how i trembled when at last i tore open...! my doom was to be pronounced. my secret terror was dissipated on glancing at the first lines. jeannine reminded me that she was the daughter of a soldier, the niece and grand-daughter of a soldier. from time immemorial, glorious wounds had been revered in her family. she quoted the case of her great-uncle, who was also her godfather, who, in the year '70, had been hit by a bullet near his elbow, and had soon lost the use of his right arm, owing to rheumatism. their admiration had surrounded him and followed in his train all his life long.
my misfortune, she said, had not taken her by surprise. she had dreaded it all along. had i not discerned her deep compassion beneath the encouragement even in her very first letter?
at this point her tone grew more tender. she was aware, she said, of my bitterness and anguish which i tried in vain to conceal from her. however, i had turned to her. she thanked me for that. she was my faithful friend. she recognised herself as being picked out to help me in my trouble. after all, i was alive. wasn't that all that mattered? my misfortune did not lower me. it all raised me, on the contrary. i must have fought superbly. how many times[pg 495] a day she had pictured me leading my men to the attack. i had been intoxicated, had i not, by all that life offered of sublime sensations. i should not assume my former scepticism again, even in play. what a lot we should have to tell each other when—and heaven grant that the day might be near at hand—we met again.
i read and re-read these six pages. i never tired of assuring myself of my joy and revelling in it. my heart melted as a result of the relief, and turned towards the wall; i wept the sweet tears which had been ready to flow for the last ten days.
i now recognised clearly what i had dreaded and could smile at it. a revival of the dry mistrust which was dissipated at a word from jeannine!
this miracle of her persistent affection seemed to me the simplest and most natural reality. since the milk of human kindness was not an empty saying! and then one might have mistrusted another, but she, like myself, had deliberately raised herself above the common sphere in which men's feelings move. how little the scruples and hesitations of average souls could count for in comparison with the mute vow which bound us. we belonged to each other, whatever might happen!
but, nevertheless, when the first transport was over, a vague feeling of unrest returned to skim the surface of my mind. i was insatiable. it seemed to me that i might have looked for a more tender and impassioned abandonment—for some involuntary avowal....
and then, no! on thinking it over, i had no difficulty in convincing myself that it was her modesty which forbade her to declare herself. i myself had never dared to put it into writing. no; our engage[pg 496]ment would be ratified by a hand-clasp, by the chaste exchange of words.
i wrote her eight pages that same evening. our correspondence was resumed. each of us now, certainly waited for the other's letter to arrive before answering it—and the posts were still uncertain, a week sometimes went by without bringing the looked-for letter.
i was not without regret for the time when our love had found a way to express itself, every, or almost every day. we had ceased to move amongst those unique circumstances when not an hour must be lost in pouring out all one's heart, since each letter, received or despatched, might be the last. this was the return to normal conditions; letters between the betrothed before the ring has been given. it was at least something on which to feed the certainty of our happiness.
time went on and on. at the end of a fortnight they had given my leg a thorough dressing for the first time. the compresses, with the aid of hot water, had come off more quickly, and given me less pain than i had feared they might. bujard congratulated me on the condition of my wound. there was no trace of suppuration. three weeks more and i should get up!
i smiled at his words of encouragement. i marvelled at feeling nothing at the severed stump but a sort of tickling which was sometimes, by the way, almost intolerable. the feeling that my right thigh had nothing to counter-balance it was very queer too.
the occupants of our ward had nearly all recovered. some more beds were added. they tried to make[pg 497] more room, and sent away a great many of those who could stand up. cadieu was despatched to a convalescent home. he went hobbling off, much amused by his crutches. and merriment went with him.
many of the new arrivals appeared exhausted and worn out. they arrived in an infected state—it was the end of october—from the ghastly slaughters in belgium. there were several cases of tetanus and gangrene. i remember a big fellow, belonging to the naval brigade, who screamed with pain all night, and died at dawn.
i found this promiscuousness very trying, and lost strength again. my friend bujard noticed it, and, after having consulted me, arranged for me to have a little room to myself. i took leave of the sister, ste. thérèse.
to begin with i missed the fresh air in the ward. i was reduced to the society of my father as sole companion, and he was not well, because he had had an attack of choking one evening, in the thick of the battle of the yser, when he had thought our line had been broken through. bujard had warned me that he was threatened with angina pectoris.
and yet with what solicitude the poor man surrounded me. he was by my side from eight o'clock in the morning onwards. he never left me during the day, and had obtained permission to have his meals brought up there. he tried everything imaginable to alleviate the monotony of my long convalescence. he joined a library so that i might have books, and tired himself by reading to me for hours together. in the end i had to implore bujard to forbid him to[pg 498] read. he bought me a quantity of maps of different scales, and we tried to follow the situation, and the man?uvres of our five principal armies during the immortal days at the beginning of september. we marked out the actual front with little flags.
we talked, too. i evoked certain scenes from my childhood, our lorraine, eberménil. it caused my father frightful distress to think that the enemy were still there. "but not for long," he growled, grinding his teeth.
if i pressed the subject and recalled some happy occasion on which our dear departed ones had figured at our sides, then i used to see him fall into a deep day-dream, into which i dared not break. he belonged to those whose grief is frozen and taciturn, more heart-rending, perhaps, than ours, which is assuaged when we give vent to it.
i realised anew the difference in our two natures—not without regret! i should never have ventured, i thought, to allow him even a glimpse of the surprising evolution which had made a new man of me. it would have revolted him to learn from what depths i had started, and all that had been needed to bring me to this state of grace in which he had maintained himself without an effort, for more than forty years.
jeannine, everything brought back the longing for your beloved presence! you alone knew me, such as i had been and such as i was. what pride, just think, for us two, to ascertain how, little by little, at the seat of my love for you, all these virtues had blossomed in my soul. you would persuade me, perhaps, that i bore the germs in my heart, but that they could never have flowered in the etiolating atmosphere in which my life had been spent.
[pg 499]
stirred by such thoughts, i suddenly became more sensible to the paternal affection. what nurse would have set her wits to work in such a touching fashion? he tried to remember how my mother used to treat me during my long illnesses in former days.
one morning, he put a pack of cards on my table and timidly proposed a game of piquet.
"a good idea!" i said. "let's draw!"
he puckered his forehead and played attentively, and won. and i could see myself again as a child—a child playing like this with my mother, caressing her beautiful white hands. i could have seized and kissed this old man's wrinkled hands. the unique tenderness of parents, which one must hasten to enjoy! my mother had passed away years and years ago—and as for him, the last on earth of the beings whom i perpetuated, how much time would slip away before they left him, having lived his life, between four planks? i was harrowed in advance. i made a vow to do all that was in my power to sweeten the days—restricted, alas, in number—which still remained to him.
