My grip alone supported me. My
hands were grazed by the bark.
On my feet, at last--triumphant! I was able to gaze far across the
plain in front of me.
It was a large expanse of wild country, cut by a railway. Little
did I care for the view. What I sought for hungrily was that cloud
of dust--the men. I ended by discovering it. In the distance, as
far as eye could see, there was a line of skirmishers--easily
recognisable--our greatcoats and red trousers!
Vloumm! Rouvloumm! Vloumm! A cannonade echoed near at hand, making the
air waves vibrate. About a mile and a half away a battery of the 75's
let off a trial round. Too short! They harnessed up again, swung round,
and were off at a gallop.
Yonder a company of dragoons were trotting in the same direction. The
pursuit had begun.
By some intuition or suggestion my vision increased at this point.
I had the feeling that I could see from one end to the other of our
front. On the Ourcq just by, and farther off on the Marne, the Meuse,
the Moselle, this very Destiny was being pronounced; this very morning,
at this very hour, the success of our counter-offensive; the hostile
rabble dislocated, broken, forced to retreat.
Paris and France saved! A grand date in the history of the world! What
did it matter how long the War might last.
I greeted the day of glory. This noble stretch of country, the
Île-de-France, stood forth before us--our adopted land--and lay
stretched at our feet, presenting a fertile appearance for our sakes.
Preserved for the sons of my race, the acres which nourished us with
their substance of life-giving properties. I thought not at all of my
wound, of my life, no doubt in danger. Content to have lived until
this sublime instant, I united in the same love, the freed territory,
the luminary shining on my country, the beings dear to my heart; and
enlacing the rugged tree, I eagerly stretched myself up to follow to
the very horizon our victorious colours.
* * * * *
My strength suddenly gave way. The leaden weight became aggravated. I
yielded with the one idea of falling upon my sound limb. My forehead
struck the ground and I fell into a deep swoon.
PART IV
_BOOK X_
_Epilogue_
CHAPTER I
APPREHENSIONS
"That's doing very well--very well indeed!" It was Bujard, the
house-surgeon, who was speaking. "If everyone got on as quickly as
you----"
I no longer felt any pain. My gaze wandered round the huge room. It
was warm and prettily decorated--the smoking-room in the M---- hotel,
which had been converted into a hospital. My temperature was normal
again and I experienced a sensation of relief and deliverance. How
delightful it was to rest on this pliant mattress, in these cool
sheets, to distinguish the prattle of my neighbours, and the patter of
the sister's feet standing out from the subdued hubbub in the ward.
When the light tired me, I closed my eyes on this scene, and went over
the vicissitudes of the nightmare I had just left behind....
My long prostration in a dying condition, on that deserted plateau;
swoons from which I awoke at intervals; that deadly cycle; two days and
two nights. ... Ah! Faces were leaning over me. They pick me up and
carry me away. Where am I? A stretcher, a motor.... Heavens, how my leg
tears me! How thirsty I am!
In the train now, on some straw. Round me those poor unfortunates,
spectres, drawing their last breath, can they be men? But I am like
them! That first dressing in the train.... They snip and tear my
trouser and drawers; my wound is exposed, all soiled; matter and
congealed blood. There is some question of detraining me. A red-beard
opposes the suggestion, I am put back on to the same straw, in a
state of decay. The train starts again, and rolls on and on for days.
Unexpected or unknown names of stations. The feeling of being tossed
about from one end of France to the other. Oh, this heat, this jolting,
this acrid, fetid odour of humanity.... I am sleeping, or dying,
unconscious....
A very different period follows--Vichy. A hospital ward, this; and
the same bed on which I am still lying. Washed and cared for, I am
born anew. I joke with the sister, a cheery soul, an ex-nurse in the
expeditionary corps in China; with the house-surgeon--he and I have
mutual friends.
My wound is certainly severe--the fibula is shattered, the tibia
fractured. I shall limp. But what matter? They have cut away a lot
and extracted splinters of bone, and scraps of clothes.... Barring
complications, I shall have five or six weeks of it, not more.
Heavens, how beautiful life is! The Battle of the Marne has just been
fought. What inspiriting reading the newspapers make. The intoxication
of Victory; our Victory. The very day I arrived I was able to have two
telegrams sent--their destinations will easily be guessed. Jeannine
answered at once, by the ardent letter I had wished for. A promise in
it makes my heart leap. The Landrys will arrange to come round by Vichy
on their way to the South, where they spend each winter. There is only
one slight shadow--an allusion to certain worries of the grandmother's,
money matters, from what I can gather.
As to my father: here he is installed at my bedside.
My thoughts are pleasing ones, and linger over such memories. And
then--and then!
A Saturday evening. Ever since the morning my leg seems to me to
have got heavier.... Thirst dries the very marrow in my bones. My
temperature suddenly rises 101.2°. When it is taken again 102.2°. What
does it mean? Sunday at eight o'clock 104°. Professor Gauthier, who
is called in for a consultation, examines me and seems put out. These
confounded leg wounds!
More incisions, and a drainage tube is put back again, and we must wait
and see.
What a day! I am consumed with thirst, and burning hot. My leg on fire
right up to the hip, paroxysms of suffering, infernal shooting pains.
Pus is forming in it. Exhaustion soon follows. My tongue is green, and
I vomit. I no longer digest anything. Delirium sets in. I call Maman, I
call Jeannine, in a despairing voice....
Those silhouettes of doctors. That consultation round my bed. A haze
envelops me ... I hear music! Then Bujard's voice:
"Well, old chap...?"
Halloa, he's very affectionate!
"We may have to--amputate...!"
From the depths of my torpor, I have understood. "Yes, take it off!
Take it off!" I implore them.
"That's right! Very sensible!" He nodded. "A leg! They make such
excellent substitutes! And then...."
He emphasised this point: "You'll suffer no more, you know!"
Oh, how well he knows my weak spot. No more suffering--or fever....
How did it all happen? I had no notion of anything. I came round from
the chloroform to find myself in my bed. My father said to me, with
tears in his eyes:
"That's all over, Michel, you're saved!"
I slept and slept. I come to life again. I open my eyes. Have I been
dreaming? I should be tempted to think so. I have difficulty in
persuading myself of the reality of my misfortune. My gaze never rests
without astonishment on the fold in my bed-clothes, where it sinks down
over the stump of my excised thigh.
Stupefaction, yes: rather than distress. I am less crushed by it than
I should have expected. What an abominable thing the existence of
beings mutilated in this way used formerly to seem to me. To-day the
fate which awaits me does not make me revolt. I smile, without too much
melancholy, at the motherly words of encouragement from the excellent
nun. I take note, almost with amusement of the sensations of itching
in my missing sole and big toe, common in patients who have had a leg
amputated.
The secret of my serenity is to be found in the fact that my thoughts
return to the decisive engagement when leading my men. I had consented
to the sacrifice. Intoxicating moments which could only be paid for
with my life! And this last week again, I had seen my coffin open;
death flowed in my veins. Now Destiny had had mercy on me. I might well
consider myself blest!
But this period did not last long. At the end of a few days, the memory
of my recent tortures paled. The withdrawal of this shadow robbed my
present condition of its tinge of consolation.
There were ten of us in this ward, all seriously wounded, and operated
on under favourable conditions. The general atmosphere was one of
cheerfulness. I was soon out of sympathy with it.
I had made friends with my next-door neighbour, a recruit of twenty,
Cadieu, by name. He was always in the most uproarious spirits and quite
irresistible. I compared him with Judsi. What vitality there must be in
a race which produces such men by thousands! His leg amputated too, and
like mine, in the "upper third," he gaily made the best of it. First
of all there was the pension. And then as an adjuster of scales it
wouldn't worry him so much as all that! And then, what was a leg more
or less after all?
