“Ah, ces Américains!” exclaimed the mother.
“Un peuple tout a fait fou!” added the aunt.
It was practically an engagement.
14 The Furies of Pain
I
THE little town of Beauvais lies about fifty miles to the north of Paris. It is something over a thousand years old, and has an ancient cathedral, and battlements now made into boulevards. It was like Paris, in that the Germans had got there almost, but not quite. Its inhabitants had heard the thunder of guns, and were still hearing it, day and night, a distant storm where the sun came up. Thunderstorms are capricious, and whether this one would return was a subject of hourly speculation. People studied the bulletins in front of the ancient Hotel de Ville and hoped that what they read was true.
To keep the storm away, everybody was working day and night. The Chemin de Fer du Nord passed through the town, which had become a base: soldiers detraining, guns and ammunition being unloaded, depots established to store food and fodder and pass them up to the front, everything that would be needed if the line was to hold and the enemy be driven back. No use to expect comfort in such a place; count yourself lucky that you were alive.
Beauty Budd was here because she belonged to that class of people who are accustomed to have their own way. She had met cabinet ministers at tea parties and salons, she had given a generous check for the aid of the French wounded, she bore the name of a munitions family now being importuned to expand their plant and help to save la patrie. So when she appeared at the door of an official, the secretary bowed and escorted her in; the official said: “Certainly, Madame,” and signed the document and had it stamped.
So the car with the red-headed college boy chauffeur had been passed by sentries on the edge of Beauvais, and the harassed authorities of the town did their best to make things agreeable for a lady whose grief added dignity to her numèrous charms. “Yes, Madame, we will do our best to find your friend; but it will not be easy, because we have no general records.” There was another battle going on; the grumbling guns were making hundreds of new cases every hour, and they were dumped here because there was no time to take them farther.
“We will go ourselves and search,” said Madame; and when they told her that all the buildings in the town which could be spared had been turned into hospitals, she asked: “Can you give me a list?” The boys drove her to one place after another, and she would stand waiting while a clerk looked through a register of the living and another of the dead; her hands would be clenched and her lips trembling, and the two escorts at her side would be ready to catch her if she started to fall.
At last they found the name of Marcel Detaze; in a dingy old inn, so crowded with cots in the corridors that there was barely room to get through. It was Milton's “Stygian cave forlorn, 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy.” Beauty Budd, accustomed to every luxury, was plunged into this inferno, ill-lighted, clamorous with cries and groans, stinking of blood and suppurating wounds and disinfectants. Ambulances and carts were unloading new cases on the sidewalk; sometimes they were dead before a place could be found for them, and then they were carted to open graves outside the city.
II
Marcel was alive. That was all Beauty had asked for. They could not tell her much about him. His legs had been broken and had been set. His back was injured, they didn't know how badly. He doubtless had internal injuries. His burns had been dressed; very painful, of course, but they did not think he would be blind. “We have no time, Madame,” they said. “We do not sleep, we are exhausted.”
Beauty could see that it was true; doctors and nurses and attendants, all were pale and had dark rings under their eyes, and some of them staggered. “C'est la guerre, Madame.” “I know, I know,” said Beauty.
They took her to where he lay upon a cot, with a dozen other men in the same room. There would have been no way of recognizing him; his head was a mass of bandages, only an opening for his mouth and nose, and these appeared to be open sores. She had to kneel by him and whisper: “Is it you, Marcel?” He did not stir; just murmured: “Yes.” She said: “Darling, I have come to help you.” When she put her ear to his lips, she heard faintly: “Let me die.” There was something wrong with his voice, but she made out the words: “Don't try to save me. I would be a monster.”
Beauty had never been taught anything about psychology; only what she had picked up by watching people she knew. She had never heard of a “death-wish,” and if anyone had spoken of autohypnosis she would have wondered if it was a gadget for a motorcar. But she had her share of common sense, and perceived right away that she had to take command of Marcel's mind. She had to make him want to live. She had to find what might be an ear under the mass of bandages, make sure that the sounds were going into it, and then say, firmly and slowly:
“Marcel, I love you. I love your soul, and I don't care what has happened to your body. I mean to stand by you and pull you through. You have got to live for my sake. No matter what it costs, you must stand it, and see it through. Do you hear me, Marcel?”
“I hear you.”
“All right then. Don't say no to me. You must do it because I want you to. For the sake of our love. I want to take you away from here, and nurse you, and you will get over this. But first you have to make up your mind to it. You have to want to live. You have to love me enough. Do you understand me?”
“It is not fair to you —”
“That is for me to say. Don't argue with me. Don't waste your strength. You belong to me, and you have no right to leave me, to deprive me of your love. I don't care what you say, I don't want to hear it — I want you. Whatever there is of you that the doctors can save — that much is mine, and you must not take it from me. You can live only if you try to, and I ask you to do that. I want your promise. I want you to say it and mean it. I have to go out and make arrangements to take you to Paris; but I can't go till I know that you will fight, and not give up. You told me to have courage, Marcel. Now I have it, and you have to repay me. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“I want your promise. I want to know that if I go out to get help, you will fight with everything that's in you to keep alive, to keep your hope and courage, for my sake, and for our love. There's no use talking about love if you're not willing to do that much for it. Answer me that you will.”
She put her ear to the opening again, and heard a whisper: “All right.” She touched him gently on the shoulder, not knowing what part of him might be a wound, and said: “Wait for me. I'll come back just as quickly as I can make arrangements. Anything else I can do?”
“Water,” he said. She didn't know how to give it to him, for she was afraid to lift his head, and she had no tube, and no one to ask. She dipped her handkerchief into a glass and squeezed a little into his mouth, and kept that up until he said it was enough.
III
The doctors made no objection to having a patient taken off their hands. They said he couldn't be crowded into an automobile, that would surely kill him; and there was no ambulance available. It was a question of making changes in Beauty's own car, one of the new and fashionable kind called a “limousine,” a square black box. It might be possible to take out two of the seats, the right-hand ones, and make a place to lay a narrow mattress on the floor. Then Jerry made a suggestion — why not put a board platform on top of the two seats, with a mattress on that?