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THE RED CROSS BARGE

BY MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES

AUTHOR OF 'THE CHINK IN THE ARMOUR,' 'THE LODGER,' 'GOOD OLD ANNA,' ETC.

LONDON

SMITH, ELDER & CO.
15 WATERLOO PLACE
1916

[All rights reserved]

CONTENTS

[PART I]
[PART II]
[PART III]
[PART IV]
[PART V]

THE RED CROSS BARGE

PART I

1

The Herr Doktor moved away his chair from the large round table across half of which, amid the remains of a delicious dessert a large-scale map of the surrounding French countryside had been spread out.

On the other half of the table had been pushed a confusion of delicate white-and-gold coffee-cups and almost empty liqueur-bottles—signs of the pleasant ending to the best dinner the five young Uhlan officers who were now gathered together in this French inn-parlour had eaten since 'The Day.'

Although the setting sun still threw a warm, lambent light on the high chestnut trees in the paved courtyard outside, the low-walled room was already beginning to be filled with the pale golden shadows of an August night. A few moments ago the Herr Commandant had loudly called for a lamp, and Madame Blanc, owner of the Tournebride, had herself brought it in. Placed in the centre of the table the lamp illumined the flushed, merry young faces now bent over the large coloured map.

Alone the Herr Doktor sat apart from the bright circle of light, and, although he was himself smoking a pipe, the fumes of the other men's strong cigars seemed to stifle him.

Of only medium height, with the thoughtful, serious face which marks the thinker and worker; clad, too, in the plain, practical 'feld-grau' uniform of a German Red Cross surgeon, he was quite unlike his temporary comrades. And there was a further reason for this unlikeness. The Herr Doktor, Max Keller by name, was from Weimar; the young officers now round him were Prussians of the Junker class. They were quite civil to the Herr Doktor—in fact they were too civil—and their high spirits, their constant, exultant boasts of all they meant to do in Paris—in Paris where they expected to be within a week, for it was now August 27, 1914—jarred on his tired, sensitive brain.

Behind his large tortoise-shell spectacles the Herr Doktor's eyes ached and smarted. He belonged to the generation which had been, even as children, put into spectacles. His present companions, more fortunate than he, had been born into the 'nature-eye' cycle of German oculistic research. Not one of them wore spectacles, and their exemption was one of the many reasons why he, though only thirty-four years of age, felt so much older, and so apart from them in every way.

Alone, of the six men gathered together to-night in that French inn-parlour, the Herr Doktor knew what war really means, and something—as yet he did not know much—of what it brings with it. He had been, if not exactly in, then what he secretly thought far worse, close to, the battle of Charleroi, and for the ten days which had followed that battle he had been plunged in all the stern horrors, and the gaspingly hurried, unceasing work, of an improvised field hospital.

The fine abounding-with-life young officers, with whom a special circumstance had thrown him for some days, had so far escaped even a skirmish with the unfeared enemy; that they loudly lamented the fact, that they cursed, in all sincerity, the chance which had delayed their regiment till the first series of victories—Mons, St. Quentin, Charleroi—which had opened the wide road to Paris, was over, secretly irritated the Herr Doktor. He knew the limitless extent to which they were to be envied. And that knowledge made him hopelessly out of touch with them—out of touch as he could never be with the arrogant by-his-mother-spoilt lieutenant, his Highness Prince Egon von Witgenstein, whose arrival in the luxurious motor ambulance now standing just outside in the courtyard of the Tournebride alone accounted for the Herr Doktor's presence here. It was true that the boastful, childishly vain, fretful-tempered Prince Egon also talked unceasingly of the baser charms of Paris, but he, at any rate, had earned his right to those same base charms by the three wounds from which he was now slowly recovering, thanks to the skill and care of the Weimar surgeon.

Sitting there, apart from the others, puffing steadily, silently, at his pipe, the Herr Doktor's mind, his dreamy, sensitive, imaginative mind, retraced all that had happened in the last two hours.

The taking possession of this charming little town of Valoise-sur-Marne had been carried through with most agreeable ease. The Mayor had blustered a bit, and had expressed his determination to write an account of all that had taken place to his Government. But when he had been told, in language of careful, cold, calculated brutality, that at the slightest disturbance or ill-behaviour of his townsmen or townswomen, he himself would be at once led out and shot, he had come to heel, and promised to do his best to preserve order.

There had been, however, a rather painful scene, one which the Herr Doktor disliked to remember, with the parish priest. The Curé of Valoise was an old, white-haired man, and at first he had behaved with considerable dignity—with far more dignity, for instance, than the excitable Mayor. Also he had expressed himself as quite willing to be hostage for his flock's good behaviour.

The scene had occurred when the priest had been ordered off with the guard to the temporary prison he was to share with the Mayor. With what had seemed a most uncalled-for agitation, he had pleaded to be allowed to go and pay a last visit to three dying men. 'Surely you will accept my word of honour to return within one hour?' he had exclaimed, and then, in answer to a natural, if sharply uttered question—'No, I cannot—I will not—tell you where these dying men are! All I can say is that they are well within the limits of the town.' To accede to his request had been, of course, out of the question; and to the Herr Doktor's surprise, and indeed to his disgust, it was plain that the German Commandant's refusal to let the old priest have his way had gratified the Mayor—indeed the only smile any of them had seen on the French Republican official's face was while this discussion, this urgent painful discussion, was going on.

After it was over, the two of them had been marched off to the Tournebride, where a large windowless fruit and tool house, standing isolated in the middle of Madame Blanc's kitchen garden, had been assigned to them as prison.

Everything else had gone quite smoothly, and both officers and men had found delightful quarters in the fine old inn which stood at the top of the hill, taking up all one side of the Grande Place. The Tournebride, so the Commandant informed the Herr Doktor, had been noted among gay Parisians, in the days of peace which now seemed so long ago, as a motoring luncheon and supper resort. Thus the conquerors of Valoise had found there the best of good wine, good food, and good beds.

2

At last the Herr Doktor got up from his chair. Unnoticed by the others, he slipped out into the cooler air outside. The courtyard, shaded by high horse chestnut trees, was now crowded with good-humoured German cavalry-men waiting, patiently enough, for the savoury meal which Madame Blanc and her two anxious-faced young daughters were engaged in preparing for them.

As the Herr Doktor walked quickly over to the other side of the quadrangle, the soldiers respectfully made way for him, and he stood, for a few moments unnoticed, on the threshold of the big kitchen of the Tournebride. To eyes already war-worn it was a pleasant sight.

To and fro in her low, arch-roofed, spacious domain, the landlady came and went, busily intent on her considerable task of feeding over a hundred men. There were huge copper cauldrons on the steel top of the fourneau, and Madame Blanc herself constantly stirred and inspected their contents. But when she became suddenly aware of the German doctor's presence at the kitchen door, she stayed her labours and came towards him.

Silently she waited, a stern look of heavy-hearted endurance on her face, for him to speak; and at last, in a French which was somewhat halting, he put the question he had come to ask, and on the answer to which, as he well knew, depended a good deal of the future comfort of his illustrious, tiresome patient, Prince Egon von Witgenstein. Was there a hospital in Valoise?

'There is no hospital in Valoise.' Madame Blanc's voice was very, very cold. But after a moment's pause she added: 'The nuns were chased away four years ago, and the Government have not yet decided what to do with their convent.'

As there came a look of disappointment on his mild face she went on, as if the words were being dragged from her reluctant lips: 'But M. le Médecin will find a Red Cross barge on the river.'

Madame Blanc's powerful, swarthy face was set and grim; she did not look as if she had ever smiled, or if she had, would ever smile again. Yet the man now standing opposite to her remembered that, when he had first arrived with his patient, she had shown a certain maternal interest in the inmate of the Red Cross motor ambulance which now stood in a corner of her large paved courtyard, also that within a few minutes of the peaceful assault of her inn she had herself cooked for the wounded officer a delicate little meal.

The Herr Doktor smiled conciliatingly, but she gave him no answering smile. Her heart was still too full of wrath, of surprise, of agonised, impotent rage, at the happenings of the last two hours.

A troop of the abhorred, dreaded Uhlans had suddenly appeared, clattering along the wide Route Nationale which followed the right bank of the river Marne. Without drawing rein they had ridden up the steep, central street of Valoise, and then they had turned straight into the courtyard of the Tournebride.

Madame Blanc had been amazed at the extent and particularity of the Prussians' knowledge of the town, and of her inn. Not only had they greeted her, with a strange mixture of joviality and sternness, by name, but the golden-haired, pink-cheeked commanding officer had actually alluded to the spécialité of the Tournebride—a certain chicken-liver omelette which Parisians motored out to enjoy on all fine Sundays from each May to each October! And then, perhaps because she had tacitly refused to fall in with his pleasant humour, the young Uhlan officer, after his first roughly jovial words, had suddenly threatened her with mysterious and terrible penalties if she disobeyed, in any one particular, his own and his comrades' confusing orders.

Yes, they had only arrived two hours ago, and yet already Madame Blanc hated these arrogant Uhlan officers with all the strength of her powerful, secretive French nature. Quite willingly, had she thought it would have served the slightest good purpose, would she have put a good dose of poison in the excellent soup they, in the company of the man now talking to her, had just eaten.

She also hated, but in an infinitely lesser degree, their men—those big, bearded, splendidly equipped soldiers clad in the grey-green cloth which her strong common sense had at once told her must be so far more serviceable, because blending with nature's colouring, than the bright blue and red uniforms of her own countrymen. But for the wounded youth, who now lay straight and still in the huge grey motor-car, bearing on its side a painted Red Cross which she could almost touch from where she stood at her low kitchen door, she felt a thrill of motherly pity and concern....

