Complete Text (Part 2)

the most touching and childish favours of us. Thus if a limb that hurts too much must be lifted, or a piece of clothing that binds a wound eased up, they all ask: "Not the orderly, not the orderly, please; the Sister or the lady." One must have given in little enough to suffering, have treated oneself rather roughly, after all, not to deserve now the gentle min- istrations of women's hands. And certainly it is the least of our duties to be here and ready with this gentleness, as long as there is one wounded soldier left to look after, the IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I7 least of our duties to serve them till the final hush of victory descends at last on our terrible battlefields. The first words that the newcomers ex- change with their cot neighbours are not about their own hardships; they speak first, and before anything else, of France. "How are things going down there?" "All right. We'll get them." Then the newcomers, worn out as they are, sink into feverish sleep, struggling some- times for days between realities and the per- sistent nightmare of the visions that pursue them. That night in the room that was al- ways so still, but that now seemed more feverish than usual, I heard a sound of smothered sobs. It was Number 25, a big, good-looking soldier, whom each day I had seen having his wound dressed, a real torture, without a word, and who was sobbing now with his head in his pillow, ashamed of his tears, but powerless to keep them back. I went to him and tried to question him, but l8 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL the soldiers don't readily speak to you of the sorrows that touch their hearts the deep- est and most nearly. "Thank you, lady; don't bother yourself about me. I don't need anything." 'Is your pain worse, maybe?" "I'm in pain, yes, terribly, but it isn't that." "What is it, then? Won't you tell me?" He denied me still, then, all at once, un- der the pressure of his grief, he said: "Oh, yes, I do feel like confiding in you. I'll tell you what it is. The comrade who was waiting next to me till his bed was ready brought me news of the death of my best friend. He was in his regiment and was killed by his side. Oh, madame, he was such a fine fellow, so devoted and full of courage. We were brought up together. He was more than my chum; he was my friend." He cried and cried. He had borne every- thing without giving way — the continual nearness of death, the so hard life in the IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL IQ trenches, the incessant physical suffering; but the death of his friend crushed him and brought him down to earth. And while I murmured words that, alas, were futile for any change they made in his sorrow, but which did some good, just the same, I heard him sobbing in his pillow : "My friend was killed. My friend was killed." His friend — when one knows what the word comrade means to them, one divines all that word friend may mean, too. Sister Gabrielle, whose infallible instinct brings her alway to the cots where the sickest of her children are, passed near Number 25 and stopped a moment. She did not ask him anything. She just put her hand caressingly on his brown head, so young and virile, and said in her firm, sweet voice : "All right, my boy, all right. Courage. Remember all this is for France." Then turning to me, she said : "Before night-time wouldn't you like to 20 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL play a game of dominoes with this good boy? He'll represent the French forces, and in the morning he must be able to tell me that he has won." In the midst of his tears the young sol- dier, his heart swelling in his distress, smiled at finding himself thus treated like a child. They have such need of it, the soldiers, after having done so valiantly the work of men! FROM ONE TO ANOTHER It is comforting to hear them talk about their superior officers, as a soldier of the 149th Infantry has just talked to me about his captain. "Oh, I can tell you, my captain had plenty of good blood in his veins. There was noth- ing suspicious about him. I saw him stand- ing straight up among the whistling bullets, giving his orders without flinching, without recoiling one inch, as if he were sitting at his desk and only flies were buzzing round his IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 21 head. And so gentle, too. Good to the men and always jolly. We were in luck to have him over us." I asked him questions about his campaign, and he talked freely, having only good things to tell. The taciturn ones are those who have sad memories to conceal. "We were the ones told off to take the vil- lage of S ," he said, "where the enemy was. My captain, who acted as chief of battalion, got us all together, and said to us: " 'There seem to be two or three Boches down there. We must get them out, eh"?' "Everybody knew very well what that meant, but we laughed and went to it in good part. What fights those were! Two days of bloody battles in the streets. Fin- ally the village was ours. We had one night's rest in a farmhouse, three-quarters of which had been destroyed. When we got there we spied an unfortunate porker in a corner. He had taken refuge there, fright- 22 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL ened by the firing. He came in very handy, I can tell you, for our stomachs were hollow. " 'Charge again on that Boche, there,' said the Captain. When we had eaten and slept and assembled again next