Her Royal Highness Woman

by Max O'Rell

As an illustration, I will give a little story that I extract from my early reminiscences.

We were fast getting the better of the Communards in 1871, and my men were warming to the work in grand style, when a piece of burst shell hit me, and some of the fellows carried me off to the hospital. I remember being puzzled that there should be relatively no pain in a wound of that sort; but the pain came soon enough when the fever set in. The doctor of the Versailles Hospital was a rough specimen, as army doctors often are—in France, at any rate—and you may fancy that the groans and moans of the other wounded were not soothing either. One day the doctor told me I should soon be able to be removed to a country hospital. That was after I had been under his treatment for six weeks.

The sights, sounds, and smell of the place had grown so sickening to me, that I think I could have kissed him when he talked of sending me to St. Malo. He came in one morning, and, in his brusque way, said, as he probed the wound for bits of shattered bone:

'We shall be able to pack you off in a few days. You would like to get transferred to St. Malo, would you not? You come from that part of the country, don't you? The air will suit you.'

He was a brute, but he had awfully good cigars, and used to make me smoke one when he was going to have an extra 'go' at my wound. I suppose he hoped the goodness might prove infectious. I used to call him strings of bad names while he was digging away at his work on my arm. Somehow it relieved me, and, truth to tell, he took it all in good part.

In a few days, then, I saw the last of him and he of me, and glad enough was I to find myself in the clean, quiet, nun-tended hospital in the dear old Breton town. There I had a room to myself, as each officer had, and to lie there in that sweet sunny room and hear no groans but my own was almost like being in heaven. The daily cleanings of the wound, still pretty painful, were recommenced under the hands of another surgeon, who proved to be a very good fellow. He and I struck up quite a friendship after a while.

Well, life was, if not exactly rosy, at any rate once more worth living. The brightness and calm were very sweet after the horrors of the Versailles hospital, and a serenity filled the air, like an echo of organ tones brought in by the nuns from chapel.

The nun who attended to me was an angel. I was there in St. Malo three months. Before one month had passed I had grown to love her as I should have loved my sister if she had lived. I loved the sound of her voice and the touch of her deft, gentle hands. I would have gone through the surgeon's probings without a groan if she might have re-bandaged the arm afterwards. But Dr. Nadaud always did that himself. Sister Gabrielle—that was what they called her—would come directly he had done with me, and would try the bandages to make sure they were not hurting, arrange the pillows afresh, and smooth out the wrinkles in the counterpane and my brow at the same time, sympathizing with me all the while in the sweetest fashion possible. Her voice was a great part of her charm, very low, and yet the clearest voice in the world. She had a way of looking at one all the time, too, with a gaze that was almost like a mother's caress, and that wrapped one around with a delicious feeling of security and well-being. Sometimes she would sit and talk with me about the battles, and lead me into chats about my mother, who was ill herself at this time and not able to come to see me.

How old was Sister Gabrielle? Oh, I suppose she must have been about twenty-four or five then, perhaps a little more. She had the Norman blue eyes and a fair complexion, which the white wrappings about her face seemed to heighten and irradiate. Is it the white lawn, or is it a beauty that the self-denying life lends to them which makes the faces of so many of those women look so lovely? I called Sister Gabrielle an angel just now, but you must not fancy there was any cold saintliness about her; in fact, it was her very ready sympathy with all my accounts of my young life in the outer world that drew out my heart towards her. It was her very womanliness that soon set me wondering who she could have been, and what had led her to shut herself away from the world. There was little to do, lying there in bed week after week, and hundreds of times, as I looked at that sweet woman moving about the room, I pictured her without the coif, and said to myself that if she were not then a beloved wife, with a husband's protecting arm around her, and children climbing about her knees, it was not because the love that should have led to this had been wanting, but certainly because some marring chance had prevented the realization of such happiness. It amused me to make a pretty history to myself, with Sister Gabrielle for the heroine. A woman with a voice like hers and such a smile was bound to have loved deeply and to have inspired deep love. Sometimes, when she was not speaking, her eyes had a sad, far-away look. I can only compare it to the look that an emigrant who was toiling along a hot, dusty highroad to embark for a new country might turn and give to the dear spot that he had said a long good-bye to. But that look never lasted more than a minute in Sister Gabrielle's face. It was as if the traveller settled his burden afresh on his shoulders, and, with fresh, vigorous resolution, stepped on into the long expanse of road that went stretching away to the horizon.

One day—I could not help it—I broke into one of those little reveries of hers.