"PATHETIC ECHO OF AIR-TRAGEDY. SHERBRAND, R.F.C., NOT DEAD OR PRISONER. RESCUED BY AMERICAN RED CROSS AMBULANCE. IN HOSPITAL NEAR YPRES. WILL RECOVER, BUT BLIND FOR LIFE."
The clamorous headlines had followed close on a telephone from Sir Roland. Patrine had learned what it means to cry for joy—an unforgettable experience. She had discovered that one who kneels down to thank God for a boon so marvellous, has no words left to offer Him, nor even tears and sighs.
She had written again and again to Sherbrand, saying only "Let me come to you!" Passionate, pitiful, tender letters, answered after weeks of delay by one page in the stiff, neat handwriting of the American Red Cross Nursing Sister who acted as amanuensis for the blind man.
"April, 1915.
"You have said that you wish to visit me in my blindness. I thank you for the expressed desire, but I cannot receive you here! I have never been the kind of man who bid for pity from women, and the ties that you broke, voluntarily, six months ago, I do not wish to renew. My mother has been here to bring me some things"—the French and Belgian decorations, guessed Patrine—"and has gone away again. She understands that it is best for me to remain here, because, although the War is over as far as I am actively concerned, I can hear the guns and breathe the breath of battle, and know when the 'planes pass overhead, and follow them in thought. There is little else a blind man can do, except make toys or baskets! Do not think me bitter or discontented—I am neither—quite O.K. I wish people had been told I brought down the Zepp., that's all! With gratitude for your kind and friendly remembrance,
"Yours most sincerely,"A. S."
A formal letter, but between the cold, stiff lines Patrine had read reproach, and love, and yearning. An unkind letter—but could she judge him harshly, her poor blind eagle, sitting in darkness never to be lifted, listening to the guns, and the battle-song of the Birds of War, drifting down out of "his sky"?
There was Mass in the Convent chapel at seven next morning. A military chaplain offered the Divine Sacrifice, and the rush-bottomed chairs were occupied by soldiers, French Chasseurs and Zouaves, Senegalese and Negroes, English Guards and Irish Fusiliers, Highlanders and a German or two,—all patients from the Hospital under the management of the Ursuline Sisters—a big building next door to the Convent, that had been a young ladies' boarding school in the days before the War.
The chapel was a dusky place. So dusky that though the red carnations and white Eucharis lilies in the Altar vases struck vivid notes of colour in the light of the Altar candles, the ruby spark of the Sanctuary lamp and the bright flame of the Paschal candle were barely visible in the brooding gloom. You could only tell the place to be crowded, by the deep-toned chorus of masculine voices joining fervently in the Confiteor and Credo. Pale green flashes momentarily lit up the crimson and purple and tawny tracery of the round east window, and the distant thudding of the guns at the Front made an accompaniment to the sacred rite.
The French priest officiating was a lean, short, elderly personage with brilliant eyes set in a mask of walnut-brown wrinkles and a resonant voice that was illustrated by beautiful, illuminating gestures as he preached.
"Let none say in your hearing, unrebuked, that this War is an unrelieved misfortune," he said to his hearers. "Recognize with me, my French compatriots, the Divine Mercy as extended particularly to France in this fiery ordeal! Her towns and villages have been destroyed,—her buildings have been shattered, her sons in countless thousands slain, but her national character has been purified—the soul of her people has been raised from the mire. If there is one here present among you—whatever may be his nationality,—who is conscious of loving Virtue better and loathing Vice more intensely, since the beginning of this War—then the War has been a blessing—to him—and not a curse! Acts have been performed—and are repeated hourly—acts of a sublime and touching selflessness and an almost Divine tenderness,—not only by men and women who are mild and gentle, but by the roughest and the most abandoned of either sex. The good seed was sown in time of peace—ah yes, my children! but it might have perished. And now Our Lord, who loves flowers, has caused these pure and exquisite blossoms to spring for Him from the field of War."
After his tiny sermon, delivered in French, and repeated in English, he hesitated a moment before turning to the Altar and said, with emotion in his mobile face and quick utterance:
"I have to ask a favour of you this morning. It is that at the Commemoration of the Departed you will unite with me in a mental act of prayer. Prayer for the soul of one to whom the gift of Faith, not being sought, was not given. A soul that has passed forth in darkness into the presence of Him who is the Light."
He turned away and began the Credo. As the deep chorus of male voices followed, Patrine found herself agreeing with the preacher's discourse.
"What was it," she asked herself, "that led me out from overheated, crowded rooms, oppressive with the scent of flowers and perfumes of triple extract—where the Tango and the Turkey Trot were being danced by half-clad, painted women and effeminate young men—and set my feet upon a mountain-slope with the free winds of heaven blowing upon me? I must answer—It was the War!"
As the great waves of the Credo surged and beat against the old brown rafters she went on thinking:
"What has made me quicken to the call of Humanity—awakened me to the knowledge of my sisterhood with my fellow-women? What has taught me how to live without dissipation and do without useless luxuries? Again—the War! And oh! what has taught me the meaning of Love in all its fulness, and set within the shrine of my heart this great sacred sorrow, and kindled in my soul the pure altar-flame of Faith? The War, the terrible War!"
She prayed for Sherbrand at the Commemoration of the Living! A somewhat incoherent petition that her Flying Man might be helped to bear his blindness, and find some happiness in her unchanged love. And the thought of the dead Agnostic haunted her. Who was the man, and what had brought about his ending? Was he a patient in the Ursuline Hospital?
A French, an English, or a German soldier? By a subtle change in her mental purview, recollections of von Herrnung began to occupy her mind.
"I will not think of him!—I will not!" she said to herself desperately. Then the obsession assumed an acute form. All that she most wished to forget in her relations with the Kaiser's Flying Man was being revived in her memory. Scene by scene, sentence by sentence, she was forced to live over the hated Past again.
She must have risen from her knees and left the chapel, so unbearable became the torment, but that the sacring bell rang its triples, the deep tones of the Sanctus answered from the turret, and the Host was lifted up. Then her tense nerves relaxed. The almost tangible presence of evil withdrew itself. She breathed more freely, and peace flowed in balmy waves upon her stormy soul. In prayer for herself and those who were most dear to her, she lost the sense of the unseen hands plucking at her garments and the soundless voice whispering at her ear. And presently at the Ipsis Domine, when supplication is made by priests and people for the departed, she prayed for the soul of the Denier—that the Divine Mercy might reach and enfold him, and lead him yet into the Way of Peace.
"Christ is risen who created all things, and who hath had pity upon mankind.... Purchased people, declare His virtues, alleluia! Who hath called you out of darkness into His admirable light."
To Patrine the Call had come.
It was Easter Week and there were many communicants. The nuns and the French and English Red Cross nurses helped the lame to reach the Altar-rails and guided the blind. When a tall, blond young English Officer with bandaged eyes and an empty sleeve was led up to his Master's Table, Patrine was grateful that the chapel was so dusk.
She was to meet the Chaplain of the Pophereele Stationary Hospital after Mass, the Mother Superioress had said. Thus, guided by an Ursuline Sister, she passed from the chapel into a long, whitewashed cloister looking on the garden, its open arches facing the doors of what had been class-rooms, and now were wards. Another Ursuline, the Sister Superintendent of the Hospital, with a young, gentle face framed in her close white guimpe and flowing black veil, sat writing in a big book at a plain deal table. Near her were some shelves with rows of bottles and a chest of drawers with measuring-glasses upon it, and a pestle and mortar and druggists' scales. Above the table a black wooden Crucifix hung against the whitewashed wall.
"This is Soeur Catherine, who keeps the Hospital accounts and dispenses the medicines, and posts the register in which we set down the names of all the wounded received and discharged. Take care, Mademoiselle! That paint is new and comes off!" cried the chaperoning Sister, snatching aside the skirt of Patrine's long blue V.A.D. coat.
She had brushed, in passing, against a wooden tablet that leaned against the wall near the door through which she had come. A big square of black-painted deal surmounted by a gabled and eaved Cross of German pattern, and bearing an inscription in white Gothic lettering:
"HIER RUHT IM GOTT
EIN DEUTSCHER FLIEGENDE OFFIZIER."
"That is for the grave of the German officer who died yesterday. One of the Bavarian soldiers is painting it. He has not finished—he has only gone away for a moment to get some more céruse from Mother Madeleine."
Sister Catherine offered the explanation. She added, as the tall English girl glanced at something that lay on the deal table beside the register:
"That is his flying-cap, poor man! and the belt that shows his rang militaire. They will be placed upon the pall when they carry him to the cemetery. But pardon! One should have observed before that Mademoiselle was suffering! What! Mademoiselle is not ill, not even a little fatigued? Then what Mademoiselle needs is a petit déjeuner."
And Patrine was whisked away to the guest's refectory to be refreshed with pistolets and coffee. Monseigneur would follow a little later. Madame la Superieure had arranged for Monseigneur to take déjeuner with M. l'Aumonier. Later, Monseigneur hoped for the pleasure of meeting the English Mademoiselle.
Mademoiselle's tall rounded figure, ushered by the little active Ursuline Sister, had barely passed through the glazed swing-doors leading from the cloister to the Convent, when the short, spare, elderly priest who had celebrated Mass entered from the chapel, followed by the Convent Aumonier, who had served him at the altar. Even as the nun rose from her table, the vividly clear eyes of Monseigneur, set in the mask of dry walnut-brown wrinkles, dropped on the painted head-board propped against the wall.
"That is for him?"
The supple right hand of Monseigneur waved towards the chapel, then extended itself to the Sister, who curtsied and kissed his amethyst ring.
"For him, Monseigneur," answered the Aumonier, to whom the question had been addressed.
"Dieu veuille avoir son âme!"
The left sleeve of Monseigneur's decidedly rusty serge soutane bore the well-known brassard. Its scarlet and white peeped between the folds of his heavy black mantle as he made the Sign of the Cross.
"His name is missing from the inscription," he commented, producing a battered silver snuff-box and helping himself to a generous pinch. "Why, might one demand?"
"The initials will be painted in presently, Monseigneur. There will be no name—by desire of the deceased!"
"He preferred anonymity?" The amethyst ring of Monseigneur's prelacy flashed violet as he dusted the brown powder from his upper-lip with a blue checked handkerchief. "The Père Aumonier tells me," his startlingly clear eyes were on the Sister, "that terrible as were his injuries, he might have recovered—that his death occurred suddenly and unexpectedly."
"But yes, Monseigneur, he might have recovered!" The fair face framed in the narrow guimpe was shadowed and troubled. "The coup d'obus had spared the brain, arteries, and vertebra. His sight was uninjured—M. le Commandant and his colleagues had achieved wonders in the partial restoration of the visage. Speech was difficult—but we could understand him—unless he was sullen and would only speak German to us. But at those times a Bavarian soldier interpreted—he who has painted the headboard for the grave."
"He—the German officer—was grateful to those who nursed him?" inquired Monseigneur of the Aumonier.
The stout little Chaplain visibly hesitated. It was the Sister who answered in her clear and gentle voice:
"Alas! no, Monseigneur! He was arrogant, even brutal. But then—he suffered so terribly, in mind as in body—one could not be angry at anything he said. He could not resign himself to his disfigured condition. It was intolerable, he would cry, that he should now be an object of horror to women—women who had worshipped him almost as a god!"
"Chut—chut! Eh—well! One presumes he meant a certain type of women," observed Monseigneur.
"Possibly so, Monseigneur." The simplicity of the fair face in the narrow guimpe was touching. "For when we assured him that we did not regard him with horror he would say to us: 'That makes nothing! I speak of women. You are only nuns.'"
"But nuns are women," objected Monseigneur.
"Monseigneur, he said not. When his condition seemed to him most miserable he found relief in saying things—abusive—outrageous—about nuns. We didn't mind. We pitied him—poor Number Twenty! But the French and English officers in the same ward resented this. They entreated us to remove him to a separate room. This we did, and at his request the Bavarian was placed in the same apartment—he has been an officer's servant—and is active and useful, even though he has lost a leg. Thus things went better. Poor Twenty seemed more contented. He even looked forward to leaving the Hospital!"
"And then? A change?—a relapse?" suggested Monseigneur.
"A change. He became more gloomy—more violent after a letter arrived for him from England at the Jour des morts. Since two days comes another letter. We heard him raving of perfidy, the folly of his agents—the injustice of his Emperor—the revenge upon the Englishwoman that he would never have now! ... Then all was quiet. Towards morning the Bavarian came out of the room and called an orderly. The Herr Hauptmann was sleeping, he said, in such a queer way.... From that unnatural stupor he never awakened. All his letters and papers were torn up and scattered in fragments. There was a little cardboard box on the night-table and a pencil billet for me. I am to send a ring he always wore to the address of a noble young lady at Berlin. She was his fiancée, I believe, Monseigneur. He thanks me for the little I have been able to do for him!—he begs the Sisters to pardon his rudeness.... He wishes no name upon his grave—but to be forgotten.... Poor broken body—poor rebellious heart—poor stubborn, desperate soul!"
"You think, then, that—he killed himself?" asked Monseigneur with directness.
"I dare not think!" She was searching in her table drawer with tears dropping on her hands. "I can only pray that the autopsy of the surgeon will not reveal that the death was not natural. Look, Monseigneur!—this is his ring. A big black-and-white pearl. And under the pearl, which lifts up—is a little box for something.... A relic perhaps—or a portrait, or a lock of a friend's hair."
"It might serve as a reliquary—at need, my child," said Monseigneur, examining the platinum setting. He gave one swift glance at the unsuspicious Aumonier and another at the innocent nun. He peered again narrowly at the empty hiding-place, to the shallow sides of which a few atoms of glittering grey dust were adhering. He lifted the ring to his nose and sniffed, tapped the little box on his thumb-nail, and touched his tongue to one of the glittering grey specks. Then he hastily spat in his handkerchief, and thunder-clouds sat on the furrowed forehead over the great hooked beak.
