MONSIEUR SATAN
There had been nothing, perhaps, more radically changed by the rigors of
war than Atlantic transportation. The thrills of pleasure and romance that
attended the tourist in the days before the war had deepened to thrills of
another timbre, while romance had become more epic than idyllic. The happy
phrase of "going abroad" had given place to "going over" or "going
across"; such a trifling difference in words, but the accompaniment comes
in quite another key. It was no longer shouted in a care-free,
happy-go-lucky fashion; it may have had a ring of suppressed exultation;
but it was sure to be whispered with a quick intake of breath, and so
often it came through teeth that were clenched.
The piers had changed their gala attire. The departure from this country
for another was no longer a matter of mere rejoicing and congratulatory
leave-taking. The gangways no longer swarmed with friends shouting, "Bon
voyage!" There was no free voicing of anticipation, no effervescing of
good humor. The Spirit of Adventure was there, but he had changed his
costume and his make-up. So had the good ships. Their black paint and
white trimmings were gone; gone were the gay red funnels; and in their
stead were massed the grays and blues, the greens and blacks of
camouflage. The piers were deserted. A thin stream of travelers sifted in;
there were a few officials and deckhands; and far outside, beyond hail of
ship or sea or traveler, in a barbed-wire inclosure, guarded by military
police, stood a few scattered, silent figures. They were the remnants war
had left of the once-upon-a-time jocose band of waving, shouting friends.
All this Sheila O'Leary felt as she stood on the upper deck of a French
liner with Peter Brooks and watched their fellow-passengers board the
ship. She was tingling from head to foot with almost as many emotions as
there are ganglia in the nervous system. It was as if she had suddenly
claimed the world for a patient and had laid fingers to its pulse for the
first time. Eagerly, impatiently, she was waiting to count each successive
beat until she should be able to read into the throbbing rhythm of it all
a meaning for herself.
As Sheila thought in terms of her work, so Peter thought in terms of his.
It was all copy to him. Each group that followed another up the gangway
carried the promise of a story to Peter. There were Red Cross nurses,
canteen workers, a college unit for reconstruction work, a hospital unit,
scores of detached American officers going over for the first time, scores
of French and British returning, a few foreigners getting back to their
respective countries, and hosts of non-descripts whose civilian clothes
gave no hint of their missions. Last of all came a sudden, swift influx of
celestial blue.
Peter smiled at them with anticipation, "Look, Leerie, the Blue Devils of
France! There ought to be the making of a good yarn."
But Sheila barely heard. The mass had captured her imagination on the
instant with a dramatic intensity too overpowering to be denied.
Unconsciously she smiled. They were going back to fight again--to be
wounded. Who knew--in a month she might be nursing some of them. The Blue
Devils had reached the gangway; they were just below them when one looked
up. Black eyes as unfathomable as forest pools looked into Sheila's quiet
gray ones. For a moment there was almost a greeting flashed between them;
as if they recognized something common to them both that lay in the past
or the future. It was one of those gossamer threads of fate that a few
glimpse rarely in their lives.
Peter saw, and was on the point of giving tongue to his astonishment when
a voice from behind interrupted them: "The ship sails at ten; it lacks
thirty seconds of that. There is the typical instance of the way these
Devils obey their orders. Is it not so?"
The voice savored of France. Sheila and Peter turned together to find a
little man, with a small, pleasant face, topped with shaggy brown hair,
and dabs of mustache and beard placed like a colon under his nose. His
shrug was the conclusive evidence of his nationality.
"Well, thirty seconds is enough," laughed Sheila. "Time is as precious as
food, gold, or gunpowder these days. Why waste it?"
"And men," supplemented the little man. "Perhaps, mad'moiselle already
knows Bertrand Fauchet, the young captain who passed below?"
Sheila shook her head.
The little man rubbed his hands together in keen enjoyment. "Ah, there is
a man; but they are all men. The Boches have named them well. They fight
like demons, then they rest and play like children until their turn comes
to fight again. And Fauchet--he is a devil of a devil, possessed of a
thousand lives. Mad'moiselle would adore him."
Sheila's demure chin tilted mutinously, "But I don't like devils, even
blue ones."
"Ah, you do not understand. C'est la guerre. We must lock away in our
hearts all the pity, all the tenderness, as we hide our jewels and our
treasures and mask our cathedrals. If we did not they would all be
destroyed and we would go quite mad." He smiled whimsically at Sheila, as
one smiles at a child who fails to comprehend. "Wait--wait till
mad'moiselle sees France. Then--" He finished with a shrug and left them.
They were in midstream when they saw the little man again. He came
hurrying toward them with both hands outstretched to Peter. "It is Mr.
Brooks. I did not know when I was speaking with you and mad'moiselle
before. They told me at the office of your paper that you would be sailing
to-day. May I present Jacques Marchand of the _Figaro_, a
fellow-journalist?" and he made a profound bow which included Sheila.
