1
The Herr Stabsarzt was enjoying a steaming cup of hot coffee under the
porch of the church which had been his headquarters for five stirring
days.
Everything was packed and ready for departure. And the German Red Cross
surgeons and their staff were now only waiting for the return of the
Herr Doktor Max Keller, and for the parish priest of Valoise.
All final directions had been given to, and intelligently noted down by,
Mademoiselle Rouannes. Not that there was much to say or to hear.
Patience and pity were all that seemed likely to be needed, for only the
dying--those past hope of recovery either as fighters or as
prisoners--were being left behind.
Suddenly a shell burst close to the porch under which the Herr Stabsarzt
was eating his hasty breakfast. He uttered a quick, sharp exclamation of
anger. It would indeed be rough luck if any of his wounded, the men now
stretched out in motor ambulances, and in other less comfortable
conveyances, were killed while waiting for the start!
'Any harm done?' he shouted, rising to his feet. But half a dozen
reassuring voices answered him.
The foremost portion of the melancholy convoy, that is, the motor
ambulances, crammed with the wounded men whose condition was considered
too serious for the makeshift wagons or springless carts pressed into
the Red Cross service, was already under way. Only one large grey motor,
that reserved for the Herr Stabsarzt and his own personal assistants,
stood waiting in the open space in front of the church. They would be
the last Germans to leave Valoise.
As he sat there, under the grey stone porch--for he was a wise man, and
as he had a great deal of enforced standing to do he never stood when he
could sit--the Herr Stabsarzt felt more at ease, more 'zufrieden' than
he had felt for a long time. A successful medical man--be he physician
or surgeon--generally has a kindly, tolerant, understanding outlook on
human nature. And this was so with the Herr Stabsarzt Octavius Mott of
Ems. But as the minutes went by, and the screaming of the shells grew
more insistent, and as they began bursting nearer to the quarter of
Valoise they had hitherto spared, he blamed himself for having granted
Max Keller's request.
'The poor devils out there, to say nothing of ourselves, will soon be in
some danger if this goes on,' he observed to his chief orderly; 'it's
time we were----' and then, before he could finish his sentence, there
came an awful explosion, followed by the dull thuds of falling masonry,
while from close by rose cries and shouts of fear, surprise, and pain.
An Englishman or a Frenchman would have instinctively rushed to see what
damage had been done, and especially would he have done so had he been
an English or French surgeon. But the Herr Stabsarzt did not move. He
simply shrugged his shoulders. His professional labours in Valoise were
at an end. If any civilian inhabitant had been wounded by that shell he,
or more probably she, must wait for the French Red Cross.
There was a confused stir of sound--exclamations in French and in
German. Someone had evidently been seriously hurt--someone was going to
be taken into the church.
But what was this which was being borne along so carefully, and by four
of his own orderlies, on one of the stretchers which fitted into his own
motor ambulance? The Herr Stabsarzt stood up again, and looked anxiously
towards the little procession coming slowly towards him. Presently, with
surprise and consternation, he saw that the huddled up figure, of which
the head, face, and breast were thickly covered with dust and blood,
wore the same uniform as he did himself!
'It's surely the Herr Doktor Max Keller?' exclaimed the man by his side.
'Ach, poor fellow! What a sight!'
'Donnerwetter!' The Herr Stabsarzt was not given to swearing, still this
piece of black bad luck was too much for his feelings, the more so that
he knew his own sympathetic, sentimental heart was responsible.
But after he had bent over the mangled, moaning form of his unfortunate
colleague, he softened. This, after all, was the fortune of war! If he
had drunk his coffee rather more quickly, it might have happened to
himself--it might happen yet.
But what was to be done with the Herr Doktor? Plainly the poor man was
in no condition to be moved at all, still less to take a long journey.
The Herr Stabsarzt made a brief, but still a very thorough, examination,
out there in the wind and sunlight, and that examination made up his
mind for him. The only thing to do was to leave Max Keller behind, to
take his chance of meeting with a humane and skilful French surgeon. It
looked as if at the best there was but very, very little that could be
done for him.
Turning away with a troubled face, the Herr Stabsarzt pushed his way
back into the church; and, as he did so, a feeling of acute nausea, of
intense depression, came over him. How awful, how inhuman, above all how
_useless_, all this was!
Then he told himself that he had been too long in the fresh air; that
was why he suddenly found that subtle, sweetish, devilish, gangrene
stench so foul, so trying.