He told me how he had been hit. When he had got the splinter in his
leg, he had said to himself: "Well done! Of course you would just go
and get in the light!" Lying down in a furrow he was waiting quietly
for--what? Blimey! the end o' the war! The crackling was still going on
as hard as ever. Suddenly, paf! Oh, my eye! A bullet in the foot. But
'e'd 'ad one bit o' luck. It was the one on the same side!
The boy had at once confided his love affairs to me. His lady friend
was a housemaid to some people of good position. Her name was
Margaret. "It all began by that there song, you remember 'ow it goes,
'Margaret, give me your 'eart.' I 'ummed it to 'er--." One child
brought up in the country by her parents, good old things. He expected
her to come and see him at the beginning of next month: "You're kept
at it pretty 'ard in 'er trade! But 'er missus' 'usband 'as just bin
'napoohed' too. She bolted off to 'im in double-quick time, an' w'en
Margaret was seein' 'er orf at the station, she up and told 'er that
'er boy was knocked out, too, and blowed if the lidy didn't feel sorter
touched by it, and offered 'er a fortnight's 'oliday!"
His outpourings at an end, Cadieu, seeing I was still depressed,
watched me out of the corner of his eye.
"And wot abaht you? An' your sweet'eart?" he said to me one day.
I smiled. "Not married, old chap, or attached in any way. No,
seriously!"
How much to the point his guess had been, though!
O Jeannine! Sleeping and waking I had thought of my love. The other
week her fair image presided over my revival. It was with my heart
dedicated to her that I had put myself into the hands of the surgeons,
and when I had opened my eyes again, amid the giddiness and sickness,
it was the light of her face that had been the first thing to pierce
the veil of my torpor.
I have said that I had telegraphed, that I had received a reply. But
since then, what a striking change there had been. On the threshold
of a new era, I tremblingly encouraged myself not to mistrust her. I
remember the tone in which De Valpic had spoken of his unchanging love,
when just on the point of death.
I waited to write to her until I had recovered my strength to a certain
extent. A week! How long the time must seem to her. A second letter
came from her. She demanded news.... What a piece of news I had to
announce to her!
I made up my mind to it, however.
My first sentence revealed everything to her. It was a mutilated man,
I told her, who was tracing these lines to her.... I stopped short,
and turned over to bury my head in my pillow. Tears rose to my eyes!
Then I recovered myself. I so much wanted this letter to appear a
normal continuation of the others. When I re-read it, I was struck by
the deadly heart-break depicted in it, in spite of myself! I was on
the point of tearing the pages to pieces. I stayed for a long time,
balancing them in my hands. Then I finally decided to slip them into
the envelope; my salvation lay entirely in the pity I should inspire.
Some days passed by in boredom, and overwhelming anxiety, the reason
of which I now forbade myself to specify. I tried in vain to distract
my thoughts. My father read the papers aloud to me--those around me
profited by it. With the monotonous delivery of an officer giving the
order of the day, he sometimes stirred us all in pronouncing the word
Victory. He had to take off his glasses which were dimmed.
But the Press no longer reflected the same enthusiasm evinced for the
"Battle of the Marne." The thankless battle of the Aisne was dragging
on, and becoming endless. We began to feel that the enemy would hold
out for a long time on this stolen territory. There was heavy fighting
going on in the North. Our left and the German right struggling to
outstrip each other in their race for the coast--fierce cavalry
encounters round Aire and Hazebrouck.... And there were already
sinister rumours abroad concerning the probable fate of Anvers.
I bore myself a grudge for not being more thrilled. I urged myself to
lose sight of my individual misery, in order to continue in communion
with my noble nation. I tried hard to do it, but my efforts were in
vain!
An epistle from Guillaumin reached me. He was safe and sound, and
was anxious to be reassured on my account. His letter contained some
details. Yes, poor De Valpic had fallen. His body had been identified,
and was reposing in hallowed ground, beneath a cross. The platoon
had been reduced to half its strength the day after Nanteuil, but
reinforcements had arrived during the following days. They had been
engaged over and over again since then, and were fighting nearly every
day; yesterday again at Guennevières. They did not forget me in all
that! Guillaumin enclosed in his letter a joint card signed by each
_poilu_. One shaky scrawl was from the hand of poor Donnadieu, hit by a
splinter in the abdomen, and who, so my friend told me, had succumbed
during the night.
Who would believe that I put off answering him. And, for that matter,
my sister-in-law, too, who had sent me several affectionate missives.
Sometimes it was enervation which tortured me, as I lay there,
sometimes a gloomy atony.
Margaret, Cadieu's friend, had arrived, a pretty, fair-haired girl of
the soubrette and ingénue type. Her presence exhilarated my neighbour
to such an extent that our corner was one long roar of laughter. I
alone did not cheer up. He cast sorrowful looks at me, and the girl
took to bringing me flowers in the morning when she brought them for
her Julot. How sorry they were for me!
And my father! He certainly would not have questioned me. But his
speech which was usually abrupt, softened, and his gaze grew more
gentle when it rested on me. I was grateful to him for his tacit
compassion, and I felt inclined to cry.
CHAPTER II
RELIEF
How I trembled when at last I tore open...! My doom was to be
pronounced. My secret terror was dissipated on glancing at the first
lines. Jeannine reminded me that she was the daughter of a soldier, the
niece and grand-daughter of a soldier. From time immemorial, glorious
wounds had been revered in her family. She quoted the case of her
great-uncle, who was also her godfather, who, in the year '70, had
been hit by a bullet near his elbow, and had soon lost the use of his
right arm, owing to rheumatism. Their admiration had surrounded him and
followed in his train all his life long.
My misfortune, she said, had not taken her by surprise. She had dreaded
it all along. Had I not discerned her deep compassion beneath the
encouragement even in her very first letter?
At this point her tone grew more tender. She was aware, she said, of
my bitterness and anguish which I tried in vain to conceal from her.
However, I had turned to her. She thanked me for that. She was my
faithful friend. She recognised herself as being picked out to help me
in my trouble. After all, I was alive. Wasn't that all that mattered?
My misfortune did not lower me. It all raised me, on the contrary. I
must have fought superbly. How many times a day she had pictured me
leading my men to the attack. I had been intoxicated, had I not, by all
that life offered of sublime sensations. I should not assume my former
scepticism again, even in play. What a lot we should have to tell each
other when--and Heaven grant that the day might be near at hand--we met
again.
I read and re-read these six pages. I never tired of assuring myself of
my joy and revelling in it. My heart melted as a result of the relief,
and turned towards the wall; I wept the sweet tears which had been
ready to flow for the last ten days.
I now recognised clearly what I had dreaded and could smile at it.
A revival of the dry mistrust which was dissipated at a word from
Jeannine!
This miracle of her persistent affection seemed to me the simplest
and most natural reality. Since the milk of human kindness was not an
empty saying! And then one might have mistrusted another, but she,
like myself, had deliberately raised herself above the common sphere
in which men's feelings move. How little the scruples and hesitations
of average souls could count for in comparison with the mute vow which
bound us. We belonged to each other, whatever might happen!
But, nevertheless, when the first transport was over, a vague feeling
of unrest returned to skim the surface of my mind. I was insatiable. It
seemed to me that I might have looked for a more tender and impassioned
abandonment--for some involuntary avowal....
And then, no! On thinking it over, I had no difficulty in convincing
myself that it was her modesty which forbade her to declare herself.
I myself had never dared to put it into writing. No; our engagement
would be ratified by a hand-clasp, by the chaste exchange of words.
I wrote her eight pages that same evening. Our correspondence was
resumed. Each of us now, certainly waited for the other's letter to
arrive before answering it--and the posts were still uncertain, a week
sometimes went by without bringing the looked-for letter.