Peter introduced the girl beside him and the little man looked at her with
whetted interest and a twinkle of suppressed humor. "You women of America,
you come like battalions of good angels to nurse our devils. Eh bien,
before the sun goes down you shall meet your first one. Au 'voir till
then."
They were in the stern, watching the last of the sun in their wake as it
turned myriads of whirring wings to iridescent gold, when the little man
found them again. This time he was not alone. Close upon his heels came
the captain of the Blue Devils; and again the black eyes met Sheila's when
they were still a man's length apart.
"Mad'moiselle," said Jacques Marchand, "I have brought, as I
promised--Monsieur Satan--Mad'moiselle O'Leary. Look him well over; you
will see he has not the horns or cloven feet, nevertheless--mais, voila."
The captain was blushing like a very bashful little boy; he was smiling as
naively as an infant. Sheila guessed at his age and placed it not far from
twenty. Who had ever conceived of a boy-Mephistopheles? It was absurd. A
genuine diabolical personage had no right to a pre-middle age; for him all
years prior to forty should not exist. And here was undeniably a boy,
whose very bashfulness and naivete bore witness that he had not entirely
grown up. So Sheila smiled back upon him with the frankness and abandon
one feels so safe in bestowing upon youth.
"This paper-man, he likes to be what you call funny. It pays him well, and
he must keep, what you say, his feet in. But I do not like always his
little jokes. I will make a new introduce so. Bertrand Fauchet, capitaine
Chasseurs Alpins, very much at your service, ma'am'selle." The soldier
bowed with solemnity. It was evident he felt his dignity had been
trampled on and resented it.
The little man of the _Figaro_ wagged a forefinger at him. "Ah, tata,
garcon. Remember, I am your godfather in the battalion. It is I that give
you the name. Three years ago in the Cafe des Alcazar I call you Monsieur
Satan, and it stick. You cannot rub it off; you cannot make France forget
it; and when you come back so fierce--so terrific from the fighting at
Troyes where you get the Croix de Guerre it is not for Capitaine Fauchet
the men shout--non. It is for Monsieur Satan they shout, for the devil of
a Blue Devil. Eh, mon ami?" And he laid a loving arm across the other's
shoulder.
During the crossing the four met often; the journalist always kindly and
loquacious, Monsieur Satan always shy. Sometimes he joined Sheila alone
for an after-dinner promenade. It was always at that hour when the day was
fading into a luminous twilight that told of stars to come, and they
tramped the decks in a strange, companionable silence. It was plain that
Monsieur Satan did not wish to talk, and Sheila gave him freely the
silence he craved. Once he stopped and looked over the railing, hard at
the sea horizon.
"Did you ever think, ma'am'selle," he said, softly, "how the great ocean
shows nothing of the war? The underneath may be choked with sunken ships,
the murdered ships, but the ocean has no scars. It is not like our
sorrowful France--all scars. So--I find it good to look at this and
forget. Perhaps, some day, a peace like this will come to the heart of
Bertrand Fauchet. Qui savez?"
And another time, when he was wishing her good night, he added: "Dormez
bien--sans songes, ma'am'selle. The dreams, they are bad."
But generally he left her with just a pressure of the hand and an "_Au
'voir_." And yet there was always in his voice a suppressed gratitude as
for a gift.
When Peter was alone with him he tried to draw him out and got nothing for
his pains. The story he had scented on their day of embarkation had
undoubtedly left no trail. When he aired his disappointment good-naturedly
to Sheila she only laughed at him.
"If you want a story go to some of the other devils; we'll never know more
of Monsieur Satan till Fate turns interlocutor."
"Well, he's certainly the most slumbering devil I ever saw. If that's the
worst French soil can propagate, it's hard to believe the Germans they
tackle get much of an inferno."
In spite of his skepticism, however, Peter had an unexpected glimpse into
that inferno the day before they landed. For thirty-six hours they had
been running through the danger zone with life-boats loose on their
davits, life-belts ready for adjustment, and nerves tense. Then the
tension had suddenly relaxed, everybody talked with everybody else,
displaying a lack of restraint that bordered on intimacy. Peter and Sheila
were strolling an almost deserted deck toward a group amidships. As they
neared it they saw it was dominated by two principal figures--one a
professional philanthropist with more sentiment than judgment, and the
other Monsieur Satan. The philanthropist was talking in what Peter termed
an "open-throttle voice."
"But you don't mean you would ever harm a defenseless prisoner, Captain
Fauchet? Of course you would never allow your men to kill a fallen enemy
or one supplicating mercy."
