Пользователь - WORLD'S END

It happened that Jerry and M. Rochambeau were in the house, as well as Lanny. They tried to comfort her, but what could they say? They tried to restrain her,.but she wouldn't listen to reason. "You must find out if you can get on the train," argued the diplomat. But her answer was that she would motor. "Then you must arrange to get essence" - but she said: "I'll find a way - I'll pay what it costs - you can always get things if you pay."

"But, my dear lady, you may not be able to get near the town-it's in the war zone, and they never allow relatives or visitors."

"I'll find a way. I'll go to Paris and lay siege to the government."

"There are many persons laying siege to the government right now - including the Germans."

"I'm going to help Marcel. I'll find a way - I'll take a job as nurse with Emily Chattersworth. She'll get me there somehow. Who will come with me?"

Lanny had learned to drive a car, but hardly well enough for this trip. Jerry Pendleton was a first-class driver, and knew how to fix carburetors and those other miserable devices that were always getting out of order. Jerry would go; and the terrified maids would rush to pile some clothes into suitcases - warm things, for Madame was declaring hysterically that if they wouldn't let her into the town she would sleep in the car, or in the open like the soldiers. None of her pretty things - but then she changed her mind, if she had to call on government officials she would have to look her best - nothing showy, but that simplicity which is the apex of art, and which costs in accordance. A strange thing to see a woman, so choked with her own sobs that she could hardly make herself understood, at the same time trying to decide what sort of dress was proper to wear in approaching the war minister of a government in such dire peril of its existence that it had had to move to a remote port by the sea!

Lanny packed his suitcase, taking a warm sweater and the overcoat he had worn in Silesia; a good suit also, because he too might have to interview officials. Beauty sent a wire to Mrs. Emily, asking her to use her influence; M. Rochambeau sent a telegram to an official of his acquaintance who could arrange it if any man could. "Only woman can do the impossible," added the old gentleman, parodying Goethe.

They piled robes and blankets into the car, filling up the seat alongside Beauty, who sat now, a mask of horror, gazing into a lifelong nightmare. They drove to the pension where Jerry stayed, and he ran upstairs and threw some of his things into a bag. Downstairs were Mlle. Cerise and her mother and her aunt, all shocked by the news. The red-headed tutor grabbed the proper young French lady and kissed her first on one cheek and then on the other. "Adieu! Аи revoir!" he cried, and fled.

"Ah, ces Amйricains ! " exclaimed the mother.

"Un peuple tout a fait fou ! " added the aunt.

It was practically an engagement.

14

The Furies of Pain

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 numиrous 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: