more carefully the men upon whom he had made snap diagnoses, to correct
the diagnosis, if need be, and to order treatment. The chief treatment
they needed was a bath, a clean bed, and a week of sleep, but the
doctor, being fairly conscientious, thought to hurry things a little,
to hasten the return of these old, tired men to the trenches, so that
they might come back to the hospital again as _grands blessés_. In which
event they would be interesting. So he ordered _ventouses_ or cupping,
for the bronchitis cases. There is much bronchitis in Flanders, in the
trenches, because of the incessant Belgian rain. They are sick with it
too, poor devils. So said the _Major_ to himself as he made his rounds.
Five men here, lying in a row, all ptomaine poisoning, due to some rank
tinned stuff they'd been eating. Yonder there, three men with
itch--filthy business! Their hands all covered with it, tearing at their
bodies with their black, claw-like nails! The orderlies had not washed
them very thoroughly--small blame to them! So the _Major_ made his
rounds, walking slowly, very bored, but conscientious. These dull wrecks
were needed in the trenches. He must make them well.
At Bed 9, André stopped. Something different this time? He tried to
recall it. Oh yes--in the sorting tent he'd noticed----
"_Monsieur Major!_" A thin hand, clean and slim, rose to the salute. The
bed covers were very straight, sliding neither to this side nor to that,
as covers slide under restless pain.
"I cannot walk, _Monsieur Major_."
So André stopped, attentive. The man continued.
"I cannot walk, _Monsieur Major_. Because of that, from the trenches I
was removed a month ago. After that I was given a _fourgon_, a wagon in
which to transport the loaves of bread. But soon it arrived that I could
not climb to the high seat of my wagon, nor could I mount to the saddle
of my horse. So I was obliged to lead my horses, stumbling at their
bridles. So I have stumbled for the past four weeks. But now I cannot
even do that. It is very painful."
André passed a hand over his short, thick, upright hair, and smoothed
his stiff brush reflectively. Then he put questions to the man,
confidentially, and at the answers continued to rub backward his tight
brush of hair. After which he disappeared from the ward for a time, but
returned presently, bringing with him a Paris surgeon who happened to be
visiting the Front that day. There also came with him another little
doctor of the hospital staff, who was interested in what André had told
him of the case. The three stood together at the foot of the bed,
stroking their beards and their hair meditatively, while they plied the
patient with questions. After which they directed Alphonse, the swarthy,
dark orderly, who looked like a brigand, and Henri, the priest-orderly,
to help the patient to rise.
They stood him barefoot upon the floor, supporting him slightly by each
elbow. To his knees, or just above them, fell a scant, gay, pink
flannel nightshirt, his sole garment. It was one of many warm, gay
nightshirts, pink and cheerful, that some women of America had sent over
to the wounded heroes of France. It made a bright spot of colour in the
sombre ward, and through the open window, one caught glimpses of green
hop fields, and a windmill in the distance, waving its slow arms.
"Walk," commanded André. "Walk to the door. Turn and return."
The man staggered between the beds, holding to them, half bent over,
fearful. Cool summer air blew in through the window, waving the pink
nightshirt, making goose flesh rise on the shapely white legs that
wavered. Then he moved down the ward, between the rows of beds, moving
with uncertain, running, halting steps. Upon the linoleum, his bare feet
flapped in soft thumps, groping wildly, interfering, knocking against
each other. The man, trying to control them, gazed in fright from side
to side. Down to the door he padded, rocked, swayed, turned and almost
fell. Then back again he flapped.
Dense stillness in the ward, broken only by the hard, unsteady thumping
of the bare feet. The feet masterless, as the spirit had been
masterless, years ago. The three judges in white blouses stood with arms
folded, motionless. The patients in the beds sat up and tittered. The
man who had been kicked by a horse raised himself and smiled. He who had
been knocked down by a despatch rider sat up, as did those with
bronchitis, and those with ptomaine poisoning. They sat up, looked, and
sniggered. They knew. So did André. So did the Paris surgeon, and the
little staff doctor, and the swarthy orderly and the priest-orderly.
They all knew. The patient knew too. The laughter of his comrades told
him.
So he was to be released from the army, physically unfit. He could no
longer serve his country. For many months he had faced death under the
guns, a glorious death. Now he was to face death in another form. Not
glorious, shameful. Only he didn't know much about it, and couldn't
visualize it--after all, he might possibly escape. He who had so loved
life. So he was rather pleased to be released from service.
The patients in the surrounding beds ceased laughing. They had other
things to think about. As soon as they were cured of the dysentery and
of the itch, they were going back again to the trenches, under the guns.
So they pitied themselves, and they rather envied him, being released
from the army. They didn't know much about it, either. They couldn't
visualize an imbecile, degrading, lingering death. They could only
comprehend escape from sudden death, under the guns.
