She had written again and again to Sherbrand, saying only "Let me come to you!" Passionate, pitiful, tender letters, answered after weeks of delay by one page in the stiff, neat handwriting of the American Red Cross Nursing Sister who acted as amanuensis for the blind man.
"April, 1915.
"You have said that you wish to visit me in my blindness. I thank you for the expressed desire, but I cannot receive you here! I have never been the kind of man who bid for pity from women, and the ties that you broke, voluntarily, six months ago, I do not wish to renew. My mother has been here to bring me some things"—the French and Belgian decorations, guessed Patrine—"and has gone away again. She understands that it is best for me to remain here, because, although the War is over as far as I am actively concerned, I can hear the guns and breathe the breath of battle, and know when the 'planes pass overhead, and follow them in thought. There is little else a blind man can do, except make toys or baskets! Do not think me bitter or discontented—I am neither—quite O.K. I wish people had been told I brought down the Zepp., that's all! With gratitude for your kind and friendly remembrance,
"Yours most sincerely,
"A. S."
A formal letter, but between the cold, stiff lines Patrine had read reproach, and love, and yearning. An unkind letter—but could she judge him harshly, her poor blind eagle, sitting in darkness never to be lifted, listening to the guns, and the battle-song of the Birds of War, drifting down out of "his sky"?
There was Mass in the Convent chapel at seven next morning. A military chaplain offered the Divine Sacrifice, and the rush-bottomed chairs were occupied by soldiers, French Chasseurs and Zouaves, Senegalese and Negroes, English Guards and Irish Fusiliers, Highlanders and a German or two,—all patients from the Hospital under the management of the Ursuline Sisters—a big building next door to the Convent, that had been a young ladies' boarding school in the days before the War.
The chapel was a dusky place. So dusky that though the red carnations and white Eucharis lilies in the Altar vases struck vivid notes of colour in the light of the Altar candles, the ruby spark of the Sanctuary lamp and the bright flame of the Paschal candle were barely visible in the brooding gloom. You could only tell the place to be crowded, by the deep-toned chorus of masculine voices joining fervently in the Confiteor and Credo. Pale green flashes momentarily lit up the crimson and purple and tawny tracery of the round east window, and the distant thudding of the guns at the Front made an accompaniment to the sacred rite.
The French priest officiating was a lean, short, elderly personage with brilliant eyes set in a mask of walnut-brown wrinkles and a resonant voice that was illustrated by beautiful, illuminating gestures as he preached.
"Let none say in your hearing, unrebuked, that this War is an unrelieved misfortune," he said to his hearers. "Recognize with me, my French compatriots, the Divine Mercy as extended particularly to France in this fiery ordeal! Her towns and villages have been destroyed,—her buildings have been shattered, her sons in countless thousands slain, but her national character has been purified—the soul of her people has been raised from the mire. If there is one here present among you—whatever may be his nationality,—who is conscious of loving Virtue better and loathing Vice more intensely, since the beginning of this War—then the War has been a blessing—to him—and not a curse! Acts have been performed—and are repeated hourly—acts of a sublime and touching selflessness and an almost Divine tenderness,—not only by men and women who are mild and gentle, but by the roughest and the most abandoned of either sex. The good seed was sown in time of peace—ah yes, my children! but it might have perished. And now Our Lord, who loves flowers, has caused these pure and exquisite blossoms to spring for Him from the field of War."