"Supplicating mercy--bah!" The mouth that could smile so boyishly had a
diabolical twist, the eyes blazed like hell-fires, as Peter said
afterward. "There is only the one Boche that is safe, madame--the dead
Boche. When we find them wriggling I teach my men to make them
safe--quickly!" The lips smiled sardonically. Monsieur Satan was a boy no
longer; in some inexplicable fashion he had come into full possession of
that Mephistophelian middle-age.
But the lady philanthropist had neither the eyes to see nor the
intelligence to understand. Instead she clumsily parried with invisible
forces. "Of course you don't mean that, Captain Fauchet. You are just
making believe you are a wicked man. I believe you are trying to stuff me,
as our American slang puts it. Now if a wounded German came running toward
you crying Kamerad--"
"Sacrebleu! Oui, madame, once I listen to that Kamerad. But now--jamais!
When they call it with their lying tongues I shout them back 'Kamerad to
hell!' and I zigeuille." The right hand made a swift, subtle twist with a
deep thrust. It took little imagination to guess what it was supposed to
be holding. For a second Monsieur Satan's eyes still continued to blaze at
the woman before him; then he tossed back his head, plunged through the
crowd, and was gone.
"A devil of a Blue Devil," quoted Peter under his breath. "Our friend,
Monsieur Marchand, was not indulging in hyperbole after all."
Sheila watched him go and said nothing.
That twilight, when Monsieur Satan joined her, he looked as harmless as
ever, only a trifle more bashful. "Perhaps ma'am'selle will care no longer
to promenade with the wicked man. N'est ce pas?"
"A brave man," corrected Sheila, and she looked straight into the black
eyes. "A brave man who has given himself body and soul to France."
"Body and soul. Oui, ma'am'selle. But listen--there is something--" His
face changed in a breath, the eyes were blazing again, the mouth had
turned as sinister as his _nom de guerre_ signified. But something in
Sheila's eyes checked him. He put out a hand unconsciously and laid it on
her as though to steady himself. "Non, ma'am'selle. One need not tell
everything. You will see enough--enough."
When they landed, his good-bys to her were curiously brief. He held her
hand a second as if he would have said a great deal; then with a quick
"_Au 'voir_" he flung it from him and was down the gangway. But with Peter
it was different. He found him alone and vouchsafed him for the first time
what might have been called conversation.
"I do not know until yesterday that you were betrothed to Ma'am'selle
O'Leary. That is so?"
Peter nodded.
"You have been generous, monsieur. I wish to thank you."
Peter held out his hand. "Oh, that's all right. American men aren't given
to being jealous, as a rule. Besides, Miss O'Leary is the sort one has no
right to be selfish with. I guess you understand?"
"Oui, monsieur. She belongs a little to every one, man or child, who needs
the sympathy, the kind word, the loving heart. Moi, I comprehend. Some
time, perhaps, I render back the service. Then you can trust me; the honor
of Bertrand Fauchet can be trusted with women. Adieu, monsieur."
By dawn the next day the passengers of the liner were scattering to the
far corners of the fighting-front. Jacques Marchand had gone, _via_ the
office of the _Figaro_, to Flanders. Monsieur Satan had been despatched to
relieve another captain of the Chasseurs Alpins with French outposts along
the Oise. Peter had received his war permits to join the A. E. F. in
action and Sheila had received her appointment to an evacuation hospital
near the front. Her parting with Peter was over before either of them had
time to realize it. Her train left the Gare du Nord before his. They had
very little to say, these two who had claimed each other out of all the
world and now were putting aside their personal happiness that they might
give their service where it was so really needed. There were no
whimperings of heart, no conscious self-righteousness; only a great
gladness that hard work lay before them and that they understood each
other.
"Good-by, man o' mine. Whatever happens, remember I am yours for always,
and death doesn't count," and Sheila laid her lips to Peter's in final
pledge.
"I know," said Peter. "That's what makes all this so absurdly easy. And,
sweetheart, you are to remember this, never put any thought of me before
what you feel you have got to do. Don't bungle your instincts. I'd swear
by them next to God's own."
And so they went their separate ways.
There was no apprenticeship for Sheila in the hospital whither she was
sent. The chief of the surgical staff gave a cursory glance over the
letter she had brought from the San, signed by the three leading surgeons
in that state; then he looked hard at her.
"Hm ... m! And strong into the bargain. You're a godsend, Miss O'Leary."
Before the day had gone she was in charge of one of the operating-rooms;
by midnight they had fifty-three major operations. And the days that
followed were much the same; they passed more like dreams than realities.
