The Red Cross Barge

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

1

It was half-past five on this, the sixth morning of the Herr Doktor's stay at Valoise.

He leapt out of bed and had a cold plunge bath-a most peculiar, un-German habit he had acquired during the months he had boarded with an English family at Munich.

Then, when he was dressed, not before, he put on his spectacles and went across to the window. On the first morning of his stay there, he had been filled with a queer misgiving that perhaps when he looked out the Red Cross barge would have drifted away-disappeared, fairy-wise, in the night. That he now no longer feared, and on this lovely September morning his eyes rested with a feeling of exultant ownership on the now familiar scene before him. The trim, leafy mall just across the paved road, the slowly flowing river gleaming in the bright morning sun, the line of poplars above the opposite bank—and then in the centre, as it were, of the placid landscape, the Red Cross barge ... they were his, for ever—the harvest of his eyes, of his imagination, of his heart.

The Red Cross barge? The man standing at the window of this humble French wine-shop told himself how good it was that now, to-day, that work of mercy before him was the only reminder in Valoise that France was at war. Till the day before there had been a hundred and five spurred and booted reminders, but yesterday afternoon the Uhlans had ridden off eagerly, exultantly, to join their main victorious army—that army which was now engaged in pursuing the defeated English and the retreating French.

The Herr Doktor, on this peaceful, sunny morning, quite forgot that he himself was a constant reminder of the awful struggle, of the losing fight now going on between those the women of Valoise had sent forth—their husbands, sons, and lovers—and his countrymen.

But it was natural he should make this capital omission, for as he stood there, looking out on a still unawakened world, the people of Valoise, well disposed as he felt towards them, formed but a blurred background to the one figure which now possessed all his waking, aye, and all his dreaming thoughts. Not only did he now know, but he exulted in the knowledge that, with his first vision-like sight of Jeanne Rouannès, had come that 'love-at-once' of which some of his comrades had rhapsodised in the now-so-distant-as-to-be-almost-forgotten pre-war time. Those rhapsodies of long ago had left him unmoved, partly because as a student he had adored, with a selfless, hopeless passion, a famous singer far older than himself, and partly because, with the passing of years, he had seen the springtide romance of youth almost invariably dulled down into what would have been, to such a man as he knew himself to be, unendurably dull domesticity.

Was this new, and at once rapturous and painful, absorption in another human being the outcome of great, noble, war-provoked emotions? If so, how amazing that a Frenchwoman should have compelled the flowering of his soul, the awakening of both spirit and senses to what the union of a man and woman may mean! But well content was he that it should be so. This side of the great war—so futile from the point of view of happy, prosperous France—would soon be at an end. That he had been confidently assured, some three weeks ago, by a member of General von Kluck's own able staff. Within a very short time of the German occupation of Paris—some even believed within a few hours of the capitulation of the city—peace would be signed with France. There would be bitterness among certain sections of the French people—among the Chauvinists, for instance, who still hankered after Alsace. But the Conquerors had behaved so humanely and so wisely during their triumphant rush through Northern France, that this very natural feeling would soon fade away, while the love he, Max Keller, now bore Jeanne Rouannès was of the eternal, enduring quality which compels its own fulfilment.... Already in his dreams the Herr Doktor saw his house, his childhood's home, at Weimar, beflowered and garlanded to receive a bride.

But these dreams were far more living and tangible to his imagination during those waking hours when they two were apart, than when the Herr Doktor was faced with the reality of his and Mademoiselle Rouannès' necessarily formal relationship. More than once he had tried to engage her in talk on 'safe' subjects—such subjects, for instance, as that of the Great Revolution—but she had quietly eluded him, and he sometimes had to face the fact that the only common ground on which they met each day was that on which lay the wounded Frenchmen to whom she gave so much anxious care. It was a ground on which the Herr Doktor spent all the time he could. But unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, it was ground which was being rapidly cleared, for thanks to his skill, to her care, and no doubt to nature too, 'our wounded,' as he had once ventured to call them to her, were now in full convalescence, almost fit, in fact, to be taken off as prisoners to Germany. When that thought, that knowledge, rose to the Herr Doktor's mind he always thrust it hurriedly away. The despatch of prisoners is purely a military duty, and would in this case be performed by whatever officer on whom it devolved; if no one better offered, then on the Herr Lieutenant, Prince Egon von Witgenstein.

Prince Egon? On this fine September morning, the Herr Doktor suddenly found himself wondering whether it would not be advisable to move his patient into the now empty Tournebride. The knowledge that the Prince would soon be well enough to sit up on deck was not as agreeable to the Herr Doktor as it ought to have been to a conscientious medical attendant. True, Mademoiselle Rouannès never even asked him how his noble patient was progressing, and once, when old Jacob had alluded to the Uhlan officer, the Herr Doktor had overheard her exclaim, with a strange touch of passion in her voice, 'I forbid you—I forbid you, Jacob, to speak of that Prussian to me!' But Prince Egon did not share her indifference, still less her—was it hatred? He was frankly interested in his fair enemy, and very eager to make her acquaintance. But the Herr Doktor was determined that this so uncalled-for and undesirable-from-every-point-of-view desire of the Prince should not be gratified.