'A Red Cross barge on the river?' repeated the Herr Doktor doubtfully.

For a man who had never been in France before, and who had been taught French by a German who, in his turn, had never been in France save during the brief, glorious-and-ever-victorious-campaign of 1870, the Herr Doktor spoke very fair French. But while he spoke, and even more while he listened to Madame Blanc's quick, short utterances, he blamed himself severely for having wasted so much time on the English language. English was now never likely to be of much use to him, save perhaps during the coming Occupation of London. If only he had spent as much time and trouble over French as he had done over English, not only would it have been useful here and now, but it would have been invaluable a little later on—when he took up his quarters, as he hoped to do within the next two or three weeks, at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.

'Yes,' said Madame Blanc, with a touch of irritation in her even, vibrating voice, 'as I have just had the honour of explaining to M. le Médecin, there is a Red Cross barge on our river. Mademoiselle Rouannès is there all day, from six in the morning till nine o'clock each night.'

'Is Mademoiselle'—he had not really caught the curious name, 'is she'—he hesitated for the right phrase—'is she a Sister of Compassion?'

'I have just told M. le Médecin that all our good sisters were chased away by the Government four years ago. Mademoiselle Rouannès is our doctor's daughter.'

And then, as the man standing before her uttered a quick guttural exclamation of relief, she added sharply, 'You cannot see Doctor Rouannès, for he is very ill—some say he is dying.' As again she saw a look of disappointment overcast his face, she added—'But his daughter is a very serious demoiselle. The wounded have every confidence in Mademoiselle Rouannès.'

'Thank you, Madame, I will now the barge of the Red Cross go and seek,' he said, and bowed courteously.

'It is just at the bottom of the hill, this side of the lock. But wait a minute—I can show you the exact place from the abreuvoir.'

She stepped across the threshold of her kitchen, and walked, with a good deal of simple dignity, through the groups of tall soldiers who stood at ease, contentedly smoking their big pipes under the chestnut-leaves canopy of her courtyard. They made way for her pleasantly enough—some even smiled the foolish, fond smile of the big man-child, for she reminded more than one of these burly giants of his own mother. But Madame Blanc gave no answering smile, as, gazing straight before her, she hurried on towards the high gilt gates of her domain—a domain which till a hundred years ago, and for more than a hundred years before that, had kennelled royal staghounds, and housed their huntsmen.

The Herr Doktor stopped for a moment to speak to a non-commissioned officer, a good fellow who came from his own town of Weimar. 'Keep an eye on the motor ambulance,' he muttered. 'You might, in fact, go and ask His Highness if he requires anything further just now. Tell him I have gone out to look for quiet quarters. It would be impossible to have the Prince here to-night; the house won't settle down for a long time.'

The other grinned, broadly. 'These are comfortable, greatly-to-be-commended quarters, nevertheless, Herr Doktor.' And the Herr Doktor, nodding, hastened after his guide.

He followed her through the wrought-iron gilt gates, now wreathed with white jessamine and orange-coloured trumpet flowers, and so to the great open space which formed the apex, not only of the hill, but of the little town, of Valoise-sur-Marne.

A moment later they stood before the oval abreuvoir, a stone-rimmed pool at which the timid does sometimes came, even now, to quench their thirst at night.

For a few moments Madame Blanc gazed dumbly over the dear familiar scene, and the German surgeon respected her silence.

Lit by the afterglow of the setting August sun, the little town of Valoise lay spread before them ... a picturesque, gaily charming cluster of white, grey, and red roof-trees, full of the peaceful stateliness of aspect which is a distinguishing mark of so many of the old villages and towns set amid chestnut groves, and on river banks, within easy reach of Paris.

From the days of Henri IV, the Kings of France had possessed a favourite hunting lodge on the edge of the wooded uplands stretching behind the town, and though the Pavillon du Roi had been destroyed during the Revolution, the avenue of high forest trees which had once bounded the royal demesne still remained, faithful witness to a vanished glory, while a fragmentary survival of what had been a grandiose and splendid whole remained in the stone abreuvoir.

And yet, as following his companion's example, the Herr Doktor gazed over what was in truth a singularly pleasing and soothing scene, a sense of chill, even of discomfort, crept over his kindly heart.

Valoise looked, on this fine summer evening, as might look a place stricken with the plague. Some melancholy-looking dogs had been shut out of doors: they, and a few cats who leapt furtively out of their way, seemed the only living things in the town.

Why were the French civilian population so sullen? The great, generous-hearted, all-conquering German army did not war on children and women—not, that is, so long as these women and children behaved in a reasonable, civilised manner.

The Herr Doktor had already heard rumours of certain painful, frightening things which had had to be done, and which were still being done, in Belgium. But the French were a more civilised people than the Belgians—or so the cultured Max Keller had persuaded himself to believe. Further, the Germans had no real quarrel with the French, the foolish, impulsive, chivalrous French, who had allowed themselves to be dragged into a quarrel with which they had no concern, in order to support barbarous Russia and lawless, savage Servia!

Standing by the side of the sensible, clean housewife who had just served him so admirably cooked a meal, the Herr Doktor reflected complacently that very soon some sort of peace would be signed in Paris, after which the French and Germans, friends as they had never been before, would join together to break the might of the now decadent, nerveless, and treacherous English.

He would have liked to have expressed some of this comfortable, so-friendly-to-the-French feeling to the woman who now stood, her hands clenched together, as if absorbed in painful, far-away thoughts, by his side. But he knew that his French was too halting to convey these cultured-and-so-humane and German sentiments. He started slightly when Madame Blanc suddenly turned to him with the words, 'It is getting rather too dark to see the place clearly from here, but if M. le Médecin will go straight down to the river, and across the wall, he will see the Red Cross barge just in front of him.'

Before he had time to utter the words aloud, 'Very truly, Madame, do I thank you,' she had left his side, and was halfway across the Grande Place, on her way towards the Tournebride.

Feeling a little discomfited by her abrupt departure, the Herr Doktor stepped forward, and started walking briskly down the hill.

How pleasant it was to be alone—alone with his own exciting and, yes, glorious thoughts! The absence of solitude had been the thing which had tried Max Keller the most in this amazing-and-ever-victorious campaign. During the last three days he had found the conversation of Prince Egon's brother officers particularly wearing, as also very, very—he hardly knew what phrase to use even in his inmost mind, but at last he found it—very-lacking-in-culture-and-seriousness.

The Paris of which these Junkers talked incessantly was not the Paris to which he, the Herr Doktor, looked forward so eagerly, the Paris, for instance, of the Pasteur Institute, and of the Salpétrière. The Paris of these young officers—and he regretted indeed that it was so—was the Paris which, as every good German knew, so aroused the anger and contempt of God as to cause France to be once more crushed and humiliated to the dust. Of this Paris there existed a very fair imitation in what had been euphemistically called 'the night life of Berlin,' but Berlin, to the Herr Doktor at any rate, did not stand for his Fatherland as Paris stands for France.

So musing, so thankful for even a few moments of peace and solitude, the mildest of the conquerors of Valoise reached the bottom of the hill.

Across the paved Route Nationale was an avenue, or mall, of lime trees which formed a green wall between the road and the river. He crossed the street as he had been directed to do, and then, when actually under the dense arch formed by interlacing branches of green leaves, he uttered an exclamation of relief; for there before him, close to the entrance of the lock, and only to be reached by a narrow stone jetty, lay on the placid, slow-moving waters of the river a broad, white barge, on the side of which was painted a large Red Cross. The small, square, white curtained windows just above the dimpling water line were all open, and, set amidships, was a round porthole, on whose edge stood a pot of brilliant scarlet geraniums.

On the deck of the barge stood a woman. She wore the loose, unbecoming white overall which forms the only uniform of a French Red Cross nurse, and there was a red cross on her breast. From where he stood the German surgeon could see that she was young, straight, and lithe. The gleams of the sun, which was now resting, like a huge scarlet ball, on the horizon, lit up her fair hair, which was massed, in the French way, above her forehead. He saw her in profile, for she seemed to be gazing, through the waning light, down the river beyond the lock.

With a queer thrill at the heart the Herr Doktor told himself that so might Wagner have visioned his Elsa in war-time. Since the Herr Doktor had left Weimar, he had not seen a so awakening-to-the-better-feelings and pleasant-to-the-senses-of-man sight as was this French golden-haired girl.

Taking off his cap—for Max Keller was aware that Frenchwomen are curiously punctilious, and he did not wish her to suppose that a cultured German could be lacking in even unnecessary courtesy—he started walking along the narrow stone jetty.

And then, when at last he stood just opposite to the barge, and as suddenly the Red Cross nurse became aware of his presence, he saw a dreadful look of aversion and dread flash into her face and she turned and hastened away, down what he concluded must be a stairway leading to the interior of the barge.

For what seemed to him a considerable time the Herr Doktor stared at the now empty deck with a feeling of sharp exasperation and disappointment.

In the little town where had come that awful rush of wounded after the battle of Charleroi he had already been in contact with the French Red Cross. There had been several Frenchwomen—two countesses, so he had been told, and a duchess—middle-aged ladies who had treated him with suave, if distant, courtesy, and who had always deferred, most politely and sensibly, to his professional knowledge. In the same hastily improvised Feld-Lazaret there had also been three English nurses; them he had naturally disliked, the more so that they had a sharp, short way with them, and always seemed to disapprove of his methods—methods which, being German, were of course in every way superior-and-more-truly-scientific than anything likely to issue from the English Army Medical Service.

