1
Still draped in the black-and-silver trappings laboriously hung by the
women of Valoise to do funeral honour to Dr. Rouannes, the parish
church, when Jeanne Rouannes entered it, was already transformed into a
hospital ward; and, as she came slowly back to normal conditions of
heart and brain, she was amazed to see all that these capable, if
rough-looking, German medical orderlies had accomplished.
Not only had every kind of bed already been commandeered from the houses
round, but through medieval glass which the Great Revolution had spared,
the sun shone on huge cases containing every kind of surgical requisite
ready for immediate use.
An operating theatre equipment had been set out in the Lady Chapel, and
a wave of colour flooded the French girl's face when she saw that the
trestles on which her father's rude coffin had rested were now serving
as the base of the principal operating table. She could not help
wondering in her ignorance why all these elaborate preparations had been
made, for the only wounded occupant of this strange war-hospital was a
two-year-old girl, injured in the head by a fragment of one of the
half-dozen shells which had fallen in the town two hours before.
'To the little child attend you,' the Herr Doktor muttered in her ear.
'I will ensure that no disagreeables you befall. The Herr Stabsarzt is a
good man--perhaps have you of him heard, my gracious miss; he is the
surgeon Octavius Mott of Ems. Very famous and skilful is he.'
Quickly, and yet with much ceremony, he brought her up to the big,
shaggy, spectacled German, who greeted her courteously with the words,
uttered in a French as good as her own, 'We shall have plenty of work
for you presently, Mademoiselle.'
Then, as Max Keller, in a quick, rather anxious undertone, explained
that Mademoiselle Rouannes was the just orphaned daughter of a French
Red Cross doctor, the Herr Stabsarzt became perceptibly more cordial.
'She does not look strong enough for the labours which will presently
begin. You must watch over the poor bereaved one,' he said kindly; 'she
looks a truly refined, gentle being, as well as full of French
prettiness and grace. There are plenty of ugly old women in this town
whom we shall be able to make useful when the wounded come in.'
The Herr Doktor's face became transformed. He could have knelt and
kissed the hand of the great, the skilful, the so understanding and
humane Octavius Mott! The Herr Stabsarzt, looking at him from out his
shrewd little eyes, saw something in the plain sensitive face that
touched him. 'So?' he said to himself, 'there is already an excellent
Franco-German alliance established here!'
* * * * *
The soldier looters of Valoise slept heavily that night. Their miserable
victims, those among them who had not fled into the surrounding country,
crowded back into their ravished, empty houses, and into those
out-buildings and stables which had escaped the notice of the
marauders--anywhere to be free of hateful and terrifying presences. They
hoped, poor wretches, with that curious hope and faith in the future,
which in the French temperament survives all material disasters, and
makes recuperation comparatively easy, that with the morning the enemy
would hasten away from the sacked town. This, as they all knew, was what
had happened elsewhere.
But, with the breaking of the cloudless dawn, came a new terror to the
unhappy people, for shells again began dropping into the town, and, for
a while at least, panic and confusion reigned, even among the sated
German soldiery. The French batteries, hidden away to the right of
Valoise, had evidently obtained trustworthy information from within the
town, for their attack was carefully directed to the group of villas on
the hill where the officers had established themselves, but the
church,--the church which now flew the Red Cross flag, and was still the
glory of Valoise, was spared.
At last the French guns found another range, that of the German
batteries, and as these replied, so strange and so exciting was the
artillery duel, that women, and even children, crowded into the streets
and, with upturned faces, watched the shells from the even then famous
'75, and the heavier German missiles, go hurtling by overhead.
And then very soon, from the plains below and the woods above Valoise,
the wounded came pouring in. They were brought in every kind of vehicle,
from the luxurious motor ambulances belonging to the German Red Cross,
to handcarts drawn by donkeys and by dogs.
At the end of the first hour, Jeanne Rouannes told herself that there
was no room for more. But on and on they came, in a terrible, continuous
procession, and place still had to be found for them. After the beds had
all been filled, the stone floor, hastily covered with stacks of straw,
had to serve as resting-place for many more. Very soon, too, all the
houses, and the often more comfortable stables and out-buildings of the
town, were also full and overfull....
The French Red Cross nurse was ordered to remain in the church, and
reluctantly she found herself compelled to admire the energy, the
method, the quick, if to her heartless, type of efficient intelligence,
the German surgeons there brought to their terrible tasks. In whatever
part of the church she happened to be, whatever the duty in which she
was engaged, during those hours of horror and strain, when all the
miraculous resources of youth--her fine health of body, and finer
stoicism of soul--alone brought her through the awful ordeal, the Herr
Doktor watched over, and as far as was in his power, helped her to
perform her arduous, pitiful works of mercy.
Very soon--so soon that it seemed retrospectively to have been at the
end of the first morning--everything a normal surgeon and his dressers
require had been used up, and that though, by the forethought of Herr
Doktor Max Keller, all the clean, looted linen which had been put safely
away for transport to Germany had early been requisitioned by the Field
Ambulance.
The German wounded far outnumbered the French, and at first the fact
had filled the French Red Cross nurse with a relief of which she felt
ashamed.
Then suddenly she understood the strange disparity! To these keen,
clear-thinking German surgeons their own countrymen came first as a
matter of course, and the best was naturally reserved for them. They
were skilful, and as humane as it was in them to be, to all those whom
they attended, but the grey-clad wounded were obviously the most
important.
The knowledge that this was so filled Jeanne Rouannes with revolt, and
bitter anger. As she half mechanically performed the duties set her, she
thought of her own shattered countrymen, lying for the most part outside
and unattended; and she was filled with repugnance, even horror, for all
these Germans, both the wounded and the whole, who lay and stood about
her. As far as was possible, she lavished the small surgical science she
possessed, and the measureless pity and tenderness that was hers in
ample measure, on the few French wounded who were brought into the
church.
Then suddenly a strange thing happened. A dying German, to whom she had
just given an injection of camphorated oil, held out his hand,
gropingly. She took the rough, blackened hand in hers, and he murmured
'Mutter,' in a voice full of agonised longing and entreaty. From that
moment Jeanne Rouannes no longer made, even in her inmost heart, any
distinction between the French and German wounded. She tended them as
far as was in her power, and in the measure of her strength, with the
same kindness and untiring devotion.
In addition to the wounded--the wounded brought in from the scenes of
the fierce rearguard actions now being fought round Valoise--were the
injured townspeople, the old women and the little children who became
unwitting targets for the bombs, the shells, and even the arrows, which
now and again fell from the German aeroplanes circling in the air above.
Occasionally, not often, the French Red Cross nurse would obtain
permission to go out into the town to attend on some of them; and
perhaps because the thought of any personal danger was so far from them
both, during those strange and terrible days, the Herr Doktor Max Keller
and Jeanne Rouannes, when engaged on such outside works of mercy, met
with none of the mishaps which befell many of those about them.
Such trifling, even childish, incidents and happenings remained
imprinted on her heart! Thus, she was shaken with rage and disgust when
shown that the curiously shaped steel arrow which had fatally injured a
little child, had fastened to it, not only a miniature German flag, but
an absurd message, written in bad French, pinned to the flag.
As to the sights which filled her eyes when she was away from the
shadowed church, the one which remained the most vividly present to her,
in after days, was the effect produced by a fragment of shell which
happened to unseal the top of a hydrant. Just out of reach of a fiercely
burning building, the water rose like a colossal fountain, throwing
exquisite sprays of prismatic colour into the sunny air.
All through those four September days, while friend and enemy destroyed
the Haute Ville of Valoise, the sun shone hotly in a clear sky, the air
was filled with a soft, luminous haze which rose from the river, and the
fierce fighting in the woods behind the town went on in glades and
coverts filled with the magic beauty of early autumn scents and tints.
2
Jeanne Rouannes suddenly awoke from what had been a seven hours' deep,
death-like sleep. Awoke? Ah no! As she sat up in a darkness broken by
tiny, wraithlike shafts of sunlight, she half smiled, half frowned at
the strangeness of the nightmare in the mazes of which she found herself
involved.
Instead of being in her blue-and-white room at home, surrounded by all
her girlish treasures, and lying in the old-fashioned mahogany bed,
opposite which hung a charming portrait, painted some thirty years ago,
of her gentle, dead mother, she seemed to be--of all the most absurdly
improbable places--in the sacristy of the parish church, and sitting
up, fully dressed, on a heap of dirty grey coats!
There came over her a sudden misgiving--a mysterious sinking of the
heart. Perhaps this was the beginning of illness--of a very serious,
terrible illness? She was conscious of agonising, shooting pain in her
head, and over her eyes, also of dull, aching sensations in her limbs,
especially in her arms.... But if only she could shake herself free of
this evil nightmare, she would not mind the pain....
