THE VICTORY By Mildred Cram

ILLUSTRATIONS BY II. J. MOWAT

^HE doctor was a wonderful not her money, that made Doctor Hirsch­ man—oh, a singularly feld her devoted slave. She sent for him wonderful man! He wasn't to look at some trivial throat trouble. It the greatest surgeon of all was a general practitioner's job, and yet times or even of his own the great Hirschfeld, called to her hotel particular time, although from his office across the Seine, wrote out he failed less often than most of them do. a prescription for an innocent gargle with His success, and it was phenomenal, you all the seriousness of an interne on his remember, was due to the man himself. first case. He had a charm that was simply amazing. "So you like France, madame?" he Men liked him. Women never fell in love said, handing the prescription to me with with him, but they mothered him out a flourish. of all reason. And children, once on his My New Yorker sighed: "France!" knees, couldn't be bribed or lured to get And then to me: "Nurse, haven't I al­ off again. Apparently, he never exerted ways said that if I could have chosen, I himself to get all this adulation. And it should have been born a Frenchwoman ? never turned his head. You see, he hadn't When my mother was a girl," she added, a strain of the ironical in his make-up. with a nice twinkle behind her spectacles, Doctors are often credulous, but you "she saw Lafayette. And before I was seldom meet one who is guileless—and born, praying for a son, she begged God Hirschfeld was. to make me like her hero. 'Make him His mother was a Frenchwoman—she French,' she prayed, 'Amen.' " came from Provence. His father was a The doctor was profoundly impressed. German Jew, a convert. He died when He tipped back her old chin and told her the doctor was still at the university, and to say "Ah" three times. left his son, by the way of inheritance, "I thought so!" he said. "Your a guttural accent and four silver francs. mother's prayer was answered. You Four francs don't go a long way in Paris. have a French throat, a tongue formed But the doctor did odd jobs, kept a roof for the most beautiful language in the over his mother's head, and got his degree. world; a glottis created to pronounce the He had the sort of facility that makes French r. You should never have spoken light of obstacles. In the whole thread of Yankee, madame!" his destiny there was only one knot, only "But surely," my old lady said, "you one tangling. All the rest of his life was are not French, Doctor Hirschfeld. Your as easy, as happy, as unruffled, as mild, accent " as a May breeze ! He clapped his hands over his ears. When he was thirty he had a good prac­ "Don't say it! You were going to tell tice. At forty, he grew an imperial, but­ me that I have a German accent. Good toned his thin body into tight black God, madame, it is the curse of my life." clothes, and became a specialist. At fifty, "But your name?" he was famous. At sixty, he was lectur­ " German! Name and accent were all ing at the Sorbonne, charging his rich pa­ my pig of a father left me. But I am tients enormous fees and giving heart and French!" He pounded his breast with soul to his free clinic. both hands. " French ! I was born here I knew him then. I had come to Paris in Paris. My mother was Provenjale. I with a New Yorker of the old school, a have never stepped my foot outside of fragile, wiry spinster nearly eighty years France. I have worked for France, I old. She loved France. It was that, and have lived for France. My father had 702

