The Forest of Swords: A Story of Paris and the Marne by Joseph A. Altsheler (i like reading TXT) 📖

untrimmed. He carried a rifle over his shoulder and nobody could mistake him for anything but a Frenchman. Then he was not a prisoner again, but was in French hands. That, at least, was a consolation.

It was amusing to lie there and see the people, one by one, pass between him and the light. He could easily imagine that he was an inspection officer and that they walked by under orders from him. Two more women in those somber dresses with the red crosses embroidered upon them, were silhouetted for a moment against the glow and then were gone. Then a man with his arm in a sling and his face very pale walked slowly by. A wounded soldier! There must be many, very many of them!

The musical murmur ceased and he was growing weary. He closed his eyes and then he opened them again because he felt for a moment on his face a fragrant breath, fleeting and very light. He looked up into the eyes of Julie Lannes. They were blue, very blue, but with infinite wistful depths in them, and he noticed that her golden hair had faint touches of the sun in it. It was a crown of glory. He remembered that he had seen something like it in the best pictures of the old masters.

"Mademoiselle Julie!" he said.

"You have come back," she said gently. "We have been anxious about you. Philip has been to see you three times."

He noticed that she, too, wore the somber dress with the red cross, and he began to comprehend.

"A nurse," he said. "Why, you are too young for such work!"

"But I am strong, and the wounded are so many, hundreds of thousands, they say. Is it not a time for the women of France to help as much as they can?"

"I suppose so. I've heard that in our civil war the women passed over the battle fields, seeking the wounded and nursed them afterward. But you didn't come here alone, did you, Mademoiselle Julie?"

"Antoine Picard—you remember him—and his daughter Suzanne, are with me. My mother would have come too, but she is ill. She will come later."

"How long have I been here?"

"Four days."

John thought a little. Many and mighty events had happened in four days before he was wounded and many and mighty events may have occurred since.

"Would you mind telling me where we are, Mademoiselle Julie?" he asked.

"I do not know exactly myself, but we are somewhere near the river, Aisne. The German army has turned and is fortifying against us. When the wind blows this way you can hear the rumble of the guns. Ah, there it is now, Mr. Scott!"

John distinctly heard that low, sinister menace, coming from the east, and he knew what it was. Why should he not? He had listened to it for days and days. It was easy enough now to tell the thunder of the artillery from real thunder. He was quite sure that it had never ceased while he was unconscious. It had been going on so long now, as steady as the flowing of a river.

"I've been asking you a lot of questions, Mademoiselle Julie, but I want to ask you one more."

"What is it, Mr. Scott?"

"What happened to me?"

"They say that you were knocked down by a horse, and that when you were falling his knee struck your head. There was a concussion but the surgeon says that when you come out of it you will recover very fast."

"Is the man who says it a good surgeon, one upon whom a fellow can rely, one of the very best surgeons that ever worked on a hurt head?"

"Yes, Mr. Scott. But why do you ask such a question? Is it your odd American way?"

"Not at all. Mademoiselle Julie. I merely wanted to satisfy myself. He knows that I'm not likely to be insane or weak-minded or anything of the kind, because I got in the way of that horse's knee?"

"Oh, no, Mr. Scott, there is not the least danger in the world. Your mind will be as sound as your body. Don't trouble yourself."

She laughed and now John knew that it was she whom he had heard singing the chansonette in that low murmuring tone. What was that little song? Well, it did not matter about the words. The music was that of a soft breeze from the south blowing among roses. John's imaginings were growing poetical. Perhaps there were yet some lingering effects from the concussion.

"Here is the surgeon now," said Mademoiselle Julie. "He will take a look at you and he will be glad to find that what he has predicted has come true."

It was the man in the white jacket, and with that wonderful tangle of black whiskers, like a patch cut out of a scrub forest.

"Well, my young Yankee," he said, "I see that you've come around. You've raised an interesting question in my mind. Since a cavalry horse wasn't able to break it, is the American skull thicker than the skulls of other people?"

"A lot of you Europeans don't seem to think we're civilized."

"But when you fight for us we do. Isn't that so, Mademoiselle Lannes?"

"I think it is."

"War is a curious thing. While it drives people apart it also brings them together. We learn in battle, and its aftermath, that we're very much alike. And now, my young Yankee, I'll be here again in two hours to change that bandage for the last time. I'll be through with you then, and in another day you can go forward to meet the German shells."

"I prefer to run against a horse's knee," said John with spirit.

Surgeon Lucien Delorme laughed heartily.

"I'm confirmed in my opinion that you won't need me after another change of bandages," he said. "We've a couple of hundred thousand cases much worse than yours to tend, and Mademoiselle Lannes will look after you today. She has watched over you, I understand, because you're a friend of her brother, the great flying man, Philip Lannes."

"Yes," said John, "that's it, of course."

Julie herself said nothing.