He called out sharply from where he stood--'Mademoiselle? Mademoiselle
Rouannes!'
Leaving the bedside of a dying German over whom she had been bending,
the young Red Cross nurse hastened down the nave towards him. Her face
was a little flushed, her eyes wet, from the piteous ordeal of trying to
ease the last moments of a dying man with whose language she was
unacquainted, whose last earnest messages she could never hope to
transmit to those he loved. It was an ordeal she had gone through often
during the last few days, but to which, as yet, she could not make
herself grow callously accustomed; and now she was herself too shaken,
too eager to get back to the man she had just left, to notice the
disturbed expression of the German surgeon's face. Indeed, the meaning
of the words he uttered, as he came up close to her, took some moments
to penetrate her brain.
'There has been an accident, Mademoiselle. A shell burst close to the
Herr Doktor Max Keller. He has been gravely injured, wounded by large
fragments of shell in the face and head, while his right arm has been
crushed by a piece of masonry or iron girder. He is not in a state to be
moved. We must leave him behind in your care. For his sake, I hope a
French Red Cross surgeon will soon be here.' He spoke quickly,
pronouncing the name of his colleague in the German way, and to Jeanne
Rouannes' ears the name, so uttered, suggested nothing.
'I will do my best to alleviate his pain and to make him comfortable,'
she spoke mechanically, and her eyes wandered uncertainly. Where was
this newly wounded man?
'I know right well that you will!' The Herr Stabsarzt looked at the
French Red Cross nurse curiously. Was it possible that Max Keller's
absorption in herself, his plainly-to-be-perceived state of
'Verliebtheit' was ignored by her? Why the poor fellow had been injured,
practically killed, in her service! And where, by the way, was the old
Cure?
'I ask myself, Mademoiselle, if there is any place other than here where
the Herr Doktor could be taken--a place clean, quiet and, yes, airy?'
'The Herr Doktor?' She flushed a little. Then it was one of the German
surgeons who had been injured? She had thought the man in question to be
one of the orderlies.
'He had a great liking for the barge. More than once he expressed to me
the opinion that it was the ideal place for wounded men. Could not room
be found there for him?'
And then, at last, Jeanne Rouannes understood. 'Is it--is it _he_ who
has been hurt?' she asked. And now there was no lack of concern or
distress in her voice.
'Yes, it is the Herr Doktor Max Keller--he who was in Valoise before we
arrived here,' he answered gravely. 'And the thought of my good
colleague dying in this disturbed and noisy place is painful to me.'
'He shall immediately be taken to the barge. I will come and see to
everything. There is a small cabin where he will be quite comfortable,
and very, very quiet.'
'And I have your promise to tend him till a French surgeon can take
charge of him?'
'But certainly,' she answered. He noticed that she spoke a little
breathlessly. 'I promise not to leave him till then.'
Again the Herr Stabsarzt looked at her curiously. Did her troubled face
express only the natural sympathy of a sensitive, soft-hearted woman--or
something more?
'I will myself accompany you to the barge. We will walk behind the
stretcher. It is not very far. Do you wish to tell the women here where
you will be?'
'No, Monsieur le Medecin,' and this time a wave of colour flooded her
face. 'If I do that, they will constantly be sending for me. Everything
is in order. There is nothing I could do, that they cannot do.'
She spoke with the decision, the simple directness, which the Herr
Stabsarzt admired. What would he not give, in times of peace of course
he meant, to have such a capable young woman as this French girl had
proved herself to be, in charge of the nurses in his beloved clinik!
2
Jeanne Rouannes tended the Herr Doktor all that long, still, cloudless
day, as together they had tended so many wounded men during those days
and nights which had seemed, to her at least, to contain an eternity of
painful effort and strain, of dull despair, of agonising sights.
But here, in this clean, water-lapped little cabin-room, there reigned a
delicious quietude, only broken by the drowsy murmur of the river which
flowed swiftly just outside, past the wooden walls of the barge. From
far off, making the stillness the more intense, came the deep booming of
great guns, but with the falling of night that also ceased.
She had been prodigal with the morphia the German surgeon had left with
her, and still more with that strange, suggestively-named drug, heroine.
For she was dully, but none the less firmly, determined that this man
should not suffer as some of the men she had tended during the last few
days had suffered. He, at least, had earned immunity from that hellish
pain by all the pain he had spared others.
He lay so rigidly unmoving that had he not sometimes breathed out a
long, tired sigh, and now and again, not often, moved his bandaged head
an inch to the right or an inch to the left, she might have doubted if
he still lived.