Then there seemed to steal into her delicate nostrils a most horrible
odour--And it was that now dreadfully familiar smell, that sweetish,
sickly, penetrating smell, which brought back full consciousness to
Jeanne Rouannes.
This was no dream--no nightmare. She was in very truth lying, or rather
now sitting up, in the sacristy of the old church! It was there that the
Herr Doktor had arranged her rude couch the night before; he, too, who
had folded one of her blood-stained Red Cross overalls to make a pillow
for her head, and, finally, with the thoughtful kindness on which she
had grown unconsciously to rely, darkened the two narrow windows with
various holy vestments which he had unceremoniously pulled out of M. le
Cure's cupboard. She even remembered, now, the form of English words in
which, with a queer break in his tired, worn voice, he had _ordered_ her
to lie down and sleep.
He had done it all for the best--she knew that. And yet, and yet she was
faintly resentful of his well-meant care. For now she was uneasily
conscious that she felt less able than she had felt yesterday to go on
with her work--the terrible, urgent, unceasing work which lay just the
other side of the oak door leading into the church.
Through that door there now came the loud sounds of knocking which had
evidently awakened her. Each knock reverberated horribly in her brain.
The Herr Doktor would be sorry--concern would fill his anxious,
red-rimmed eyes, when he saw how tired, how dreadfully tired, in spite
of her long night's rest, poor Jeanne now was!
Fumbling in her pocket, she found a little box he had given her two days
ago, when she had confessed to a spasm of the headache which was now
again full on her, making her feel blind and sick. She had not believed
that one of the tiny white capsules in this little box would do her any
good--but she had taken it to please him, to show courtesy to one who
was always so kind and courteous to her, and who had been so good, so
more than good, to her dear father. And then a miracle had happened! Not
only had her headache gone, but also her sense of utter weariness and
confusion of mind. 'Not more than every four hours must you one take,'
he had explained, and she had tried not to exceed the allowance. She had
lived and worked on those capsules ever since. But it was eight hours
since she had had the last.
Nothing on the part of those whom she still in her heart called 'the
Prussians'--a name dating from her childhood--could now surprise Jeanne
Rouannes. She was equally ready for their hearty kindness or their
equally strong and heartless brutality. During those last three days she
had seen much of both.
And yet she was surprised--surprised and, yes, terribly moved--when, on
opening the sacristy door, she saw what was going on in the church. All
that had been brought there, unpacked and arranged with so much science
and care five days ago, was now being prepared for removal. The
Sanitaets-Aerzte were busily engaged in supervising the work, and the old
Frenchwomen who had been impressed to help in the improvised
Feld-Lazaret were assisting the German orderlies with what looked
unnecessarily cheerful zeal.
It was a painful scene, a scene of noise, of confusion, and of the
angry, hoarse shouting of orders. Lying in the beds arranged in rows on
either side of the aisles, stretched out on the now sodden, dirty straw
which had been brought in when the beds had given out, the wounded, and,
in many cases, the dying, men lay staring with glazed, apathetic eyes at
all that was going on about them.
Suddenly an order rang out, in a voice with which Jeanne Rouannes had
only kindly, almost pleasant, associations--that of the Herr Stabsarzt.
At once, wheeling about with sharp precision, each of the German
orderlies ceased whatever work he was engaged on, and with firm,
ungentle hands began rolling up in their bed-coverings those among the
wounded--French as well as German--who were regarded as 'hopeful cases.'
The moans, the sudden cries of pain and fear of the wretched men rang
out, and the Red Cross nurse rushed impulsively forward, words of
protest on her lips.
'You will have enough to do caring for those we are compelled to leave
behind us,' said the Herr Stabsarzt Octavius Mott dryly, and then, as he
looked into her young, grieving face, his voice softened. 'I know my
poor fellows will have care and goodness from you, my dear demoiselle.'
But even now Jeanne Rouannes did not understand, and it fell to her old
friend, the Herr Doktor Max Keller, to tell her the truth. She
attributed his strange, agitated manner, the look of dreadful suffering
on his plain, pallid face, to the nature of that truth, for 'The French
will soon in this town be,' he muttered hurriedly. 'Therefore must we
this morning in retreat go. That is why I am compelled you to leave.
But permission your Cure here to bring obtained have I. I can you with
that good old man safely leave.'
The Germans evacuating Valoise? She knew now why the women round her
were working so well and briskly, why there were even furtive smiles on
some of their weary faces. The Prussians were being driven away--the
victorious French would soon be here!
