Leerie Part 17

"I do not know until yesterday that you were betrothed to Ma'am'selle O'Leary. That is so?"

Peter nodded.

"You have been generous, monsieur. I wish to thank you."

Peter held out his hand. "Oh, that's all right. American men aren't given to being jealous, as a rule. Besides, Miss O'Leary is the sort one has no right to be selfish with. I guess you understand?"

"Oui, monsieur. She belongs a little to every one, man or child, who needs the sympathy, the kind word, the loving heart. Moi, I comprehend. Some time, perhaps, I render back the service. Then you can trust me; the honor of Bertrand Fauchet can be trusted with women. Adieu, monsieur."

By dawn the next day the pa.s.sengers of the liner were scattering to the far corners of the fighting-front. Jacques Marchand had gone, _via_ the office of the _Figaro_, to Flanders. Monsieur Satan had been despatched to relieve another captain of the Cha.s.seurs Alpins with French outposts along the Oise. Peter had received his war permits to join the A. E. F. in action and Sheila had received her appointment to an evacuation hospital near the front. Her parting with Peter was over before either of them had time to realize it. Her train left the Gare du Nord before his. They had very little to say, these two who had claimed each other out of all the world and now were putting aside their personal happiness that they might give their service where it was so really needed. There were no whimperings of heart, no conscious self-righteousness; only a great gladness that hard work lay before them and that they understood each other.

"Good-by, man o' mine. Whatever happens, remember I am yours for always, and death doesn't count," and Sheila laid her lips to Peter's in final pledge.

"I know," said Peter. "That's what makes all this so absurdly easy. And, sweetheart, you are to remember this, never put any thought of me before what you feel you have got to do. Don't bungle your instincts. I'd swear by them next to G.o.d's own."

And so they went their separate ways.

There was no apprentices.h.i.+p for Sheila in the hospital whither she was sent. The chief of the surgical staff gave a cursory glance over the letter she had brought from the San, signed by the three leading surgeons in that state; then he looked hard at her.

"Hm ... m! And strong into the bargain. You're a G.o.dsend, Miss O'Leary."

Before the day had gone she was in charge of one of the operating-rooms; by midnight they had fifty-three major operations. And the days that followed were much the same; they pa.s.sed more like dreams than realities.

There were a few sane, clear moments when Sheila realized that the sky was very blue or leaden gray; that the sun shone or did not s.h.i.+ne, that the wards were cheery places and that all about her were faces consecrated to unselfish work or to patient suffering. These were the times when she could stop for a chat with the boys or write letters home for them. But for the most part she was being hurled through a maelstrom of operations and dressings with just enough time between to s.n.a.t.c.h her share of food and sleep. Her enthusiasm was unbounded for the marvelous efficiency of it all. She could never have believed that so many delicate operations could have been done in so few hours, that wounds could heal with such rapidity, that nerves could rebound and hearts come st.u.r.dily through to go about their business of keeping their owners alive. And every boy brought to her room was a fighting chance; but the fight was up to her and the surgeons, and they fought as archangels might to restore a new heaven on a befouled earth. Life had always seemed full and worth while to her. Now it seemed a super-life, shorn of everything petty and futile.

"War may be h.e.l.l; 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, pus.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.s 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 sh.e.l.l 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 nave 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 fas.h.i.+on 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."

"Same thing, brought up to date. It's sh.e.l.l shock. Memory all right, nerves and brain speeded up like a maniac; he's come back obsessed with the idea he must kill. First night he was brought in, before we knew what the matter was, he knifed the two Germans in his ward. Since then we've kept him safe between these two Australians, but he has their nerves almost shattered." The chief smiled grimly.

To Sheila it seemed diabolically logical. What was more natural in this business of war than that when one's reason went over the top it should grip the mad desire to kill? But the horror of it! She turned back to the day's work white and sick at heart. For twenty-four hours she accepted it as inevitable. At the end of that time her memory was harkening back to the bashful boy of the French liner, the boy who could smile like a lost cherub, who looked at her with the fineness of soul that made her companions.h.i.+p a willing gift. Had that fine, simple part of him been blown to eternity and could eternity alone bring it back? And what of the years before him, the years such a physique was bound to claim? Did it mean a mad-cell with a keeper?

