Still draped in the black-and-silver trappings laboriously hung by the women of Valoise to do funeral honour to Dr. Rouannès, the parish church, when Jeanne Rouannès entered it, was already transformed into a hospital ward; and, as she came slowly back to normal conditions of heart and brain, she was amazed to see all that these capable, if rough-looking, German medical orderlies had accomplished.
Not only had every kind of bed already been commandeered from the houses round, but through medieval glass which the Great Revolution had spared, the sun shone on huge cases containing every kind of surgical requisite ready for immediate use.
An operating theatre equipment had been set out in the Lady Chapel, and a wave of colour flooded the French girl's face when she saw that the trestles on which her father's rude coffin had rested were now serving as the base of the principal operating table. She could not help wondering in her ignorance why all these elaborate preparations had been made, for the only wounded occupant of this strange war-hospital was a two-year-old girl, injured in the head by a fragment of one of the half-dozen shells which had fallen in the town two hours before.
'To the little child attend you,' the Herr Doktor muttered in her ear. 'I will ensure that no disagreeables you befall. The Herr Stabsarzt is a good man—perhaps have you of him heard, my gracious miss; he is the surgeon Octavius Mott of Ems. Very famous and skilful is he.'
Quickly, and yet with much ceremony, he brought her up to the big, shaggy, spectacled German, who greeted her courteously with the words, uttered in a French as good as her own, 'We shall have plenty of work for you presently, Mademoiselle.'
Then, as Max Keller, in a quick, rather anxious undertone, explained that Mademoiselle Rouannès was the just orphaned daughter of a French Red Cross doctor, the Herr Stabsarzt became perceptibly more cordial. 'She does not look strong enough for the labours which will presently begin. You must watch over the poor bereaved one,' he said kindly; 'she looks a truly refined, gentle being, as well as full of French prettiness and grace. There are plenty of ugly old women in this town whom we shall be able to make useful when the wounded come in.'
The Herr Doktor's face became transformed. He could have knelt and kissed the hand of the great, the skilful, the so understanding and humane Octavius Mott! The Herr Stabsarzt, looking at him from out his shrewd little eyes, saw something in the plain sensitive face that touched him. 'So?' he said to himself, 'there is already an excellent Franco-German alliance established here!'
The soldier looters of Valoise slept heavily that night. Their miserable victims, those among them who had not fled into the surrounding country, crowded back into their ravished, empty houses, and into those out-buildings and stables which had escaped the notice of the marauders—anywhere to be free of hateful and terrifying presences. They hoped, poor wretches, with that curious hope and faith in the future, which in the French temperament survives all material disasters, and makes recuperation comparatively easy, that with the morning the enemy would hasten away from the sacked town. This, as they all knew, was what had happened elsewhere.
But, with the breaking of the cloudless dawn, came a new terror to the unhappy people, for shells again began dropping into the town, and, for a while at least, panic and confusion reigned, even among the sated German soldiery. The French batteries, hidden away to the right of Valoise, had evidently obtained trustworthy information from within the town, for their attack was carefully directed to the group of villas on the hill where the officers had established themselves, but the church,—the church which now flew the Red Cross flag, and was still the glory of Valoise, was spared.