The New Book of Martyrs Part 12

I had to uncover and dress his wounds several times; and THOSE WOUNDS MUST HAVE SUFFERED. But to the last, he himself seemed aloof from everything, even his own sufferings.

XXV

"Come in here. You can see him once more."

I open the door, and push the big fair artilleryman into the room where his brother has just died.

I turn back the sheet and uncover the face of the corpse. The flesh is still warm.

The big fellow looks like a peasant. He holds his helmet in both hands, and stares at his brother's face with eyes full of horror and amazement.

Then suddenly, he begins to cry out:

"Poor Andre! Poor Andre!"

This cry of the rough man is unexpected, and grandiose as the voice of ancient tragedians chanting the threnody of a hero.

Then he drops his helmet, throws himself on his knees beside the death-bed, takes the dead face between his hands and kisses it gently and slowly with a little sound of the lips, as one kisses a baby's hand.

I take him by the arm and lead him away. His st.u.r.dy body is shaken by sobs which are like the neighing of a horse; he is blinded by his tears, and knocks against all the furniture. He can do nothing but lament in a broken voice:

"Poor Andre! Poor Andre!"

XXVI

La Gloriette is amongst the pine-trees. I lift up a corner of the canvas and he is there. In spite of the livid patches on the skin, in spite of the rigidity of the features, and the absence for all time of the glance, it is undoubtedly the familiar face.

What a long time he suffered to win the right to be at last this thing which suffers no more!

I draw back the winding-sheet. The body is as yet but little touched by corruption. The dressings are in place, as before. And as before, I think, as I draw back the sheet, of the look he will turn on me at the moment of suffering.

But there is no longer any look, no longer any suffering, no longer even any movements. Only, only unimaginable eternity.

For whom is the damp autumn breeze which flutters the canvas hung before the door? For whom the billowy murmur of the pine-trees and the rays of light crossed by a flight of insects? For whom this growling of cannon mingling now with the landscape like one of the sounds of nature? For me only, for me, alone here with the dead.

The corpse is still so near to the living man that I cannot make up my mind that I am alone, that I cannot make up my mind to think as when I am alone.

For indeed we spent too many days hoping together, enduring together, and if you will allow me to say so, my comrade, suffering together.

We spent too many days wis.h.i.+ng for the end of the fever, examining the wound, searching after the deeply rooted cause of the disaster--both tremulous, you from the effort to bear your pain, I sometimes from having inflicted it.

We spent so many days, do you remember, oh, body without a soul ... so many days fondly expecting the medal you had deserved. But it seems that one must have given an eye or a limb to be put on the list, and you, all of a sudden, you gave your life. The medal had not come, for it does not travel so quickly as death.

So many days! And now we are together again, for the last time.

Well! I came for a certain purpose. I came to learn certain things at last that your body can tell me now.

I open the case. As before, I cut the dressings with the s.h.i.+ning scissors. And I was just about to say to you, as before: "If I hurt you, call out."

XXVII

At the edge of the beetroot field, a few paces from the road, in the white sand of Champagne, there is a burial-ground.

Branches of young beech encircle it, making a rustic barrier that shuts out nothing, but allows the eyes and the winds to wander at will.

There is a porch like those of Norman gardens. Near the entrance four pine-trees were planted, and these have died standing at their posts, like soldiers.

It is a burial-ground of men.

In the villages, round the churches, or on the fair hill-sides, among vines and flowers, there are ancient graveyards which the centuries filled slowly, and where woman sleeps beside man, and the child beside the grandfather.

But this burial-ground owes nothing to old age or sickness. It is the burial-ground of young, strong men.

We may read their names on the hundreds of little crosses which repeat daily in speechless unison: "There must be something more precious than life, more necessary than life... since we are here."

THE DEATH OF MERCIER

Mercier is dead, and I saw his corpse weep.... I did not think such a thing possible. The orderly had just washed his face and combed his grey hair.

I said: "You are not forty yet, my poor Mercier, and your hair is almost white already."

"It is because my life has been a very hard one, and I have had so many sorrows. I have worked so hard... so hard! And I have had so little luck."

There are pitiful little wrinkles all over his face; a thousand disappointments have left indelible traces there. And yet his eyes are always smiling; from out his faded features they s.h.i.+ne, bright with an artless candour and radiant with hope.

"You will cure me, and perhaps I shall be luckier in the future."

I say "yes," and I think, "Alas! No, no."

But suddenly he calls me. Great dark hollows appear under the smiling eyes. A livid sweat bathes his forehead.

"Come, come!" he says. "Something terrible is taking hold of me. Surely I am going to die."

We busy ourselves with the poor paralysed body. The face alone labours to translate its sufferings. The hands make the very slightest movement on the sheet. The bullets of the machine-gun have cut off all the rest from the sources of life.

We do what we can, but I feel his heart beating more feebly; his lips make immense efforts to beg for one drop, one drop only from the vast cup of air.

Gradually he escapes from this h.e.l.l. I divine that his hand makes a movement as if to detain mine.

"Stay by me," he says; "I am afraid."