But Jeanne Rouannes was too tired, too bewildered, to feel more than
dully glad.
A few moments later Max Keller obtained from the Herr Stabsarzt
unwilling permission to leave the church. 'You must find the priest as
soon as you can,' said the old German gruffly, 'for we have to be off in
about an hour. Mademoiselle Rouannes will be quite safe here--with the
wounded.' But as he shot a look into the younger man's set, unhappy
face, he said to himself, 'You'd like to take her along with you, my
poor fellow. So? But this is no time for love nonsense!'
3
The Mairie of Valoise was close to the church, and had, so far, escaped
bombardment. It was a shabby-looking, modern house, in a narrow street
now filled with military motors and transport wagons. And now, both
within and without the Mairie, were all the signs of rather hurried,
ignominious departure.
Unchallenged the Herr Doktor walked into a dirty hall full of huge
packing-cases and crates ready for removal. To the left, above a large
half-open door, were inscribed the words 'Salle des Mariages,' and
pulling open the door, he walked in.
At an ornate table covered with maps and papers, below an allegorical
painting of Hymen, an intelligence officer sat writing. He looked hot,
tired and flurried. Raising his head, he frowned disagreeably. 'What is
the matter now, Herr Doktor? I sent all the necessary orders to the
Field Ambulance three hours ago!' he exclaimed. 'I regret to tell you
that every moment is of value, for Valoise must be entirely evacuated
by eight o'clock. We have certain information that the town is to be
again bombarded at nine, but this time the French will be destroying
what will be left here of their own people!'
At that pleasant thought his countenance lightened.
The Herr Doktor walked right up to the table. He was not in a mood to
stand any bullying. 'We have to give the parish priest instructions
about our wounded,' he said curtly.
'The parish priest? You mean one of the hostages?' The intelligence
officer pushed aside a packet of printed forms and sought hastily under
it. 'Here is the key of their prison--if indeed it is still standing! To
tell you the truth, I have been too busy to concern myself about these
two Frenchmen, and it is a good thing for them, Herr Doktor, that you
have this business with the Cure! Yes, by all means, bring the priest to
the church, and leave him there in charge. As for the Mayor, he can be
released later. That Mayor is a truculent fellow!' He smiled a little
grimly. 'You can hand this key to the priest just before you move off.'
The Herr Doktor took the key, and walked quietly to the door. Did the
Herr Major mean that, but for his, Max Keller's, accidental
intervention, the hostages would have been left to await release by
their own countrymen? But that was quite against the usages of civilised
warfare!
* * * * *
After he had left the Rue de la Mairie and entered the zone of
destruction caused by the bombardment of the last few days, the Herr
Doktor had to pick, to leap, sometimes almost to excavate, his way
through the ruins of what had been a pleasant, residential quarter of
the happy little town.
What a scene of tragic and, yes, sordid desolation lay all about him,
and what an awful stillness--a stillness which made him start at the
sounds made by his own footfalls!
All the landmarks with which he had become vaguely familiar during the
last three weeks were gone. They seemed obliterated. Heaps of rubble,
and decomposing masses of filth, from which he hastily averted his eyes
when warned of their nearness by another of his sensitive senses, rose
mountainously round the shattered sides and backs of those houses of
which the walls remained standing. Where there had been placid beauty,
there was now an ugliness that verged on the diabolic grotesque; where
there had been healthy life, there was now foul corruption.
At last, after what seemed an eternity of difficult going, he saw,
through a hole blown out in an otherwise still intact wall, a beautiful
garden. Beds of blooming, delicately tinted flowers rose amid grass
which still looked fresh and green, though here and there, across a
stretch of lawn, there yawned a deep pit made by a bursting shell.
He clambered through into the peaceful demesne with a sensation of
gasping relief, and wandered on till a turn brought him close to what
looked like a massive ruin, out of which, high up above his head, there
lurched two large pieces of fine, brass-incrusted, mahogany furniture.
With a shock of regret he realised that this was all that now remained
of the largest of the villas commanding the Grande Place, for through
an open door, set deep in the wall of the garden, he caught a glimpse of
the familiar open space.
He hurried forward, relieved to know that his perilous, disagreeable
journey was nearing its end.
And then, as he emerged on to the now deserted Grande Place, the Herr
Doktor's feelings of relief changed with terrible suddenness to horror.
For the first time he felt his nerve give way, and there swept over him
an overmastering desire to rush back and obliterate from his memory the
hideous sight on which his eyes now rested.