I was not without regret for the time when our love had found a way
to express itself, every, or almost every day. We had ceased to move
amongst those unique circumstances when not an hour must be lost in
pouring out all one's heart, since each letter, received or despatched,
might be the last. This was the return to normal conditions; letters
between the betrothed before the ring has been given. It was at least
something on which to feed the certainty of our happiness.
* * * * *
Time went on and on. At the end of a fortnight they had given my leg
a thorough dressing for the first time. The compresses, with the aid
of hot water, had come off more quickly, and given me less pain than I
had feared they might. Bujard congratulated me on the condition of my
wound. There was no trace of suppuration. Three weeks more and I should
get up!
I smiled at his words of encouragement. I marvelled at feeling nothing
at the severed stump but a sort of tickling which was sometimes, by the
way, almost intolerable. The feeling that my right thigh had nothing to
counter-balance it was very queer too.
The occupants of our ward had nearly all recovered. Some more beds were
added. They tried to make more room, and sent away a great many of
those who could stand up. Cadieu was despatched to a convalescent home.
He went hobbling off, much amused by his crutches. And merriment went
with him.
Many of the new arrivals appeared exhausted and worn out. They arrived
in an infected state--it was the end of October--from the ghastly
slaughters in Belgium. There were several cases of tetanus and
gangrene. I remember a big fellow, belonging to the naval brigade, who
screamed with pain all night, and died at dawn.
I found this promiscuousness very trying, and lost strength again. My
friend Bujard noticed it, and, after having consulted me, arranged for
me to have a little room to myself. I took leave of the sister, Ste.
Thérèse.
* * * * *
To begin with I missed the fresh air in the ward. I was reduced to the
society of my father as sole companion, and he was not well, because he
had had an attack of choking one evening, in the thick of the battle of
the Yser, when he had thought our line had been broken through. Bujard
had warned me that he was threatened with angina pectoris.
And yet with what solicitude the poor man surrounded me. He was by
my side from eight o'clock in the morning onwards. He never left me
during the day, and had obtained permission to have his meals brought
up there. He tried everything imaginable to alleviate the monotony of
my long convalescence. He joined a library so that I might have books,
and tired himself by reading to me for hours together. In the end I
had to implore Bujard to forbid him to read. He bought me a quantity
of maps of different scales, and we tried to follow the situation, and
the manoeuvres of our five principal armies during the immortal days at
the beginning of September. We marked out the actual front with little
flags.
We talked, too. I evoked certain scenes from my childhood, our
Lorraine, Eberménil. It caused my father frightful distress to think
that the enemy were still there. "But not for long," he growled,
grinding his teeth.
If I pressed the subject and recalled some happy occasion on which our
dear departed ones had figured at our sides, then I used to see him
fall into a deep day-dream, into which I dared not break. He belonged
to those whose grief is frozen and taciturn, more heart-rending,
perhaps, than ours, which is assuaged when we give vent to it.
I realised anew the difference in our two natures--not without regret!
I should never have ventured, I thought, to allow him even a glimpse
of the surprising evolution which had made a new man of me. It would
have revolted him to learn from what depths I had started, and all that
had been needed to bring me to this state of grace in which he had
maintained himself without an effort, for more than forty years.
Jeannine, everything brought back the longing for your beloved
presence! You alone knew me, such as I had been and such as I was. What
pride, just think, for us two, to ascertain how, little by little,
at the seat of my love for you, all these virtues had blossomed in
my soul. You would persuade me, perhaps, that I bore the germs in
my heart, but that they could never have flowered in the etiolating
atmosphere in which my life had been spent.
Stirred by such thoughts, I suddenly became more sensible to the
paternal affection. What nurse would have set her wits to work in such
a touching fashion? He tried to remember how my mother used to treat me
during my long illnesses in former days.
One morning, he put a pack of cards on my table and timidly proposed a
game of piquet.
"A good idea!" I said. "Let's draw!"
He puckered his forehead and played attentively, and won. And I could
see myself again as a child--a child playing like this with my mother,
caressing her beautiful white hands. I could have seized and kissed
this old man's wrinkled hands. The unique tenderness of parents,
which one must hasten to enjoy! My mother had passed away years and
years ago--and as for him, the last on earth of the beings whom I
perpetuated, how much time would slip away before they left him, having
lived his life, between four planks? I was harrowed in advance. I made
a vow to do all that was in my power to sweeten the days--restricted,
alas, in number--which still remained to him.
CHAPTER III
A SUNLIT CONVALESCENCE
One afternoon, towards two o'clock, my father took his hat, and said to
me, in rather a mysterious tone:
"I must go out on an errand. I'll be back in a moment."
Half an hour later I became aware of shuffling going on outside my
door. Somebody knocked.
"Come in!"
A little boy, dressed in black, appeared on the threshold. My heart
gave a bound. That prominent forehead, where fair curls rolled, that
straight, brilliant gaze. Victor! Victor, at five years old. Victor as
he had been when my eyes had opened on him as a little child.
It was his son--little Robert.
Behind him was my sister-in-law. She came straight up to my bed, and
bent down, raising her long widow's veil. We kissed each other, and I
demanded my little niece Brigitte, who was shy and was burying her face
in her mother's skirts.
The conversation immediately started off, quite naturally and
delightfully, free of its whilom reserve. We ingenuously confessed
that we had learnt to know each other, and how we had felt the mutual
affection grow, in the course of these terrible months.
Madeleine had come to stay at Vichy for a few days.
"We will give you new courage," she said.
"I'm not lacking in it! You're the one who needs it, poor little
sister."
"Oh! I have enough for three."
It was true enough. I was struck by her spirit of determination. And I
had thought her in danger of giving way entirely beneath the blow. She
spoke of nothing but the future; of her plans; of the education of her
children. She thought of going to live at Versailles: the rents were
not so high there as in Paris, they would be near the town, and the
Lycée Hoche. For she wanted to keep Robert with her, in order that the
whole family should cling together.
As my eyes were again drawn irresistibly to the little boy, she said:
"Isn't he like----"
She did not complete the sentence. Tears pearled on her eyelashes. It
was one of the few allusions she allowed herself, to her great sorrow.
I told her that her children would find a second father in me.
"He counted on it," she assured me.
And she showed me a note which Victor had written before leaving St.
Mihiel; a few lines in which he confided those dearest to him on earth,
to my charge. What instinct warned him that he would fall; that I
should be preserved?
I reverently welcomed this sacred bequest. When my father had gone
I should be the head of the family. New duties which I hailed with
delight. And in a short time, I said to myself, Madeleine would find
in Jeannine a friend, more than a friend. I think that if we had been
alone it would have been to her, first of all, that I should have
revealed my secret.
Those were calm days perfumed by sympathy and friendship. I had to tell
the story of my campaign in full detail. Not even the children seemed
bored as they listened.
Dear mites they were! Too quiet and good. I sent to a neighbouring
bazaar for some toys for them. Then I drew up a plan for the future.
I asked my sister-in-law what she meant to do for the winter. It was
impossible for her to go back home. The enemy had just laid hands on
St. Mihiel.
"Stay in Paris," she said.
"How depressing that would be!"
I pretended to be seized with a sudden inspiration. "Suppose we all
went off to the Riviera for a time, for a rest?"
The suggestion was carried unanimously. It was a landmark set up.... To
draw all my belongings down there. It seemed to me that in accompanying
me, they would share my joy. As for me--could I hesitate? The Landrys'
departure for Antibes, seriously delayed by certain complications, was
fixed for the following month. I had reminded Jeannine of her promise
to come round by the Bourbon line. The matter was arranged.
I fondly imagined that I should have recovered by that date. Bujard
spoke to me every day of the marvellous apparatus which was to disguise
my misfortune.
* * * * *
My sister left again with her children, recalled to Paris by various
purchases and other matters. The sweetness she had brought with her
persisted. Those were radiant days.