There were a few sane, clear moments when Sheila realized that the sky was
very blue or leaden gray; that the sun shone or did not shine, that the
wards were cheery places and that all about her were faces consecrated to
unselfish work or to patient suffering. These were the times when she
could stop for a chat with the boys or write letters home for them. But
for the most part she was being hurled through a maelstrom of operations
and dressings with just enough time between to snatch her share of food
and sleep. Her enthusiasm was unbounded for the marvelous efficiency of it
all. She could never have believed that so many delicate operations could
have been done in so few hours, that wounds could heal with such rapidity,
that nerves could rebound and hearts come sturdily through to go about
their business of keeping their owners alive. And every boy brought to her
room was a fighting chance; but the fight was up to her and the surgeons,
and they fought as archangels might to restore a new heaven on a befouled
earth. Life had always seemed full and worth while to her. Now it seemed a
super-life, shorn of everything petty and futile.
"War may be hell; very likely it is for those who make it; but for us who
do the patching afterward it's like the Day of Creation. I feel as if I'd
put new souls into mended bodies." And the gruff, overtired chief who
heard her smiled and mumbled to himself, "Those of us who survive will all
have new souls; old ones have atrophied and dropped off."
Fall was slow in coming. Instead of settling down to trench hibernating as
had been the custom for three years, the Entente kept to its periodic
attacks, pushing the enemy back farther and still a little farther, so
that trenches were no longer the permanent abiding-places they had been in
the past. Just as every one was prophesying the numbing of hostilities
until spring, the rumor spread of Foch's final drive. On the heels of the
rumor came the drive itself. Hospitals were taxed to their utmost;
surgeons and nurses worked for days with a maximum of four hours' sleep a
night. In Sheila's hospital Anzacs, Territorials, poilus, Americans,
Tommies, and Zouaves poured in indiscriminately. Mattresses covered every
square inch on the floor and canvas was stretched in the yard over many
more. The number of operating-tables gave out at the beginning and they
used stretchers, boards--anything that could hold a wounded man.
"It's our last pull," said the doctors. "If we can keep going three--four
more days, we'll have as many months to get back some of our wind."
"Of course we'll keep going," said the nurses. And they slept in their
clothes for those days and did dressings in their sleep.
When it was over and they had settled down to what was near-routine again
they began to sort out the minor cases and pass on the convalescents.
Sheila, who had slept on the threshold of her room for weeks, was dragged
forth by the chief to make the rounds with him and dispose of the
negligible cases. It was in the last ward that she came upon Monsieur
Satan.
From across the room she was conscious of the change in him. He was not
much hurt--an exploding shell had damaged one foot and his heart had been
strained. It was a mental change that caught Sheila's attention. The eyes
had grown abnormally alert and cunning; there was nothing boyish or naive
left to the mouth; it was sinister, vengeful, unrelenting. He was in a
wheel-chair between two husky giants of Australians who kept wary eyes
upon him. As the surgeon and the nurse reached them, Monsieur Satan
tossed his head back with a sudden recognition, and Sheila held out a
friendly hand.
"I am glad to see you again, Captain Fauchet; not much of a scratch, I
hope."
The eyes held their cunning, the sinister droop to the lips intensified as
they curved mockingly to greet her: "Bon! It is Ma'am'selle O'Leary. The
scratch it is nothing. Bertrand Fauchet has still the two good hands to
kill with." He curled them as if over the hilts of invisible weapons, and
with lightning thrusts attacked the air about him. "Une, deux, trois,
quatre, cinq--Ha-ha!" and the appalling pantomime ended with a diabolical
laugh.
In some inexplicable fashion he had come into full possession of his _nom
de guerre_. Sheila had thought her nerves steel, her control unshakable;
but she was shuddering when they reached the corridor. There she broke
through the orthodox repression of her calling and quizzed the chief.
"What's happened? He wasn't like that when I knew him. If it was
witch-times we'd say he'd been caught by the evil eye."
"Same thing, brought up to date. It's shell shock. Memory all right,
nerves and brain speeded up like a maniac; he's come back obsessed with
the idea he must kill. First night he was brought in, before we knew what
the matter was, he knifed the two Germans in his ward. Since then we've
kept him safe between these two Australians, but he has their nerves
almost shattered." The chief smiled grimly.
To Sheila it seemed diabolically logical. What was more natural in this
business of war than that when one's reason went over the top it should
grip the mad desire to kill? But the horror of it! She turned back to the
day's work white and sick at heart. For twenty-four hours she accepted it
as inevitable. At the end of that time her memory was harkening back to
the bashful boy of the French liner, the boy who could smile like a lost
cherub, who looked at her with the fineness of soul that made her
companionship a willing gift. Had that fine, simple part of him been blown
to eternity and could eternity alone bring it back? And what of the years
before him, the years such a physique was bound to claim? Did it mean a
mad-cell with a keeper?
At the end of a third day the old Leerie of the San was walking through
the wards of the hospital with her lamp trimmed and burning, casting such
a radiance on that eager face that the men turned in their cots to catch
the last look of her as she passed; and after she had gone blinked across
at one another as if to say: "Did you see it? Did you feel it? And what
was it, anyway?"
