Still draped in the black-and-silver trappings laboriously hung by the women of Valoise to do funeral honour to Dr. RouannÈs, the parish church, when Jeanne RouannÈs entered it, was already transformed into a hospital ward; and, as she came slowly back to normal conditions of heart and brain, she was amazed to see all that these capable, if rough-looking, German medical orderlies had accomplished.

Not only had every kind of bed already been commandeered from the houses round, but through medieval glass which the Great Revolution had spared, the sun shone on huge cases containing every kind of surgical requisite ready for immediate use.

An operating theatre equipment had been set out in the Lady Chapel, and a wave of colour flooded the French girl's face when she saw that the trestles on which her father's rude coffin had rested were now serving as the base of the principal operating table. She could not help wondering in her ignorance why all these elaborate preparations had been made, for the only wounded occupant of this strange war-hospital was a two-year-old girl, injured in the head by a fragment of one of the half-dozen shells which had fallen in the town two hours before.

'To the little child attend you,' the Herr Doktor muttered in her ear. 'I will ensure that no disagreeables you befall. The Herr Stabsarzt is a good man—perhaps have you of him heard, my gracious miss; he is the surgeon Octavius Mott of Ems. Very famous and skilful is he.'

Quickly, and yet with much ceremony, he brought her up to the big, shaggy, spectacled German, who greeted her courteously with the words, uttered in a French as good as her own, 'We shall have plenty of work for you presently, Mademoiselle.'

Then, as Max Keller, in a quick, rather anxious undertone, explained that Mademoiselle RouannÈs was the just orphaned daughter of a French Red Cross doctor, the Herr Stabsarzt became perceptibly more cordial. 'She does not look strong enough for the labours which will presently begin. You must watch over the poor bereaved one,' he said kindly; 'she looks a truly refined, gentle being, as well as full of French prettiness and grace. There are plenty of ugly old women in this town whom we shall be able to make useful when the wounded come in.'

The Herr Doktor's face became transformed. He could have knelt and kissed the hand of the great, the skilful, the so understanding and humane Octavius Mott! The Herr Stabsarzt, looking at him from out his shrewd little eyes, saw something in the plain sensitive face that touched him. 'So?' he said to himself, 'there is already an excellent Franco-German alliance established here!'

The soldier looters of Valoise slept heavily that night. Their miserable victims, those among them who had not fled into the surrounding country, crowded back into their ravished, empty houses, and into those out-buildings and stables which had escaped the notice of the marauders—anywhere to be free of hateful and terrifying presences. They hoped, poor wretches, with that curious hope and faith in the future, which in the French temperament survives all material disasters, and makes recuperation comparatively easy, that with the morning the enemy would hasten away from the sacked town. This, as they all knew, was what had happened elsewhere.

But, with the breaking of the cloudless dawn, came a new terror to the unhappy people, for shells again began dropping into the town, and, for a while at least, panic and confusion reigned, even among the sated German soldiery. The French batteries, hidden away to the right of Valoise, had evidently obtained trustworthy information from within the town, for their attack was carefully directed to the group of villas on the hill where the officers had established themselves, but the church,—the church which now flew the Red Cross flag, and was still the glory of Valoise, was spared.

At last the French guns found another range, that of the German batteries, and as these replied, so strange and so exciting was the artillery duel, that women, and even children, crowded into the streets and, with upturned faces, watched the shells from the even then famous '75, and the heavier German missiles, go hurtling by overhead.

And then very soon, from the plains below and the woods above Valoise, the wounded came pouring in. They were brought in every kind of vehicle, from the luxurious motor ambulances belonging to the German Red Cross, to handcarts drawn by donkeys and by dogs.

At the end of the first hour, Jeanne RouannÈs told herself that there was no room for more. But on and on they came, in a terrible, continuous procession, and place still had to be found for them. After the beds had all been filled, the stone floor, hastily covered with stacks of straw, had to serve as resting-place for many more. Very soon, too, all the houses, and the often more comfortable stables and out-buildings of the town, were also full and overfull....

The French Red Cross nurse was ordered to remain in the church, and reluctantly she found herself compelled to admire the energy, the method, the quick, if to her heartless, type of efficient intelligence, the German surgeons there brought to their terrible tasks. In whatever part of the church she happened to be, whatever the duty in which she was engaged, during those hours of horror and strain, when all the miraculous resources of youth—her fine health of body, and finer stoicism of soul—alone brought her through the awful ordeal, the Herr Doktor watched over, and as far as was in his power, helped her to perform her arduous, pitiful works of mercy.