I began to get up. First a foot out of bed, nothing more. My father
who was still vigorous lent me the support of his arm. My head swam
when I stood up. I was just able to reach an arm-chair, and doubted
whether my strength could ever come back. I was especially bewildered
by the strange lack of equilibrium.
I held the crutches in abhorrence. I should never get accustomed to
that. Directly it was possible, Bujard brought me a wooden stump.
Frightful! However, it was a way of progressing. My left leg was able
to get exercise, and regain strength, little by little. I walked up and
down the landings, and the hotel garden.
I was measured for a jointed limb. Bujard had told me of an American
firm which was supplying both groups of belligerents, so he assured me.
I sent my order to them.
The delay demanded had seemed to me very reasonable. But, when I first
began to go into the town I fell a prey to the embarrassing compassion
of the passers-by. They nudged each other, when they met me.
"Another one!"
"Poor fellow!"
I, who aspired to losing myself in the crowd, like other people!
I happened just then to come across the prospectus of an English firm,
which offered to provide the whole thing complete in a fortnight, at a
price defying all competition!
"A hoax!" Bujard warned me.
It couldn't be helped. I was consumed with impatience. I wrote,
enclosing my cheque. We should see. It would be well worth the twelve
pounds it would cost me.
Those were happy weeks, I repeat. I went before a Board; I was passed,
and left the hospital. I was free! And had the satisfaction of feeling
that I had paid my debt to the full.
I wrote letters, and received them. Madeleine wrote me jewels of
sisterly affection. Guillaumin, for his part, sent me picturesque
epistles. They had had a rough time again, at the beginning of October,
round Champieu and De Roye.
Since then, trench warfare had been inaugurated: they were settling
down for the winter. There was not a word of complaint, simply the
tranquil and delightful keenness he had always shown. The morale of the
men was intact. And they had had so few casualties during the last five
weeks. They were well fed. The only drawback was the lack of heating
arrangements!
I replied to him at length, and sent a real letter, too, to each man
who had signed the collective post-card which I have already mentioned.
I asked my sister-in-law to go and call on Guillaumin's sister in the
little flat she had in the Gobelins. They talked for a whole hour about
him and me, like firm friends; and Madeleine managed to procure some
piano lessons for the other--a real feat!
The postal arrangements had improved considerably. Neither Jeannine
nor I lost any time. Directly a letter arrived--quick!--the answer was
written. Our eagerness was more intense than ever.
The German offensive in the North had not come to an end. The fighting
round Ypres had caused us a recurrence of anguish. My father had
another attack one evening when we once more thought--from reticences
in the _communiqué_--that our line had been forced and penetrated, and
that the road to Calais was open.
A few words from Jeannine--a supplementary card, that one--were what
reassured us, before all the papers. An aide-de-camp from Foch had
just been dining with them, and had given them details. The situation
had been critical, desperate, one day, but it had been tardily
re-established the next day, and was now consolidated, and no longer
gave any cause for alarm.
I read the whole passage to my father. He gave a sigh of relief.
"We are saved, then! The source of your information seems reliable. Is
it one of your friends, who's written to you?"
"A friend, yes."
Later on, quite soon, it would be sweet to open my heart to him, to
claim his blessing on the daughter I should bring him.
The Landrys had again put off the date of their departure. Jeannine
gave me to understand, with a certain emphasis, that some business
matters could not be settled. I had the delicacy never to ask for
details.
This delay suited me very well. I would have given a lot for them not
to join us before the ghastly "stump" had been relegated to the rubbish
heap. Jeannine had, perhaps, guessed as much.
Oh! our correspondence at that point. I cannot prevent myself from
returning to the subject. Its tone of complete confidence, of youthful
abandonment. Oh! my loving beloved; arrayed in every attraction, who
did not intoxicate me solely by the enchantment of her clear life
and warm seduction, nor solely by the goodness which all her being
irradiated. She was the intellectual companion, too--the complement,
for which man's instinct yearns, and which he discovers so rarely.
Sometimes, after having come into collision with my father who could
not be shaken in his opinions, I would turn to her in delight and
admire her broader outlook. For instance, he did not desire, or even
admit, the possibility of peace or a truce before the enemy had been
completely crushed. According to him, the necessary conditions of the
future Treaty were that the Central Powers should be dismembered; large
territories annexed; and our frontier extended as far as the Rhine. The
brutal law of force. The vanquished must bow his head. While, as for
her it must be noted that she cursed the cruel blindness of the Teuton
caste which provoked the catastrophe just as much as I did. But she
followed me--far better than that--she boldly out-stripped me in my
desire simply for the repression of a minor race, in my wish for the
future re-establishment of concord among all nations, not excepting
even that one. Did she not want to convince me that each great race in
turn let itself be ensnared by the mirage of universal hegemony. Look
at us, under Napoleon! In fifty or a hundred years, we should see these
Germans rallied to our republican wisdom.
What joy I experienced in playing lightly upon all the chords of this
young soul, in hearing each one of them vibrate in harmony with me.
I will quote one touching incident. She it was who sent me, by
telegram, too, the text of my promotion, as it appeared in the
_Gazette_ on November the 23rd. So that was why she had sounded me so
dexterously for a long time now. I had told her what I knew, what my
captain proposed. I thought no more about it, instead of which, she had
studied the lists for weeks and weeks, with the perseverance of a woman
in love.
* * * * *
The English firm fulfilled their contract, the order was delivered on
the promised date. Bujard shook his head when he examined it. Just as
he had expected. A ready-made model!
As for me, the apparatus attracted me. I put it on hurriedly, and
having pulled on my trousers, went and planted myself in front of the
wardrobe looking-glass, which no longer reflected the former, monstrous
and incomplete apparition. Upright and firmly planted on my feet, and
well-balanced, I admired myself, restored to my manly dignity. Now,
Jeannine might come! I could not help telling her of the joy which was
running over in me. I jokingly told her that I had to think before
being sure which leg was missing.
She replied with the announcement that they were to start on their
journey in a few days.
The fulness of life! The rapture of it! I was about to attain my
supreme end, and was exalted by the prospect of it. The time was
accomplished. I had escaped the wind of death which had felled so many
others. The war might still be in progress--I must ask pardon for this
return of egoism!--At a time when my brothers were still suffering and
perishing, I awaited, with heart enthralled, the coming of my betrothed.
How strange is destiny. I looked back upon the weeks spent, not so very
long ago, beside this girl. I had not had an inkling, then, of what
she was to be to me. How fantastic it seemed that I should be beholden
to that brutal separation. How near I had come to neglecting happiness!
But for the War----!
I dared to look this terrible truth in the face. Thus are hearts
tempered anew. I had had to undergo the dread ordeal by fire, which
consumes the greater number, whence a few issue, purified.
CHAPTER IV
THE AWAKENING
Such was the dream I lived in. To-day, when I go over that time in
retrospect, I ask myself whether I did not experience any anxiety. Not
the least. Not for an instant did I see my sky overcast.
I was harshly undeceived on one point though. In using it I found out
how second-rate the English article was. It answered the purpose all
right as long as I kept still, but light as it seemed it was necessary
to exert my hip to work it, which made me walk with a kind of unsightly
swing and very quickly tired me.
I got into the habit of going out during the best hours of the day
while the fine weather lasted. Once outside, I walked slowly, putting
on the air of a loiterer. As uninitiated passers-by might well think
I was merely slightly lame, I now had to be doubly vigilant about
avoiding the least contact with the crowd. Alas! I was very unsteady;
twice I nearly fell when someone bumped into me, and people did not
apologise; the mufti I had taken to again seemed to rob me of the right
to any consideration.
Who would believe that I almost got as far as to regret the wooden
stump? My last hopes were fixed on the American firm. I congratulated
myself upon not having cancelled my order. A fellow-sufferer had just
been introduced to me, who had been supplied with a leg by them, and I
marvelled at his young and supple carriage.
Why did I make a point of telling Jeannine of my disillusionment?
Perhaps in order to get the answer, "What are you worrying about?" With
ambitious coquetry I boasted in advance of the wonders expected from
the other firm.
The reply was delayed for six days, and when it came was only
four pages. The Landrys were putting the finishing touch to their
preparations. There was not a single allusion to my infirmity, which
I had told her was well on the way to being cured. No doubt she had
made a rule never to broach the subject. Having once and for all given
me proof of her tender pity she wished thenceforward to spare me the
humiliation of feeling that she even thought of it.
Some days slipped by. I had written to her again in an affectionate
tone. Though tempted to give her to understand that it would be less
painful to show myself to her in a fortnight's time, I refrained from
making such a mistake. That was a secondary matter. Only let her come!
let her come! Oh, my love!
At this point, there was a long silence on her part. Must it be put
down to the postal service again? No, we received our other letters
from Paris quite regularly.
At the end of ten days I wrote her a line, saying that I was anxious.
No answer--what could I make of it? I was seized with apprehension.
Was she ill perhaps? But I should have been told about it. Had some
accident happened to her? That was more likely. If so, what was it? My
thoughts wandered, incapable of fixing themselves.
Then, one morning, just as I got out of bed, the waiter brought me a
card. What power there is in presentiments! As I took it from him I
distinctly saw another, the one I had got from Jeannine at F---- the
day before we started. I immediately thought--why, I wonder? that was
the first, and this--this, the last!
It was not the Paris postmark. I undid it slowly, pretending--on
whose account?--to be unmoved. One page, no more. It was headed
Juan-les-Pins, December 17, 1914. Jeannine expressed her regret at the
fact that they had been prevented from making the detour they intended,
because the time-tables fitted in so awkwardly. Her grandmother was not
very well, as a result of a great deal of worry, and found the journey
long enough without adding to it. They had arrived the day before
yesterday on the Riviera, which was not justifying its reputation,
since the sun was absent. It lacked joyousness above everything. She
added that she could not tear her thoughts away from the cold Northern
regions, where so much youth, and all the promise of the future was
succumbing. She ended by expressing the hope that we should see each
other again some day. There was no allusion to our travelling plans,
which I had mentioned to her several times.
I stood still, thunder-struck. I mechanically began to read over the
lines again. The letters were dancing. I searched for an unexpected
meaning in them. I refused to admit.... But the conviction was secretly
gaining ground in my mind.
When I got to the signature again, there was not an unsteady stroke.
The evolution was complete; I was ripe at last to understand. It
was the emanation of a distant, a prodigiously distant being. How
could I ever have thought--? My simplicity amazed me. Here, endless
overwhelming forebodings occurred to my mind. The imperceptibly, but
totally changed tone of her letters; the note of friendship substituted
for that of love; never a word in reference to my misfortune; the
grandmother always refraining from adding a personal message, the
long-delayed opportunity of seeing me again. Lastly, the brutal
decision: these four sentences of dismissal.
I leant on the window looking over the hotel garden from the second
floor. A bare lawn, and leafless trees. A cold and dreary wind was
blowing, this winter morning. I pictured her, too, at her window
opening on to the sea. My thoughts sought her thoughts. Yes, I wanted
her to feel me moved by her cold, heart-breaking epistle at that
moment. Ah, and if she could have read my heart, she would have seen
that it held for her nothing but a desperate, resigned devotion.
Move her to pity? A dead ambition. Demand an explanation? What was the
good? I saw it quite clearly. Curse her, blaspheme against her? How far
that was from my thoughts. I did not accuse her of treachery. It seemed
to me certain that at the time of the uplifting struggle she had dreamt
of me as her bridegroom of to-morrow. But since I had been damaged. My
God! What could I have reproached her with?
Had I still supposed myself worthy to inspire contentment in a youthful
creature, inexperienced and perfect? When no engagement bound us! For
on what foundations had I built? On nothing more than an odd avowal
or two hidden here and there between the lines. Sand scattered by the
wind! I might read over her letters, those written during the last few
months and even those at the beginning. When once my own ardour had
abated I should not find in them either oath or promise; there was
nothing there, nothing had ever been expressed but a sisterly affection.
It occurred to my mind that more than one girl of former days, brought
up in the pious ideas of devotion and self-sacrifice, would have felt
herself especially bound to proclaim as her fiancé the man who had
suffered at the hands of Fate--inspirations to be respected, but, I
admitted, out of date. This generation, less sensible--I have already
said Jeannine was not the least--to the impress of religion, showed
more common sense. It was permissible for a child of our century,
however generous she might be, to trust to time to cure all heartaches,
in others and in herself, to aspire to a happiness other than sacrifice.
Jeannine might have suffered, might be suffering still. Yes, she
must regret that what was not, might not be. It was possible that
she might carry away a picture of me which would illuminate a chaste
corner of her memory: an idol that she had not been able to bring
herself to destroy by seeing me again. It was Reason. I bowed to the
sovereign I always recognised. Does one not usually end by repenting
of a sacrifice? I glanced into the glass--I have said that I was
not dressed: ugliness, a lack of harmony, weakness. If I had given
her my arm, she would have been the one to support me. What shame,
what remorse even, there would have been for me, in paralysing this
creature, so vividly alive, in eternally hearing her pitied, she who
was born to be envied.
I dressed with my mind a blank. I abstained, when I was ready, from
knocking at the door of the room next to mine, where my father slept. I
was afraid of letting him see the distracted look on my face.
I went downstairs and out of doors. Where should I go to? I avoided
the frequented streets, and the park where I liked to sit. It was a
long round. How my leg weighed on me. But I forced myself to walk
quickly, as long as I continued to meet any one. When I got beyond the
suburbs some power or other abruptly ceased to support me. Faint, and
at the end of my strength, I was only just able to reach a heap of
stones, upon which I sank down.
There was a nip in the air. The sun, like a dull ball, appeared behind
a livid curtain of cloud.
What a feeling of irremediable collapse! All my strength, physical
and moral, was annulled. My despair alone lived on in the depths of
my frozen heart. For a long while I experienced a secret, harrowing
joy in imagining the future, such as it might have been. My sorrow was
exasperated by turning over such visions in my mind, and reached a
state of paroxysm. I could not bear it. I got up, picked up my stick,
and went on along the road.
Not far away, beyond some fields, a line of poplars made me guess where
the Allier lay. I was drawn on by a fatal longing to reach the bank of
the river. Poor soul, born but to disappear!
Swollen by the autumn rains, the river filled its huge bed to the
brink. It was a glaucous, sinister stretch of water. Eddying foam was
swept along on a strong current.
I was tempted. I approached the bank. It fell away in a steep slope
towards the stream which swished along it with a monotonous gurgle. I
planted my stick at the extreme edge among the fragments of slate. I
leant over--it was horribly alluring--and I granted myself a certain
delay.
What a stirring moment that was while my fate hung in the balance. I
had come to the end of my tether. What had brought me there? Was it
not the paltry idea of bringing remorse to birth in Jeannine's heart?
But what would she know of my wretched fate? And why revenge myself
so basely? I scrupled to annihilate the vestige of strength which I
constituted. Lastly, there was the disdain for an act of romantic
impotence.
And then, what pulled me up short was the thought of the old man, who
must have heard me go out, who was alarmed no doubt already, whose life
hung upon my return. Then I sat down. Ceasing to hypnotise myself by
gazing at the torrent eating away the bank at my feet, my eyes strayed
to the horizon. By a stretch of the imagination it seemed to me that I
dominated the field where my individual happiness had been shattered.
The War! Had I not come--I remember the day before--to deify the word!