At last an immense, limitless lassitude seemed to fall on Jeanne
Rouannes. Soul, as well as body, cried out and hungered for rest.
Slipping down on to the floor, to the left side of the bed, she propped
her head against the hard back of a wooden chair and dozed.
* * * * *
She woke--was it moments or hours later?--to hear a little, stuffless
sound--that of the Herr Doktor's hand moving feebly across the sheet.
Turning slightly round, and lifting up her right arm, she clasped the
poor, limp, nerveless hand in hers....
How many hands, hard, dirty, tortured hands, she had in pity clasped
during the last few weeks!--the honest, valiant hands of her young,
wounded, fellow-countrymen, in those peaceful, early days of war that
now seemed to her so unutterably long ago. Lately, the hands she had
held in hers, often in a useless, pitiful attempt to make them
understand words of kindness or of hope, had been the huge hands of
wounded Germans, those big men-children who had seemed to her so much
less stoical in the braving of pain than the more highly-strung French
soldiers.
The hand she now held was small and delicate, the hand of a surgeon and
a student. How kindly that poor hand, now lying limply clasped in hers,
had tended her father! At this thought, this recollection, she pressed
it more closely, and as she did so, Max Keller, unknowing where he was,
though aware of her nearness, came back to semi-consciousness.
Before his sightless eyes there suddenly gleamed the lights of the
Schloss at Weimar, reflected in the waters of the Ulm. Then with
extraordinary vividness he saw the Schloss gates--those gates which he
had passed such myriads of times in his thirty-four years of life.... A
moment later, he was gazing, with the same sense of vivid reality, at
the bronze fountain, let into an old wall, of which the subject--found
by Goethe in a church in Spain--is that of two beautiful youths,
brothers who died young. One youth, who holds a torch reversed, has his
arm round the other's neck. Beneath their feet the clear water has
gushed forth since the day when Goethe's eyes first rested on the
finished work, and now, lying there in the little cabin-room of a French
Red Cross barge, Weimar's dying son seemed to hear the delicious
bubbling of the spring.
There, too, he saw the door through which so often walked the one woman
whom Goethe had supremely loved.
Thousands of times had the happy Goethe walked through that low door on
his way to the beloved....
At last, vaguely, obscurely, there came to the Herr Doktor the knowledge
of where he was, and who was with him there. But the knowledge brought
confusion, and distress of mind. His associations with this little
cabin-room were all of the mother-spoilt, given-to-base-pleasures
princeling, his Highness Prince Egon von Witgenstein. The thought that
the Prince might be in Valoise, lying in wait for the young French Red
Cross nurse, disturbed him, made him restless. If only he could
remember! But it was as if great stretches of his mind and memory were
darkened, hopelessly.
'Honoured miss?' he muttered feebly.
And she answered, oh so gently, in a voice he had never heard her use to
him, though often these last few days he had heard it whispering kind,
consoling, hopeful things to the suffering and the dying: 'Yes, my
friend?'
'Where is Prince Egon--my patient who was here?'
'He left for Paris the day my father became so much worse--don't you
remember?'
He remembered nothing, but the nurse reassured and comforted him, gave
him a sense of spacious leisure in which to think of himself. 'What has
to me happened?' he asked. 'Why am I here?'
'You were wounded by a shell, and I think by the wall of a falling
house. We--I and your head surgeon--thought you would be more
comfortable here than in the church.'
'And have you the whole time here been?' he asked wonderingly.
'Yes, and I have promised to stay with you till a surgeon comes.'
'You are huelfreicher than any surgeon,' he muttered, in so low a tone
that she had to lift herself and bend over him to hear the words she did
not understand.
The pale white glimmer of the dawn filtered through the white curtain
stretched across the little window, and she saw that there was a change,
a pinched grey look, in his face. Tears started to her eyes. Then he was
not better, as she had ardently hoped. This return to consciousness, to
connected thought, was not the good sign she had ignorantly supposed it
to be?
Suddenly he groaned, a spent, weary groan. 'Pardon, honoured miss, it is
fatigue which the pain hard makes.'
She gave him morphia. 'Try and sleep, my poor friend, and I will do
likewise. The morning will soon be here.'
3
There came a series of loud, excited rappings on the door. It burst
open, and a little girl--a child to whom in the past, which now seemed
aeons away, she had been kind--stood breathless, smiling, 'Mamselle!
Mamselle! Our soldiers are here! Come and see them. I ran away from
mother to tell you! They said you were here.'