Very soon—so soon that it seemed retrospectively to have been at the end of the first morning—everything a normal surgeon and his dressers require had been used up, and that though, by the forethought of Herr Doktor Max Keller, all the clean, looted linen which had been put safely away for transport to Germany had early been requisitioned by the Field Ambulance.

The German wounded far outnumbered the French, and at first the fact had filled the French Red Cross nurse with a relief of which she felt ashamed.

Then suddenly she understood the strange disparity! To these keen, clear-thinking German surgeons their own countrymen came first as a matter of course, and the best was naturally reserved for them. They were skilful, and as humane as it was in them to be, to all those whom they attended, but the grey-clad wounded were obviously the most important.

The knowledge that this was so filled Jeanne RouannÈs with revolt, and bitter anger. As she half mechanically performed the duties set her, she thought of her own shattered countrymen, lying for the most part outside and unattended; and she was filled with repugnance, even horror, for all these Germans, both the wounded and the whole, who lay and stood about her. As far as was possible, she lavished the small surgical science she possessed, and the measureless pity and tenderness that was hers in ample measure, on the few French wounded who were brought into the church.

Then suddenly a strange thing happened. A dying German, to whom she had just given an injection of camphorated oil, held out his hand, gropingly. She took the rough, blackened hand in hers, and he murmured 'Mutter,' in a voice full of agonised longing and entreaty. From that moment Jeanne RouannÈs no longer made, even in her inmost heart, any distinction between the French and German wounded. She tended them as far as was in her power, and in the measure of her strength, with the same kindness and untiring devotion.

In addition to the wounded—the wounded brought in from the scenes of the fierce rearguard actions now being fought round Valoise—were the injured townspeople, the old women and the little children who became unwitting targets for the bombs, the shells, and even the arrows, which now and again fell from the German aeroplanes circling in the air above.

Occasionally, not often, the French Red Cross nurse would obtain permission to go out into the town to attend on some of them; and perhaps because the thought of any personal danger was so far from them both, during those strange and terrible days, the Herr Doktor Max Keller and Jeanne RouannÈs, when engaged on such outside works of mercy, met with none of the mishaps which befell many of those about them.

Such trifling, even childish, incidents and happenings remained imprinted on her heart! Thus, she was shaken with rage and disgust when shown that the curiously shaped steel arrow which had fatally injured a little child, had fastened to it, not only a miniature German flag, but an absurd message, written in bad French, pinned to the flag.

As to the sights which filled her eyes when she was away from the shadowed church, the one which remained the most vividly present to her, in after days, was the effect produced by a fragment of shell which happened to unseal the top of a hydrant. Just out of reach of a fiercely burning building, the water rose like a colossal fountain, throwing exquisite sprays of prismatic colour into the sunny air.

All through those four September days, while friend and enemy destroyed the Haute Ville of Valoise, the sun shone hotly in a clear sky, the air was filled with a soft, luminous haze which rose from the river, and the fierce fighting in the woods behind the town went on in glades and coverts filled with the magic beauty of early autumn scents and tints.

2

Jeanne RouannÈs suddenly awoke from what had been a seven hours' deep, death-like sleep. Awoke? Ah no! As she sat up in a darkness broken by tiny, wraithlike shafts of sunlight, she half smiled, half frowned at the strangeness of the nightmare in the mazes of which she found herself involved.

Instead of being in her blue-and-white room at home, surrounded by all her girlish treasures, and lying in the old-fashioned mahogany bed, opposite which hung a charming portrait, painted some thirty years ago, of her gentle, dead mother, she seemed to be—of all the most absurdly improbable places—in the sacristy of the parish church, and sitting up, fully dressed, on a heap of dirty grey coats!

There came over her a sudden misgiving—a mysterious sinking of the heart. Perhaps this was the beginning of illness—of a very serious, terrible illness? She was conscious of agonising, shooting pain in her head, and over her eyes, also of dull, aching sensations in her limbs, especially in her arms.... But if only she could shake herself free of this evil nightmare, she would not mind the pain....