Yes, it was a progressive spell. The War! While childishly attributing
the rejuvenation of my soul to it, I had ended by seeing in it the
fairy who was cruel to be kind. So many thinkers and poets had bowed
down to this terrible goddess, before me.
My aberration fell to pieces. The War! The abominations which were
really contained in this term rose up and quelled me.
Those villages, blazing like torches. The Meuse rolling by with its
purple slime; the woods of Montrolles with their grasses stained with
mottled patches violet, the traces of our brothers massacred there. O
death, sole enemy of man, sneering at the orgies of the sword! So many
beings who moved and loved, struck off the rolls, so many lights put
out! De Valpic, the great-hearted, and Henriot and little Frémont;
my excellent Bouillon, Prunelle, Icard; Descroix and Playoust, too,
all or almost all, without discrimination--a crowd of friends and
companions, now grimacing underground. And the anonymous multitude,
those foul masses of corpses whose odour had pursued us all through
our fighting from end to end. All that, oh! merely a prologue! As if
it was enough that a million young men should be sacrificed. To death,
to death with their elders, the fellows from thirty to forty. The
trench fighting instituted, which would last how long, O God! The sons
of the hostile races, face to face in their burrows, spitting murder
and hatred at each other, tracing with their blood the baleful line
of fire. Frenzy gaining the two fronts little by little, the zones of
slaughter being displaced and stretched out, others being made. Where
would the conflagration end? A craze for butchery sweeping through the
world. Would there be an acre in Europe, to-morrow, which had not seen
human remains decaying beneath the beaks of carrion crows, or which did
not contain them in its depths, infecting the sources of their poisoned
juices?
Ah! when the awakening came at last, and the diplomats, old vultures,
were collected round the council-board to talk, they might congratulate
themselves as they audited the balance sheet. Broken up, ground and
crushed, these two, three, four generations of men who might have been
great, and collaborated in the common cause. So many wounded who would
soon succumb, wan wrecks, and so many others who, like myself, would
only drag out the shadow of an existence. And all the rest! The ravaged
homes, the wives abandoned to the terrors of their widowhood, the old
parents dying with curses on their lips, the children delivered over
without guidance to life's buffetings, the surplus girls especially,
deprived of their natural associates, devoted to the sorrows of
debauchery. With many of those who came back safely, the mind at least
would be affected, their faith in work sapped, their brutal instincts
let loose, and their desire for immediate enjoyment aroused. The public
wealth destroyed, want bringing revolt in its train, the emasculated
nations incapable of recovering, or even of governing themselves. The
snare of revolutions, of frightful social convulsions. What could one
depend upon henceforth? There would be no law or rule of any sort. The
religions, Art, Science, all these would be humiliated before Force.
The Ideal broken and trampled underfoot. An infected breath tainting
the sacred legacies of the past. The genius of destruction hovering
over a civilisation in ruins. That was what War meant!
A monstrous survival of primitive errors. How I abhorred them all of a
sudden, the politics and morals which revere this scourge of God.
As to war raising the hearts of individuals and nations, alas, who
could answer for it? For one soul purified, how many others would be
vilified! And, above all, how terrible was the remedy, a thousand times
worse than the complaint.
War might be necessary, and it was in this case, for the defence of our
native land. Then it might give birth to the most noble effervescence.
Then in its radiance virtues might thrive like plants beneath a
tropical sun. But it remained no less the supreme calamity; the triumph
of the powers of Death.
Care must be taken not to magnify it, not to flatter the fluctuating
mind of the nations with bellicose dreams. We must needs greet a like
catastrophe with a fiercely hostile heart, abhor it, blaspheme against
it, we miserable creatures, who had but one life to live, one brief
chance of being happy.
CHAPTER V
A GIRL OF 1915
My sister has rejoined us at Vichy with her children. We are to leave
together for the South. The idea no longer holds any attraction for me,
everything draws me in the opposite direction. But I cannot give my
reasons. I pretend to be waiting for the delivery of my order from the
American firm, not to want to move before it has arrived. Very well!
The excuse serves for a few days. But now the limb is delivered. Ten
times preferable to the other, light and strong at the same time. This
knee that bends is a marvel! Though it matters little enough to me now,
it is true.
How am I to withstand the family urgency now? In vain I argue that I am
still weak. They all persist in extolling the advantage to be derived
from a change of air. And then the tickets have been taken and our
rooms engaged at Cannes in one of the only hotels not transformed into
hospitals. I gain a week more. Here is Christmas, and the New Year's
Day, so many All Souls' Days! Oh well, I shall have to give in.
* * * * *
A palace on the Antibes road; a park with luxuriant palms; a
far-reaching view over the turquoise-coloured sea. Very few people--a
diminished staff; war prices; besides, my father is making us a present
of this holiday.
My sister-in-law at once makes inquiries about less pretentious
quarters, where we may end the winter. Getting wind of this project,
I hasten to remonstrate. She is surprised; what's the matter? Do I no
longer like this part? Didn't I choose it myself? I admit that I have
changed my mind--a convalescent's weak nerves--that I dream of less
well-known neighbourhoods, Corsica or the Morocco coast.
It is quite true: I burn to escape from all that oppresses me on this
coast. I avoid letting my eyes rest upon the headland of La Croisette.
I can picture, too vividly, the bay behind it with its silver slopes,
the Cape d'Antibes stretching out into the sea, with the white
lighthouse at La Groupe, and, facing towards us amid the tangled mass
of verdure, that dwelling so often described to me.
These associations overwhelm me. Be still, my heart, be still! This is
the sun which warms her, these are the waves whose murmur lulls her to
sleep, the air which quickens her. I cannot breath here!
My people, who enjoy being at Cannes, give way to my express wish: we
are to leave again.
* * * * *
To-morrow will be our last day here. I am seated on the promenade.
Where are the luxurious cars with their insolent footmen? Where are the
dandies in white flannel, the fair pedestrians in toilettes fit for a
queen? The patrons of the Riviera, this year, are those poor soldiers
in faded uniforms.
I find myself near the place where the sea-gulls used, formerly, to
whirl, catching in their flight the scraps which little girls threw to
them. They have deserted the shore. They are playing together in the
distance, skimming the gleaming surface of the waves.
I am waiting for Madeleine and my small nephew and niece. Here they
come--she with her long veil. The passers-by think, as they meet her,
of their losses of yesterday and to-morrow.
"A letter for you, Michel."
"Thanks."
I take it nonchalantly. Where is the news, to-day, with any power to
stir me?
But the envelope torn the blood throbs in my temples! I can't
believe....
It is from Madame Landry!
She writes that she has just seen my name in the _Journal des
Étrangers_ (so it still appears?). We were expected here. She and her
grand-daughter would be delighted if I would go to see them, delighted,
too, if my family would accompany me. She proposed a day, the day after
to-morrow.
I don't know where I am. My hand tightens on the letter. Jeannine has
taken care not to add a word. My heart swells with bitterness. But why
this proceeding?
I shall not go! I cannot go!
* * * * *
Oh, my sister, the only friend left to me, why did I feel a longing to
confide in someone, at the sight of your sweet melancholy? I began by
joking:
"Halloa, an invitation!"
You searchingly fixed your eyes, full of affection on me.
Drawing a quadrant in the sand with the end of my stick, in a toneless
voice, which I force myself to render frivolous, I have told Madeleine
this story. But by some subtle feeling of bashfulness, I have not made
myself out as ingenuous--I should have blushed for it--as I was. I
have told her that directly I saw I had been damaged I had ceased to
indulge in a hope grown fond. Our continued correspondence had been a
consolation prize. Then when she had tired even of this game I lost
interest in it too.
Madeleine has said to me, in her calm voice:
"It seems to me that nothing is lost."
I have protested.
"I shan't go!"
"You must go."
"What's the use?"
"Who can read in another's heart?" she murmured.