3

For some time, perhaps for as long as five minutes, the Herr Doktor stood on the stone jetty. He did not like to step down upon the barge and at once take possession of it, as it was his undoubted right, almost his duty, to do. Also, though in no way a coward, his nerve had been shaken by the terrible things he had seen, and by the long fatiguing hours of desperately hard work he had lately gone through. Horrible stories were whispered as to what the French were capable of doing to an unarmed enemy. The inside of this big, roomy barge might contain youths and old men armed with knives and scythes.... Perhaps his wisest course would be to go up the hill again, and, together with his patient, return with an armed escort who would deal in summary fashion with any evil-intentioned inmates of the Red Cross barge.

While he was thus hesitating, there suddenly floated towards him the stifled sounds of hurried whisperings. They were followed, a moment later, by the lady of the barge herself. But her fair hair was now almost entirely hidden by the severe, unbecoming head-dress of a French Red Cross nurse; and the hard white coif and flowing veil obscured the free, graceful, rather haughty poise of her head.

As at last she faced him squarely, he became painfully aware of the mingled terror and anger which made her face turn from white to red, and filled her blue eyes with a dreadful look of haunting fear.

The Herr Doktor was well read in the great Romantics of the world, and quite involuntarily he thought of Rebecca and a certain scene in 'Ivanhoe.'

Just behind the tall, slender figure, forming at once a guard and an escort to the Red Cross nurse, came a short, sturdy-looking, elderly woman, clad in a dark blue-and-white check gown, and an old man, dressed in a shabby black suit.

Stepping forward alone, Mademoiselle Rouannès stood close to the plank which connected the stone jetty with the barge, and while the Herr Doktor was trying to compose the right form of words, at once firm and conciliatory, with which to address her, she suddenly spoke.

'How many wounded have you?' she asked, in a low, clear voice. 'I must tell you, Monsieur, that we have not room for many here, for we already have eighteen.' As he remained silent, she went on, a little breathlessly, and he saw that her under-lip was quivering, 'We have one empty cabin, but it is not very large; it will not hold more than six.'

And then at last the Herr Doktor found the French words he wanted with which to answer and to reassure her.

'I have but one wounded man, gracious demoiselle. It is his Highness Prince Egon von Witgenstein. You may of him have heard?'

She shook her head with a touch of scorn, and he saw with relief that, for some difficult-to-understand reason, she was now no longer as afraid of him as she had been.

'Is he very badly wounded?' she asked in the clear, grave voice which already kindled his heart.

'He has very badly wounded been, but now on the way to recovery is,' said the Herr Doktor decidedly. He felt more at ease with this serious, beautiful maiden now that they were discussing his patient. 'What the Prince requires rest and care and quiet is. There could not a better place for him than your Red Cross barge be. Perhaps will you me allow with your doctor the arrangements to discuss?' His eyes sought uncertainly the man in the background, the thin, frightened-looking old man dressed in seedy black. Could this be a French physician?

Even while speaking he had edged cautiously down the plank footway. 'Have I your gracious permission to advance?' he asked politely.

And she bent her head.

A moment later he was standing close to her, gazing with an earnest, conciliating gaze into her sad blue eyes. She looked pale and worn, but it was only the transitory pallor and fatigue of youth unaccustomed to the strain of anxiety, and the wear of work and sorrow.

'We have no doctor,' she said and, sighing, looked away. 'My father, who is a doctor, would be here were it not that'—her voice broke suddenly—'he was terribly wounded—wounded when himself tending the wounded!'

'Sorry am I to hear that!' exclaimed the Herr Doktor, and he was indeed sorry. 'But who attends the eighteen men you tell me you on this barge have?'

'I attend them,' she said, and a little more colour came into her face. 'I and my two friends whom you see here. Most of them were only slightly wounded, but we have three serious cases.'

'Perhaps you will allow me to visit them, and see how helpful I to your three serious cases may be?' He spoke deferentially, and the rigid lines in which her soft mouth was set relaxed.

'I thank you,' she said quietly, 'but I fear they are beyond your help.'

She turned, and preceded him down the narrow, shaftlike stairway. It terminated in a square passage place, lighted by a porthole, on the ledge of which stood the pot of geraniums the Herr Doktor had noticed when standing under the lime tree mall.

Opening a narrow door to her right, the French girl led him into a large, low, cabin-room which looked the larger and the barer because here too everything was white—the walls, the floor, the curtains drawn across each small square window, and even the coverlets of the pallet beds in which lay the eighteen wounded men.

And as he followed the young Red Cross nurse from bed to bed, as he divined what had once been the condition of most of the young soldiers there, and saw what it was now, the Herr Doktor paid his guide a secret, involuntary tribute of respect. She had not exaggerated, as the amateur nurse so often does, the state of three of her patients. The German surgeon saw with concern that two out of the three were indeed beyond his help—they were even now dying.

'The lad over there might by skilled attention benefit. Has no doctor him seen?' he asked abruptly. He had not raised his voice, but his companion's hand shot out; she touched his arm.

'Don't speak so loudly,' she whispered, 'or he will hear you. The poor fellow does not know how ill he is!'

The Herr Doktor felt at once a little irritated and a little moved. Apparently all Frenchwomen were like that! The only time he had had the slightest unpleasantness with one of those French noblewomen at the Feld-Lazaret was when he had suddenly spoken, in front of a certain wounded boy, of the fact that he could not last many hours. But whereas he had felt very much annoyed, annoyed and angry, with the rebuke uttered so sharply by the Red Cross nurse on that former occasion, this time irritation was merged in indulgent amusement. This fair-haired, blue-eyed girl—this French Elsa—was after all only a novice, though a most capable, conscientious, hard-working novice!

It was good to know that very soon—perhaps as soon as another fortnight or three weeks—the awful cloud of war would be lifted off beautiful, prosperous, frivolous France. She would be conquered for her own good, and would of course have to pay in treasure, as she was now paying in lives, heavily, for her lesson. But after the coming peace France would become, not only a peaceful, but what she had never before been, an affectionate neighbour to wise, masculine, masterful Germany. Already the Herr Doktor found himself celebrating the peace with France by planning a return visit to this charming, peaceful, little town of Valoise-sur-Marne.

It was a good thing for him as well as for Jeanne Rouannès that, while she busied herself with the lighting of a hand lamp, she had no clue to his exultant, disconnected thoughts.

More and more as she accompanied him to each bedside, and as he listened to her low, harmonious voice explaining the various cases of those poor human wrecks—flotsam and jetsam of cruel war—for whom she showed such pitiful concern, he felt the surprise he had not thought to feel, and the admiration he was ready to encourage, grow and grow. Glad indeed was the Herr Doktor to know that there were certain things which he could do to ease that last, losing conflict with death now being waged by two of the Frenchmen lying there before him. Impulsively he turned to her—Ah! if only he could express himself adequately in her difficult, attractive language!

And then there came to him a sudden inspiration.

'Do you speak English?' he asked in the language which, however much he hated it in theory, came yet so far more easily to his tongue than did that of France.

In a surprised tone the Red Cross nurse answered, in the same uncouth tongue, with the one word, 'Yes.'

And then, as she listened to his now quick, clear, intelligent explanation of what might at least bring the ease bred of oblivion to her dying patients, the look of anxious, almost agonised, strain faded from her blue eyes and delicately chiselled face; while as for the Herr Doktor, he felt as though they two had suddenly glided into a harbour of that happy, innocent No Man's Land where the gigantic absurdities, the incredible inhumanities of war had never been, and never could take place.

Only an hour ago Max Keller would have fiercely denied that anything connected with England or with the English could be anything but hateful to him—yet how thankful was he now for that sudden inspiration! It reversed the rôles, gave him the advantage, and that most agreeably, of this Red Cross nurse, for though he did not speak English nearly as correctly as did Mademoiselle Rouannès, he expressed himself more fluently.

'Have you ever to England been?' he ventured at last.

She shook her head. 'No, but for some time I had an English lady for a governess. And now—now I love England!' She looked at him quite straight as she spoke, and he felt a sudden sense of unease. It was as if the tide had turned. They were drifting away from that pleasant harbour of No Man's Land....

When they had finished their round, she led him through the little square passage room into the other and smaller half of the hold. This cabin was empty, save for a row of pallet beds. 'Will this be suitable for your wounded officer?' she asked him gently.

'Yes, very well it will do,' he said hastily. 'And now with your permission, gracious miss, my two orderlies I will send for the Prince to prepare.'

'Cannot my servants make what preparation is needed?' she asked, and there was a tremor of fear and of revolt in her voice.

'I fear not. First these beds must moved out be. But do not be afraid—they will great care take you not in any way to trouble. Indeed, you will not here be, it must now the time be when you away go.' And as she looked at him in surprise, he added awkwardly, 'The hostess of the Tournebride—I think Madame Blanc her name is—told me that you the barge at nine o'clock always left.'

'When there are soldiers dying,' she said in a low voice, 'I arrange to stay here all night'; and then, looking at him pleadingly, she added, 'Could you wait just one little hour before bringing your patient to the barge?'

Reluctantly he shook his head. 'I must as soon as possible the Prince here bring. It is bad for him in a courtyard full of noisy men to be.'