Then there seemed to steal into her delicate nostrils a most horrible odour—And it was that now dreadfully familiar smell, that sweetish, sickly, penetrating smell, which brought back full consciousness to Jeanne RouannÈs.

This was no dream—no nightmare. She was in very truth lying, or rather now sitting up, in the sacristy of the old church! It was there that the Herr Doktor had arranged her rude couch the night before; he, too, who had folded one of her blood-stained Red Cross overalls to make a pillow for her head, and, finally, with the thoughtful kindness on which she had grown unconsciously to rely, darkened the two narrow windows with various holy vestments which he had unceremoniously pulled out of M. le CurÉ's cupboard. She even remembered, now, the form of English words in which, with a queer break in his tired, worn voice, he had ordered her to lie down and sleep.

He had done it all for the best—she knew that. And yet, and yet she was faintly resentful of his well-meant care. For now she was uneasily conscious that she felt less able than she had felt yesterday to go on with her work—the terrible, urgent, unceasing work which lay just the other side of the oak door leading into the church.

Through that door there now came the loud sounds of knocking which had evidently awakened her. Each knock reverberated horribly in her brain.

The Herr Doktor would be sorry—concern would fill his anxious, red-rimmed eyes, when he saw how tired, how dreadfully tired, in spite of her long night's rest, poor Jeanne now was!

Fumbling in her pocket, she found a little box he had given her two days ago, when she had confessed to a spasm of the headache which was now again full on her, making her feel blind and sick. She had not believed that one of the tiny white capsules in this little box would do her any good—but she had taken it to please him, to show courtesy to one who was always so kind and courteous to her, and who had been so good, so more than good, to her dear father. And then a miracle had happened! Not only had her headache gone, but also her sense of utter weariness and confusion of mind. 'Not more than every four hours must you one take,' he had explained, and she had tried not to exceed the allowance. She had lived and worked on those capsules ever since. But it was eight hours since she had had the last.

Nothing on the part of those whom she still in her heart called 'the Prussians'—a name dating from her childhood—could now surprise Jeanne RouannÈs. She was equally ready for their hearty kindness or their equally strong and heartless brutality. During those last three days she had seen much of both.

And yet she was surprised—surprised and, yes, terribly moved—when, on opening the sacristy door, she saw what was going on in the church. All that had been brought there, unpacked and arranged with so much science and care five days ago, was now being prepared for removal. The SanitÄts-Aerzte were busily engaged in supervising the work, and the old Frenchwomen who had been impressed to help in the improvised Feld-Lazaret were assisting the German orderlies with what looked unnecessarily cheerful zeal.

It was a painful scene, a scene of noise, of confusion, and of the angry, hoarse shouting of orders. Lying in the beds arranged in rows on either side of the aisles, stretched out on the now sodden, dirty straw which had been brought in when the beds had given out, the wounded, and, in many cases, the dying, men lay staring with glazed, apathetic eyes at all that was going on about them.

Suddenly an order rang out, in a voice with which Jeanne RouannÈs had only kindly, almost pleasant, associations—that of the Herr Stabsarzt.

At once, wheeling about with sharp precision, each of the German orderlies ceased whatever work he was engaged on, and with firm, ungentle hands began rolling up in their bed-coverings those among the wounded—French as well as German—who were regarded as 'hopeful cases.' The moans, the sudden cries of pain and fear of the wretched men rang out, and the Red Cross nurse rushed impulsively forward, words of protest on her lips.

'You will have enough to do caring for those we are compelled to leave behind us,' said the Herr Stabsarzt Octavius Mott dryly, and then, as he looked into her young, grieving face, his voice softened. 'I know my poor fellows will have care and goodness from you, my dear demoiselle.'

But even now Jeanne RouannÈs did not understand, and it fell to her old friend, the Herr Doktor Max Keller, to tell her the truth. She attributed his strange, agitated manner, the look of dreadful suffering on his plain, pallid face, to the nature of that truth, for 'The French will soon in this town be,' he muttered hurriedly. 'Therefore must we this morning in retreat go. That is why I am compelled you to leave. But permission your CurÉ here to bring obtained have I. I can you with that good old man safely leave.'

The Germans evacuating Valoise? She knew now why the women round her were working so well and briskly, why there were even furtive smiles on some of their weary faces. The Prussians were being driven away—the victorious French would soon be here!