"Listen!"
The nun started and grew paler still. She hurried to the glazed doors opening on the garden and threw them wide apart. As the chill outer air rushed in, sporting with the scant white locks of M. l'Aumonier, fluttering the purple lappets at the throat of Monseigneur, and tugging as with invisible hands at the Sister's thin black veil, approaching footsteps crunched over the sloppy gravel of the cloister walk.
The small stout figure of the Sister-Keeper of the mortuary headed the small, solemn procession. She held up her habit out of the slush, and carried as well as a mammoth iron doorkey, a small bunch of spring flowers.
A stretcher-squad of the French Red Cross followed the Sister of the mortuary. In life the man they bore must have been a magnificent specimen of humanity. In death the length of his rigid form appeared phenomenal. The black velvet pall, over which had been draped the black-red-white German War Ensign, was far too short to cover the stiff blanket-swathed feet. That they projected beyond the stretcher-end with an effect of arrogance and obstinacy, was the thought that occurred to one of the three people gathered in a little group upon the threshold of the cloister-doors.
"Monseigneur.... My Father! ..." Sister Catherine was speaking in suppressed but eager accents. "It is Number Twenty. They are taking him to the mortuary. The Sister-Keeper promised to carry flowers as a sign that all was well. You understand, do you not? The surgeons have decided—thanks be to God!—that the poor man did not poison himself!"
She dropped to her knees and began to say a decade of her Rosary, the wooden beads running between her fingers like brown water as she prayed. The priests made the Sign of the Cross silently as the body was borne past. When the last feather of the Black Eagle had vanished, and the crunching of footsteps on sloppy gravel had thinned away in distance, the nun rose.
"You feel happier now, my sister, do you not?" Monseigneur asked kindly.
"Much happier, Monseigneur," she said, "for now I may pray for him!"
Monseigneur, who had retained the ring, shut the hiding-place with a decided click, snapped into its slot the end of the bar that held the magpie pearl in place, and said as he restored the bauble to the nun:
"Who knows but that some ray of Divine Grace may yet shine upon that darkened soul! Do as the owner begged of you, and pray for him by all means!"
"That I will!" she said fervently. "And you also, will you not pray for him? the poor, proud Pagan who believed no resurrection possible—unless one were to exist again as a vapour or a tree. Alas! I fear I have sinned much in yielding to the feeling he inspired in me!"
She added, meeting the keen glance of Monseigneur's vivid eyes:
"The feeling of repugnance. Of horror, Monseigneur! Here comes the Bavarian to finish the inscription. Well, my good Kühler, you have got some more ceruse?"
The glass-doors had been darkened by the shape of a one-legged man on crutches, a black-haired, swarthy fellow dressed in the maroon flannel uniform distinctive of the Hospital. A little pot with a brush in it dangled from one of his big fingers. He glanced up under his heavy brows, with a muttered word as he passed the Sister, and returned the greeting of Monseigneur with a clumsy attempt at a salute.
"You are better? You are getting on?" said Monseigneur to him in German.
"Better, mein Vater, and getting on."
"That is well! And you have only a little bit to do, and then your work is done?"
"Done, mein Vater!" echoed the one-legged man.
He went to the head-board where it was near the door leading to the chapel, leaned his crutches against the wall, and began cautiously and painfully to let himself down. Monseigneur and the Aumonier hurried to his assistance, saw him safely squatted upon his folded sack, took leave of the Sister, who knelt to receive the blessing of the hand that wore the amethyst ring,—and vanished through the farther door at the urgent summons of a bell.
The Sister turned again to her big ledger. A list of articles appertaining to the deceased would have to be checked and verified. Two pairs of binoculars—surely the one bearing the name and address of an officer in a British Guards regiment ought to be sent to the Allies' Headquarters at St. O—. Two purses, one full of English sovereigns, a stout roll of French bank-notes in a pigskin case, and so forth. When next she looked round, the Bavarian was wiping his brushes. The finished inscription now stood:
"HIER RUHT IM GOTT
EIN DEUTSCHER FLIEGENDE OFFIZIER
T. v. H.
30 YAHRE ALT."
"You are sorry for him, are you not, my good Kühler?" the nun asked mildly as the Bavarian scrambled to his solitary foot, and stood supporting himself against the wall.
"Sorry, my Sister?" He spoke in thick Teutonic French, and looked at her under his lowering black brows as he reached his crutches out of the corner and tucked them under his arms. "Why should I be sorry? He's dead—and so an end of him. Total kaput for another officer!" He saluted the Sister and stumped out.