4
They sped along, two white, ghost-like figures, in the darkness. Every light in the little town was already extinguished, or hidden behind high walls and closely drawn curtains. Valoise only asked to be forgotten, to be obliterated from the map, while the awful tide of war swayed and swept on, within some twenty miles of the town, towards Paris.
Jeanne Rouannès walked as swiftly and unfalteringly as if it had been broad daylight through the steep byways and up the roughly paved alleys leading to the Haute Ville. But it seemed a long time ere they emerged into a street, lighted by one twinkling lamp which swung suspended over the centre of the highway.
'You are interested in the Revolution?' she said in English. 'Well, thirty people were hung in this street, from where that lamp now swings, a hundred and twenty years ago. That was the meaning of "à la lanterne!"'
'Ach!' exclaimed the Herr Doktor, gazing upwards. 'That truly informative is!' And while he uttered these words he was telling himself—that secret self to whom each of us tells so many amazing, unexpected, tragic and, yes, sometimes such delicious things—that this was the first time she had ever spoken to him, of her own volition, on any subject which lay quite outside her Red Cross work. That she had done so made him feel exultant, absurdly happy. Soon, quite soon, every barrier would surely be down between their two hearts....
She moved on a few steps, and then stopped in front of an aperture sunk far back in the wall which ran to the right of the historic lantern.
'We have arrived,' she said, and turning the handle of the door, she stepped back to allow him to pass through first.
He waited awkwardly for a moment. 'Won't you the way lead?' he asked; and quickly she walked past him into a garden which in the darkness seemed illimitable. Sweet pungent scents rose and mingled from each side of the narrow flagged path, and to his moved and ardent imagination it was as if Nature herself was offering the homage of her incense to the French girl now leading him into the sanctuary of her home.
Suddenly he saw a small low house rise whitely before him; a door opened, and a shaft of yellow light illumined the short, broad figure of the old woman servant, Thérèse, for in her hand she held a lamp with a gay Chinese shade over it.
Mademoiselle Rouannès called out, 'Here we are, Thérèse!' Then she turned round to her companion. 'If you will kindly wait in my salon for a moment, I will go and tell my father that you are here,' she said in a low voice.
Her white figure melted into the darkness and he followed the servant down a passage, and into what was evidently the only sitting-room of the little house. Then Thérèse shut the door on him, and the Herr Doktor began looking about him with eager curiosity.
The room was not gay and bright as he would have thought to find a young Frenchwoman's salon. Rather was it simple and austere. The few pieces of furniture were of the First Empire period, of mahogany and brass, covered with bright green silk which with time had become dulled in tint, and even frayed. In the middle of the room was a marble-topped round table on which stood a lamp, fellow to that which old Thérèse had held in her hand. On the round table lay several books, and a magazine, the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,' to which the Herr Doktor in the now-so-far-away days of peace had been a subscriber.
He bent down and looked at the familiar orange cover. It bore the date of August 1. Idly he looked at the table of contents: no prevision, no suspicion even, of the coming cataclysm! He wondered whether the number of August 15 had been published. He thought it unlikely.
He turned away from the table, and looked up and about him. Above a narrow, straight settee hung two charming eighteenth-century pastels—that of a young man in a blue and silver uniform, and that of a slim, pale girl with powdered hair. She had a wistful and yet a proud little face, and it pleased the Herr Doktor to trace in this portrait a resemblance to Mademoiselle Rouannès.
At last the door opened, and he felt a slight shock of disappointment at seeing that it was old Thérèse, and not her young mistress, who had come for him. Stepping lightly, he followed her up a shallow staircase, and so to a landing on the first floor.
Jeanne Rouannès was standing there, waiting for him. She had changed from her white uniform into a black gown, and this change of dress altered her strangely. It made her look younger, slenderer, paler, more beautiful even than before in the Herr Doktor's eyes, for it intensified her peculiar fairness, and deepened the fire in her blue eyes.
