We advanced towards the guns at the pas de gymnastique and reached them without mishap. Some were too shattered by the recent bombardment to be of any further use, but others were still intact, and these, as it was difficult if not impossible for us to get them away in a retreat over a hilly wooded country, we determined to destroy. Ordering some of my men to do what was necessary, and as rapidly as possible, the others and I kept a sharp look-out. The enemy gave not a sign of life. The fuses having been attached to the breeches of the guns and lit, we began to retire whither we had come, but had hardly gone more than fifty yards, and heard the successive explosions of the guns blowing up, when, on looking over my shoulder, I saw a body of Germans emerge at a run from a coppice about two hundred yards to our right, and heard them open fire upon us. At the same time I felt a sharp, burning pain in my side; a curious sensation of intense weakness filled my being; and, with a vision of men falling to the ground with extended arms, I, too, bowed down, unconscious, to Mother Earth.
That night, as I afterwards learnt, I was posted as "dead on the field of honour." After eleven hours of oblivion, I came to myself in a German ambulance. My first impression on recovering consciousness was that of hearing the gruff, peremptory voice of a German Herr Doktor at my bedside; my second, when he had passed on to another sufferer, that of seeing a sweet French face bending over me.
"Where am I?" I asked.
"Hush! the doctor says you must speak as little as possible," replied the nurse, in a French which I at once detected to be that of an educated person. "I will tell you all that you need know for the present. You are in our little ambulance at Erquelinnes, on the frontier between Belgium and France—a German ambulance. But fear not"—this in a lower voice—"my country is France, and I am not without influence, or I should not be here. Your wound, though serious, will get well in time. Only you must be sage, and obey me. There, now! Cela suffit! Try to get a little more sleep; the more rest you have the better."
It needed but the invitation, the sound of her soothing voice, like that of a tender mother speaking to her child, and especially those singularly calming words: "Fear not—my country is France," which seemed to wrap me within the protective folds of the tricolour, to send me back once more into that state of semi-unconsciousness which appears to transport one to the borderline between life and death. Loss of blood during those many hours while I had lain forgotten on the battlefield had, indeed, brought me to so weak a condition that, as my benefactress told me later, the doctor had hardly expected to pull me through. My wound was one of those which have been encountered so often in this war; it exhibited the curious vagaries of which bullets are capable. The projectile entered my right side, travelled along a downward, curved path, and, avoiding any of the vital organs, came out at the other side. A millimetre to right or left, and it might have either killed or paralyzed me. As it was, the injury and loss of blood were serious, and could only be repaired by many weeks of immobility, coupled with skilled medical aid (and I must do the Herr Doktor the justice of recognizing that he was highly capable) and the devoted attention of my nurse. Ah! kindly benefactress of the ambulance of Erquelinnes, know, should you ever read my words, that I can never thank you enough for all you did for me. To have shown my gratitude too openly amidst the surroundings where your lot was cast—under what circumstances I have often tried to imagine—would have betrayed you. But, knowing how one French heart can understand another without the passing of words, I doubt not that you have long since comprehended the gratitude of the soldier of the Republic whom you befriended and saved.
IV—ON THE ARM OF SISTER MADELEINE
A month in bed brought me the period when I was declared out of danger, and was allowed to sit up in a chair near a window overlooking a little garden bright with hollyhocks and sunflowers. Then came the day when, leaning on the arm of Sister Madeleine—the name under which, she said, I was to know her—I took my first walk and descended into that garden, to lie there for the best hours of the day on a chaise longue, conversing with her, or, when she was occupied with other wounded, reading and reflecting. It was Sister Madeleine who told me of passing events. But, oh! how discreetly she broke the news of the triumphant march of the German armies southward to Dinant and westward to Maubeuge! It required no great psychological insight on my part to detect where her sympathies lay. Her looks when, the wind being favourable, the faint sound of cannon reached us, the tone of her voice when France was named, her significant reticence on certain occasions, told me much more than actual words. One of these occasions stands out in my mind with particular prominence, owing to my having read in her words a warning, and conceived for the first time the idea of escape.
"The Herr Doktor is immensely pleased with the progress you are making, Captain X——," said Sister Madeleine, rising from my side to pluck some Michaelmas daisies from an adjoining border. "He says you may be allowed soon to take a little gentle exercise in the garden, and do a little gardening, too, if you are a flower-lover, as I doubt not. Are you inclined that way?"
"I shall be delighted to turn my hand to weeding and planting," I replied. "The garden indeed needs attention!"
"N'est ce pas? Poor Jean, our gardener, now with the French colours, would be heartbroken if only he could see the wilderness his little earthly paradise has become. How grateful he will be to you when he returns—if he ever should return after this dreadful war—and finds that someone has been tending his beloved chrysanthemums and dahlias. When the mobilization order reached him he was in the midst of potting slips of geranium in the tool and potting shed yonder"—motioning to a little wooden construction at the end of the garden—"and everything there is just as he left it. A heap of withered slips lies side by side with rows of empty flower-pots, whilst in a corner I saw his working-clothes, which he hastily changed before he came to the house to wish us good-bye and passed into the unknown."