She was looking for some one; and she found him with a leg shot off,
playing a mouth-organ in the farthest corner of one ward. He was a
Chasseur Alpin; he had been wounded in the same charge as Monsieur Satan.
Sheila was searching for cause and effect and she prayed this man might
help her find them. As she sat down on the edge of the cot she thanked her
particular star for a speaking knowledge of French. "Bon jour, mon ami. I
have come for your help. C'est pour Capitaine Fauchet."
The mouth-organ dropped to the floor. The eyes that had been merely
pleasantly retrospective gathered gloom. "Mais, que voulez-vous? All the
others say it is hopeless. Tell me, ma'am'selle, what can I do?"
"I don't know--I hardly know what any of us can do. But we must try
something. We know so little about shell shock, so often the impossible
happens. Tell me, were you with him?"
The soldier hitched himself forward and leaned over on one elbow.
"Toujours, ma'am'selle, always I am with him. Listen. I can tell you. I
was born in the little town of Tourteron where Bertrand Fauchet was
born--and where Nanette came to live with her brother Paul and their
uncle, the good abbe. I was not of their class; but we all played together
as children and even then Bertrand loved Nanette. The year war came they
were betrothed. I am not tiring ma'am'selle?"
"No. Go on."
"We both enlisted in the Chasseurs Alpins. They made Bertrand a
lieutenant, then a captain--he was a man to lead. And how kind, how good
to his men! That was before he had won his nom de guerre--before they
called him Monsieur Satan. If there was a danger he would see it first and
race for it, to get ahead of his men. He would give them no orders that he
would not fill with them; and always so pitying for the prisoners. 'Treat
them kindly, mes garcons,' he would cry; and what mercy he would show! Mon
Dieu! I have seen him, when his mouth was cracking with the thirst, pour
the last drop from his canteen down the throat of a dying Boche, or share
the last bread in his baluchon with a wounded prisoner. And the many times
he has crept into No Man's Land to bring in a blesse we could hear moaning
in the dark; and when it turned out a Boche, as so often it did, he would
carry him with the same tenderness. That was Bertrand Fauchet when war
began. Once I ask him, 'Why are you so careful with the Boches?' and he
smiled that little-boy smile of his and say: 'Why not? We are still
gentlemen if we are at war. And listen, Francois--some day our little
Tourteron may fall into Boche hands. I would have them know many
kindnesses from us before that happens.'
"Eh bien, Tourteron did fall into their hands, ma'am'selle, and there it
has been until a fortnight ago. The German ranks swept it like a sea and
made it their own, as they made the houses, the cattle, the orchards, the
maids, quite their own. You comprehend? After that Bertrand fight like
the devil and pray like the saint. Then one day a Boche stabs
Paul--Nanette's brother Paul--as he stoops to succor him. Fauchet sees;
and he hears the tales that come across the trenches to us. The abbe is
crucified to the chapel door because he gives sanctuary to the young
girls; Pere Fauchet is shot in the Square with other anciens for example.
After that Capitaine Fauchet gives us the order 'no mercy,' and we kill in
battle and out. Ma'am'selle shudders--mais, que voulez-vous? He is
Monsieur Satan now; but I still think he prays.
"And now comes the big drive of the Supreme Command. Village after village
that has been Boche land for four years becomes French again. The people
go mad with joy; they come rushing out to meet our regiments like souls
turned out of hell by God Himself. But such souls, ma'am'selle! Be
thankful in your heart you shall never have the little places of America
thrown back to you by a retreating Boche army, never look into the faces
of the people who have been made to serve their desires. It is like when
the tide goes out on the coast and leaves behind it wreckage and slime.
Only here it was human wreckage.
"At last the night came when we lay outside Tourteron. Bertrand called for
me and we bivouacked together. We were to attack some time before dawn,
after the moon had set. We could not trust our tongues--at such times
things are better left unsaid; so we lay and smoked and prayed against
what we feared. Only once Bertrand spoke--'Francois, to-morrow will see me
always a devil or a saint, le bon Dieu knows which.'
"The moon shone bright till after midnight. We lay under cover of thin
weeds, and beyond lay the meadow and stream and then the town. About
twelve we heard the crisp bark of a sniper--two, three shots; then
everything was still as death again. We were watching the shadows play
across the meadow and timing the minutes before the moon would sink, when
out of one of those shadows she came--straight across the meadow and the
moonlight. It was Nanette, ma'am'selle. We knew it on the instant. She had
a way of carrying the head and a step one could not forget. It was she the
sniper had been after. One side of her face was crimson, the other side
white and beautiful. But she did not seem to know, and the first look I
had told me she had gone quite mad.
"I could feel Bertrand Fauchet stiffen by my side; I could feel him reach
out for my Rosalie and grip it fast. Then he began a low or crooning call.