One way or another, it is about the same. Tragedy either way, and death
either way. But the tragedies of peace equal the tragedies of war. The
sum total of suffering is the same. They balance up pretty well.
PARIS,
18 June, 1916.
A SURGICAL TRIUMPH
In the Latin Quarter, somewhere about the intersection of the Boulevard
Montparnasse with the rue de Rennes--it might have been even a little
way back of the Gare Montparnasse, or perhaps in the other direction
where the rue Vabin cuts into the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs--any one who
knows the Quarter will know about it at once--there lived a little
hairdresser by the name of Antoine. Some ten years ago Antoine had moved
over from Montmartre, for he was a good hairdresser and a thrifty soul,
and he wanted to get on in life, and at that time nothing seemed to him
so profitable an investment as to set up a shop in the neighbourhood
patronized by Americans. American students were always wanting their
hair washed, so he was told--once a week at least--and in that they
differed from the Russian and Polish and Roumanian and other students of
Paris, a fact which determined Antoine to go into business at the
Montparnasse end of the Quarter, rather than at the lower end, say round
the Pantheon and Saint-Etienne-du-Mont. And as he determined to put his
prices low, in order to catch the trade, so later on when his business
thrived enormously, he continued to keep them low, in order to maintain
his clients. For if you once get used to having your hair washed for two
francs, and very well done at that, it is annoying to find that the
price has gone up over night to the prices one pays on the Boulevard
Capucines. Therefore for ten years Antoine continued to wash hair at two
francs a head, and at the same time he earned quite a reputation for
himself as a marvellous good person when it came to waves and curls. So
that when the war broke out, and his American clients broke and ran, he
had a neat, tidy sum saved up, and could be fairly complacent about it
all. Moreover, he was a lame man, one leg being some three inches
shorter than the other, due to an accident in childhood, so he had never
done his military service in his youth, and while not over military age,
even yet, there was no likelihood of his ever being called upon to do
it. So he stood in the doorway of his deserted shop, for all his young
assistants, his curlers and shampooers, had been mobilized, and looked
up and down the deserted street, and congratulated himself that he was
not in as bad a plight, financially and otherwise, as some of his
neighbours.
Next door to him was a restaurant where the students ate, many of them.
It had enjoyed a high reputation for cheapness, up to the war, and twice
a day had been thronged with a mixed crowd of sculptors and painters
and writers, and just dilettantes, which latter liked to patronize it
for what they were pleased to call "local colour." Well, look at it now,
thought the thrifty Antoine. Everyone gone, except a dozen stranded
students who had not money enough to escape, and who, in the kindness of
their hearts, continued to eat here "on credit," in order to keep the
proprietor going. Even such a fool as the proprietor must see, sooner or
later, that patronage of this sort could lead nowhere, from the point of
view of profits--in fact, it was ridiculous.
Antoine, lounging in his doorway, thought of his son. His only son, who,
thank God, was too young to enter the army. By the time he was old
enough for his military service, the war would all be over--it could not
last, at the outside, more than six weeks or a couple of months--so
Antoine had no cause for anxiety on that account. The lad was a fine,
husky youth, with a sprouting moustache, which made him look older than
his seventeen years. He was being taught the art of washing hair, and of
curling and dyeing the same, on the human head or aside from it, as the
case might be, and he could snap curling irons with a click to inspire
confidence in the minds of the most fastidious, so altogether, thought
Antoine, he had a good future before him. So the war had no terrors for
Antoine, and he was able to speculate freely upon the future of his son,
which seemed like a very bright, admirable future indeed, in spite of
the disturbances of the moment. Nor did he need to close the doors of
his establishment either, in spite of the loss of his assistants, and
the loss of his many customers who kept those assistants as well as
himself busy. For there still remained in Paris a good many American
heads to be washed, from time to time--rather foolhardy, adventurous
heads, curious, sensation hunting heads, who had remained in Paris to
see the war, or as much of it as they could, in order to enrich their
own personal experience. With which point of view Antoine had no
quarrel, although there were certain of his countrymen who wished these
inquisitive foreigners would return to their native land, for a variety
of reasons.