Perhaps something in his face showed his surprise, for she said in English, and in a very low voice, 'I never wear my Red Cross dress when I am with my father. It disturbs him—makes him remember——' and then, without finishing her sentence, she pushed open a red-baize door, and beckoned to him to follow her. As he did so, she put her finger to her lips and whispered, 'Wait here a moment——'
From where he stood, just within the door, he could see only one half of the room, and that half bare, save that the walls were lined with books set on mahogany shelves. Standing at right angles across the one corner visible from the door was a writing-table, covered with grey cloth. A high screen to his left hid the rest of the room.
The Herr Doktor's heart began to beat quickly. He told himself that he was about to enter into the very heart of her life—to take an amazing step forward in his intimacy with her....
A word or two was whispered behind the screen, and then she came for him. As together they walked forward into the room, she exclaimed, in French of course, 'Papa, I bring you the kind——'
But the words were cut across by the leonine-looking, grey-haired man sitting up in bed. 'Welcome!' cried Dr. Rouannès heartily. He stretched out both his hands. 'Welcome, my dear colleague—nay, I should now say, my dear ally! My daughter tells me that you speak French. Unhappily I do not know your splendid language, but, as you see, Jeanne was taught English. For some years after the death of my beloved wife, we had living with us a charming person, our excellent Miss—Miss——'
'Miss Owen,' said Mademoiselle Rouannès quietly.
'Yes, yes, Miss Owen!' He waited a moment; then he looked up at his daughter. 'My little girl,' he said, and there was a very tender, caressing inflection in his resonant French voice, 'I will now ask you to go downstairs while I confer with our friend.'
With a curiously impulsive gesture she clasped her hands together. 'But no, father!' she exclaimed. 'Remember that I am your nurse! Surely you will let me stay?' She looked beseechingly, not at her father, but at the silent man now standing by her side.
'Mademoiselle your daughter is an excellent nurse,' observed the Herr Doktor awkwardly.
The old man leant back on his pillow, wearily. He had hoped his English colleague would be more expansive, and 'sympathique.' Also, he had thought to see an older man, one who would understand, without any need for explanation, his point of view about his daughter.
'I only wish you to leave the room for five minutes, my child. One word I must say to Monsieur alone.'
She obeyed without further demur, and as the door closed behind her, the Frenchman put out his hot, sinewy, right hand and seized the younger man's.
'Not a word!' he exclaimed in a hurried whisper. 'Not a word, you understand, of the truth for her! Gangrene has set in. There is nothing to be done now—it's too late. Why I consented to see you was, first, to procure for myself the pleasure of meeting an English confrère (an honour as well as a very great pleasure, I assure you)—and then with the hope that you were likely to know some—what shall I say?—palliative—ay, that's the word!—to make things less painful for her, as well as for me too, when comes the end.'
The Herr Doktor nodded his head understandingly.
'I tell you this,' went on the other quickly, 'because my daughter, as a matter of fact, knows nothing of illness, nothing of wounds——' He waited a moment. 'Perhaps you have a daughter—a child of your own?'
The Herr Doktor shook his head.
'Ah well, at your age I too was not married! More, like you, perhaps, I intended not to marry. But, some day your heart will play you a trick—wait till then, it's worth it—and you will come to realise how carefully one tries to guard one's children, especially one's daughter, from what is painful and disagreeable. I could not prevent Jeanne from taking charge of this Red Cross barge. She belongs to the Secours aux Blessés Militaires, and she has been through the course they give their young girl members. But, naturally, I should not have allowed her to go to a military hospital. A Red Cross barge is different. There are only convalescents there—and old Jacob, whom you will have seen, gave me his word that she should be sheltered from anything unpleasant or—or unsuitable.' He waited a few moments, and then, in a very different voice, added: 'But now, my dear colleague, we will consider my case—otherwise she will be growing impatient.'
He drew down his bed-clothes, and an involuntary exclamation of concern, of surprise, of regret escaped from the Herr Doktor's lips.