He dared not call out loud--he dared not move to give our troops away! It
was to be a surprise attack. So all he could do was to wait and call
softly as to a little child, 'Nanette cherie, allons, allons!'
"There had been a skirmish in the meadow two days before; we had given way
and the handful of dead we had left behind were still unburied. I think
Nanette had heard that the Chasseurs Alpins had come and she had stolen
out to find her lover. She came slowly, so slowly, and frail as a shadow
herself. As she passed each corpse she knelt beside it and sang the
foolish little berceuse that Poitou mothers sing to their babies. We could
hear the humming far away, and as she came nearer we could hear the words.
Ma'am'selle knows them, perhaps?
"'Ah! Ah! papillon, marie-toi--
Helas, mon maitre, je n'ai pas de quoi,
La dans ma bergeri-e
J'ai cent moutons; ca s'ra pour faire les noces de papillon.'"
[Illustration: "The first look I had told me she had gone quite mad"]
The soldier crooned the song through to himself as if under the spell of
the story he was telling. Then he went on. "She sang it through each time,
patting the blue coats, pushing back the caps of those who still wore
them, looking hard into each dead face. But she would always turn away
with the little shake of the head, so triste, ma'am'selle. And all the
time the man beside me calling out his heart in a whisper--'Nanette--
Nanette--allons, cherie!'
"She was not twenty yards away, the arms of Bertrand Fauchet were reaching
out to take her, when, pouf! the sniper barked again and Nanette went down
like a pale cornflower before the reaper. And all the time we laid there,
waiting for the moon to set. When we charge we charge like devils. We
swept Tourteron clean of the Boches; _and we take no prisoners!_ For that
night every man remember the one thing, they love their captain and they
see what he has seen. But before the day is gone we are sane men again,
all but our captain. The shell that takes my leg takes what pity, what
softness he has left, and leaves him with just the frenzy to kill. And it
is not for me to wonder--moi--for I know all."
The story haunted Sheila for days; always when she closed her eyes she
could see the girl Nanette coming across the meadow in the moonlight. She
never failed to open them before she saw too far. The plaintive melody of
the berceuse rang in her ears on duty and off, till at last she could
stand it no longer. It was the old dominant Leerie who hunted up the
chief.
"Colonel Sparks, I want you to put me on Captain Fauchet's case. The work
is lighter now; you can do with one less operating-room. I know it's bad
form to interfere, but I want my chance on that case."
The chief looked his surprise. "I've heard of your fondness for breaking
rules--wondered when you were going to begin. I don't mind giving you up,
but that case is hopeless. I'm sure of it. Listen--and this isn't for
publication--Fauchet got out of his ward again, hid in the corridors until
the nurse was gone, and killed another German last night. That man is
incurably insane and we can't keep him here any longer."
"Please!" There was a look about Leerie that could not be denied, a
compelling prayer for the right to save another human being. "You could
keep him a little longer; I'll promise there'll be no more dead Germans.
Give me my chance."
"What's your idea?"
The girl raised a deprecating hand. "Something so crazy that you'd laugh
at it. Let me keep it to myself--and give me Captain Fauchet."
In the end Leerie had her wish. The little room at the end of a ward, used
heretofore for supplies, was turned into a private room, and Monsieur
Satan was moved in, with Sheila O'Leary as guardian. It was very evident
that the patient approved. Once the door was closed behind them, he
beckoned the nurse to him with malignant joy.
"They are all Germans out there--I've just discovered it. Sooner or later
they will all have to be destroyed. You are an American. I can swear to
that, for I saw you on a liner coming from America and your French is so
bad, pardonnez-moi, it could not be anything but American. That is why I
trust you. You are with me against the Boches, n'est-ce pas?"
Sheila solemnly agreed.
"Eh bien, listen. The world is slowly turning Boche. You pour a little
Pinard into water and what do you get? Crimson! Well, you scatter a few
Boches over the earth and what have you? A German world colored Prussian
blue. Come closer, ma'am'selle." He put out nervous hands and drew her
down so he could whisper his words. "And the cure, ma'am'selle, the cure?
Ah, moi, Monsieur Satan, knows it."
They spent the rest of the day in discussing the killing qualities of
shells, grenades, bombs; the stabbing qualities of bayonets, daggers,
swords; the exploding properties of dynamite, nitroglycerin, TNT, and
others. As they talked Monsieur Satan sucked in his breath exultantly and
hissed between his teeth, "_Zigouille, toujours zigouille!_" while his
hand stabbed and twisted into the air.