Jeanne Rouannes put a finger to her lips. She gave a swift look at the
unconscious form stretched stiffly out on the narrow bed. If only she
could get a surgeon now, at once--
Putting on her cap, she followed the child up the wooden steps leading
to the deck of the barge, and even as she did so, she heard the steady,
rhythmic sound of marching, broken across by confused, shrill cries of
joy and welcome.
Her heart began to beat; she hastened across the sunlit deck of the
barge, and ran swiftly down the narrow stone jetty, with the excited
little girl clinging to her hand.
'Les voila! Les voila!'
And through a mist of tears Jeanne Rouannes gazed on a sight she will
never forget.
They came swinging along, the familiar, active, red-trousered figures
looking so slight, so short, so _old-fashioned_ after the huge,
splendidly-equipped Germans. But though war-worn, shabby as their
predecessors had never been shabby even at their worst, these countrymen
of hers wore their hot, short blue jackets, their wide poppy-coloured
trousers with an air--that most inspiring air of all airs--the air of
victory.
How ecstatically happy the sight would have made Jeanne Rouannes a month
ago! Now, they simply seemed to her oppressed heart and brain a pageant
which brought vague shadowy fears, and a need on her part for thought
and action, for which she felt unfit, inadequate.
At last there rode up a regiment of Dragoons. Above their silver
helmets--still silver, for these were the early days of war, and the
French had not yet learnt the wise and cunning tricks of their
enemies--black plumes nodded. Suddenly they were halted, and their
commander turned his horse, and rode up under the trees to the spot
where the Red Cross nurse was standing. He lifted his helmet off his
head, and showed a young, brave, happy face.
'Madame?' he said courteously. 'Can you tell me when the Germans left
Valoise? Have they had time to go far? Did they leave in order or in
disorder? Is it true that the upper part of the town is in ruins?'
She answered his questions, and then put one of her own. 'Have you a Red
Cross doctor here, M. le Capitaine?'
'Alas! no. The Red Cross attached to my brigade was sent for yesterday.
There has been very fierce fighting, Madame--a series of great combats.
But my troops are comparatively fresh--they still have to win their
laurels.' He looked round, and lowered his voice. 'Have you any German
wounded? I hope not. But though they run no real danger'--he had seen a
look of--was it fear?--flash into her face--'our soldiers are terribly
incensed, for we have come across awful things done by those brutes
during the last few days.' His face contracted with reminiscent pain and
horror. 'Such sights do not make one feel tender to even a wounded
Boche.'
The Red Cross nurse gave him a long sad look. What beautiful, sincere,
blue eyes she had--what a firm, finely drawn mouth! He wondered where
her husband was fighting.
'I must tell you, mon capitaine, that there are, or perhaps I should say
were, a number of dying Germans in the church. All that could be moved
"they" took away. But down here, in the barge, I have a very special
case----'
She moistened her lips and went desperately on, scarcely aware that he
was listening to her with great respect and attention. 'The dying man on
the barge is an Englishman, himself a surgeon of the Red Cross, who was
wounded by a shell only yesterday. He was untiringly good to our
wounded--to all the wounded. It is my great wish M. le Capitaine, that
he should have a quiet death.'
'But certainly,' he said eagerly. 'What would not I do--what would we
not all do--for any Englishman? I will put two of my own men to guard
the approaches to your barge, Madame. As for the wounded in the church,
I will at once go there myself, and see that everything is done for the
poor devils.'
They bowed ceremoniously to one another, and 'mon capitaine' allowed
himself the pleasure of gazing after the slight, graceful figure of the
Red Cross nurse as long as it remained within his arc of vision. That
was not long, for Jeanne Rouannes sped away swiftly--fearful of what she
would find in the little cabin room. It seemed to her so long since she
had left it, and she was nervously afraid lest he might have recovered
consciousness, and missed her. 'I am coming,' she called out,
breathlessly, in English, and then again as she came close to the door,
'I am here,' she said.
But the Herr Doktor went on staring sightlessly before him. He was
busily talking, talking argumentatively, in hoarse, broken whispers to
himself, and his fingers picked at the brown blanket.
Sinking down on her knees, she grasped his clammy hands in hers, and
laid them to her cheek in a passion of desire to soothe, to comfort, to
make easier the struggle she thought lay immediately before him.
Suddenly there floated in the sound of men's voices singing--a vast,
magnificent roaring volume of sound--'Allons, enfants de la
Patrie--ie--ie--ie ...'