At the end of a third day the old Leerie of the San was walking through the wards of the hospital with her lamp trimmed and burning, casting such a radiance on that eager face that the men turned in their cots to catch the last look of her as she pa.s.sed; and after she had gone blinked across at one another as if to say: "Did you see it? Did you feel it? And what was it, anyway?"

She was looking for some one; and she found him with a leg shot off, playing a mouth-organ in the farthest corner of one ward. He was a Cha.s.seur Alpin; he had been wounded in the same charge as Monsieur Satan.

Sheila was searching for cause and effect and she prayed this man might help her find them. As she sat down on the edge of the cot she thanked her particular star for a speaking knowledge of French. "Bon jour, mon ami. I have come for your help. C'est pour Capitaine Fauchet."

The mouth-organ dropped to the floor. The eyes that had been merely pleasantly retrospective gathered gloom. "Mais, que voulez-vous? All the others say it is hopeless. Tell me, ma'am'selle, what can I do?"

"I don't know--I hardly know what any of us can do. But we must try something. We know so little about sh.e.l.l shock, so often the impossible happens. Tell me, were you with him?"

The soldier hitched himself forward and leaned over on one elbow.

"Toujours, ma'am'selle, always I am with him. Listen. I can tell you. I was born in the little town of Tourteron where Bertrand Fauchet was born--and where Nanette came to live with her brother Paul and their uncle, the good abbe. I was not of their cla.s.s; but we all played together as children and even then Bertrand loved Nanette. The year war came they were betrothed. I am not tiring ma'am'selle?"

"No. Go on."

"We both enlisted in the Cha.s.seurs Alpins. They made Bertrand a lieutenant, then a captain--he was a man to lead. And how kind, how good to his men! That was before he had won his nom de guerre--before they called him Monsieur Satan. If there was a danger he would see it first and race for it, to get ahead of his men. He would give them no orders that he would not fill with them; and always so pitying for the prisoners. 'Treat them kindly, mes garcons,' he would cry; and what mercy he would show! Mon Dieu! I have seen him, when his mouth was cracking with the thirst, pour the last drop from his canteen down the throat of a dying Boche, or share the last bread in his baluchon with a wounded prisoner. And the many times he has crept into No Man's Land to bring in a blesse we could hear moaning in the dark; and when it turned out a Boche, as so often it did, he would carry him with the same tenderness. That was Bertrand Fauchet when war began. Once I ask him, 'Why are you so careful with the Boches?' and he smiled that little-boy smile of his and say: 'Why not? We are still gentlemen if we are at war. And listen, Francois--some day our little Tourteron may fall into Boche hands. I would have them know many kindnesses from us before that happens.'

"Eh bien, Tourteron did fall into their hands, ma'am'selle, and there it has been until a fortnight ago. The German ranks swept it like a sea and made it their own, as they made the houses, the cattle, the orchards, the maids, quite their own. You comprehend? After that Bertrand fight like the devil and pray like the saint. Then one day a Boche stabs Paul--Nanette's brother Paul--as he stoops to succor him. Fauchet sees; and he hears the tales that come across the trenches to us. The abbe is crucified to the chapel door because he gives sanctuary to the young girls; Pere Fauchet is shot in the Square with other anciens for example.

After that Capitaine Fauchet gives us the order 'no mercy,' and we kill in battle and out. Ma'am'selle shudders--mais, que voulez-vous? He is Monsieur Satan now; but I still think he prays.

"And now comes the big drive of the Supreme Command. Village after village that has been Boche land for four years becomes French again. The people go mad with joy; they come rus.h.i.+ng out to meet our regiments like souls turned out of h.e.l.l by G.o.d Himself. But such souls, ma'am'selle! Be thankful in your heart you shall never have the little places of America thrown back to you by a retreating Boche army, never look into the faces of the people who have been made to serve their desires. It is like when the tide goes out on the coast and leaves behind it wreckage and slime.