day, he said: " 'Well, well, my lads, we're in danger of getting too soft here. Suppose we go on a little further and see what's happening.' "We marched on further, but the enemy, who were in force, began to shoot at us all at once from below. My Captain didn't ex- pose us needlessly. He made us lie down in the deserted trenches. There were corpses there and dead horses, and water, water everywhere. It rained without stopping. We spent the night up to our waists in water. It was enough to make one laugh." To laugh — this word turns up all the time in their recitals, and in the most unexpected manner. Oh, this French courage, which faces not only the bitter struggle with dan- ger, but disdains and mocks it, too; that ele- IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 23 gant courage of our fathers that has been born again amongst us. My foot-soldier, Number 149, was seized with quite a touching emotion when I told him that I knew his Captain's lady. "Tell her she may be proud," he said, "and that I'd willingly go back down there; for my country's sake, of course, but also and a good deal, on my Captain's account." Then I let him know something that I'd kept till the end of our interview, that his Captain, young as he was, had just been pro- moted to the rank of battalion chief; that the Cross of the Legion of Honour had been given him, and that, thanks to him, no doubt, the entire regiment had been mentioned in the order of the day. I won't attempt to picture the little soldier's moving and disin- terested joy. Near Number 3's bed I caught sight of a peasant woman from the Cher, in a white headdress, and an old man, who wore a me- dallion of 1870 on his breast. 24 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL "They are his parents," Sister Gabrielle explained to me. "I had word sent to them. The poor lad is in grave danger. Luckily I've got the management's permission to let the mother pass the nights here." In this way I became acquainted with the Mechins, French peasants of the old order, unalterably attached to the soil. They hope, nay, they are sure, that their son is going to get well. The sick man says nothing. They're all like that, our soldiers — ^no fool- ish tenderness, no pain given to their par- ents. Who knows, besides, how much their desire to live may have dwindled down after their tragic voyages to the frontier"? The soul must possess new powers of detachment when it has risen to the heights of absolute self-sacrifice. The little soldier does not de- ceive himself, Sister Gabrielle has told me, and when I expressed my admiration for the strange moral force that he gave proof of, she answered me proudly : "But they are all like that." IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 2^ Just as I was going to leave the room the sick man summoned me with his eyes. I went up to him and bent over him. "Do you want anything?" I asked. He made a sign of No, and with a great effort raised his hand outside the bed and reached it toward me, murmuring: "Thanks." I understood. It was his good-bye. He thought that he should perhaps not be there in the morning when I came back. OUR ORDERLIES The corps of orderlies is not always sym- pathetic. I must say, however, that in the room where I am employed, each one does his duty, thanks, no doubt, to the active su- pervision of the Sister, thanks also perhaps to three singularly moving personalities among the orderlies themselves. To begin with, there is Nicolas Indjema- toured, twenty-two, a Greek, and a subject of the Ottoman empire. He held a highly 26 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL lucrative position, of which he was very proud, in a bank at Constantinople, but when the war broke out, he could not bear the thought of being drawn into service with the Germans against France, and did not hesi- tate to give up his job. He would not even see his old mother again, but made a will providing for her with all his small store of property, and sailed away as a stowaway on a steamer which landed him at Marseilles. He enlisted as a volunteer in the Legion and was ordered here, where, however, soon after his arrival, he received a serious finger wound, and was sent to St. Dominic to be cured. He explained his state of mind to me with simplicity and emotion: "You can understand, madame, how ashamed I am, among all these brave men, not to have done anything yet for France. Luckily I can help Sister in serving them. It's a great honour for me." In the hospital room they all call him "the little Greek." Night and day he holds IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL T] himself in readiness to do things for the in- valids, whom he treats with touching con- sideration, refusing doggedly to accept the least remuneration from the management. Boisset, a stubby little orderly of some sixty years, is an old employee of the hos- pital. An ex-pastry cook with no family, he was operated on and cared for at the hospital ten years ago. His case is one of those mysterious stories of conversion that work themselves out in secret near this cross- shaped chapel, with its four great doors wide open on the wards of suffering. Boisset, once cured, begged permission not to leave the hospital, "hoping," as he said, "to consecrate my life to God in the service of the poor wounded." Do not his words recall those of the broth- ers of St. Francis*? Like them, Boisset has summed up his whole life in these two words : simplicity and heroism. He is at