And she confides in me that on the day when Victor had asked for her
hand in marriage, her mother had sent for her to consult her, as was
seemly. And she, who loved him--and how she loved her young, intrepid
soldier! This union was her one wish--she began to sob, stammering
"No," amid her tears. They were unfathomable creatures, certainly!
But I smiled at my misery, and at this senseless renewal of intercourse.
* * * * *
Why have I obeyed her? Why have I got into this train alone? She would
come next time, she assured me prettily. The rear carriage without
a top races along, raising clouds of white dust. I catch frequent
glimpses of the radiant stretch of water. Here is the Juan Vallauris
Gulf. Now we are skirting the edges of the coast, the pearly foam
frolicking almost at our feet on the pale strand.
I force myself to think of nothing. That would be best. I come to grief
over it, and my thoughts are torture. Why am I going there? Out of
cowardice? Or else is it a remnant of hope? No! We'll dismiss that
idea! Rather, I think, in order to prove to myself that I am not afraid
to suffer.
I stiffen myself. I will be correct and cold. Cold, poor wretch! Just
now my tears welled up at the sight of the sunlit road where there
might some day have gambolled lovely children, born to us.
I have got out, and have slowly traversed the deserted village, and
rounded the tall pine-wood. My footsteps sink into the earth--an
inconvenience shared by everyone. My jointed leg flexes at the
difficulties in the ground, and does not call attention to my drawback.
I just seem tired by my walk.
I have forbidden myself to think, to procrastinate, or to hesitate, or
I should not have got as far as this threshold. Just as well, since I
am embarked on this fantastic adventure. No backing out of it! For a
soldier!
There it is. I recognise the gates, overhung with ivy, from the
description they gave me. Here it is! I ring, with wonderful,
unexpected calmness. My heart has stopped beating quickly, since my
fate is sealed.
The sound of footsteps. Is it she? No, the maid coming to open the gate
to me. Was I expected as early as this?
A short and fairly steep pathway brings us to the flight of steps
leading up to the villa. No one at the windows--luckily! As a matter of
fact, my careless carriage cloaks my lameness.
I have been taken into the drawing-room, and the maid has gone
to tell--A prettily furnished room, unobtrusively luxurious, and
smacking of the old _bourgeoisie_, of matured and refined taste.
Old furniture--flowers in modern vases. I go up to a table with
photographs standing on it. Here is, or, rather, are hers. This one
dates back to two years ago. She seems a child, with her hair down her
back Thus it was that she entered upon life.
I am struck by a pastel on the wall--a gracious portrait of a young
woman. That resemblance--Her mother, no doubt; her mother, who had died
when she was twenty-four.
A door opens. It is Madame Landry, as slim and sprightly as ever, in
her dark gown, but she has a tired expression, it is true. Is she still
an invalid? She denies it, in a few disconnected sentences, and seems
even more perturbed than I am.
"Jeannine is just coming down," she says.
I ask: "How is she? Quite fit?"
"Very."
Then, recovering herself:
"I've been annoyed--with her."
But here is Jeannine herself.
I admire my self-control, for I get up and go towards her. There is
nothing constrained in my gait; I hardly drag my leg. Dazzled, and yet
at the same time clear-sighted, I look at her with a prejudiced eye. I
do not think her as lovely as she was.
I have bowed and pressed her hand; a commonplace greeting has been
exchanged. The little brother has already appeared, and is deafening
me with a crowd of questions which I answer good-naturedly. How
easily it passes, this moment, which I had dreaded so much. We
might be back at Ballaigues: the tone of courtesy and irony--and of
indifference--recovered.
A strange hour. The conversation does not flag. Mention is made of my
family, whose regrets I am supposed to have brought. Then I plunge into
praise of this heaven-blest country where they pass each winter. The
grandmother interrupts me. This season is the last they will spend here.
"Really?"
Jeannine changes the subject.
The conversation, having wavered, naturally returns to the War. When
will it end? In the spring? Yes, after the Big Push! We return to the
first weeks. They ply me with questions. What have I seen? At first,
I decline to be drawn out. They insist--I let myself go. They listen,
and ask for details. Here is the perfect audience, interested and
impassioned. Even technical details do not repel them, this sister and
this daughter of soldiers, who have been staking out the maps with
little flags; they, too.
I question them in my turn. It pleased me to hear them describing
Paris' proud bearing at the time of our reverses. They have a right to
speak of it, as they live there. When I mention our meeting with the
two young Red Cross members at Rosny----
"It might have been me," says Jeannine. "I was at St. Denis that
morning."
Heavens! I do not know what I had feared or desired. I become
expansive. My mind is set at ease. What, is that Jeannine, who is
listening to me, leaning her chin in her hand? Is it her pure, pensive
gaze which mine meets without embarrassment?
And the grandmother is standing up. In the most natural tone in the
world, she asks her grand-daughter to show me round the garden.
Jeannine hesitates, and looks at her. I wonder, at this moment, if
Madame Landry has ever heard of our letters, if she sees the tragic
undercurrents to this frivolous scene which is being enacted.
Jeannine is still considering. Is she afraid that the walk may tire me?
I get up, and reassure her in advance. She blushes. The grandmother
apologises for not accompanying us--the doctor forbids it.
So I call little André--I only forestall Jeannine--that there may be a
third in the party.
The child jumps down the steps. I walk down gingerly, holding on to the
rail; Jeannine, with her usual tact, more slowly still.
This garden is more like a park. Trees of twenty species meet here,
mingled in a medley, with the luxuriance of primeval forests--palms,
maples, and olives; and I am made to guess the name of magnolias and
mastic trees. I admire the tangles of lichens and aloes and the "mimosa
alley," running between two hedges of gold.
How sad and exquisitely sweet this loitering is. Our futile topics lend
it a melancholy charm. I should like to be able to detain the fleeting
moments. We are going up to the house again. I am going away--and I
shall never come back.
"I don't like our garden any more," Jeannine suddenly declared. "I've
not been down into it three times since we got there."
"Why not?"
"It doesn't belong to us now. The villa is sold."
"An accomplished fact?"
"Yes, with everything belonging to it. To some Americans, from the
first of February."
This astonishes me:
"As soon as that?"
"We had to."
"Where are you going to spend the rest of the winter then?"
"We shall have to go back to Paris."
André seems bored by our pace, which is not lively enough for him. He
outstrips us, comes back to fetch us, and covers twice the distance we
do.
"I am sure he's dying to show me his playground."
"Probably," Jeannine acquiesced.
We reach a lawn. Here is a piece of ground which has been dug up, and a
chalked line.
"How far can you jump now, André?"
"More than four yards," he exclaims.
He leaves his straw hat in our care, goes off to get room, takes a run,
and jumps; and immediately turns round, triumphant, the four yards
cleared.
"Bravo! You are getting on."
"Oh, it'll be a long time before I can jump like you."
He stops short, biting his lip. Too late. We all three redden, and
recall that summer's day when, in compliance with a request from
Jeannine, I had taken off my coat, and jumped nearly five yards on the
sand. To-day? Alas, to-day!
Jeannine points out the croquet lawn to me, in passing.
"And what about tennis?"
"We've given up playing."
I begin to feel slightly tired. Jeannine, who suspects it, slackens her
speed again, gracefully and unaffectedly. But it is heart-breaking for
me--I who have such a vivid recollection of the rhythm of her usual
pace. And had I not seen her at Ballaigues, challenging her brother to
race with her, and beating him with ease?
The round is finished. We are going in. André proposes:
"Suppose we take Mr. Dreher to the Observatory?"
"Just what I meant to do," she says. "We'll have a rest--I'm worn out."
Is she putting it on, to make me forget my fatigue, or is she really
tired out? Her rosy colour has certainly paled very suddenly. Her pure
face is troubled, like limpid water which has been agitated.