Bathed in the bright, early morning sunlight, close to him, on his
right, the stone-rimmed Abreuvoir was surrounded by a herd of dead and
dying horses. There they had galloped, maddened by pain; there they had
wandered down, wounded, starving, and thirsty, from the uplands, drawn
by some strange, secret instinct as to where water was. Many of the poor
creatures still had saddles on their sore backs, and others had attached
to them remains of the harness which had bound them to artillery and
transport wagons.
Averting his eyes determinedly from the piteous sight, he ran across the
Grande Place towards the screen of chestnut trees behind which lay the
Tournebride, and when he reached the high gilt gates, of which the posts
were wreathed in now fading orange trumpet flowers, he uttered aloud an
exclamation of almost sobbing relief. The long, low, rose-red mass of
brick buildings seemed intact, and that though two of the high trees in
the courtyard lay split and riven, their blackened trunks broken up into
what now looked like monstrous pieces of firewood.
But, alas! as he went on, as he penetrated farther and farther into the
courtyard, he saw that all that now remained of the beautiful old inn
was the rose-red facade; behind that facade everything had been
destroyed by shell or fire. Through the upper windows he could see the
sky, and a muslin embroidered curtain, still delicately white, fluttered
outwards.
He edged his way to where an arch had given access to the kitchen garden
of the inn. Arch and wall had escaped destruction, but the garden
beyond had been rifled of everything; fruit, ripe or unripe, had been
plucked; vegetables pulled up from the ground; and the flower borders
trampled into a bare wilderness of dust and mud. Two taps had been left
running, and a space which had contained a miniature apple orchard had
become a swamp. But the square, windowless fruit-house stood unscathed
in the midst of the desolation. Yet, as he walked along the dusty path,
a nervous sense of misgiving came over the Herr Doktor; he felt he would
like to find the building before him empty, and that though it made his
journey useless.
Putting the key in the door, he turned it--then recoiled in involuntary
disgust, so fetid and so hot was the blast of air which met him. Opening
the door widely he walked through into the large room, and saw that his
suspicions of the officer who had handed him the key with such
ambiguous, sinister words were indeed justified!
Each of the two French hostages lay stretched out on his pallet bed; the
Mayor's body and face were turned to the wall, but the priest lay on
his back, and all over his wax-like, yellowing, dead face, and on his
white hair, a cloud of flies had settled.
Suddenly the Mayor, with a painful effort, turned and sat up. He feebly
dragged his limbs across the brown blanket on which he had been lying,
and whispered, 'For the love of God, a little water, Monsieur,' but his
swollen tongue could hardly form the words.
The Herr Doktor rushed out into the garden. Yes, there, close by, was
running water. But he could see nothing to pour it into. He made a cup
of his two hands, and walking this time with slow, steady footsteps, he
came back into what had become a charnel-house.
It was after his third journey for water that he heard the Frenchman
speak again, in low, husky tones. 'The old man died yesterday morning.
He had, it seems, a malady of the heart. But he predicted that I should
be saved, and as long as he was alive to say fine and consoling things
to me, I kept my courage.'
'You have courage now,' said the German surgeon, feelingly.
'No, Monsieur, my courage has all gone. I am horribly frightened--I am
like a child.' He brought out the words with a hoarse, choking effort,
and tears forced themselves into his sunken eyes, and lost themselves in
his unkempt beard.
To the Herr Doktor, this unexpected incident was proving, rather to his
own surprise, almost unendurably painful--and, yes, humiliating. Such
accidents should not be allowed to happen in so splendidly organised an
army as were the cultured German hosts. He was not a vindictive man, but
he longed to bring the officer responsible for--for this bit of callous
cruelty, to condign and very sharp punishment.
'Listen,' he said in his odd, twisted French. 'I now go must. But first
will I something find in which plenty of water to leave. And, Monsieur
le Maire, I have good news for you.' He waited a moment, then went on,
with an effort, 'The French will soon in Valoise be, for within an hour
shall we the town leave. But before leaving, I will arrange that food
suitable to your requirements shall brought be.'
He went out again into the ravaged garden, and, now that the greatest
need for it had gone by, he espied a watering-pot close to where he had
looked so eagerly a few minutes ago. Filling it up, he hurried back into
the fruit-house.
'Do not therein a moment longer stay,' he said in a low voice. 'Into the
air and the sun come you now out. If that you do, soon recovered quite
you will be.'