But she went on, making an evident effort to speak calmly, conciliatingly. 'Our curé is on his way to administer these poor dying. I cannot think why he has delayed so long—I sent for him at five o'clock——'

'But—but'—and now it was the Herr Doktor's turn to hesitate—'your curé cannot come here to-night, gracious miss—at least the old priest who lives in the house next the church cannot do so. He has been taken as a hostage for the good behaviour of the population of this town. Temporarily is he prisoner. A sad necessity of war such things are.' He looked at her deprecatingly—for the first time it occurred to him that the Herr Commandant might have contented himself with locking up the truculent mayor, and letting the old priest alone.

He saw her wince, he saw the colour rush into her face. 'But surely Monsieur le Curé will be allowed to administer the last Sacraments to dying soldiers!' she exclaimed.

He shook his head solemnly. It was indeed unfortunate for him that war, and the cruel, grotesque inhumanities of war, were invading the stretch of neutral country on which he and this—this so refined and zierliches Madchen had glided so pleasantly but a short half-hour ago. Full of very real concern he nerved himself to reject the personal appeal he felt sure she was about to make to him. But Mademoiselle Rouannès did nothing of the kind. Instead she turned, and looking up the shaft of the stairway, called out sharply 'Jacob!' and then 'Thérèse!'

The thin man and the stout woman both came hurrying down, and at once she spoke to them in quiet, dry, urgent tones. 'The Prussian doctor of the Red Cross is going to bring a wounded Prussian officer on to the barge. He will occupy the smaller cabin. Two orderlies are coming to help you to prepare the cabin; and you, Jacob, will have to show the Prussians how the crane is worked.'

The Herr Doktor, himself much ruffled by hearing himself described as a Prussian, saw a look of sullen ill-temper come over Jacob's face. But Mademoiselle Rouannès put out her hand and laid it on the old fellow's shoulder. 'My good friend,' she said, and her voice quivered for the first time, 'pray do what I ask of you without discussion. And you, Thérèse, I must ask to go home and tell my father that I am taking the watch here to-night.'

Jacob was the first to respond to the appeal. He looked fiercely at the German Red Cross surgeon. 'At your orders, M'sieur,' he said gruffly. As for the woman, she turned away with a sullen 'Bien, Mademoiselle,' and started walking up the ladder-like stairway.

The Red Cross nurse bowed distantly. 'Bon soir, Monsieur,' she said coldly.

The Herr Doktor also bowed stiffly. It was disconcerting, even strange, to find himself once more in enemy country.

She slipped through the narrow door of the larger ward, and he heard her draw the bolt.

Again he felt irritated, and surprised as he had been surprised at seeing that strange look of aversion and horror flash into her face when her eyes had first rested on him....

True, she was young, divinely compassionate, and very delightful to the eye, but she evidently misunderstood the situation! It was he, Herr Doktor Max Keller, who was now in command of the Red Cross barge, and that by the rules of the International Red Cross Society. He might, however, so far humour her as not to bring his orderlies to-night on board what had been her Red Cross barge. He had noticed with sincere annoyance that his men—who, by the way, were Prussians—were rough, not to say brutal, in their manner to those French people with whom they were perforce brought into contact.

So after he had made the old Frenchman understand what he wanted done, he asked him, in his halting French, 'Is there an hotel close by where sleep I can?'

'There's a kind of cabaret yonder'—and then, as if rather ashamed of his ungraciousness, the man added, 'I will come and show Monsieur le Médecin where it is.'

Together they climbed up on to the deck of the barge, and there the Herr Doktor stopped a moment, and looking round about him, drew a deep, long breath. The falling of the shade of night was singularly beautiful on this quiet stretch of slow-moving waters. Across the river a line of poplars looked like a row of ghostly, giant sentinels....

The two men, the Frenchman in front, the German behind, stepped off the barge on to the narrow stone jetty, and then they walked for a few yards in darkness along the leafy mall. None of the street lamps had been lit on this, the evening of the most tragic day in the life of Valoise, but dim lights twinkled in the house across the roadway to which old Jacob now led his enemy.

'M'sieur will find this place quite clean,' he observed, vigorously pulling the bell of a narrow door. There was a long delay—then a young woman, opening her door a few inches, looked timorously out at them. But Jacob now took everything on himself. With what seemed to his companion an unnecessary torrent of words, he explained that 'Monsieur' was a doctor of the Red Cross, who had come to look after the wounded on the Red Cross barge, and that therefore a room must at once be prepared for him. The woman's face cleared, she opened her narrow door widely, and led the way up to a large, clean bedroom on the first floor, of which the windows overlooked the mall, the river, and—the barge.

As a few moments later they left the house the Herr Doktor could not help feeling grateful to old Jacob. Jacob? Why 'twas almost a German name!

4

Half an hour later the great grey ambulance, drawn up close to the gates of the Tournebride, was ready to start down the hill, and the Herr Doktor waited impatiently while the five hale and whole officers bade their wounded comrade a hearty, lengthy, and jovial good-night.

They were all übermütig—bubbling over with wild spirits—and still talking of their Mecca—Paris—now only some thirty miles away. Any hour might come the longed-for order to advance thither!

The Herr Doktor's illustrious patient seemed the most eager of them all. But he hoped the order to advance would be delayed till he himself were well enough to be in time for the solemn entry into the conquered city—that entry through the Arc de Triomphe which was to be a more superb replica of that which had taken place in 1871. Some days must surely elapse before that glorious pageant could take place, although everything was ready for it—in Luxembourg. In Luxembourg, so Prince Egon now told his comrades—for he alone among them was in touch with the Court—the Kaiser was waiting impatiently for the glad news that Paris had fallen or surrendered. There too, even now, the Imperial Master of the Horse had everything prepared—the state chargers, even, had been brought from Potsdam....

At last the Herr Doktor went up to the youthful commanding officer. 'A word with you in private,' he said hurriedly, and the other allowed himself to be drawn aside. He was curious to know what the Herr Doktor could possibly have to say, 'in private.'

'I know well your humane sentiments towards the unfortunate population of this conquered country'—the words came quickly, almost breathlessly—'and your good heart, Herr Commandant, will perhaps remember the curious request made to you by the old French priest when taken hostage. I have discovered that what he said was true—that there are indeed three wounded soldiers dying on the Red Cross barge where I am about to take Prince Egon. Two of the men will not outlast the night, and the Red Cross Sister, a French lady of distinction, is most anxious they should receive religious consolation. That being so I thought I might promise her that this pious wish should be gratified. With your permission the priest can go in the ambulance, and I myself will bring him back within an hour or so!'

The Herr Commandant looked at the Herr Doktor doubtfully. He did, it was true, hold the unusual theory that benignant justice, rather than 'frightfulness,' was the right way to deal with a conquered population. He remembered, too, that, unlike his four lieutenants, his own instinct had been to believe the Curé of Valoise when the old man had pleaded that he might be allowed to attend 'trois mourants,' and that, though it had seemed almost impossible that there could be three dying people desiring priestly ministration in this little town, the more so that, as all the world knew, France was now an utterly godless country.

Still he waited a few moments before answering. It was not proper that the Herr Doktor should take too much upon himself. But his mind was already made up, and at last he took a large key out of one of his pockets, and handed it to the Herr Doktor. 'You must be personally responsible for the hostage's safe return!' He laughed rather huskily. 'The responsibility is not great, Herr Doktor, or perhaps I would not put it upon you! That old man could not hobble away very far. The Mayor—ah, that is another matter! He is what they call here un fort gaillard.' He uttered the three French words without any accent, and the other envied him.

The Herr Doktor hastened across the courtyard and found the arch in the wall which he knew led through into Madame Blanc's well-stocked kitchen garden. In the centre of the large open space there rose, in the moonlit darkness, the square building lit only by a skylight, which had been chosen as making an ideal prison for the two hostages. Putting the key the Herr Commandant had handed him in the door, he turned it, and walked into the sweet-smelling fruit-room of the old inn.

There a curious sight met his eyes. The two Frenchmen, companions in misfortune though they were, had placed themselves as far the one from the other as was possible. The priest sat on his truckle bed, reading his breviary by the light of a candle, while the Mayor of Valoise, also sitting on his bed—for the Tournebride had naturally proved very short of the chairs required for the accommodation of so many hosts—was busily writing what he intended to be the official account of his amazing and disagreeable adventures.

As the door opened the Mayor leapt to his feet, and a look of apprehension shot over his dark, southern-looking face. The priest looked up, but remained seated, and went on reading his prayer-book with an air of ostentatious indifference.

The Herr Doktor walked across to the old man. 'Will you please at once come?' he said haltingly. 'Permission for you obtained I have to attend the French wounded on the Red Cross barge.'

The priest closed his book, and rose from his seat; but at the same moment the Mayor came forward towards the German Red Cross doctor, but there was a curious lack of firmness about his footsteps. It was as if he hardly knew where his legs were bearing him. His voice, however, was strong and defiant. 'I protest!' he cried loudly. 'I strongly and vigorously protest against this favour being shown to the priest! It is on me, as Mayor of Valoise, that there reposes the duty of transmitting to their families the wishes of our dying soldiers!'

The Herr Doktor brought his two feet together and bowed. 'Your protest, Monsieur le Maire, duly registered will be,' he said coldly. 'Meanwhile I must ask Monsieur le Curé my instructions to obey.' Motioning the old man to precede him, he walked out of the door, and, shutting it, turned the key in the lock.

Quickly the two men walked through the dark garden, and when they were close to the arch which led into the courtyard of the Tournebride, the priest abruptly broke silence. 'Am I to be allowed to administer these dying men?' he asked.