As the months rolled along, however, he who had been so farseeing, so
thrifty a business man, seemed to have made a mistake. His calculations
as to the duration of the war all went wrong. It seemed to be lasting an
unconscionable time, and every day it seemed to present new phases for
which no immediate settlement offered itself. Thus a year dragged away,
and Antoine's son turned eighteen, and his moustache grew to be so
imposing that his father commanded him to shave it. At the end of
another two months, Antoine found it best to return his son to short
trousers, for although the boy was stout and fat, he was not tall, and
in short trousers he looked merely an overgrown fat boy, and Antoine
was growing rather worried as he saw the lads of the young classes
called to the colours. Somewhere, in one of the _Mairies_ of Paris--over
at Montmartre, perhaps, where he had come from, or at the _Préfecture de
Police_, or the _Cité_--Antoine knew that there a record of his son's
age and attainments, which might be used against him at any moment, and
as the weeks grew into months, it seemed certain that the class to which
this precious son belonged would be called on for military service. Then
very hideous weeks followed for Antoine, weeks of nervous suspense and
dread. Day by day, as the lad grew in proficiency and aptitude, as he
became more and more expert in the matters of his trade, as he learned a
delicate, sure touch with the most refractory hair, and could expend the
minimum of gas on the drying machine, and the minimum of soap lather,
and withal attain the best results in pleasing his customers, so grew
the danger of his being snatched away from this wide life spread out
before him, of being forced to fight for his glorious country. Poor fat
boy! On Sundays he used to parade the Raspail with a German shepherd dog
at his heels--bought two years ago as a German shepherd, but now called
a Belgian Police dog--how could he lay aside his little trousers and
become a soldier of France! Yet every day that time drew nearer, till
finally one day the summons came, and the lad departed, and Antoine
closed his shutters for a whole week, mourning desperately. And he was
furious against England, which had not made her maximum effort, had not
mobilized her men, had continued with business as usual, had made no
attempt to end the war--wouldn't do so, until France had become
exhausted. And he was furious against Russia, swamped in a bog of
political intrigue, which lacked organization and munitions and
leadership, and was totally unable to drawing off the Bosches on the
other frontier, and delivering a blow to smash them. In fact, Antoine
was far more furious against the Allies of France than against Germany
itself. And his rage and grief absolutely overbalanced his pride in his
son, or his ambitions as to his son's possible achievements. The boy
himself did not mind going, when he was called, for he was something of
a fatalist, being so young, and besides, he could not foresee things.
But Antoine, little lame man, had much imagination and foresaw a great
deal.
Mercifully, he could not foresee what actually happened. Thus it was a
shock to him. He learned that his son was wounded, and then followed
many long weeks while the boy lay in hospital, during which time many
kind-hearted Red Cross ladies wrote to Antoine, telling him to be of
brave heart and of good courage. And Antoine, being a rich man, in a
small hairdressing way, took quite large sums of money out of the bank
from time to time, and sent them to the Red Cross ladies, to buy for his
son whatever might be necessary to his recovery. He heard from the
hospital in the interior--for they were taking most of the wounded to
the interior, at that time, for fear of upsetting Paris by the sight of
them in the streets--that artificial legs were costly. Thus he steeled
himself to the fact that his son would be more hideously lame than he
himself. There was some further consultation about artificial arms,
rather vague, but Antoine was troubled. Then he learned that a
marvellous operation had been performed upon the boy, known as plastic
surgery, that is to say, the rebuilding, out of other parts of the body,
of certain features of the face that are missing. All this while he
heard nothing directly from the lad himself, and in every letter from
the Red Cross ladies, dictated to them, the boy begged that neither his
father nor his mother would make any attempt to visit him at the
hospital, in the interior, till he was ready.
Finally, the lad was "ready." He had been four or five months in
hospital, and the best surgeons of the country had done for him the best
they knew. They had not only saved his life, but, thanks to his father's
money, he had been fitted out with certain artificial aids to the human
body which would go far towards making life supportable. In fact, they
expressed themselves as extremely gratified with what they had been able
to do for the poor young man, nay, they were even proud of him. He was a
surgical triumph, and as such they were returning him to Paris, by such
and such a train, upon such and such a day. Antoine went to meet the
train.
In a little room back of the hairdressing shop, Antoine looked down upon
the surgical triumph. This triumph was his son. The two were pretty
well mixed up. A passion of love and a passion of furious resentment
filled the breast of the little hairdresser. Two very expensive, very
good artificial legs lay on the sofa beside the boy. They were nicely
jointed and had cost several hundred francs. From the same firm it would
also be possible to obtain two very nice artificial arms, light, easily
adjustable, well hinged. A hideous flabby heap, called a nose, fashioned
by unique skill out of the flesh of his breast, replaced the little snub
nose that Antoine remembered. The mouth they had done little with. All
the front teeth were gone, but these could doubtless be replaced, in
time, by others. Across the lad's forehead was a black silk bandage,
which could be removed later, and in his pocket there was an address
from which artificial eyes might be purchased. They would have fitted
him out with eyes, in the provinces, except that such were better
obtainable in Paris. Antoine looked down upon this wreck of his son that
lay before him, and the wreck, not appreciating that he was a surgical
triumph, kept sobbing, kept weeping out of his sightless eyes, kept
jerking his four stumps in supplication, kept begging in agony:
"Kill me, Papa!"
