Brand and Dr. Small were both astonished and indignant.
“Do you mean to say she shuts her door against this poor bleeding
girl?” said Brand.
The American doctor did not waste words. He only used words when there
was no action on hand.
“The next place?” he said. “A hospital?”
I had the idea of the convent where Eileen O’Connor lodged. There was
a sanctuary. Those nuns were vowed to Christian charity. They would
understand and have pity.
“Yes,” said Brand, and he called to the driver.
We drove hard to the convent, and Brand was out of the car before it
stopped, and rang the bell with such a tug that we heard it jangling
loudly in the courtyard.
It seemed long before the little wicket opened and a woman’s voice
said, “_Qui est là?_”
Brand gave his name, and said, “Open quickly, _ma soeur_. We have a
woman here who is ill.”
The gate was opened, and Brand and I lifted out the girl, who was still
unconscious, but moaning slightly, and carried her into the courtyard,
and thence inside the convent to the white-washed passage where I had
listened so long to the Reverend Mother telling me of the trial scene.
It was the Reverend Mother who came now, with two of her nuns, while
the little portress stood by, clasping her hands.
“An accident?” said the Reverend Mother. “How was the poor child hurt?”
She bent over the girl, Marthe,--Pierre Nesle’s sister, as I remembered
with an added pity--pulled my Burberry from her face and shoulders and
glanced at the bedraggled figure there.
“Her hair has been cut off,” said the old nun. “That is strange! There
are the marks of finger-nails on her shoulder. What violence was it,
then?”
Brand described the rescue of the girl from the mob, who would have
torn her to pieces, and as he spoke I saw a terrible look come into the
Reverend Mother’s face.
“I remember--1870,” she said harshly. “They cut the hair of women who
had disgraced themselves--and France--by their behaviour with German
soldiers. We thought then that it was a light punishment ... we think
so now, monsieur!”
One of the nuns, a young woman who had been touching the girl’s head,
smoothing back her tousled close-cropped hair, sprang up as though she
had touched an evil thing, and shrank back.
Another nun spoke to the Reverend Mother.
“This house would be defiled if we took in a creature like that. God
forbid, Reverend Mother----”
The old Superior turned to Brand, and I saw how her breast was heaving
with emotion.
“It would have been better, sir, if you had left this wretched woman to
the people. The voice of the people is sometimes the voice of God. If
they knew her guilt their punishment was just. Reflect what it means to
us--to all our womanhood. Husbands, fathers, brothers were being killed
by these Germans. Our dear France was bleeding to death. Was there any
greater crime than that a Frenchwoman should show any weakness, any
favour, to one of those men who were helping to cause the agony of
France, the martyrdom of our youth?”
Brand stammered out a few words. I remember only two: “Christian
charity!”
The American doctor and I stood by silently. Dr. Small was listening
with the deepest attention, as though some new truth about human nature
were being revealed to him.
It was then that a new voice was raised in that whitewashed corridor.
It was Eileen O’Connor’s Irish contralto, and it vibrated with
extraordinary passion, as she spoke in French.
“Reverend Mother!... I am dismayed by the words you have spoken. I do
not believe, though my ears have heard them. No, they are unbelievable!
I have seen your holiness, your charity, every day for four years,
nursing German prisoners, and English, with equal tenderness, with
a great pity. Not shrinking from any horror or the daily sight of
death, but offering it all as a sacrifice to God. And now, after our
liberation, when we ought to be uplifted by the Divine favour that has
come to us, you would turn away that poor child who lies bleeding at
our feet, another victim of war’s cruelty. Was it not war that struck
her down? This war which has been declared against souls as well as
bodies! This war on women, as well as on fighting-men who had less
need of courage than some of us! What did our Lord say to a woman who
was taken by the mob? ‘He that is without sin among you, let him cast
the first stone!’ It was Mary Magdalen who kissed His feet, and wiped
them with her hair. This girl has lost her hair, but perhaps Christ
has taken it as a precious napkin for His wounds. We who have been
lucky in escape from evil--shall we cast her out of the house which
has a cross above its roof? I have been lucky above most women in
Lille. If all things were known, I might be lying there in that girl’s
place, bleeding and senseless, without this hair of mine. Reverend
Mother--_remember Franz von Kreuzenach_!”
We--Dr. Small, Brand and I--were dumbfounded by Eileen O’Connor’s
passionate outcry. She was utterly unconscious of us and looked only at
the Reverend Mother, with a light in her eyes that was more intensely
spiritual than I had seen before in any woman’s face.
The old nun seemed stricken by Eileen’s words. Into her rugged old
face, all wrinkled about the eyes, crept an expression of remorse and
shame. Once she raised her hands, slowly, as though beseeching the
girl to spare her. Then her hands came down again and clasped each
other at her breast, and her head bowed so that her chin was dug into
her white bib. Tears came into her eyes and fell unheeded down her
withered cheeks. I can see now the picture of us all standing there in
the whitewashed corridor of the convent, in the dim light of a hanging
lantern--we three officers standing together, the huddled figure of
Marthe Nesle lying at our feet, half covered with my trench-coat, but
with her face lying sideways, white as death under her cropped red
hair, and her bare shoulders stained with a streak of blood; opposite,
the old Mother, with bowed head and clasped hands; the two young nuns,
rigid, motionless, silent; and Eileen O’Connor, with that queer light
on her face, and her hands stretched out with a gesture of passionate
appeal.
The Reverend Mother raised her head and spoke--after what seemed like a
long silence, but was only a second or two, I suppose.
“My child, I am an old woman, and have said many prayers. But you have
taught me the lesson, which I thought I knew, that the devil does not
depart from us until our souls have found eternal peace. I am a wicked
old woman, and until you opened my eyes I was forgetful of charity and
of our Lord’s most sweet commands.”
She turned to us now with an air of wonderful dignity and graciousness.
“Gentlemen, I pray you to carry this wounded girl to my own cell.
To-night I will sleep on bare boards.”
One of the young nuns was weeping bitterly.
So we lifted up Marthe Nesle, and, following the Reverend Mother,
carried her to a little white room and laid her on an iron bedstead
under a picture of the Madonna, below which burned an oil lamp on a
wooden table. The American doctor asked Eileen O’Connor to bring him
some hot water.
Brand and I went back in the car, and I dined at his mess again.