The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France Part 4

"Something was broken, my General," responded the soldier, gravely, "but it is mended."

"Good!" said the general. "Now for the front, to beat the Germans at their own game. '_We shall get them_.' It may be long, but we shall get them!"

That was the autumn of the offensive of 1916, by which the French retook, in ten days, what it had cost the Germans many months to gain.

Pierre was there in that glorious charge in the end of October which carried the heights of Douaumont and took six thousand prisoners. He was there at the recapture of the Fort de Vaux which the Germans evacuated in the first week of November. In the last rush up the slope, where he had fought long ago, a stray sh.e.l.l, an inscrutable messenger of fate, coming from far away, no one knows whence, caught him and ripped him horribly across the body.

It was a desperate ma.s.s of wounds. But the men of his squad loved their corporal. He still breathed. They saw to it that he was carried back to the little transit hospital just behind the Fort de Souville.

 

It was a rude hut of logs, covered with sand-bags, on the slope of the hill. The ruined woods around it were still falling to the crash of far-thrown sh.e.l.ls. In the close, dim shelter of the inner room Pierre came to himself.

He looked up into the face of Father Courcy. A light of recognition and grat.i.tude flickered in his eyes. It was like finding an old friend in the dark.

"Welcome!--But the fort?" he gasped.

"It is ours," said the priest.

Something like a smile pa.s.sed over the face of Pierre. He could not speak for a long time. The blood in his throat choked him. At last he whispered:

"Tell Josephine--love."

Father Courcy bowed his head and took Pierre's hand. "Surely," he said.

"But now, my dear son Pierre, I must prepare you--"

The struggling voice from the cot broke in, whispering slowly, with long intervals: "Not necessary. . . . I know it already. . . . The penance. . . . France. . . . Jeanne d'Arc. . . . It is done."

A few drops of blood gushed from the corner of his mouth. The look of peace that often comes to those who die of gunshot wounds settled on his face. His eyes grew still as the priest laid the sacred wafer on his lips. The broken soldier was made whole.

Books By Henry Van d.y.k.e

The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France

The Americanism of Was.h.i.+ngton

The Christ Child in Art

The Lost Boy

The Mansion

The Story of the Other Wise Man