The Queen: To her
A beautiful thing has happened in a beautiful hospital. Going to that hospital from mine, what seems most beautiful about it, and very strange, is its peace. It is so quiet. The little gentle nuns move softly and have sweet low voices. The women who work there are all of them women who choose to serve, and they serve lovingly. One feels there quietness and sympathy, and something that I think must be just the love of God. My hospital seems like a nightmare in that beautiful place.
One day there came to visit that beautiful hospital a very gentle lady, than whose story there is none more tragic in the whole world.
She is a queen who lives in exile. She has known every sorrow that a woman can know, and that a queen can know, every one. And she lives, with the memory of her sorrows, in exile.
She may come to France at times for visits of which few people are aware; and those are the times that are most nearly happy for her, for she loves France, and the France that knows her, that is so truly her own, loves her greatly.
The little soldiers of France might have been her soldiers. If they realized, how they would love to be her soldiers! What would it not mean to them to have such a queen to fight for?
The soldiers in the beautiful hospital were not told at first that it was a queen who came that day to see them. They only knew that it was a very lovely lady. She understood just how to talk to them, just how to look at them. They were men who had given everything they had to give for the country that she loved, that was indeed her country, and she loved them, every one of them, and her love for them was in her eyes and on her lips and in her voice. She had known so much of suffering that she could take the suffering of each man for her own to bear with him.
There was a man who was dying. He was not a beautiful young boy, but one of those older little soldiers who touch one's heart so. The thin, worn, stooping little soldier type who has his wife and the children and the old people to be anxious about while he serves his France. The bearded, anxious-eyed little soldier type who knows just what it all means, and who has the flame of the spirit of France shining in his always rather haggard eyes.
This little soldier was dying; there was no hope at all. He knew quite well. His wife and babies were far away and could not come to him. And he was glad of that, he wanted his wife to be spared all she might be spared of pain. He was glad she would not have to remember his suffering so. The nurse had promised to tell his wife always that he had not suffered at all. His nurse had promised him that she would always keep sight of his wife and the babies, and be sure that no harm came to the old people. She had comforted him in everything. And she, and the good little sisters, had so beautiful a faith in God, that he was sure they knew, and that it all would be quite well.
He had won his Croix de Guerre and Médaille Militaire; they had been sent, but the officer had not yet come from the President of the Republic to give them to him. It seemed very sad to the people of the hospital that his medals should not be given to him before he died. His nurse had been very troubled about it, and the chief doctor also. They had sent messages twice to the authorities, but no one had come.
Then, when the queen was there the nurse who herself was a great lady of the world, thought of a beautiful thing and asked the chief doctor if it could not be. That the queen should give his decorations to the man who was dying, and that they should tell him, and all the others, that it was the queen. She knew what pleasure it would give him. She knew it would be like a dream to him, a lovely dream thing to happen to him, just at the end. Of course, it would not be official, but what did that signify—now? The man was dying.
The doctor and the queen spoke together for a minute.
The queen had never cried for her own sorrows, but she had tears in her eyes then, and did not mind that every one saw.
When all of those people of the hospital who could come were assembled in the ward, the hospital staff, and all of the wounded who could walk or be carried, the doctor told them, very simply, his voice a little hoarse, that it was the Queen of —— who was there among them, and that she was going to give his decorations to their comrade. A thrill passed through all the ward as the doctor's voice dropped into silence. No one spoke at all.
The little soldier who was to be so honoured turned his head and looked at the queen.
She was crying very much, but she smiled, and said to him, "You see, my little one, I cry because it is so great an honour for me that I may give his decorations to a soldier of France." She would not have him know that she cried because he was dying. She smiled down at him.
Then she took his papers from the doctor and read his citations out aloud, quite steadily, to all the ward.
She bent down over him and pinned the two medals on his poor nightshirt. "The honour is all mine," she said.
And then she took his head between her hands, as if he had been a child—as if he had been her own son who was so cruelly dead—and kissed his forehead.
They say that royalty must go away out of the world. But how can any one say that who knows beautiful things? There is something so beautiful that belongs only to kingship, something of ideal and dream. It was there, in the hospital ward, when the great lady in the plain, almost poor, dress, her eyes full of tears, was honoured by the honour she might do a little soldier. Only a queen could have made it all seem so beautiful. Only a queen could have kissed a little soldier of the people, who really were her people, so quite as if he had been her child, or have made of kneeling by his bed for a minute quite so simple and proud and symbolic a thing.
The little soldier never said one word. His eyes followed her with the worship that is quite different from any other worship, the worship that can be given only to a queen.
Afterwards he said to his nurse—it was the only time he spoke, for in that night he died—"You will tell my wife, will you not? You will tell her all about my queen?"