'That may you do,' replied the Herr Doktor shortly.

'Then, Monsieur, I must ask permission to go round by my house and by the church.'

Now this was not exactly in the bond, yet, rather to his own surprise, the Herr Doktor gave his orderly-driver the command. Why not do this thing graciously and thoroughly while he was about it? Thoroughness has always been one of the great German virtues—so he reminded himself while sitting in the rather airless ambulance, and listening to his high-born patient's fretful remarks.

As the motor ambulance at last drew up on the road opposite to where the barge was moored, there arose a sudden stir in the houses facing the mall. Windows were flung cautiously open, and dark forms leaned out of them.

Curtly instructing the priest to follow him, and requesting his orderlies to await his return, the Herr Doktor preceded the priest down the stone gangway, and on to the deck of the barge. In spite of the stars it was a very dark night, and suddenly he turned on the electric torch strapped to his breast. As he did so his companion uttered a sharp exclamation of surprise. Monsieur le Curé had never seen, he had never even heard of such an invention! It made him realise, as he had not yet done, what terrible, ingenious, irresistible fellows these Germans were.

The big trap-door in the deck had been opened, and the crane for lowering the wounded man was already in position. Mademoiselle Rouannès had been true to her word, everything had been made ready for the new patient, and the Herr Doktor felt suddenly very glad that he had followed his kindly so-truly-German-and-humane impulse about the priest.

Carefully the two went down the stairs now open to the star-powdered sky, and then the one in command knocked at the door of what he already called in his own mind 'Her ward.'

There followed a moment or two of delay—long enough for the Herr Doktor to become rather impatient. Then, slowly, the door opened, and the electric torch flashed for a moment over Mademoiselle Rouannès' head and breast. She no longer wore the Red Cross cap and veil, and her fair hair formed an aureole above her delicately-tinted face and deep blue eyes. 'If you will ask Jacob, he will tell you everything, Monsieur le Médecin. I have told him to put himself entirely at your disposal. I cannot come just now, for I must not leave my wounded. Two of them are even now dying.'

She spoke in a quick whisper and in her own language. But the Herr Doktor answered in English. 'Gracious miss, I have to you the priest brought,' he said eagerly.

'I thank you—oh! how I thank you!' There was a thrill of real, heartfelt gratitude in her voice—and something in the Herr Doktor's heart thrilled in answer, as she opened wide the narrow door to let them both come through.

Most of the men, lying stretched out there, on those narrow pallet beds, were asleep, but only the two now so near to death seemed really at peace. The others moved uneasily, and from their bloodless lips there issued painful mutterings and groans. One very young soldier kept counting over and over again—from one to thirty-seven. When he came to trente-sept, he always broke off, and began again. In answer to a mute, questioning glance from the Herr Doktor, the Red Cross nurse whispered, 'The thirty-eighth shot struck him. But he only counts like that when he is asleep.' A lad in the farthest corner, the third man in the danger zone, asked again and again, with a terrible, monotonous reiteration, 'Mais pourquoi? Pourquoi suis-je ici?'

Again the doctor turned questioningly to Jeanne Rouannès. 'He also always begins asking that question as soon as he falls asleep,' she said sighing; 'when awake he seems quite happy.'

The Herr Doktor was strangely reluctant to leave the mournful scene. He felt an uneasy curiosity as to what was going to take place. Even now the Red Cross nurse was turning a little table, which had been covered with various odd French medicaments, into an altar. But his duty to his own patient called him insistently away, and slowly he backed towards the door. Once there, however, he called out, but in a low voice, 'Miss? Miss? A word with you.'

She came and stood by him, a lovely vision of health, purity, and strength, in that piteous, pain-bound place.

'When the priest finished has,' he murmured, 'again back him I will take. I have myself responsible for him made.'

'I promise you that he will not be very long!' And then she added softly, 'I thank you again, sir, for having done this good action. The good God will reward you.'

She opened the door, and after she had closed it again, the Herr Doktor lingered for a moment outside in the little passage which was now open to the stars and cool night air.

And during the hour he spent in the low-ceilinged, white-washed cabin where Prince Egon now lay comfortably settled in a real bed, the Herr Doktor, though his body was by his patient's side, in his spirit dwelt in the other half of the Red Cross barge—where was taking place the ever august and awe-inspiring transit from life to death of two young, sentient, human beings. So little indeed was he present in mind where his body was, that he experienced a feeling of astonishment, as well as of discomfort, when he suddenly realised that a quick, amicable conversation was going on between the young Prussian officer and Mademoiselle Rouannès' old French man-servant.

'Herr Doktor!' cried Prince Egon joyfully, 'this fellow was once a valet—valet to a Prince de Ligne! I have told him that henceforth he is commandeered by me! He will be my valet. I would far rather be waited on by him than by that tiresome Fritz of yours. This one is a thoroughly intelligent fellow; he knows a house in this town where there is a great store of those unanständige Parisian comic papers. He will bring them here to-morrow morning—so I now have something pleasant to dream about!'

'That is good,' said the Herr Doktor absently. 'I felt sure your Highness would prefer this place to the Tournebride. I hope you will not be disturbed by the French wounded. There is a passage room between.'

'The French wounded will not disturb me!' The young man lifted himself slightly in his bed and smiled. 'It is not as if they were our brave fellows, after all!'

PART II

1

It was half-past five on this, the sixth morning of the Herr Doktor's stay at Valoise.

He leapt out of bed and had a cold plunge bath-a most peculiar, un-German habit he had acquired during the months he had boarded with an English family at Munich.

Then, when he was dressed, not before, he put on his spectacles and went across to the window. On the first morning of his stay there, he had been filled with a queer misgiving that perhaps when he looked out the Red Cross barge would have drifted away-disappeared, fairy-wise, in the night. That he now no longer feared, and on this lovely September morning his eyes rested with a feeling of exultant ownership on the now familiar scene before him. The trim, leafy mall just across the paved road, the slowly flowing river gleaming in the bright morning sun, the line of poplars above the opposite bank—and then in the centre, as it were, of the placid landscape, the Red Cross barge ... they were his, for ever—the harvest of his eyes, of his imagination, of his heart.

The Red Cross barge? The man standing at the window of this humble French wine-shop told himself how good it was that now, to-day, that work of mercy before him was the only reminder in Valoise that France was at war. Till the day before there had been a hundred and five spurred and booted reminders, but yesterday afternoon the Uhlans had ridden off eagerly, exultantly, to join their main victorious army—that army which was now engaged in pursuing the defeated English and the retreating French.

The Herr Doktor, on this peaceful, sunny morning, quite forgot that he himself was a constant reminder of the awful struggle, of the losing fight now going on between those the women of Valoise had sent forth—their husbands, sons, and lovers—and his countrymen.

But it was natural he should make this capital omission, for as he stood there, looking out on a still unawakened world, the people of Valoise, well disposed as he felt towards them, formed but a blurred background to the one figure which now possessed all his waking, aye, and all his dreaming thoughts. Not only did he now know, but he exulted in the knowledge that, with his first vision-like sight of Jeanne Rouannès, had come that 'love-at-once' of which some of his comrades had rhapsodised in the now-so-distant-as-to-be-almost-forgotten pre-war time. Those rhapsodies of long ago had left him unmoved, partly because as a student he had adored, with a selfless, hopeless passion, a famous singer far older than himself, and partly because, with the passing of years, he had seen the springtide romance of youth almost invariably dulled down into what would have been, to such a man as he knew himself to be, unendurably dull domesticity.

Was this new, and at once rapturous and painful, absorption in another human being the outcome of great, noble, war-provoked emotions? If so, how amazing that a Frenchwoman should have compelled the flowering of his soul, the awakening of both spirit and senses to what the union of a man and woman may mean! But well content was he that it should be so. This side of the great war—so futile from the point of view of happy, prosperous France—would soon be at an end. That he had been confidently assured, some three weeks ago, by a member of General von Kluck's own able staff. Within a very short time of the German occupation of Paris—some even believed within a few hours of the capitulation of the city—peace would be signed with France. There would be bitterness among certain sections of the French people—among the Chauvinists, for instance, who still hankered after Alsace. But the Conquerors had behaved so humanely and so wisely during their triumphant rush through Northern France, that this very natural feeling would soon fade away, while the love he, Max Keller, now bore Jeanne Rouannès was of the eternal, enduring quality which compels its own fulfilment.... Already in his dreams the Herr Doktor saw his house, his childhood's home, at Weimar, beflowered and garlanded to receive a bride.

But these dreams were far more living and tangible to his imagination during those waking hours when they two were apart, than when the Herr Doktor was faced with the reality of his and Mademoiselle Rouannès' necessarily formal relationship. More than once he had tried to engage her in talk on 'safe' subjects—such subjects, for instance, as that of the Great Revolution—but she had quietly eluded him, and he sometimes had to face the fact that the only common ground on which they met each day was that on which lay the wounded Frenchmen to whom she gave so much anxious care. It was a ground on which the Herr Doktor spent all the time he could. But unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, it was ground which was being rapidly cleared, for thanks to his skill, to her care, and no doubt to nature too, 'our wounded,' as he had once ventured to call them to her, were now in full convalescence, almost fit, in fact, to be taken off as prisoners to Germany. When that thought, that knowledge, rose to the Herr Doktor's mind he always thrust it hurriedly away. The despatch of prisoners is purely a military duty, and would in this case be performed by whatever officer on whom it devolved; if no one better offered, then on the Herr Lieutenant, Prince Egon von Witgenstein.