There came a gleam across the dying man's face. 'Das ist schoen' ('That
is beautiful'), he whispered.
'... le jour de gloire est arrive!'
The Herr Doktor murmured 'Das genuegt mir!' ('That is enough!') and his
head fell back, sinking deep into the soft pillow.
Jeanne Rouannes went on holding his dead hand for a few moments. Then
she got up from her knees, and made the sign of the Cross on his damp
forehead. As she did so, there burst on her ears the closing lines of
the great battle hymn of freedom--
_Liberte Liberte, cherie,
Combats avec tes defenseurs!
Sous nos drapeaux que la victoire
Accoure a tes males accents!
Que tes ennemis expirants
Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire!_
and the terrible, inspiring refrain--
_Aux armes, citoyens! formez vos bataillons
Marchons;--qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!_
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. LTD., COLCHESTER
LONDON AND ETON
* * * * *
CONAN DOYLE'S NEW 'SHERLOCK HOLMES' STORY.
The Valley Of Fear.
By the Author of 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,' 'The Memoirs of
Sherlock Holmes,' 'The Lost World,' &c.
_Punch._--'As rousing a sensation as the greediest of us could want. I
can only praise the skill with which a most complete surprise is
prepared.'
_Pall Mall Gazette._--'My Dear Watson! All good "Sherlockians" will
welcome Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's new story with enthusiasm ... it is all
very thrilling and very fine reading.'
* * * * *
Journeys with Jerry the Jarvey.
By the Hon. ALEXIS ROCHE.
_Scotsman._--'The stories are so good and the epigrams so quaint that
one is loath to lay it down. A book that can call forth a hearty laugh
on nearly every page.'
_Field._--'The stories are really irresistible, and there is not a dull
page in the whole book.'
* * * * *
Oliver.
By B. PAUL NEUMAN.
Author of 'The Greatness of Josiah Porlick,' 'Chignett Street,' &c.
_Westminster Gazette._--'The first hundred pages contain as fine a piece
of restrained realistic writing as our recent literature has put forth.
We laid down this very individual book with a wholesome respect for Mr.
Neuman's literary art.'
_Punch._--'The thing is remarkably well done, a close and unsparing
treatment of a subject by no means easy ... an original and successful
story.'
* * * * *
Two Who Declined.
By HERBERT TREMAINE.
_Evening Standard._--'A striking, even absorbing novel. Its author will
certainly "count" before long.'
_Pall Mall Gazette._--'A very clever story, and a work of great
promise.'
* * * * *
Some Elderly People and their Young Friends.
By S. MACNAUGHTAN.
Author of 'The Fortune of Christina McNab,' 'A Lame Dog's Diary,' &c.
_Globe._--'Miss Macnaughtan at her best. All her characters are
charming. Her books are a sovereign remedy for depression and
misanthropy.
_Daily Telegraph._--'One of the most engaging stories that we have read
for a goodly while--a story full of lively wit and mellow wisdom.
Delightful is indeed the word which best sums up the whole book.'
* * * * *
In Brief Authority.
By F. Anstey,
Author of 'Vice Versa,' 'The Brass Bottle,' &c.
_Punch._--'In these days a fairy fantasy by Mr. F. Anstey comes like a
breath from the old happiness ... compelling our laughter with that
delightful jumble of magic and modernity of which he owns the secret.
"In Brief Authority" shows what I may call the Anstey formula as potent
as ever. It is all excellent fooling.'
_Athenaeum._--'At any time this book would be welcome; it is doubly so
to-day when a "short breathing-space from the battle" is a recurring
necessity.'
* * * * *
'K.'
By Mary Roberts Rinehart,
Author of 'The After House,' 'The Street of Seven Stars,' &c.
_Sunday Times._--'A book of whose unfailing charm, firmness of handling,
and pervading atmosphere of understanding and sympathy, almost any
living writer might be proud.'
_Morning Post._--'One of those books that have all the elements of a
sudden and overwhelming popularity. Let us recommend it with what
authority we can.'
* * * * *
For this I had borne Him.
By G. F. Bradby,
Author of 'Dick: a Story without a Plot,' 'When every Tree was Green,'
'The Lanchester Tradition,' &c.
_Punch._--'In my opinion the present Dick is not only entirely worthy of
the earlier, but marks by far the highest level that Mr. Bradby has yet
reached. It is not too much to think that this little book will live
long as a witness to the spirit of England in her dark hour.'