Surgeon Delorme passed through the bar of brilliant light and disappeared, his place being taken by a gigantic figure with grizzled hair, and the stern face of the thoughtful peasant, the same Antoine Picard who had been left as a guardian over the little house beyond the Seine. John closed his eyes, that is nearly, and caught the glance that the big man gave to Julie. It was protecting and fatherly, and he knew that Antoine would answer for her at any time with his life. It was one remnant of feudalism to which he did not object. He opened his eyes wide and said:

"Well, my good Picard, perhaps you thought you were going to look at a dead American, but you are not. Behold me!"

He sat up and doubled up his arm to show his muscle and power. Picard smiled and offered to shake hands in the American fashion. He seemed genuinely glad that John had returned to the real world, and John ascribed it to Picard's knowledge that he was Lannes' friend.

Julie said some words to Picard, and with a little au revoir to John, went away. John watched her until she was out of sight. He realized again that young French girls were kept secluded from the world, immured almost. But the world had changed. Since a few men met around a table six or seven weeks before and sent a few dispatches a revolution had come. Old customs, old ideas and old barriers were going fast, and might be going faster. War, the leveler, was prodigiously at work.

These were tremendous things, but he had himself to think about too, and personality can often outweigh the universe. Julie was gone, taking a lot of the light with her, but Picard was still there, and while he was grizzled and stern he was a friend.

John sat up quite straight and Picard did not try to keep him from it.

"Picard," he said, "you see me, don't you?"

"I do, sir, with these two good eyes of mine, as good as those in the head of any young man, and fifty is behind me."

"That's because you're not intellectual, Picard, but we'll return to our lamb chops. I am here, I, a soldier of France, though an American—for which I am grateful—laid four days upon my back by a wound. And was that wound inflicted by a shell, shrapnel, bomb, lance, saber, bullet or any of the other noble weapons of warfare? No, sir, it was done by a horse, and not by a kick, either, he jostled me with his knee when he wasn't looking. Would you call that an honorable wound?"

"All wounds received in the service of one's country or adopted country are honorable, sir."

"You give me comfort, Picard. But spread the story that I was not hit by a horse's knee but by a piece of shell, a very large and wicked piece of shell. I want it to get into the histories that way. The greatest of Frenchmen, though he was an Italian, said that history was a fable agreed upon, and you and I want to make an agreement about myself and a shell."

"I don't understand you at all, sir."

"Well, never mind. Tell me how long Mademoiselle Julie is going to stay here. I'm a great friend of her brother, Lieutenant Philip Lannes. Oh, we're such wonderful friends! And we've been through such terrible dangers together!"

"Then, perhaps it's Lieutenant Lannes and not his sister, Mademoiselle Julie, that you wish to inquire about."

"Don't be ironical, Picard. I was merely digressing, which I admit is wrong, as you're apt to distract the attention of your hearer from the real subject. We'll return to Mademoiselle Julie. Do you think she's going to remain here long?"

"I would tell you if I could, sir, but no one knows. I think it depends upon many circumstances. The young lady is most brave, as becomes one of her blood, and the changes in France are great. All of us who may not fight can serve otherwise."

"Why is it that you're not fighting, Picard?"

The great peasant flung up his arms angrily.

"Because I am beyond the age. Because I am too old, they said. Think of it! I, Antoine Picard, could take two of these little officers and crush them to death at once in my arms! There is not in all this army a man who could walk farther than I can! There is not one who could lift the wheel of a cannon out of the mud more quickly than I can, and they would not take me! What do a few years mean?"

"Nothing in your case, Antoine, but they'll take you, later on. Never fear. Before this war is over every country in it will need all the men it can get, whether old or young."

"I fear that it is so," said the gigantic peasant, a shadow crossing his stern face, "but, sir, one thing is decided. France, the France of the Revolution, the France that belongs to its people, will not fall."

John looked at him with a new interest. Here was a peasant, but a thinking peasant, and there were millions like him in France. They were not really peasants in the old sense of the word, but workingmen with a stake in the country, and the mind and courage to defend it. It might be possible to beat the army of a nation, but not a nation in arms.

"No, Picard," said John, "France will not fall."

"And that being settled, sir," said Picard, with grim humor, "I think you'd better lie down again. You've talked a lot for a man who has been unconscious four days."

"You're right, my good Picard, as I've no doubt you usually are. Was I troublesome, much, when I was out in the dark?"

"But little, sir. I've lifted much heavier men, and that Dr. Delorme is strong himself, not afraid, either, to use the knife. Ah, sir, you should have seen how beautifully he worked right under the fire of the German guns! Psst! if need be he'd have taken a leg off you in five minutes, as neatly as if he had been in a hospital in Paris!"

John felt apprehensively for his legs. Both were there, and in good condition.

"If that man ever comes near me with the intention of cutting off one of my legs I'll shoot him, good fellow and good doctor though he may be," he said. "Help me up a little higher, will you, Picard? I want to see what kind of a place we're in."

Picard built up a little pyramid of saddles and knapsacks behind him and John drew himself up with his back against them. The rows and rows