Another day and he had taken Sheila entirely into his confidence. "I have
my mind made. You shall hear the cure, ma'am'selle, for you and I will be
partners. A Boche world can be cured but the one way--destroyed,
completely destroyed," and he laughed uproariously. Then his eyes
narrowed; he was all cunning and intensity, a beast of prey crouched for
the spring. "Ah, but we must whisper; there are spies everywhere. The men
in the wards are all spies pretending they are French wounded; and the
doctors are spies. Oh, the Boches are damnably clever, but we will be more
damnable--we will outwit them. We will blow them into a million atoms.
They will make good fertilizer for French vineyards in a hundred years. Eh
bien?"
So Sheila became partner in evolving the most colossal crime the world had
ever known. Everything played into her hands and gave credence to her
deceptions. The great cases that came by night packed with dressings were
to Monsieur Satan air-bombs with propellers. They were to be set loose on
the day appointed in such millions that the air would be charged with
them, the sun blotted out; and they would drop in exploding masses over
the earth, exterminating humanity.
"They shall be like the hordes of locusts that nearly destroyed
Egypt--only these shall destroy. And how every one shall run in terror!
You will see, ma'am'selle. It will be a good sight." And Monsieur Satan
rubbed his hands in keen anticipation.
The tanks of oxygen placed on motor-trucks, the gasoline-tanks, were
nothing else than a deadly gas. The partners had concocted it out of the
strangest compounds, unshed-tears, heart-agony, fear-in-the-night,
snipers' barks, and moonshine. Monsieur Satan chuckled over the formula
and said he would swear not a living soul could withstand a single whiff
of it. It was agreed that the makers of the gas--mythological beings
Sheila had created--should be killed at once so that their secret should
never be discovered; and Sheila herself was despatched to compass the
deed. Before she returned the bell in the church near by was tolling for
their parting souls; and Monsieur Satan chuckled as he cast admiring
glances at this prompt executioner.
"You are a good pupil, ma'am'selle; you learn quickly. Now the maps." And
they fell to diagraming where the piping for this deadly gas should be
laid.
Not an inch of the old world was to be left peopled; from east to west and
north to south everything was to be destroyed. No, not everything. Even as
Monsieur Satan decreed it he hesitated. "There are the children, I
think--yes, I think they shall live. Their hearts are pure; the Boches
cannot contaminate them. They shall live after us with no memory of evil,
so they can build again the beautiful world." He stopped and looked across
at the nurse with a haunting, wistful stare. "Tell me, ma'am'selle, was
the world ever beautiful?"
"Very beautiful, capitaine."
He passed an uncertain hand over his eyes. "I seem to remember that it
was; but now I see it always running with red blood boiling from hell."
After that the children were always in his mind; as he planned the
destruction of the rest of the world he planned their re-creation.
Thereupon Sheila saw to it that the war orphans from the _creche_ came to
play in the hospital gardens--under the window of the little room. Soon it
became a custom for Monsieur Satan to look for them, to ask their names,
and wave gaily to them. And they waved back. And the chief of the surgical
staff began to marvel that Monsieur Satan should give no more trouble.
Among them was a little girl, a wan, ethereal little creature who sat
apart from the other children and watched their play with far-away,
haunting eyes, as if she wondered what in the world they were doing.
Sheila had found toys for her--a ball, a doll, a jumping-jack--and tried
to coax her to play. But she only clung to them for their rare value as
possessions; as a means to enjoyment they were quite meaningless. From one
of the older children Sheila got her story. Her father had been killed,
her mother was with the Boches; there was no one else. With an aching
heart the nurse wondered how many thousand Madelines France held.
One day she brought the child in to Monsieur Satan and repeated her story.
He listened wisely, patting her on the head, and then whispered to Sheila:
"Ah, what did I say! These Boches--they get everything--the mothers, the
sweethearts." Then to Madeline: "Listen, ma pauvre; you shall have the
sadness no longer. Monsieur Satan will promise you happiness, ah, such
happiness in the new beautiful world he is preparing for you. Now go. But
'sh ... sh! You must say nothing."
From this moment Sheila became senior partner. It was she who suggested
all the extraordinary horrors Monsieur Satan had overlooked. It was she
who speeded up time and plans. "I have the hospitals and streets all mined
in case the flying bombs should not come thick enough; and I have the
wells poisoned. Isn't that a clever idea?"
The man looked disturbed. "That's as clever as the Boches. But the
children--where will they drink? You must take care of the children."
Then Sheila played her trump card and said the thing she had been waiting
so long to say. Like Monsieur Satan she hissed the words between her
teeth, while her face took on all the diabolical cunning it could muster.
"The children--bah! What do they matter, after all? I have decided--the
children shall be destroyed."
Monsieur Satan sprang from his chair. He pinioned her arms behind her,
forcing her back so he could look deep into her eyes with all the hate
and mercilessness his soul harbored. "Touch Madeline--the children, never!
Let so much as one little hair of their heads be harmed and I--Monsieur
Satan--will kill you!"