Prince Egon? On this fine September morning, the Herr Doktor suddenly found himself wondering whether it would not be advisable to move his patient into the now empty Tournebride. The knowledge that the Prince would soon be well enough to sit up on deck was not as agreeable to the Herr Doktor as it ought to have been to a conscientious medical attendant. True, Mademoiselle Rouannès never even asked him how his noble patient was progressing, and once, when old Jacob had alluded to the Uhlan officer, the Herr Doktor had overheard her exclaim, with a strange touch of passion in her voice, 'I forbid you—I forbid you, Jacob, to speak of that Prussian to me!' But Prince Egon did not share her indifference, still less her—was it hatred? He was frankly interested in his fair enemy, and very eager to make her acquaintance. But the Herr Doktor was determined that this so uncalled-for and undesirable-from-every-point-of-view desire of the Prince should not be gratified.

There came a knock at the door; it was his petit déjeuner, and the woman who brought it in smiled quite pleasantly. It was only the second time she had smiled at her unbidden guest. It was curious how the departure of those burly, good-natured Uhlans had affected the people of Valoise! Within an hour of their going, windows had been unshuttered, doors unbarred, and a stream of women, of children, and of old men the Herr Doktor had not suspected of being in Valoise at all, had flowed into the streets of the town....

He drank his coffee and ate his rolls with an excellent appetite, and then he glanced at his chronometer. It was three minutes to six—time he went across to the barge. For when six struck by the church tower (which, according to his Baedeker, had been built by the English in the now utterly departed days of their valour and military prowess, that is in the thirteenth century) the Herr Doktor invariably met Mademoiselle Rouannès by accident, either in the road, or, what was pleasanter still, under the trees in the mall. When he saw her coming, gravely he would stop and bow, and she would bend her head in greeting. It would have been natural, and agreeable too, for them to linger a few moments; but that he had soon found she would never do. Singularly reserved always was she in her manner, and in vain did he persist in his attempts to persuade her to engage in general beneficial-to-the-intellect and pleasantly-agreeable-to-the-cultured-mind conversation.

Two cases, as we know, had been beyond human help when he had first undertaken the care of the French wounded, but the third case, greatly owing to his skill and untiring efforts, seemed likely to pull through. Still, even so, the Herr Doktor and Mademoiselle Rouannès were very anxious about this case, a boy of nineteen, a clever, well-mannered, gentle boy of the peasant class, who had been shot through the lung. What had touched the German surgeon's heart, what had made him especially interested in this young soldier, were a few words which had been uttered by the Red Cross nurse very early in their joint work of mercy. 'Il est le seul soutien de sa vieille grand'mère.' Now, curiously enough, he, Max Keller, was also 'the sole support of his old grandmother,' a grand old woman of seventy-nine, now eating her heart out in placid, cultured Weimar, while thanking God her boy was not in the firing line.

The Herr Doktor went across the road to the grateful shade of the lime trees. There he waited, his heart beating, his pulse throbbing, for what seemed a long, long time. Every moment he hoped, nay, he expected confidently, to see her hastening towards him, clad in the white dress and wearing the medieval-looking cap, with its red cross in the centre, which now seemed the most becoming head-dress in the world. Hastening towards him? Nay, nay,—hastening towards the Red Cross barge.

But the minutes went slowly by, and Mademoiselle Rouannès did not come. Suddenly it occurred to him that perhaps she was already on the barge. If so, he had indeed wasted precious moments....

As he hurried along the stone jetty he saw the stout figure of old Thérèse on deck. That meant that her young mistress was below, in the ward.

The Herr Doktor smiled pleasantly at the old woman, and she smiled back, a broad genial smile of good fellowship. What a difference the departure of those few countrymen of his yesterday had made, to be sure!

But when he hurried down to the French ward he at once knew, without being told, that Mademoiselle Jeanne had not yet arrived. Old Thérèse had done her best, but it was a very poor best, to make the men lying there comfortable. Still, they all looked more cheerful than usual, and the boy he now hoped to save, the boy for whom he had a very tender corner in his kindly, sentimental soul, caught hold of his hand as he went by, and asked huskily, 'Is it true that the Prussians are gone? Quel bonheur!'

It struck half-past six, seven, then half-past seven.

The Herr Doktor went up again on to the deck. Thérèse was sitting there sewing. 'And Mademoiselle?' he asked questioningly.

She shook her head. 'Mademoiselle was very unhappy last night. She thinks her father is much worse. I myself can see no difference. But something he said to her frightened her, and so she said she must stop at home to-day, and nurse him.'

He felt absurdly surprised, absurdly annoyed, absurdly taken aback.

Had Mademoiselle Rouannès a right to leave the ambulance barge? He doubted it—doubted it very much indeed. Of course he himself, being now in command of the barge, could order her to come. He was a Red Cross doctor, and she a Red Cross nurse; he had, therefore, the absolute right to dispose of her time and services. But, sighing, he dismissed the thought. She was quite unlike any German girl he had ever seen. It would not occur to her to be flattered, or even touched, by his imperious wish for her presence.

As he stood there, wondering what he had better do, there flashed into his mind the wording of a short note which it might become his duty to write to her. The note would be written in English, and it would run somewhat in this wise: 'Gracious Miss,'—or perhaps it would be better to put plain 'Miss' in the French way—'If you your father can leave for a short time, I should be glad if to the barge you come would. One of your wounded is not so well.—Yours respectfully, Max Keller.'

There would be nothing offensive, nothing hectoring about such a missive, and he thought, he felt sure, that it would bring her. But he would not write that note yet. He would wait till he had seen his own patient, Prince Egon. Luckily, there was no hurry as to that, and, still secretly hoping she would come, he lingered on, up on deck.

The sun had gone behind a cloud. There was an autumnal chill in the morning air. The waters of the slowly flowing river looked grey and sullen. Suddenly the Herr Doktor felt oddly friendless, and alone. 'This morning felt I so foolishly cheerful, and this the natural reaction is!' he exclaimed to himself.

He turned and walked down to Prince Egon's small quarters. Cautiously he opened the narrow door, but his patient was awake and smiling.

What a contrast this curious little cabin presented, especially to-day, to that containing the French wounded! Here everything was ship-shape, even to a modest degree, luxurious. On an inlaid table, which had been 'commandeered' from an empty villa, were laid out gold-backed brushes, and a number of pretty trifles. Above the table hung a circular mirror, also commandeered, and there was a whiff of some sweet, pungent scent in the air. How different, too, the white and pink yellow-haired youth lying there from the small, dark, and now unshaved Frenchmen on the other side. Old Jacob was kept too busy attending on the Prussian prince to spare any time for his own countrymen.

The Herr Doktor looked at what had partly been his own handiwork—the handiwork of which he had felt proud on the first evening of his arrival at Valoise—with a feeling of dissatisfaction, almost of disgust.

Over a basket-chair was carefully spread out a green-and-gold-silk dressing-gown, in the Weimar surgeon's eyes a garment of almost Oriental splendour.

'If you will allow of it, Herr Doktor, I propose to get up,' said Prince Egon cheerfully. 'I feel wonderfully better to-day! It is extraordinary what good this rest has done me. And then that old Jacob! An almost perfect valet! What good fortune for me that he should be here! He has already made me a delicious omelette this morning.'

'And your Highness was not afraid to eat it?' This was really a little joke on the Herr Doktor's part. But his patient did not so accept it. An extraordinary change came over the recumbent man's fair face; it became livid, discomposed.

'God in heaven!' he cried. 'Do you suspect old Jacob, Herr Doktor?'

And then the older man burst into laughter. 'No, no,' he said soothingly. 'I suspect nothing! Besides your Highness has made it very much worth old Jacob's while to keep you alive.'

'Aye, aye! That's true.' The prince was reassured. 'As I was saying just now, I feel so much better that, if you permit it, I propose to get up. I will wear my dressing-gown, not my uniform, and I will go up on deck. There I will sit and chat with the beautiful English-speaking Mamselle. Jacob tells me that on her mother's side she is of noble birth, and that, although her father is only a physician, she——'

The Herr Doktor put up his hand. 'I must now take your Highness' temperature,' he said a little sharply. 'I doubt much if you are well enough to go upstairs. A chill would be very serious in your Highness's condition. As for the Red Cross Sister, she is not here to-day. Her father is very ill.'

'Not here? But that is absurd!' The young man spoke with a touch of imperious decision. 'You must send for her, my dear Herr Doktor; she must be requisitioned!' He smiled—an insolent smile.

The other shook his head. A sudden passion of dislike, of contempt, for his patient filled his heart. But all he said was—'Impossible! Her father is very ill indeed.'

'Then I will not trouble to get up. I am very well where I am. It is very comfortable here.'

Prince Egon spoke pettishly. He had looked forward to an amusing flirtation with the Mamselle with whose manifold perfections old Jacob sometimes entertained him.

The hours of the morning dragged wearily on. To the Herr Doktor it seemed as if there had never been such a long, such an utterly lacking-in-flavour, day as was this day. For the first time he talked to the convalescent Frenchmen at some length of themselves. Not one of them had been a soldier at the time the war broke out on that fateful 1st of August, and yet it surprised him, and in a sense moved him, to see that every one of them wished to go back and fight. Not one of them seemed conscious that he was now a prisoner, and that, unless peace was made at once, he would soon be in Germany....

