The Army Medical Officer looked the Secretary and Reporter up and down,
taking in that vision of inappropriateness and disproportion. There was
a faint, a very faint smile under the ferocity of his moustache, the
first sign of relenting. The Secretary and Reporter saw the advantage
and followed, as you might follow a bend in the enemy's line of
defence.
"I _want_ to go on" (placably, almost pathetically). "_Je veux
continuer._ Do you by any chance imagine we're _afraid_?"
At this, M. C----, the Belgian guide, smiled too, under a moustache not
quite so ferocious as the Army Medical Officer's. They shrugged their
shoulders. They had done their duty. Anyhow, they had lost the battle.
The guide and the reporter jumped back into the car; I didn't hear
anybody give the order, but the chauffeur Newlands turned her round in
no time, and we dashed past the barrier and into Melle.
The village street, that had been raked by mitrailleuses from the field
beyond it, was quiet when we came in, and almost deserted. Up a side
street, propped against the wall of a stable, four wounded Frenchmen
waited for the ambulance. A fifth, shot through the back of his head by
a dum-dum bullet, lay in front of them on a stretcher that dripped
blood.
I found Mr. Grierson in the village, left behind by the last ambulance.
He was immensely astonished at my arrival with the new car. He had with
him an eager little Englishman, one of the sort that tracks an
ambulance everywhere on the off-chance of being useful.
And the Cure of the village was there. He wore the Red Cross brassard on
the sleeve of his cassock and he carried the Host in a little bag of
purple silk.
They told me that the village had been fired on by shrapnel a few
minutes before we came into it. They said we were only a hundred [?]
yards from the German trenches. We could see the edge of the field from
the village street. The trenches [?] were at the bottom of it.
It was Baerlaere all over again. The firing stopped as soon as I came
within range of it, and didn't begin again until we had got away.
You couldn't take any interest in the firing or the German trenches, or
the eager little Englishman, or anything. You couldn't see anything but
those five wounded men, or think of anything but how to get them into
the ambulance as painlessly and in as short a time as possible.
The man on the dripping stretcher was mortally wounded. He was lifted in
first, very slowly and gently.
The Cure climbed in after him, carrying the Host.
He kneeled there while the blood from the wounded head oozed through the
bandages and through the canvas of the stretcher to the floor and to
the skirts of his cassock.
We waited.
There was no ugly haste in the Supreme Act; the three mortal moments
that it lasted (it could not have lasted more) were charged with
immortality, while the Cure remained kneeling in the pool of blood.
I shall never become a Catholic. But if I do, it will be because of the
Cure of Melle, who turned our new motor ambulance into a sanctuary after
the French soldier had baptized it with his blood. I have never seen, I
never shall see, anything more beautiful, more gracious than the Soul
that appeared in his lean, dark face and in the straight, slender body
under the black _soutane_. In his simple, inevitable gestures you saw
adoration of God, contempt for death, and uttermost compassion.
It was all over. I received his missal and his bag of purple silk as he
gathered his cassock about him and came down.
I asked him if anything could be done. His eyes smiled as he answered.
But his lips quivered as he took again his missal and his purple bag.