others' service night and day, just as he desired to be. The Sister calls him "her right arm," 28 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL something at which he only half shows his pride. He is the one that's called upon, with never any fear of putting him out, if there's anything to be done in the way of lifting some fellow on whom a specially delicate operation has been performed, or doing some other difficult bit of duty. "Boiss'et, Bois- set!" You get accustomed to hearing his name called out each moment. And Boisset, untiring, runs from one bed to the other, with his mincing, weary step, incessantly. In his moments of leisure he harks back to his old trade, begging from the kitchen some left-over bits of milk and whites of eggs, with which he cooks up some sweet dishes for his beloved patients, by whom they are much appreciated. What strikes me espe- cially in Boisset is his joyful spirit. This man, who deliberately leads the hardest kind of life, has a smile always on his lips, and cheerfulness always in his heart. In the little recess where he does the patients' dishes you can hear him humming the canticles, es- IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 29 pecially the magnificat, of which he is very fond, as he confided to me, because it's the song of joy. When I find myself with Bois- set I always want to talk to him about "Dame Poverty" and "Charity, her hand- maiden." Our third orderly, the Marquess of X, be- longs to one of the greatest Italian families. His mother was a French woman, and from the very beginning of hostilities, "he felt," as he put it, "the French blood boiling in his veins." He found a simple and admirable way of doing something for his mother's country ac- cordingly, by coming and putting himself at the services of the wounded. He wanted "to perform the humblest duties," he particu- larly specified. He did each day, from morning till night, very humble and some- times repulsive duties, without apparently recoiling from them. He is but one in the nameless crowd of orderlies, yet the patients very easily distinguish him from the others, 30 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL and the consolation and care that he gives them are specially sweet to them, because it includes the admiration of a noble soul and of a whole race for the French soldier. The day he arrived, the Marquess of X, after making a tour of the wounded, came up to me with tears in his eyes. "What extraordinary reserves of energy and heroism the French still have," he re- marked to me, much moved. "To hear these young fellows tell of the dangers they've gone through, talking about sufferings, not only without complaining of them, but laughing about them, is 'the finest part of it all: " WHEN THEY TALK Sister Gabrielle accosted me this morn- ing with a luminous smile : "We shall certainly save Number 32's leg. The work of disinfection is finished. The flesh begins to form again over the wound." IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 3I She is radiant. Such are her joys, the only ones she asks of life. Nothing else ex- ists, or ever will exist for her, and yet her face is still young. Let us incline our heads before such lives as hers I In a flash I un- derstand whence comes the deep-seated af- finity of soul that rules between Sister Ga- brielle and our soldiers ; she has given as they have given, everything, even themselves. Only in her case, it is for always and under all circumstances. I ask her what she thinks of Number 3, who seems to me to be picking up a bit. She shakes her head sadly. "His parents are full of illusions about him, but we can only prolong things for him, with all our care." Sad, oh, how sad ! A little later Mother Mechin comes and talks to me in a low voice about her son. "Such a good boy, madame! He never gave us one hour of trouble. He fought so well, they say, and at home he was as gentle as a girl. And he didn't drink or waste his 32 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL money. Just imagine, he has saved up a thousand francs, in little pieces, since he was a child. We didn't want him to cut into this money to go to the wars. We preferred to go without things ourselves to fit him out, and let him keep his little savings. He will be very glad of it when he gets married." Married ! Alas, poor boy I A terrible spouse is waiting for him, one who will not give him up. But already he has marched before her with as much courage as now perhaps he guesses at her coming near. He is very feeble, but he makes a sign that he would like to speak to me. I bend over his bed, and he whispers in my ear: "I took communion this morning: I am very glad." I had just brought him a medal of the Holy Virgin. He smiled with pleasure, and I am moved to the bottom of my soul, see- ing him kiss the medal and then place it on his heart. All this time we are making the acquaint- IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 33 ance of newer patients, as they are always coming into this ward, which is reserved for those that have undergone the most serious operations. "One never has the consolation of seeing them completely cured," Sister Gabrielle warned me with a sigh. I stop a moment before a little Turco, who took part in the battle of the Aisne. Both his legs are broken. His face stiffens with pain, and now and then a groan escapes him, though it is at once suppressed. He scolds himself about it, and warns himself, or calls me to witness, I am not sure which,