'Yes, you see how it is with me? One of those new-fangled injections at the right moment might have stopped the mischief. On the other hand, it might not.' He shrugged his shoulders, and exclaimed, 'Yes, there's nothing to be done! But I want to know if your opinion coincides with mine as to how much time I have left. That is important, for I have arrangements to make. When I am gone, my daughter will have to find her way to Paris, to her aunt, Mademoiselle de Blignière.'
'To Paris?' The Herr Doktor could not keep the amazement he felt out of his voice.
The old man looked up at him quickly. 'Yes, my dear colleague, to Paris—why not?'
'But—but——' The Herr Doktor reddened, then very quietly, even deprecatingly, he said, 'But, Monsieur le Docteur—the Germans? Will they not in Paris be?'
'No,' said Dr. Rouannès confidently. 'They will be kept out of Paris. I only wish she—aye, and I too—were in Paris now!'
There was a pause, a rather painful pause, between the two men.
'You do not believe what I say about Paris?' said Dr. Rouannès abruptly.
'No, I regret to say that I cannot your opinion share.' The Herr Doktor forced himself to say the words.
'You do not know Joffre.' The old doctor looked up at him reflectively. 'Very few people know Joffre—I do. We were at school together. I saw him not so very long ago. In fact just before I was wounded.' Then he called out, 'Jeanne! Ma petite Jeanne!'
The door opened, and Mademoiselle Rouannès walked in, pale, composed, but with lips quivering piteously.
'Do not look so anxious,' said her father quickly. 'As I have always told you, there is no mystery about my condition—none at all! My English colleague agrees with me that it's a very nasty wound. Well, you know that already! I'm not as young as I was—that is against me; on the other hand, I'm a very healthy man. You are not to trouble about me one way or the other. Certain things which we are lacking this gentleman will provide out of his stores. The English ambulance service is the best in the world.'
And then the Herr Doktor made his one mistake. 'Nein, nein!' he muttered. And then he felt his heart stand still.
But his new patient had not heard the protest. In a stronger, heartier voice he exclaimed, 'Ah yes, that's right! I wondered when it was coming——'
The door had opened, and Thérèse walked round the corner of the screen, carrying a tray on which were three small glasses, a bottle of Malaga, and some little dry cakes.
'Do you mind stopping a few minutes and having a talk with my father?' Jeanne Rouannès spoke in English. 'It's very'—she hesitated for a word, then found it—'it's very dull for him when I am away all day.'
Eagerly the Herr Doktor sat down.
'And now,' exclaimed the patient, 'we will forget illness and trouble! We will talk of the glorious British Army, and of your ships—that splendid navy which encircles and guards our shores. What would the Little Corporal have said to all this, hein?' Then more seriously he went on, 'I was put out of action almost at once, and that is why I saw nothing of my British confrères. I regret to say that I did see something of the German doctors'—the colour rushed into his face, flamed over his broad forehead, and up to the roots of his white hair.
'Father!' said his daughter imploringly, 'Father, be calm!'
'I am calm—I am absolutely calm! But I must tell our friend of my experience, if only because it will show him—it will show him——'
'Father!' she said again, 'why talk of it now? It will only excite you unduly.'
'No, it does not excite me—not in the least! Our English friend here will be interested—deeply interested—in my story. It is one which should be published in'—he waited a moment, then brought out triumphantly the name—'yes, the Lancet—it should be written in the Lancet. Perhaps M. le Docteur will himself write it?'
He stopped short, and looked inquiringly at the man sitting by his bedside.
'Most certainly will I it do, my dear confrère.' As he spoke the lying words, Max Keller looked, not at the old man in bed, but at Mademoiselle Jeanne, and there was a kindly, steady, reassuring expression in his eyes.
She had grown scarlet with annoyance, with—was it fear? The Herr Doktor longed to reassure her, to make her feel at ease. How little she understood the self-control, the generosity, the masculine good sense of the German character! As if he would or could mind anything which this poor, old, prejudiced Frenchman, dying so bravely of a gangrenous wound, was likely to say or think of the splendid surgeons now adorning the German Medical Corps! Courteously he bent forward to hear what the man in bed was saying.
