The Forest of Swords: A Story of Paris and the Marne

The heavy French field guns behind them were firing over their heads, but there was still nothing in front, merely the low green hills and not even a flash of flame nor a puff of smoke. The whistling death came out of space.

The French went on, a wide shallow valley opened out before them, and they descended by the easy slope into it. Here the German shells and shrapnel ceased to fall among them, but, as the heavy thunder continued, John knew the guns had merely turned aside their fire for other points on the French line. Carstairs by his side gave an immense sigh of relief.

"I can never get used to the horrible roaring and groaning of those shells," he said. "If I get killed I'd like it to be done without the thing that does it shrieking and gloating over me."

They were well in the valley now, and John noticed that along its right ran a dense wood, fresh and green despite the lateness of the season. But as he looked he heard the shrill snarling of many trumpets, and, for a moment or two, his heart stood still, as a vast body of German cavalry burst from the screen of the wood and rushed down upon them.

It was not often in this war that cavalry had a great chance, but here it had come. The ambush was complete. The German signals, either from the sky or the hills, had told when the French were in the valley, and then the German guns had turned aside their fire for the very good reason that they did not wish to send shells among their own men.

John's feeling was one of horrified surprise. The German cavalry extending across a mile of front seemed countless. Imagination in that terrific moment magnified them into millions. He saw the foaming mouths, the white teeth and the flashing eyes of the horses, and then the tense faces and eyes of their riders. Lances and sabers were held aloft, and the earth thundered with the tread of the mounted legions.

"Good God!" cried Wharton.

"Wheel, men, wheel!" shouted Captain Colton.

As they turned to face the rushing tide of steel, the regiment of Bougainville whirled on their flank and then Bougainville was almost at his side. He saw fire leap from the little man's eye. He saw him shout commands, rapid incisive, and correct and he saw clearly that if this were Napoleon's day that marshal's baton in the knapsack would indeed become a reality.

The Paris regiment, kneeling, was the first to fire, and the next instant flame burst from the rifles of the Strangers. It was not a moment too soon. It seemed to many of the young Americans and Englishmen that they had been ridden down already, but sheet after sheet of bullets fired by men, fighting for their lives, formed a wall of death.

The Uhlans, the hussars and the cuirassiers reeled back in the very moment of triumph. Horses with their riders crashed to the ground, and others, mad with terror, rushed wildly through the French ranks.

John, Carstairs and Wharton snatched up rifles, all three, and began to fire with the men as fast as they could. A vast turmoil, frightful in its fury, followed. The German cavalry reeled back, but it did not retreat. The shrill clamor of many trumpets came again, and once more the horsemen charged. The sheet of death blazed in their faces again, and then the French met them with bayonet.

The Strangers had closed in to meet the shock. John felt rather than saw Carstairs and Wharton on either side of him, and the three of them were firing cartridge after cartridge into the light whitish smoke that hung between them and the charging horsemen. He was devoutly thankful that the Paris regiment was immediately on their right, and that it was led by such a man as Bougainville. General Vaugirard, he knew, was farther to their left, and now he began to hear the rapid firers, pouring a rain of death upon the cavalry.

"We win! we win!" cried Carstairs. "If they couldn't beat us down in the first rush they can't beat us down at all!"

Carstairs was right. The French had broken into no panic, and, when, infantry standing firm, pour forth the incessant and deadly stream of death, that modern arms make possible, no cavalry can live before them. Yet the Germans charged again and again into the hurricane of fire and steel. The tumult of the battle face to face became terrific.

John could no longer hear the words of his comrades. He saw dimly through the whitish smoke in front, but he continued to fire. Once he leaped aside to let a wounded and riderless horse gallop past, and thrice he sprang over the bodies of the dead.

The infantry were advancing now, driving the cavalry before them, and the French were able to bring their lighter field guns into action. John heard the rapid crashes, and he saw the line of cavalry drawing back. He, too, was shouting with triumph, although nobody heard him. But all the Strangers were filled with fiery zeal. Without orders they rushed forward, driving the horsemen yet further. John saw through the whitish mist a fierce face and a powerful arm swinging aloft a saber.

He recognized von Boehlen and von Boehlen recognized him. Shouting, the Prussian urged his horse at him and struck him with the saber. John, under impulse, dropped to his knees, and the heavy blade whistled above him. But something else struck him on the head and he fell senseless to the earth.

CHAPTER XII

JULIE LANNES

John Scott came slowly out of the darkness and hovered for a while between dusk and light. It was not an unpleasant world in which he lingered. It seemed full of rest and peace. His mind and body were relaxed, and there was no urgent call for him to march and to fight. The insistent drumming of the great guns which could play upon the nervous system until it was wholly out of tune was gone. The only sound he heard was that of a voice, a fresh young voice, singing a French song in a tone low and soft. He had always liked these little love songs of the kind that were sung in a subdued way. They were pathetic and pure as a rose leaf.

He might have opened his eyes and looked for the singer, but he did not. The twilight region between sleep and consciousness was too pleasant. He had no responsibilities, nothing to do. He had a dim memory that he had belonged to an army, that it was his business to try to kill some one, and to try to keep from getting killed, but all that was gone now. He could lie there, without pain of body or anxiety of mind, and let vague but bright visions pass through his soul.