But Jeanne RouannÈs was too tired, too bewildered, to feel more than dully glad.

A few moments later Max Keller obtained from the Herr Stabsarzt unwilling permission to leave the church. 'You must find the priest as soon as you can,' said the old German gruffly, 'for we have to be off in about an hour. Mademoiselle RouannÈs will be quite safe here—with the wounded.' But as he shot a look into the younger man's set, unhappy face, he said to himself, 'You'd like to take her along with you, my poor fellow. So? But this is no time for love nonsense!'

3

The Mairie of Valoise was close to the church, and had, so far, escaped bombardment. It was a shabby-looking, modern house, in a narrow street now filled with military motors and transport wagons. And now, both within and without the Mairie, were all the signs of rather hurried, ignominious departure.

Unchallenged the Herr Doktor walked into a dirty hall full of huge packing-cases and crates ready for removal. To the left, above a large half-open door, were inscribed the words 'Salle des Mariages,' and pulling open the door, he walked in.

At an ornate table covered with maps and papers, below an allegorical painting of Hymen, an intelligence officer sat writing. He looked hot, tired and flurried. Raising his head, he frowned disagreeably. 'What is the matter now, Herr Doktor? I sent all the necessary orders to the Field Ambulance three hours ago!' he exclaimed. 'I regret to tell you that every moment is of value, for Valoise must be entirely evacuated by eight o'clock. We have certain information that the town is to be again bombarded at nine, but this time the French will be destroying what will be left here of their own people!'

At that pleasant thought his countenance lightened.

The Herr Doktor walked right up to the table. He was not in a mood to stand any bullying. 'We have to give the parish priest instructions about our wounded,' he said curtly.

'The parish priest? You mean one of the hostages?' The intelligence officer pushed aside a packet of printed forms and sought hastily under it. 'Here is the key of their prison—if indeed it is still standing! To tell you the truth, I have been too busy to concern myself about these two Frenchmen, and it is a good thing for them, Herr Doktor, that you have this business with the CurÉ! Yes, by all means, bring the priest to the church, and leave him there in charge. As for the Mayor, he can be released later. That Mayor is a truculent fellow!' He smiled a little grimly. 'You can hand this key to the priest just before you move off.'

The Herr Doktor took the key, and walked quietly to the door. Did the Herr Major mean that, but for his, Max Keller's, accidental intervention, the hostages would have been left to await release by their own countrymen? But that was quite against the usages of civilised warfare!

After he had left the Rue de la Mairie and entered the zone of destruction caused by the bombardment of the last few days, the Herr Doktor had to pick, to leap, sometimes almost to excavate, his way through the ruins of what had been a pleasant, residential quarter of the happy little town.

What a scene of tragic and, yes, sordid desolation lay all about him, and what an awful stillness—a stillness which made him start at the sounds made by his own footfalls!

All the landmarks with which he had become vaguely familiar during the last three weeks were gone. They seemed obliterated. Heaps of rubble, and decomposing masses of filth, from which he hastily averted his eyes when warned of their nearness by another of his sensitive senses, rose mountainously round the shattered sides and backs of those houses of which the walls remained standing. Where there had been placid beauty, there was now an ugliness that verged on the diabolic grotesque; where there had been healthy life, there was now foul corruption.

At last, after what seemed an eternity of difficult going, he saw, through a hole blown out in an otherwise still intact wall, a beautiful garden. Beds of blooming, delicately tinted flowers rose amid grass which still looked fresh and green, though here and there, across a stretch of lawn, there yawned a deep pit made by a bursting shell.

He clambered through into the peaceful demesne with a sensation of gasping relief, and wandered on till a turn brought him close to what looked like a massive ruin, out of which, high up above his head, there lurched two large pieces of fine, brass-incrusted, mahogany furniture. With a shock of regret he realised that this was all that now remained of the largest of the villas commanding the Grande Place, for through an open door, set deep in the wall of the garden, he caught a glimpse of the familiar open space.

He hurried forward, relieved to know that his perilous, disagreeable journey was nearing its end.

And then, as he emerged on to the now deserted Grande Place, the Herr Doktor's feelings of relief changed with terrible suddenness to horror. For the first time he felt his nerve give way, and there swept over him an overmastering desire to rush back and obliterate from his memory the hideous sight on which his eyes now rested.