'Yes, my dear confrère, what I am about to tell you deserves to be put on record! But I will not take up much of your time—I will be brief, very brief.'
He waited a moment, and then, with a curious change of tone, very quietly Dr. Rouannès told his story. 'It was a few days before I was wounded, between two of the early battles. Six of us had been sent to hastily organise a field hospital'—a bitter look came into his face. 'As you know, for it is, alas! no secret, we were caught, thanks to our fine Government, quite unprepared.... But to return to our muttons—we of the Red Cross were being cordially entertained by one of our generals and his staff, when one afternoon a number of our brave fellows came in with a capture! Such fools were we, such quixotic fools—it is not yet a month ago, but we have all changed by now—that we were angered when we discovered that this capture consisted of four German ambulance waggons, and of ten German doctors.'
The Herr Doktor moved uncomfortably in his chair; it creaked a little.
'Because we were such quixotic fools—and our general, Monsieur, shared our folly and our quixotry—we invited these German confrères to join us at dinner. We were sorry for them, we felt ashamed they had been detained. We intended to send them away next day, back to their own side. We were the more interested in them owing to the simple fact that, like ourselves, they had not yet been in action—so far was clear, they wore quite new uniforms and their equipment was superb. Ah, Monsieur, their equipment made our mouths water! Another thing also filled us with envy and, yes, a little shame. All ten of these medical gentlemen spoke French, and excellent French too; but only one of us six spoke German! Fortunately three or four of the officers attached to our General spoke German too—not perhaps very well, but still sufficiently to understand. Fortunately, very fortunately as it turned out, the one of us doctors who could speak German was a very intelligent man. He was, Monsieur, from Luxembourg, and some of his medical studies had actually been carried out in Germany. Bref, he spoke German like a German.'
The old man waited a moment. 'Have patience with me,' he said quietly. 'It will not take you long to hear my story, but the preliminaries are important.... Down we all sat to an excellent dinner. "One thing at least we can show them," observed a friend to me. "Our cooking, at any rate, is superior to theirs!" Our confrère, the man who spoke German, did not say much, he remained curiously silent during the meal; but the Germans talked a good deal with us other five. They proved pleasant, for they were each and all cultivated men. Before we sat down we Frenchmen arranged not to touch on anything controversial. But, as was natural under the circumstances, we talked what you English call "shop"—we talked, that is, in an impersonal, courteous manner of wounds, and of the treatment of wounds; for from the day war had broken out we had naturally all been reading up everything we could lay our hands on about this terrible and fascinating subject.'
'You are getting tired, Father——'
Jeanne Rouannès came forward as she said the words, but the old man raised his voice: 'No, I am not tired—not tired at all! They were ten Germans to us five Frenchmen, for, as I have already told you, our Luxembourg confrère hardly spoke at all. It was he, however, who towards the end of dinner got up and left the room, and his absence, rather to our surprise, seemed to make certain of our German confrères slightly uneasy. More than one of them asked why he had thus absented himself.... They soon had an answer to their question, for at the end of perhaps ten minutes he came back, and with him was the General. Our German guests rose to their feet with perfect courtesy as the General walked forward. He was pale, Monsieur—he was pale as you may be sure he never had been, he never would be, in action. "Gentlemen," he exclaimed, "I have to perform a disagreeable task! Your confrère here—if indeed he is your confrère—is convinced that among you there are a proportion of men who are not doctors, and who, to put it bluntly, know nothing of medicine. He is convinced, gentlemen, that out of you ten men there are four spies who have taken advantage of the Red Cross uniform to obtain information useful to our enemies. I now ask him, and his five French confrères, to constitute themselves into a court-martial; and you, gentlemen, will each in turn submit yourself to a short cross-examination. You all speak French so perfectly that it will be a very easy matter for you to answer the simple questions which will be put to you."'