Only here it was human wreckage.

"At last the night came when we lay outside Tourteron. Bertrand called for me and we bivouacked together. We were to attack some time before dawn, after the moon had set. We could not trust our tongues--at such times things are better left unsaid; so we lay and smoked and prayed against what we feared. Only once Bertrand spoke--'Francois, to-morrow will see me always a devil or a saint, le bon Dieu knows which.'

"The moon shone bright till after midnight. We lay under cover of thin weeds, and beyond lay the meadow and stream and then the town. About twelve we heard the crisp bark of a sniper--two, three shots; then everything was still as death again. We were watching the shadows play across the meadow and timing the minutes before the moon would sink, when out of one of those shadows she came--straight across the meadow and the moonlight. It was Nanette, ma'am'selle. We knew it on the instant. She had a way of carrying the head and a step one could not forget. It was she the sniper had been after. One side of her face was crimson, the other side white and beautiful. But she did not seem to know, and the first look I had told me she had gone quite mad.

"I could feel Bertrand Fauchet stiffen by my side; I could feel him reach out for my Rosalie and grip it fast. Then he began a low or crooning call.

He dared not call out loud--he dared not move to give our troops away! It was to be a surprise attack. So all he could do was to wait and call softly as to a little child, 'Nanette cherie, allons, allons!'

"There had been a skirmish in the meadow two days before; we had given way and the handful of dead we had left behind were still unburied. I think Nanette had heard that the Cha.s.seurs Alpins had come and she had stolen out to find her lover. She came slowly, so slowly, and frail as a shadow herself. As she pa.s.sed each corpse she knelt beside it and sang the foolish little berceuse that Poitou mothers sing to their babies. We could hear the humming far away, and as she came nearer we could hear the words.

Ma'am'selle knows them, perhaps?

"'Ah! Ah! papillon, marie-toi-- Helas, mon maitre, je n'ai pas de quoi, La dans ma bergeri-e J'ai cent moutons; ca s'ra pour faire les noces de papillon.'"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The first look I had told me she had gone quite mad"]

The soldier crooned the song through to himself as if under the spell of the story he was telling. Then he went on. "She sang it through each time, patting the blue coats, pus.h.i.+ng back the caps of those who still wore them, looking hard into each dead face. But she would always turn away with the little shake of the head, so triste, ma'am'selle. And all the time the man beside me calling out his heart in a whisper--'Nanette-- Nanette--allons, cherie!'

"She was not twenty yards away, the arms of Bertrand Fauchet were reaching out to take her, when, pouf! the sniper barked again and Nanette went down like a pale cornflower before the reaper. And all the time we laid there, waiting for the moon to set. When we charge we charge like devils. We swept Tourteron clean of the Boches; _and we take no prisoners!_ For that night every man remember the one thing, they love their captain and they see what he has seen. But before the day is gone we are sane men again, all but our captain. The sh.e.l.l that takes my leg takes what pity, what softness he has left, and leaves him with just the frenzy to kill. And it is not for me to wonder--moi--for I know all."

The story haunted Sheila for days; always when she closed her eyes she could see the girl Nanette coming across the meadow in the moonlight. She never failed to open them before she saw too far. The plaintive melody of the berceuse rang in her ears on duty and off, till at last she could stand it no longer. It was the old dominant Leerie who hunted up the chief.

"Colonel Sparks, I want you to put me on Captain Fauchet's case. The work is lighter now; you can do with one less operating-room. I know it's bad form to interfere, but I want my chance on that case."

The chief looked his surprise. "I've heard of your fondness for breaking rules--wondered when you were going to begin. I don't mind giving you up, but that case is hopeless. I'm sure of it. Listen--and this isn't for publication--Fauchet got out of his ward again, hid in the corridors until the nurse was gone, and killed another German last night. That man is incurably insane and we can't keep him here any longer."

"Please!" There was a look about Leerie that could not be denied, a compelling prayer for the right to save another human being. "You could keep him a little longer; I'll promise there'll be no more dead Germans.

Give me my chance."