However, Antoine couldn't do this, for he was civilized.
AT THE TELEPHONE
As he hadn't died in the ambulance, coming from the _Poste de Secours_,
the surgeons concluded that they would give him another chance, and risk
it on the operating table. He was nearly dead, anyway, so it didn't much
matter, although the chance they proposed to give him wasn't even a
fighting chance--it was just one in a thousand, some of them put it at
one in ten thousand. Accordingly, they cut his clothes off in the _Salle
d'Attente_, and carried him, very dirty and naked, to the operating
room. Here they found that his ten-thousandth chance would be diminished
if they gave him a general anæsthetic, so they dispensed with chloroform
and gave him spinal anæsthesia, by injecting something into his spinal
canal, between two of the low vertebræ. This completely relieved him of
pain, but made him talkative, and when they saw he was conscious like
that, it was decided to hold a sheet across the middle of him, so that
he could not see what was going on, on the other side of the sheet,
below his waist.
The temperature in the operating room was stifling hot, and the sweat
poured in drops from the brows of the surgeons, so that it took an
orderly, with a piece of gauze, to swab them constantly. However, for
all the heat, the man was stone cold and ashen grey, and his nostrils
were pinched and dilated, while his breath came in gasps, forty to the
minute. Yet, as I say, he was talkative, and his stream of little, vapid
remarks, at his end of the sheet, did much to drown the clicking and
snapping of clamps on the other side of it, where the surgeons were
working to give him his one chance.
A nurse held the sheet on one side of the table, and a priest-orderly
held it at the other, and at his head stood a doctor, and the
_Directrice_ and another nurse, answering the string of vapid remarks
and trying to sooth him. And three feet farther along, hidden from him
and the little clustering company of people trying to distract his
attention, stood the two surgeons, and the two young students, and just
the tops of their hair could be seen over the edge of the sheet. They
whispered a little from time to time, and worked very rapidly, and there
was quite animated talking when the bone saw began to rasp.
The man babbled of his home, and of his wife. He said he wanted to see
her again, very much. And the priest-orderly, who wanted to drop his end
of the sheet and administer the last Sacrament at once, grew very
nervous and uneasy. So the man rambled on, gasping, and they replied to
him in soothing manner, and told him that there was a chance that he
might see her again. So he talked about her incessantly, and with
affection, and his whispered words and the cheery replies quite drowned
out the clicking and the snapping of the clamps. After a short while,
however, his remarks grew less coherent, and he seemed to find himself
back in the trenches, telephoning. He tried hard to telephone, he tried
hard to get the connection. The wires seemed to be cut, however, and he
grew puzzled, and knit his brows and swore, and tried again and again,
over and over. He had something to say over the telephone, the trench
communication wire, and his mind wandered, and he tried very hard, in
his wandering mind, to get the connection. A shell had cut the line
evidently. He grew annoyed and restless, and gazed anxiously and
perplexedly at the white sheet, held so steadily across his middle.
From the waist down he could not move, so all his restlessness took
place on the upper side of the sheet, and he was unaware of what was
going on on the other side of it, and so failed to hear the incessant
rattle of clamps and the subdued whispers from the other side.
He struggled hard to get the connection, in his mind, over the
telephone. The wires seemed to be cut, and he cried out in anxiety and
distress. Then he grew more and more feeble, and gasped more and more,
and became almost inarticulate, in his efforts. He was distressed. But
suddenly he got it. He screamed out very loud, relieved, satisfied,
triumphant, startling them all.
"_Ça y est, maintenant! Ça y est! C'est le bon Dieu à l'appareil_!" (All
right now! All right! It is the good God at the telephone!)
A drop of blood spotted the sheet, a sudden vivid drop which spread
rapidly, coming through. The surgeon raised himself.
"Finished here!" he exclaimed with satisfaction.
"Finished here," repeated the _Directrice_.
PARIS,
26 June, 1916.
A CITATION
As a person, Grammont amounted to very little. In private life, before
the war broke out, he had been an acrobat in the streets of Paris, and
after that he became a hotel boy in some little fifth-rate hotel over
behind the Gare St. Lazare. That had proved his undoing, for even the
fifth-rate French travelling salesmen and sharpers and adventurers who
patronized the hotel had money enough for him to steal. He stole a
little, favoured by his position as _garçon d'hôtel_, and the theft had
landed him, not in jail, but in the _Bataillon d'Afrique_. He had served
in that for two years, doing his military service in the _Bataillon
d'Afrique_ instead of jail, while working off his five year sentence,
and then war being declared, his regiment was transferred from Morocco
to France, to Flanders, to the front line trenches, and in course of
time he arrived one day at the hospital with a piece of shell in his
spleen.