“War may be hell; very likely it is for those who make it; but for us who do the patching afterward it’s like the Day of Creation. I feel as if I’d put new souls into mended bodies.” And the gruff, overtired chief who heard her smiled and mumbled to himself, “Those of us who survive will all have new souls; old ones have atrophied and dropped off.”
Fall was slow in coming. Instead of settling down to trench hibernating as had been the custom for three years, the Entente kept to its periodic attacks, pushing the enemy back farther and still a little farther, so that trenches were no longer the permanent abiding-places they had been in the past. Just as every one was prophesying the numbing of hostilities until spring, the rumor spread of Foch’s final drive. On the heels of the rumor came the drive itself. Hospitals were taxed to their utmost; surgeons and nurses worked for days with a maximum of four hours’ sleep a night. In Sheila’s hospital Anzacs, Territorials, poilus, Americans, Tommies, and Zouaves poured in indiscriminately. Mattresses covered every square inch on the floor and canvas was stretched in the yard over many more. The number of operating-tables gave out at the beginning and they used stretchers, boards—anything that could hold a wounded man.
“It’s our last pull,” said the doctors. “If we can keep going three—four more days, we’ll have as many months to get back some of our wind.”
“Of course we’ll keep going,” said the nurses. And they slept in their clothes for those days and did dressings in their sleep.
When it was over and they had settled down to what was near-routine again they began to sort out the minor cases and pass on the convalescents. Sheila, who had slept on the threshold of her room for weeks, was dragged forth by the chief to make the rounds with him and dispose of the negligible cases. It was in the last ward that she came upon Monsieur Satan.
From across the room she was conscious of the change in him. He was not much hurt—an exploding shell had damaged one foot and his heart had been strained. It was a mental change that caught Sheila’s attention. The eyes had grown abnormally alert and cunning; there was nothing boyish or naïve left to the mouth; it was sinister, vengeful, unrelenting. He was in a wheel-chair between two husky giants of Australians who kept wary eyes upon him. As the surgeon and the nurse reached them, Monsieur Satan tossed his head back with a sudden recognition, and Sheila held out a friendly hand.
“I am glad to see you again, Captain Fauchet; not much of a scratch, I hope.”
The eyes held their cunning, the sinister droop to the lips intensified as they curved mockingly to greet her: “Bon! It is Ma’am’selle O’Leary. The scratch it is nothing. Bertrand Fauchet has still the two good hands to kill with.” He curled them as if over the hilts of invisible weapons, and with lightning thrusts attacked the air about him. “Une, deux, trois, quatre, cinq—Ha-ha!” and the appalling pantomime ended with a diabolical laugh.
In some inexplicable fashion he had come into full possession of his nom de guerre. Sheila had thought her nerves steel, her control unshakable; but she was shuddering when they reached the corridor. There she broke through the orthodox repression of her calling and quizzed the chief.
“What’s happened? He wasn’t like that when I knew him. If it was witch-times we’d say he’d been caught by the evil eye.”