She left him with a non-committal shrug, left him panting and swearing
softly under his breath.
From that moment he watched Sheila suspiciously and followed the children
with jealous eyes. For Madeline he called constantly; and she sat on his
knee by the hour while he danced the jumping-jack outrageously and taught
her to sing to the doll a certain foolish berceuse that Poitou mothers
sing to their babies.
Sheila had planned to stage their day of destruction with the craft of a
master manager. She had had to take certain officials into her confidence
and get the chief to sign such orders as had never been issued in a
hospital before. But in the end Fate staged it, and did it infinitely
better than the nurse had even conceived it. The hour of doom struck a
full half-day too soon--the children were playing in the gardens, under
Monsieur Satan's window instead of being in the cellar of the _creche_ as
he had decreed; and Sheila was helping another head nurse do dressings in
the ward outside.
There were only a few minutes after the siren blew before the first of the
great Fokkers appeared over the city. Monsieur Satan's mind went strangely
blank; the children stopped their play and gaped stupidly into the sky;
Sheila did nothing but listen. Then the bombs began to rain down on the
city. The noise was terrific. The children ran aimlessly about, shrieking
pitifully. It was this that set Monsieur Satan's mind to working again. He
broke out of the little room like the madman he was. He might have been
Lucifer himself as he stumbled along on his bandaged foot, his hair erect,
his eyes blazing a thousand inextinguishable fires. In the corridor he
came upon Sheila, with other nurses and doctors, hurrying to gather in the
out-of-door patients. As he overtook them a bomb struck the hospital.
"Sacrebleu!" he shouted. "You bungler! you fool of a destroyer! It was not
the hour--and the children--First I go to save them. Afterward I come to
kill you, ma'am'selle."
He was out before them all, through the entrance and down the steps, when
another bomb struck. The doorway and the pillars were crushed to gravel
and Monsieur Satan was hurled headlong across the gardens. In an instant
he was up, stumbling frantically toward the children, his arms
outstretched in appealing vindication to those small, quivering faces
turned to him in their hour of annihilation. "Mes enfants, have no fear. I
come--I come."
A third bomb fell. The children were tumbled in a heap like a pile of
jackstraws. Monsieur Satan had time enough to see them go down before a
fourth followed with the quick precision of an automatic. Yes, he saw; and
in that horror-smiting moment believed it all a part of his great scheme
of destruction; then the universe went to pieces about him and something
crumbled inside his brain. He stood transfixed to the earth, staring
helplessly in front of him, as immovable as a graven image.
It is one of the anomalies of war that the things that apparently destroy
sometimes re-create. The gigantic impact of exploding masses may destroy a
man's hearing, his sight, his memory, or his mercy, and leave him thus
maimed for all time. But it happens, sometimes, that the first shock is
followed by another which restores with the suddenness of a miracle and
makes the man whole again. That delicate bit of human mechanism which has
been battered out of place is battered in, by the merest chance.
So it was with Monsieur Satan; and when Sheila and the chief found him he
was rubbing his eyes as children will who wake and find themselves in
strange places. He saw only the chief at first and tried to pull himself
together.
"Ah, monsieur, I think some things have happened--but I cannot as yet make
the full report. I am Bertrand Fauchet, Chasseur Alpin," and he tried to
click his bandaged heel against his shoe. Then he looked beyond and saw
Sheila. It was as if he was seeing her for the first time since they had
separated at the French quay. "Bon Dieu! It is Ma'am'selle O'Leary." He
held out a shaking hand. "We meet in the thick of war--is it not so?"
His eyes left Sheila and traveled apprehensively to the children. They
were wriggling themselves free of one another; frightened and bruised,
but not hurt, barring one. The smallest of them all lay on the outskirts
of the heap, quite motionless.
"If you will permit," Monsieur Satan stumbled on and gently picked up
Madeline. He looked all compassion and bewilderment. "I do not altogether
understand, ma'am'selle. But this little girl, I should like to carry her
to some hospital and see that all is well with her. I seem to remember
that she belongs to me." He smiled apologetically at the two watching him,
then stumbled ahead with his burden.
At the base hospital they gave Sheila O'Leary full credit for the curing
of Bertrand Fauchet, which, of course, she flatly denied. She laid it
entirely to the interference of Fate and a child. But the important thing
is that Bertrand Fauchet left the hospital a sound man--and that Madeline
went with him, each holding fast to the hand of the other.
"She is mine now," he said, as he took leave of Sheila. "Le bon Dieu saw
fit to send me in the place of that other papa. Eh, p'tite?" He stroked
the hair back from the little face that looked worshipfully up at him.
"It is for us who remember to make these little ones forget. N'est-ce pas,
ma'am'selle? And we are going back to the world together, to find
somewhere the happiness and the great love for Madeline. Adieu."