2

At twelve o'clock the Herr Doktor walked up to the Tournebride. He had thought it possible that he might meet Mademoiselle Rouannès in the town—but it was in vain that he lingered on the way, and glanced up each steep byway, and quiet, shady street.

While he was eating an excellent déjeuner at a table spread under the trees in the courtyard of the inn, he cleverly led Madame Blanc on to the subject of Dr. Rouannès. She, too, seemed quite another woman now that the Tournebride was her own again. To-day she was eager for a gossip.

Yes, 'ce bon docteur' was certainly seriously ill. He had looked so well, so vigorous, when he had started, a month ago, for the Frontier. It was there that a shell had exploded in the room where he was actually performing a small operation on a man wounded during the dash into Alsace. As he had been struck in the left leg, it was impossible for him to go on with his work, and he had managed to get home. At first it had been said that he would soon be all right again. But now it was rumoured that he was dying! If that were indeed true, Dr. Rouannès would be a great loss to Valoise, for he was an excellent doctor, much beloved in the town. His daughter was thought rather proud—very good to 'les pauvres,' but unwilling to frequent the more well-to-do townsfolk. This, no doubt, because her mother was 'une noble.' Madame Blanc smiled as she did not often smile now, as she recalled the marriage of Dr. Rouannès. He had refused such excellent 'occasions'—such rich marriages when he was young and good-looking! Then, when he was forty-six years of age, and a confirmed bachelor, he had suddenly married Mademoiselle Jeanne de Blignière, the younger of the two daughters of the Count de Blignière, a poor, proud old gentleman whom he, the doctor, had attended, out of charity no doubt. Curious to relate, this 'mariage étrange' had been a very happy one, and this though Madame Rouannès was very, very quiet, gentle, and pious too, in fact rather like 'une bonne Sœur.' She had been ill two years, and Dr. Rouannès had brought many physicians from Paris to see her. It was said that the chemist's bill alone had been a thousand francs! But the poor lady had died all the same, and she, Madame Blanc, would never forget Monsieur le Médecin's tragic, stricken face at the funeral.

It had been thought that he would surely marry again. But no, he had not done so. At first Madame Rouannès' sister had come to take care of the motherless little girl, but Mademoiselle de Blignière had never liked her brother-in-law, so she soon went back to Paris. Then for some time Mademoiselle Jeanne had had 'une anglaise.' It was only last winter, while visiting her aunt in Paris, that she had learnt the Red Cross work.

At last the Herr Doktor finished his delicious déjeuner under the yellowing chestnut trees in the great courtyard which now looked so peaceful and so solitary, and he wondered, a little ashamed of the materialism of the unspoken question, if Mademoiselle Rouannès knew anything of the practical side of French cookery. And after he had had his cup of coffee and smoked his pipe, he took his diary out of his pocket. He had not opened the book for nearly a week.

Quickly he turned over the blank pages—and then a sudden wave of emotion swept over him. To-day was the 2nd of September—Sedan Day! And he had not remembered it! He thought of last year's Sedan Day, spent with some dear old friends of his childhood, and his heart became irradiated with a peculiar, tender radiance. Beautiful, culture-filled Weimar! How he longed to show his dear homeland to his 'Geliebte'! Then a less noble feeling, one of fierce exultation filled him. He visioned the great hosts of the Fatherland, his brothers all, pressing forward through this splendid, opulent land of France. Those great hosts must now be close to the gates of Paris—nay, they were perchance in Paris already, celebrating the great anniversary while preparing to play the rôle of magnanimous conquerors....

Only yesterday had come news of wonderful doings—and he had scarcely cared to hear them! Tidings of the invading army brought by two officers in charge of an armoured motor-car. Tidings of victory of course; and of one especial victory which they had felt peculiarly pleasant and ermutigend, the defeat and complete encirclement, that is, of the small British Expeditionary Force. The English, so had run the tale, still turned now and again and fought, not without courage, small rearguard actions, but they were not causing any real trouble. Already Compiègne was evacuated, and Chantilly was ready for the Kaiser's occupation. It was from the magnificent home of 'Le Grand Condé' that the War Lord intended to start for the entry of his victorious army through the Arc de Triomphe, into Paris.

Of course the Herr Doktor had been quite pleased to hear all this glorious news, but though he realised how inspiriting it was to know that within a day and a half's march of Valoise pressed on the relentless march on Paris, he had not really cared. Valoise had suddenly become to him the one place in the world which mattered. The only place where he wished to be—to stay....

He knew that the city of Paris, as apart from the rest of France, was to pay a huge indemnity. Until that indemnity was paid, there was to be an army of occupation, not only in the city, but in the surrounding country. Of this army he, as a non-combatant, could easily obtain permission to form part....

And then as he walked restlessly up and down the courtyard, there suddenly rose on the still, warm air a long-drawn distant roar of sound.

Thunder? The Herr Doktor shook his head, and his heart began to beat a little quicker. He knew what that sound portended, and he also remembered enough to know that the action proceeding must be a long, long way off.

Madame Blanc came out of her kitchen. 'On commence à se battre là-bas.' There was an undertone of hope, of fierce joy—even of boastfulness—in her voice.

He bent his head gravely. The expression on her face irritated him. Till to-day he had thought her an excellent, homely woman. He could no longer think her so, for there was an awful look of vengeful longing in her eyes.

3

And during all that warm, early September afternoon, across the golden haze thrown up by the river, there came from 'là-bas' the rolling, muttering roar that was so like thunder, that now and again the Herr Doktor asked himself whether it might not be thunder after all? But whatever this provenance, these sounds had a strange, electric effect on the French wounded. They became restless and excited. Hitherto they had stayed below; now, without asking the Herr Doktor's permission, two or three pallid faces appeared above the stairway, and there was a look of strained suspense, almost of hope, in the eyes which avoided looking frankly into his face.

There was yet another curious change in all those young, wild-eyed Frenchmen. They talked in low hoarse whispers the one with the other, and once he heard a reference to la nouvelle armée, and then again to l'armée de Versailles. Of what army, new or old, could they be thinking? Brave but unready France had put every man for whom she had proper arms and accoutrements into the field from the first day.

Prince Egon shared in the subdued excitement. 'It is pleasant to feel that we are no longer away from the whirlpool!' he cried joyfully, and this was his only remark during that intolerably long afternoon.

At six o'clock the sounds of firing ceased as suddenly as they had begun. Four hours' desultory cannonade? It must have been a long-drawn-out rearguard action.

The Herr Doktor was sitting up on deck, a pocket volume of Heine in his hand. He read the verse—

Im wunderschönen Monat Mai
Als alle Knospen sprangen
Da ist in meinem Herzen
Die Liebe aufgegangen.

And then he looked up and gazed across the river. Strange, strange indeed, that love should wait till now to blossom in his heart!

There came the sound, the now beloved, familiar sound of Her quick, light footfalls on the jetty, and a moment later Mademoiselle Rouannès walked on to the barge.

Leaping to his feet, he brought his heels together and bowed. But the ceremonious words of inquiry he was about to utter concerning her father's state were stayed on his lip, and the secret joy which had flooded his whole being on seeing her was suddenly changed to concern, even distress, so unlike did Jeanne Rouannès appear to his usual vision of her. Her face was flushed, her eyelids reddened by much crying. The look of composure, of dignity, which always aroused his willing admiration, if also his aching sense of her aloofness from himself, was gone, and now there was something appealing, as well as piteous and even helpless, in the face into which he was gazing.

'I have come to ask you,' she said abruptly, and in English, 'if you will give me a little of your small store of morphia or laudanum? My father is now in constant pain—I fear he is far more ill than he will admit is the case. I am very, very anxious about him.' She uttered the words with quick, nervous haste, lowering her voice as she spoke.

Was it possible that she thought there could be any fear of his refusing her request? Apparently there was, for, 'I know you do not like to diminish your store of narcotics. But from what I understand a quite small amount might lessen the pain my father is enduring.'

She had moved away from the middle of the deck, and they were standing, side by side, on the river side of the barge. As she spoke she did not look at the man by her side, instead she stared straight before her, and he saw the tears well up into her tired eyes, and roll down her pale cheeks.

'Would it not possible be,' he asked, 'for me your father to see?'

'No. That is quite impossible. But I thank you for thinking of doing so.'

'But if you tell him that to the Red Cross,—that splendid, so-entirely-neutral and internationally-universal institution—I too belong? Surely would he then consent me to see?'

She shook her head. 'The truth is that—that——' She stopped, and he said 'Yes?' interrogatively, encouragingly. 'The truth is that my poor father had a most unfortunate experience with some German Red Cross doctors!'

'With German doctors,' he repeated, discomfited. 'That very strange is.'

'Yes, it was strange—strange and most unfortunate, as matters now are; for it makes me feel that I do not dare propose your visit to him.'

The Herr Doktor—or so it seemed to the girl standing by his side—fell into an abstracted silence. She respected his mood for a few moments, then she asked timidly, in a voice very different from that which he had ever heard issue from her proud lips before, 'I suppose your medical stores are at the Tournebride?'

He looked round eagerly. 'No,' he said quickly. 'I have them here, in the motor ambulance, and what necessary is, go I at once to procure. But, gracious miss! There has come to me a thought which I find most illuminating, a thought which I you earnestly beg very carefully before you it reject to consider. With my medical stores possess I naturally operation overalls.'

He stopped for a moment, as if anxious to give himself time, then went on hurriedly: 'Would it not possible be for me to put on an overall (it covers entirely my 'feld-grau' uniform) and then an English doctor to represent by the bedside of your honoured father? He surely would not object an English or, better still, a Scotch colleague to see?'