Dr. Rouannès drew a long breath.
'I do not mind confessing to you that I thought this proposal an outrage! I had no doubt at all that the ten men before me were Red Cross surgeons. I come, Monsieur, of a Bonapartist family. I can remember 1870—the foolish, senseless cry, "We are betrayed!" On this occasion I felt as if that same ignoble cry was being raised again. "This Luxembourg confrère is afraid. He is nervous. He has the spy mania!" I exclaimed to myself. But I did notice—I could not help noticing—that of the ten men standing before us two had turned horribly pale. But what of that? Might not anyone turn pale when accused of so hateful and loathly a thing as is that of which those men were being accused?'
He paused—it seemed a very long time to his two listeners.
'Well, my dear confrère—you will already have guessed the end of my story! The two hours which followed the decree of our General were the most painful of my life. But the Luxembourg doctor had made one mistake. He had thought to find four spies—Monsieur, there were five. Exactly half of these ten men wearing the Red Cross knew nothing of medicine—nothing of surgery. The fifth man, he who had escaped suspicion, was more intelligent than the others; he, at any rate, had taken the trouble to make himself conversant with certain things which are the ABC of our noble profession. Perchance he was the son of a doctor—who knows? You will ask why we were so long as two hours? We were two hours because we first took those whom our Luxembourg confrère believed to be medical men. We put them through a very thorough examination and they came out of it admirably. Then we took the others. Ah, Monsieur, that did not take long! We knew the truth very, very soon—almost within the first few moments. For the matter of that they scarcely went to the trouble of denying what we suspected—only the one of whom I have just spoken tried to deceive us. They were brave men—that I will say frankly—those Prussian officers who had done so dastardly a thing. Indeed, Monsieur, I do not mind admitting to you that, in the end, I understood their point of view far more than I did that of the five medical men who had lent themselves to so unprofessional an act of treachery. As for the spies, they were working for their country. I repeat, they were brave men. Not one of them flinched. A confrère who had been attached to a medical mission in the East said to me afterwards that to him they recalled fanatics. For the matter of that, even the German surgeons were not aware of the enormity of their crime. There seemed no shame among them—indeed, as one of them put it to me quite plainly, each of them placed his Fatherland above his sense of professional honour.'
And then at last the Herr Doktor spoke. 'You do not think any French Red Cross surgeon would such a—a trick have practised?'
And Jeanne Rouannès, glancing at him quickly, and then averting her eyes, saw that his usually pale face was red.
The old man stared at him, surprised. He lifted his shaggy white eyebrows. 'I cannot answer for every member of the French Army Medical Corps,' he answered, with a touch of impatience. 'But I can answer for it that you would not have found five men, nay, not three, willing to do such a thing in concert. Had such a proposal been made to them, one and all, I am quite convinced, would have refused. Further, I assert that no French general would have dared to make to them so dishonourable a proposal. The Red Cross, as you know, my dear confrère, is an international institution; if it is to be used to cover, to serve military operations, then'—he shrugged his shoulders expressively.
The Herr Doktor rose to his feet. 'Yes,' he said, 'I quite see it, and from your point of view you have right—undoubted right!'
'And now, my dear father, I had better take the doctor downstairs. He has to go back to the barge.'
Dr. Rouannès grasped his colleague's hand with both his. 'It has done me great good to see you,' he said heartily. 'And I am sure you will be able to alleviate the slight pain from which I now and again suffer. You will remember all I have told you'—the old man looked up at him with a touch of painful anxiety in his eyes, and, as he heard the door behind the screen swing to behind his daughter—'You will help her to get to Paris?' he muttered. 'It would not be safe for her to remain alone here. There may be fierce fighting our way soon. You have doubtless heard of our New Army?'
The Herr Doktor nodded. How piteous were these delusions of the conquered! He answered in all sincerity, 'In every possible way, my dear confrère, will I Mademoiselle Rouannès assist, when you no longer there to help her are.'