Mounting some steps, we gain a shady retreat, bordering on and
overlooking the road. A parasol, three chairs, a seat, an iron railing.
Jeannine has dropped into a chair. I have seated myself beside her. Our
eyes roam over the stretch of country in front of us.
The short January afternoon is already drawing to a close. The sun
is sinking behind the islands, which look like deep-sea monsters,
with purple scales. The West is bathed in a luminous pallor, even the
tracery of the Estérel is hardly discernible out yonder.
At the bottom of the orange bay, there lie white houses with red roofs
and blazing windows, flaming as if the darkness were not near at hand.
And that is the way of my destiny. The last moment of radiance, on the
threshold of the eternal night!
Jeannine is still silent. André chatters, and I am glad of it, and keep
him up to it. I profess an interest in the hairy cactus creeping along
the wall. I ask him the names of certain plants, and pretend to get
muddled in order to make him laugh.
Is it I who am talking and joking, I, who smile? There is another
desperate I, coiled up at the centre of my being.
A tinkle. The door-bell. André peeps between the branches.
"I bet it's Maurice!"
I mechanically ask: "Who's Maurice?"
"A little neighbour," Jeannine replies.
"Yes, that's him all right."
The child bounds down the steps and leaves us alone. How awkward!
Just the very thing which should have been avoided. I try to fill
up the silence with a commonplace remark--Good God! This moment of
_tête-à-tête_, for which my whole being longed in desperation in the
hours of Death!
André's voice makes itself heard. He comes running back.
"I say, Jeannine, he wants to know if I may go and play with him."
I hardly listen to the reply. Turning away, I contemplate the violet
crest of the Estérel, which has just revealed itself in the gloaming so
boldly that it might be taken for the outline of a cloud.
One would almost say that Jeannine was hesitating. I listen, in spite
of myself, for the words that will fall from her lips--I know she will
recall her brother. The child is too useful here.
But, no; she says nothing. And now the little fellow begins again:
"May I, Jeannine? May I?"
That colourless voice, changed and dejected.
"Very well, run along," Jeannine has said.
The boy makes her repeat it:
"I may go?"
"Yes--yes."
His footsteps fly along the gravel.
* * * * *
A deep chord vibrates within me.
A trifling incident, and yet--of infinite import. Jeannine sending her
brother away. Jeannine in favour of our being alone together.
The sea glitters in the west. Elsewhere it borrows vermilion and
wine-coloured reflections from the conflict of sun and shade.
I consider Jeannine, her heaving bosom, her quivering eyelashes--and
her hand, her adorable child's hand, lying on the rail, hypnotises me.
I am dreaming--I no longer recognise myself; with my leg stretched
out and relaxed, I dream that I am like others--a man, young and
impassioned; and this girl, pale and tender, the promised creature.
Then I say:
"Our letters--were delightful."
Jeannine does not answer, but her hand contracts convulsively. I dare
everything. I dare to stretch out towards it my man's hand, big and
strong. I seize it, limp and warm.
"Do you remember Le Suchet? That sunrise on the Alps."
She turns round and looks into my eyes. The dear, tormented face--I
would give the world to banish even the shadow of a grief from it.
"Michel----"
She breaks off.
"Michel, have you something to say to me?"
Her gaze puts me to confusion. I bend down and kiss her fingers; then,
I find nothing to say to her, but this:
"Shake hands, Jeannine."
A feverish pressure, in which our souls, too, hold each other first.
"Are we agreed?"
She answers: "Yes."
The tone of her voice is no longer veiled. I gaze on her. The suffering
has suddenly vanished from her eyes. All the brilliance has returned
to her complexion, just as it has to her glance. Again, the expression
of which I had kept such a delightful recollection, Youth smiling at
Happiness.
Am I not assisting at a like transformation in myself? I, too, with
eyes re-opened, and heart illuminated and revived. All hail to the life
of light.
"But, Jeannine," I ask her, at once, the past anguish throttling me
again, "why have you made me suffer so much?"
"It was you," she murmurs. "Why did you stop writing to me?"
"Your last letter was so cold. You never came--there."
"I understood that you would rather we did not see you till you
were--quite cured."
"An argument which I cannot refute. It's true--I did prefer that."
"And then--" She lowers her voice. "There was that other matter----"
"What matter?"
"Which I mentioned to you."
I do not understand. She continues in a more assured tone:
"Well, we're ruined. We must sell everything. We don't even know if
that will be enough. Grandmother has had no luck. All her interests are
in the North. She is most dreadfully unhappy about it."
So this was the reason. I am astounded, and stirred to the depths of my
being. I hardly dare believe--I smile:
"Really! There really was nothing but that?"
"I got it into my head," she says. "I wanted to put you to the proof.
You never answered me on that point."
Nothing but this scruple. It was she who thought she had lost value!
"All the same," she continues, sighing as if she had been pulled out of
a fathomless abyss, "if Grandmother had not been determined--that there
should be an explanation----"
I cannot prevent myself saying:
"I dreaded your grandmother."
"Why?"
"I was so much afraid she might put you off."
"But why?" Jeannine repeats.
Oh, that ingenuous tone. Oh, that clear gaze and pure forehead, behind
which no mental reservations could revolve.
Her fresh voice in my ear is like a bell ringing in the days of joy. I
could weep--I could go down upon my knees.
"You see," she says, gravely, "those of you who come back like this,
you have so great a right to choose."
THE END
_A Selection from the Catalogue of_
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
[Illustration]
Complete Catalogues sent on application
"_OVER THE TOP_"
BY
AN AMERICAN SOLDIER WHO _WENT_
_ARTHUR GUY EMPEY_
MACHINE GUNNER, SERVING IN FRANCE
_12o 16 Illustrations and Diagrams $1.50 net
By mail, $1.60_
TOGETHER WITH TOMMY'S DICTIONARY OF THE TRENCHES
For a year and a half, until he fell wounded in No Man's Land, this
American soldier took part in more actual fighting and real warfare
than any war correspondent saw, who has written about the war. His
experiences are grim, but they are thrilling and lightened by a touch
of humor as original as the Soldiers Three. And they are _true_.
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK LONDON
When the Prussians Came to Poland
By
Mme. Laura de Turczynowicz
Marquise de Gozdawa
12°. Illustrated. $1.25 net. By mail, $1.35
The story of an American woman, the wife of a Polish noble, caught in
her home by the floodtide of the German invasion of the ancient kingdom
of Poland.
A straightforward narrative, terribly real, of her experiences in
the heart of the eastern war-zone, of her struggle with the extreme
conditions, of her Red Cross work, of her fight for the lives of her
children and herself against the dread Typhus, and at last, of her
release and journey through Germany and Holland to this country. How
truly she was in line of the German advance may be appreciated from
the fact that Field Marshal von Hindenburg for some days made his
headquarters under her roof.
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York London
Bullets & Billets
By
Bruce Bairnsfather
_12o. 18 Full-page and 23 Text Illustrations. $1.50
By mail, $1.60_
"'Bill,' 'Bert,' and 'Alf' have turned up again. Captain Bairnsfather
has written a book--a rollicking and yet serious book--about himself
and them, describing the joys and sorrows of his first six months in
the trenches. His writing is like his drawing. It suggests a masculine,
reckless, devil-may-care character and a workmanlike soldier.
Throughout the book he is as cheerful as a schoolboy in a disagreeable
football match."--_London Evening News._
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York London
Aunt Sarah and the War
A Tale of Transformations
_$.75 net. By mail, $.85_
A story brimful of the new spirit that has come over the men and the
women of England. Those who, like the hero, have borne the hardships
of the trenches; those who, like the heroine, have felt the heart
wrench, will not soon return to the superficial and thoughtless ways
of yesterday. The book is a fine, patriotic embodiment of a nation's
spirit, as evinced by the people at home, no less than by those who are
bearing the brunt of battle.
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York London