Bathed in the bright, early morning sunlight, close to him, on his right, the stone-rimmed Abreuvoir was surrounded by a herd of dead and dying horses. There they had galloped, maddened by pain; there they had wandered down, wounded, starving, and thirsty, from the uplands, drawn by some strange, secret instinct as to where water was. Many of the poor creatures still had saddles on their sore backs, and others had attached to them remains of the harness which had bound them to artillery and transport wagons.

Averting his eyes determinedly from the piteous sight, he ran across the Grande Place towards the screen of chestnut trees behind which lay the Tournebride, and when he reached the high gilt gates, of which the posts were wreathed in now fading orange trumpet flowers, he uttered aloud an exclamation of almost sobbing relief. The long, low, rose-red mass of brick buildings seemed intact, and that though two of the high trees in the courtyard lay split and riven, their blackened trunks broken up into what now looked like monstrous pieces of firewood.

But, alas! as he went on, as he penetrated farther and farther into the courtyard, he saw that all that now remained of the beautiful old inn was the rose-red faÇade; behind that faÇade everything had been destroyed by shell or fire. Through the upper windows he could see the sky, and a muslin embroidered curtain, still delicately white, fluttered outwards.

He edged his way to where an arch had given access to the kitchen garden of the inn. Arch and wall had escaped destruction, but the garden beyond had been rifled of everything; fruit, ripe or unripe, had been plucked; vegetables pulled up from the ground; and the flower borders trampled into a bare wilderness of dust and mud. Two taps had been left running, and a space which had contained a miniature apple orchard had become a swamp. But the square, windowless fruit-house stood unscathed in the midst of the desolation. Yet, as he walked along the dusty path, a nervous sense of misgiving came over the Herr Doktor; he felt he would like to find the building before him empty, and that though it made his journey useless.

Putting the key in the door, he turned it—then recoiled in involuntary disgust, so fetid and so hot was the blast of air which met him. Opening the door widely he walked through into the large room, and saw that his suspicions of the officer who had handed him the key with such ambiguous, sinister words were indeed justified!

Each of the two French hostages lay stretched out on his pallet bed; the Mayor's body and face were turned to the wall, but the priest lay on his back, and all over his wax-like, yellowing, dead face, and on his white hair, a cloud of flies had settled.

Suddenly the Mayor, with a painful effort, turned and sat up. He feebly dragged his limbs across the brown blanket on which he had been lying, and whispered, 'For the love of God, a little water, Monsieur,' but his swollen tongue could hardly form the words.

The Herr Doktor rushed out into the garden. Yes, there, close by, was running water. But he could see nothing to pour it into. He made a cup of his two hands, and walking this time with slow, steady footsteps, he came back into what had become a charnel-house.

It was after his third journey for water that he heard the Frenchman speak again, in low, husky tones. 'The old man died yesterday morning. He had, it seems, a malady of the heart. But he predicted that I should be saved, and as long as he was alive to say fine and consoling things to me, I kept my courage.'

'You have courage now,' said the German surgeon, feelingly.

'No, Monsieur, my courage has all gone. I am horribly frightened—I am like a child.' He brought out the words with a hoarse, choking effort, and tears forced themselves into his sunken eyes, and lost themselves in his unkempt beard.

To the Herr Doktor, this unexpected incident was proving, rather to his own surprise, almost unendurably painful—and, yes, humiliating. Such accidents should not be allowed to happen in so splendidly organised an army as were the cultured German hosts. He was not a vindictive man, but he longed to bring the officer responsible for—for this bit of callous cruelty, to condign and very sharp punishment.

'Listen,' he said in his odd, twisted French. 'I now go must. But first will I something find in which plenty of water to leave. And, Monsieur le Maire, I have good news for you.' He waited a moment, then went on, with an effort, 'The French will soon in Valoise be, for within an hour shall we the town leave. But before leaving, I will arrange that food suitable to your requirements shall brought be.'

He went out again into the ravaged garden, and, now that the greatest need for it had gone by, he espied a watering-pot close to where he had looked so eagerly a few minutes ago. Filling it up, he hurried back into the fruit-house.

'Do not therein a moment longer stay,' he said in a low voice. 'Into the air and the sun come you now out. If that you do, soon recovered quite you will be.'