'That,' she said, and drew a long breath, 'is very true.'

And as he gazed at her with an earnest, longing look of the inner meaning of which she was, as he well knew, utterly unconscious, he saw surprise and indecision give way to hope and relief.

'But are you willing to do that?' she asked.'Would it not be very—very disagreeable for you to carry through such a—a——' Her English failed her, and she uttered a word of which he was ignorant, and could only guess the meaning—'to carry through such a supercherie? 'she said.

He answered eagerly, 'There is nothing I would not do'—and then he checked himself, and substituted for what he had been going to say, the words, 'for a French colleague. Absolutely easy will it be,' he went on confidently. 'You will him tell that I very little French know—which indeed the truth is.'

Even as he spoke, her woman's wit was hard at work. 'I will write my father a note,' she said, 'and send it by Thérèse. Then he will not be able to say "No" to me, and I on my side shall not have the pain of speaking a lie to him face to face.'

The Herr Doktor's face relaxed into a smile; women, so he reflected, were the same all the world over—in France as in Germany. He took out of his breast pocket a neat letter-case, of which he had made no use since his arrival in Valoise. Deferentially he handed it to her, and then he had the pleasure of seeing her write a letter on his note-paper. 'Do you think that will do?' she said. And he read over slowly and carefully the short, clear French phrases.

'My dear Father,—An English doctor has joined the Red Cross barge. I much desire that he should see thee. I will bring him with me in an hour. As far as I can judge he is experienced.

'Thy
'Jeanne.'

'Most excellent, honoured miss! And only one little word not absolutely true is!' He ventured a smile. She smiled back with the words, 'But it is a very important word—"English"!' And then she wondered why his face altered and stiffened into such frowning gravity; the English, after all, were no more the Herr Doktor's enemies than were the French.

4

They sped along, two white, ghost-like figures, in the darkness. Every light in the little town was already extinguished, or hidden behind high walls and closely drawn curtains. Valoise only asked to be forgotten, to be obliterated from the map, while the awful tide of war swayed and swept on, within some twenty miles of the town, towards Paris.

Jeanne Rouannès walked as swiftly and unfalteringly as if it had been broad daylight through the steep byways and up the roughly paved alleys leading to the Haute Ville. But it seemed a long time ere they emerged into a street, lighted by one twinkling lamp which swung suspended over the centre of the highway.

'You are interested in the Revolution?' she said in English. 'Well, thirty people were hung in this street, from where that lamp now swings, a hundred and twenty years ago. That was the meaning of "à la lanterne!"'

'Ach!' exclaimed the Herr Doktor, gazing upwards. 'That truly informative is!' And while he uttered these words he was telling himself—that secret self to whom each of us tells so many amazing, unexpected, tragic and, yes, sometimes such delicious things—that this was the first time she had ever spoken to him, of her own volition, on any subject which lay quite outside her Red Cross work. That she had done so made him feel exultant, absurdly happy. Soon, quite soon, every barrier would surely be down between their two hearts....

She moved on a few steps, and then stopped in front of an aperture sunk far back in the wall which ran to the right of the historic lantern.

'We have arrived,' she said, and turning the handle of the door, she stepped back to allow him to pass through first.

He waited awkwardly for a moment. 'Won't you the way lead?' he asked; and quickly she walked past him into a garden which in the darkness seemed illimitable. Sweet pungent scents rose and mingled from each side of the narrow flagged path, and to his moved and ardent imagination it was as if Nature herself was offering the homage of her incense to the French girl now leading him into the sanctuary of her home.

Suddenly he saw a small low house rise whitely before him; a door opened, and a shaft of yellow light illumined the short, broad figure of the old woman servant, Thérèse, for in her hand she held a lamp with a gay Chinese shade over it.

Mademoiselle Rouannès called out, 'Here we are, Thérèse!' Then she turned round to her companion. 'If you will kindly wait in my salon for a moment, I will go and tell my father that you are here,' she said in a low voice.

Her white figure melted into the darkness and he followed the servant down a passage, and into what was evidently the only sitting-room of the little house. Then Thérèse shut the door on him, and the Herr Doktor began looking about him with eager curiosity.

The room was not gay and bright as he would have thought to find a young Frenchwoman's salon. Rather was it simple and austere. The few pieces of furniture were of the First Empire period, of mahogany and brass, covered with bright green silk which with time had become dulled in tint, and even frayed. In the middle of the room was a marble-topped round table on which stood a lamp, fellow to that which old Thérèse had held in her hand. On the round table lay several books, and a magazine, the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,' to which the Herr Doktor in the now-so-far-away days of peace had been a subscriber.

He bent down and looked at the familiar orange cover. It bore the date of August 1. Idly he looked at the table of contents: no prevision, no suspicion even, of the coming cataclysm! He wondered whether the number of August 15 had been published. He thought it unlikely.

He turned away from the table, and looked up and about him. Above a narrow, straight settee hung two charming eighteenth-century pastels—that of a young man in a blue and silver uniform, and that of a slim, pale girl with powdered hair. She had a wistful and yet a proud little face, and it pleased the Herr Doktor to trace in this portrait a resemblance to Mademoiselle Rouannès.

At last the door opened, and he felt a slight shock of disappointment at seeing that it was old Thérèse, and not her young mistress, who had come for him. Stepping lightly, he followed her up a shallow staircase, and so to a landing on the first floor.

Jeanne Rouannès was standing there, waiting for him. She had changed from her white uniform into a black gown, and this change of dress altered her strangely. It made her look younger, slenderer, paler, more beautiful even than before in the Herr Doktor's eyes, for it intensified her peculiar fairness, and deepened the fire in her blue eyes.

Perhaps something in his face showed his surprise, for she said in English, and in a very low voice, 'I never wear my Red Cross dress when I am with my father. It disturbs him—makes him remember——' and then, without finishing her sentence, she pushed open a red-baize door, and beckoned to him to follow her. As he did so, she put her finger to her lips and whispered, 'Wait here a moment——'

From where he stood, just within the door, he could see only one half of the room, and that half bare, save that the walls were lined with books set on mahogany shelves. Standing at right angles across the one corner visible from the door was a writing-table, covered with grey cloth. A high screen to his left hid the rest of the room.

The Herr Doktor's heart began to beat quickly. He told himself that he was about to enter into the very heart of her life—to take an amazing step forward in his intimacy with her....

A word or two was whispered behind the screen, and then she came for him. As together they walked forward into the room, she exclaimed, in French of course, 'Papa, I bring you the kind——'

But the words were cut across by the leonine-looking, grey-haired man sitting up in bed. 'Welcome!' cried Dr. Rouannès heartily. He stretched out both his hands. 'Welcome, my dear colleague—nay, I should now say, my dear ally! My daughter tells me that you speak French. Unhappily I do not know your splendid language, but, as you see, Jeanne was taught English. For some years after the death of my beloved wife, we had living with us a charming person, our excellent Miss—Miss——'

'Miss Owen,' said Mademoiselle Rouannès quietly.

'Yes, yes, Miss Owen!' He waited a moment; then he looked up at his daughter. 'My little girl,' he said, and there was a very tender, caressing inflection in his resonant French voice, 'I will now ask you to go downstairs while I confer with our friend.'

With a curiously impulsive gesture she clasped her hands together. 'But no, father!' she exclaimed. 'Remember that I am your nurse! Surely you will let me stay?' She looked beseechingly, not at her father, but at the silent man now standing by her side.

'Mademoiselle your daughter is an excellent nurse,' observed the Herr Doktor awkwardly.

The old man leant back on his pillow, wearily. He had hoped his English colleague would be more expansive, and 'sympathique.' Also, he had thought to see an older man, one who would understand, without any need for explanation, his point of view about his daughter.

'I only wish you to leave the room for five minutes, my child. One word I must say to Monsieur alone.'

She obeyed without further demur, and as the door closed behind her, the Frenchman put out his hot, sinewy, right hand and seized the younger man's.

'Not a word!' he exclaimed in a hurried whisper. 'Not a word, you understand, of the truth for her! Gangrene has set in. There is nothing to be done now—it's too late. Why I consented to see you was, first, to procure for myself the pleasure of meeting an English confrère (an honour as well as a very great pleasure, I assure you)—and then with the hope that you were likely to know some—what shall I say?—palliative—ay, that's the word!—to make things less painful for her, as well as for me too, when comes the end.'

The Herr Doktor nodded his head understandingly.

'I tell you this,' went on the other quickly, 'because my daughter, as a matter of fact, knows nothing of illness, nothing of wounds——' He waited a moment. 'Perhaps you have a daughter—a child of your own?'

The Herr Doktor shook his head.

'Ah well, at your age I too was not married! More, like you, perhaps, I intended not to marry. But, some day your heart will play you a trick—wait till then, it's worth it—and you will come to realise how carefully one tries to guard one's children, especially one's daughter, from what is painful and disagreeable. I could not prevent Jeanne from taking charge of this Red Cross barge. She belongs to the Secours aux Blessés Militaires, and she has been through the course they give their young girl members. But, naturally, I should not have allowed her to go to a military hospital. A Red Cross barge is different. There are only convalescents there—and old Jacob, whom you will have seen, gave me his word that she should be sheltered from anything unpleasant or—or unsuitable.' He waited a few moments, and then, in a very different voice, added: 'But now, my dear colleague, we will consider my case—otherwise she will be growing impatient.'