His eyes still closed, he listened to the voice. It was very low, scarcely more than a murmur, yet it was thrillingly sweet. It might not be a human voice, after all, just the distant note of a bird in the forest, or the murmur of a brave little stream, or a summer wind among green leaves.

He moved a little and became conscious that he was not going back into that winter region of dusk. His soul instead was steadily moving toward the light. The beat of his heart grew normal, and then memory in a full tide rushed upon him. He saw the great cavalry battle with all its red turmoil, the savage swing of von Boehlen's saber and himself drifting out into the darkness.

He opened his eyes, the battle vanished, and he saw himself lying upon a low, wooden platform. His head rested upon a small pillow, a blanket was under him, and another above him. Turning slowly he saw other men wrapped in blankets like himself on the platform in a row that stretched far to right and left. Above was a low roof, but both sides of the structure were open.

He understood it all in a moment. He had come back to a world of battle and wounds, and he was one of the wounded. But he listened for the soft, musical note which he believed now, in his imaginative state, had drawn him from the mid-region between life and death.

The stalwart figure of a woman in a somber dress with a red cross sewed upon it passed between him and the light, but he knew that it was not she who had been singing. He closed his eyes in disappointment, but reopened them. A man wearing a white jacket and radiating an atmosphere of drugs now walked before him. He must be a surgeon. At home, surgeons wore white jackets. Beyond doubt he was one and maybe he was going to stop at John's cot to treat some terrible wound of which he was not yet conscious. He shivered a little, but the man passed on, and his heart beat its relief.

Then a soldier took his place in the bar of light. He was a short, thick man in a ridiculous, long blue coat, and equally ridiculous, baggy, red trousers. An obscure cap was cocked in an obscure manner over his ears, and his face was covered with a beard, black, thick and 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 of wounded stretched as far as he could see, and there was a powerful odor of drugs. Around him was a forest, of the kind with which he had become familiar in Europe, that is, of small trees, free from underbrush. He saw some distance away soldiers walking up and down and beyond them the vague outline of an earthwork.

"What place is this, anyway, Picard?" he asked.

"It has no name, sir. It's a hospital. It was built in the forest in a day. More than five thousand wounded lie here. The army itself is further on. You were found and brought in by some young officers of that most singular company composed of Americans and English who are always quarreling among one another, but who unite and fight like demons against anybody else."

"A dollar to a cent it was Wharton and Carstairs who brought me here," said John, smiling to himself.

"What does Monsieur say?"

"Merely commenting on some absent friends of mine. But this isn't a bad place, Picard."

The shed was of immense length and breadth and just beyond it were some small buildings, evidently of hasty construction. John inferred that they were for the nurses and doctors, and he wondered which one sheltered Julie Lannes. The forest seemed to be largely of young pines, and the breeze that blew through it was fresh and wholesome. As he breathed it young Scott felt that he was inhaling new life and strength. But the wind also brought upon its edge that far faint murmur which he knew was the throbbing of the great guns, miles and miles away.

"Perhaps, Monsieur had better lie down again now and sleep awhile," said Picard insinuatingly.

"Sleep! I need sleep! Why, Picard, by your own account I've just awakened from a sleep four days and four nights long."

"But, sir, that was not sleep. It was the stupor of unconsciousness. Now your sleep will be easy and natural."

"Very well," said John, who had really begun to feel a little weary, "I'll go to sleep, since, in a way, you order it, but if Mademoiselle Julie Lannes should happen to pass my cot again, will you kindly wake me up?"

"If possible, sir," said Picard, the faintest smile passing over his iron features, and forced to be content with that reply, John soon slept again. Julie passed by him twice, but Picard did not awaken him, nor try. The first time she was alone. Trained and educated like most young French girls, she had seen little of the world until she was projected into the very heart of it by an immense and appalling war. But its effect upon her had been like that upon John. Old manners and customs crumbled away, an era vanished, and a new one with new ideas came to take its place. She shuddered often at what she had seen in this great hospital in the woods, but she was glad that she had come. French courage was as strong in the hearts of women as in the hearts of men, and the brusque but good Dr. Delorme had said that she learned fast. She had more courage, yes, and more skill, than many nurses older and stronger than she, and there was the stalwart Suzanne, who worked with her.

She was alone the first time and she stopped by John's cot, where he slept so peacefully. He was undeniably handsome, this young American who had come to their house in Paris with Philip. And her brother, that wonderful man of the air, who was almost a demi-god to her, had spoken so well of him, had praised so much his skill, his courage, and his honesty. And he had received his wound fighting so gallantly for France, her country. Her beautiful color deepened a little as she walked away.

John awoke again in the afternoon, and the first sound he heard was that same far rumble of the guns, now apparently a part of nature, but he did not linger in any twilight land between dark and light. All the mists of sleep cleared away at once and he sat up, healthy, strong and hungry. Demanding food from an orderly he received it, and when he had eaten it he asked for Surgeon Delorme.

The surgeon did not come for a half hour and then he demanded brusquely what John wanted.

"None of your drugs," replied happy young Scott, "but my uniform and my arms. I don't know your procedure here, but I want you to certify to the whole world that I'm entirely well and ready to return to the ranks."