The Red Cross Barge Part 13

Thousands of times had the happy Goethe walked through that low door on his way to the beloved....

At last, vaguely, obscurely, there came to the Herr Doktor the knowledge of where he was, and who was with him there. But the knowledge brought confusion, and distress of mind. His a.s.sociations with this little cabin-room were all of the mother-spoilt, given-to-base-pleasures princeling, his Highness Prince Egon von Witgenstein. The thought that the Prince might be in Valoise, lying in wait for the young French Red Cross nurse, disturbed him, made him restless. If only he could remember! But it was as if great stretches of his mind and memory were darkened, hopelessly.

'Honoured miss?' he muttered feebly.

And she answered, oh so gently, in a voice he had never heard her use to him, though often these last few days he had heard it whispering kind, consoling, hopeful things to the suffering and the dying: 'Yes, my friend?'

'Where is Prince Egon--my patient who was here?'

'He left for Paris the day my father became so much worse--don't you remember?'

He remembered nothing, but the nurse rea.s.sured and comforted him, gave him a sense of s.p.a.cious leisure in which to think of himself. 'What has to me happened?' he asked. 'Why am I here?'

'You were wounded by a sh.e.l.l, and I think by the wall of a falling house. We--I and your head surgeon--thought you would be more comfortable here than in the church.'

'And have you the whole time here been?' he asked wonderingly.

'Yes, and I have promised to stay with you till a surgeon comes.'

'You are hulfreicher than any surgeon,' he muttered, in so low a tone that she had to lift herself and bend over him to hear the words she did not understand.

The pale white glimmer of the dawn filtered through the white curtain stretched across the little window, and she saw that there was a change, a pinched grey look, in his face. Tears started to her eyes. Then he was not better, as she had ardently hoped. This return to consciousness, to connected thought, was not the good sign she had ignorantly supposed it to be?

Suddenly he groaned, a spent, weary groan. 'Pardon, honoured miss, it is fatigue which the pain hard makes.'

She gave him morphia. 'Try and sleep, my poor friend, and I will do likewise. The morning will soon be here.'

3

There came a series of loud, excited rappings on the door. It burst open, and a little girl--a child to whom in the past, which now seemed aeons away, she had been kind--stood breathless, smiling, 'Mamselle!

Mamselle! Our soldiers are here! Come and see them. I ran away from mother to tell you! They said you were here.'

Jeanne Rouannes put a finger to her lips. She gave a swift look at the unconscious form stretched stiffly out on the narrow bed. If only she could get a surgeon now, at once--

Putting on her cap, she followed the child up the wooden steps leading to the deck of the barge, and even as she did so, she heard the steady, rhythmic sound of marching, broken across by confused, shrill cries of joy and welcome.

Her heart began to beat; she hastened across the sunlit deck of the barge, and ran swiftly down the narrow stone jetty, with the excited little girl clinging to her hand.

'Les voila! Les voila!'

And through a mist of tears Jeanne Rouannes gazed on a sight she will never forget.

They came swinging along, the familiar, active, red-trousered figures looking so slight, so short, so _old-fashioned_ after the huge, splendidly-equipped Germans. But though war-worn, shabby as their predecessors had never been shabby even at their worst, these countrymen of hers wore their hot, short blue jackets, their wide poppy-coloured trousers with an air--that most inspiring air of all airs--the air of victory.

How ecstatically happy the sight would have made Jeanne Rouannes a month ago! Now, they simply seemed to her oppressed heart and brain a pageant which brought vague shadowy fears, and a need on her part for thought and action, for which she felt unfit, inadequate.

At last there rode up a regiment of Dragoons. Above their silver helmets--still silver, for these were the early days of war, and the French had not yet learnt the wise and cunning tricks of their enemies--black plumes nodded. Suddenly they were halted, and their commander turned his horse, and rode up under the trees to the spot where the Red Cross nurse was standing. He lifted his helmet off his head, and showed a young, brave, happy face.

'Madame?' he said courteously. 'Can you tell me when the Germans left Valoise? Have they had time to go far? Did they leave in order or in disorder? Is it true that the upper part of the town is in ruins?'

She answered his questions, and then put one of her own. 'Have you a Red Cross doctor here, M. le Capitaine?'

'Alas! no. The Red Cross attached to my brigade was sent for yesterday.

There has been very fierce fighting, Madame--a series of great combats.

But my troops are comparatively fresh--they still have to win their laurels.' He looked round, and lowered his voice. 'Have you any German wounded? I hope not. But though they run no real danger'--he had seen a look of--was it fear?--flash into her face--'our soldiers are terribly incensed, for we have come across awful things done by those brutes during the last few days.' His face contracted with reminiscent pain and horror. 'Such sights do not make one feel tender to even a wounded Boche.'

The Red Cross nurse gave him a long sad look. What beautiful, sincere, blue eyes she had--what a firm, finely drawn mouth! He wondered where her husband was fighting.

'I must tell you, mon capitaine, that there are, or perhaps I should say were, a number of dying Germans in the church. All that could be moved "they" took away. But down here, in the barge, I have a very special case----'

She moistened her lips and went desperately on, scarcely aware that he was listening to her with great respect and attention. 'The dying man on the barge is an Englishman, himself a surgeon of the Red Cross, who was wounded by a sh.e.l.l only yesterday. He was untiringly good to our wounded--to all the wounded. It is my great wish M. le Capitaine, that he should have a quiet death.'

'But certainly,' he said eagerly. 'What would not I do--what would we not all do--for any Englishman? I will put two of my own men to guard the approaches to your barge, Madame. As for the wounded in the church, I will at once go there myself, and see that everything is done for the poor devils.'

They bowed ceremoniously to one another, and 'mon capitaine' allowed himself the pleasure of gazing after the slight, graceful figure of the Red Cross nurse as long as it remained within his arc of vision. That was not long, for Jeanne Rouannes sped away swiftly--fearful of what she would find in the little cabin room. It seemed to her so long since she had left it, and she was nervously afraid lest he might have recovered consciousness, and missed her. 'I am coming,' she called out, breathlessly, in English, and then again as she came close to the door, 'I am here,' she said.

But the Herr Doktor went on staring sightlessly before him. He was busily talking, talking argumentatively, in hoa.r.s.e, broken whispers to himself, and his fingers picked at the brown blanket.

Sinking down on her knees, she grasped his clammy hands in hers, and laid them to her cheek in a pa.s.sion of desire to soothe, to comfort, to make easier the struggle she thought lay immediately before him.

Suddenly there floated in the sound of men's voices singing--a vast, magnificent roaring volume of sound--'Allons, enfants de la Patrie--ie--ie--ie ...'

There came a gleam across the dying man's face. 'Das ist schon' ('That is beautiful'), he whispered.

'... le jour de gloire est arrive!'

The Herr Doktor murmured 'Das genugt mir!' ('That is enough!') and his head fell back, sinking deep into the soft pillow.

Jeanne Rouannes went on holding his dead hand for a few moments. Then she got up from her knees, and made the sign of the Cross on his damp forehead. As she did so, there burst on her ears the closing lines of the great battle hymn of freedom--

_Liberte Liberte, cherie, Combats avec tes defenseurs!

Sous nos drapeaux que la victoire Accoure a tes males accents!

Que tes ennemis expirants Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire!_

and the terrible, inspiring refrain--

_Aux armes, citoyens! formez vos bataillons Marchons;--qu'un sang impur Abreuve nos sillons!_

PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. LTD., COLCHESTER LONDON AND ETON

CONAN DOYLE'S NEW 'SHERLOCK HOLMES' STORY.

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