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED The Victory 703 very little to do with me or my soul. I prodding finger-tips. I am going to plant believe my mother could have created me beans and onions and amorous potatoes. out of her own intense, divine, French My friends, I have much to learn " maternity. I didn't inherit my father's His farm was as cheerful and as guile­ fanaticism, or his Jewish nose, or his bad less as himself. There was a little old- temper. I did get his name. And my fashioned house set in the centre of a veg­ throat was built by a German architect. etable garden. In front a row of rustling I speak my French like a murdering silver poplars flanked a paved walk that Teuton. I always will!" ran from the door-step to the highroad. The doctor was tremendously excited. At the back a summer-house, a latticed, I remember his turning to me: "Nurse, vine-shadowed nook where the doctor you're a clever girl—come to my clinic took his morning coffee on.warm days. and see whether or not I have a French A clucking hen or two always scratched soul." and scuttled on the tiny lawn. The land­ "I never doubted it," said my old lady. scape was typically and delicately French "Ah, madame! Do you know, I don't —little hills, fields squared off and ablaze dare to leave France for fear I will die on with poppies, meandering streams fringed foreign soil. And I never married be­ with poplars and stunted willows, a wide cause I wouldn't bequeath to a son of sky always filled with tiny ballooning mine that one-tenth per cent of German clouds of an immaculate whiteness. Jew." The doctor lived there with two serv­ He snatched up his hat, kissed my old ants, a man and his wife, peasants, of lady's hand, and rushed out of the room. course, who were so caught in the hypnotic When he was gone she took up a hand- spell of his unfailing charm that they mirror, said "Ah," and peered down her would have done any earthly thing for "faultless French throat." him. I can't make it too clear that he That same year he retired and I heard had never met animosity of any kind. that he had gone into the country, some­ I doubt whether he had ever been caught where near Bercy, to live. Just before he in a severe storm or buffeted by a cruel left Paris he performed a brilliant opera­ wind. And his candor, his almost di­ tion in the presence of several of the vine serenity, his awful credulousness, younger surgeons at St. Antoine. They had a curious effect on people. His say he had all of his usual grace and dex­ friends protected him from their personal terity, and that he was the calmest man unhappiness. For all his amazing gentle­ in the room. When it was over, and his ness, he had none of the father confessor patient had been wheeled back to the about him ! Every one who knew him en­ ward, he took off his white coat with a tered into the tacit conspiracy to preserve dramatic gesture and made a bow to the his absurd, his idiotic, faith in human na­ nurses. "Thank you," he said, "for as­ ture. sisting at my last operation." Of course people flocked to see him on No one had dreamed he would stop so his farm. And he had known all sorts. soon—so soon, at sixty! They tried to On summer afternoons, wearing an im­ persuade him to go on. Fancy his amaz­ maculate alpaca jacket and a broad- ing popularity. No one had ever envied brimmed straw hat, he used to entertain him. He had no professional rivals. The a mixed company—actresses, poets, aris­ very man who took his place plead the tocrats, and scientists, and always a most earnestly for the spinning out of sprinkling of young men, who mistook Hirschfeld's charmed career. his simplicity for cynicism, and admired But he couldn't be tempted. "My him out of all reason. Mathilde, his cook, last operation," he said; "I am going to would scuttle from the kitchen to the my farm to get close to the flesh of France. summer-house and back again with wine I know her spirit—I know the hearts of and cake and cups of black coffee, while her people. But I have yet to know her the doctor told his best stories. There soil. I am going to grow cabbages in was something about his guttural accent long rows. I am going to watch the young that convulsed every one. It was like lettuce blades turn the sod aside with hearing the Marseillaise sung to the tune

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED 704 The Victory of Die Wacht am Rhine. It was like the swayed with those thousands of rushing soul of France in a German helmet! machines as if an earthquake had rolled Paris came to him, by train, or en auto­ the very foundations of the world away. mobile, but he never went to Paris. His It was as if all France, all France but him­ profession (except for a case of glittering self and the terrified peasants watching surgical instruments, kept in the dining- there with him, had rushed like a human room, of all places!) was apparently for­ river into that single road. After an hour gotten. And for two springs and sum­ or two he could no longer grasp what was mers his vegetable garden flourished as happening. you would expect his vegetable garden "When will it stop, m'sieu?" Ma- to flourish. There were rows of beets thilde asked. and straight lines of tender lettuce heads "It OTMrf stop soon." and patches of feathery potato weeds, and "Are they going to fight?" huge cabbages, and pease on sticks and " I don't know." He was dull and con­ carrots and spinach and beans. The doc­ fused. After a moment he added, " I sup­ tor stood in his garden and looked off at pose so." France, the tender, gay, brave, bright "Where?" France that rolled to every horizon. . . . "I don't know." And then war, gathering, a tiny cloud, " Near here, perhaps ? " in Serbia, roUed across Austria and Ger­ "Oh, no! In Belgium." many, and spread Hke a thunder-pall over Mathilde was frightened. She stood the world! The doctor read the news­ close to the doctor. " The young men at papers morning after morning, at first the village have been called," she said. with incredulity, then with a rising sense "It is war!" of helplessness, an almost childish irri­ tability. "It can't be war!" " Should we leave ? " She pulled at his War Imminent—War Declared—Mo­ sleeve. "Should we leave, m'sieu? Is bilization—England—The Advance on it safe here?" Belgium—The Revolt—Liege "I don't know." The peasants came to him for advice. Mathilde threw up her hands. What He could not give it. He waited in his had come over the doctbr? He was garden, watching the horizon. standing rigid and motionless, staring And, at last, the spirit of France, the over the top of the little gate at the^ end­ sons of France came! First an outrider less repetition of loaded omnibuses. He or two, cheerful and eager. Then a read Trocadero—Gare de I'Est on. one of straight column of yellow dust that them, out loud, stupidly. He scarcely moved down the road like a slow typhoon. heard Mathilde. It is strange, but his Behind it, part of it, choked and swal­ French soul had had no thrill of patriot­ lowed up in it, an endless procession of ism. He felt no exultation, no quiver of motor-omnibuses, loaded with men— pride, no shuddering expectancy. The Madeline—Bastille, Passy-Bourse, Vau- vast, immeasurable tragedy of France had girard, St. Lazare-—huge gray trucks roar­ stalked out of the horizon; the dust of its ing by with a horrible shriek of sirens, passing had shut out his sun, his sky, his touring-cars filled with officers, taxi-cabs, house, his world. Sixty-two years of hap­ motor ambulances, gun-carriages, bicycle piness, and the greatest grief of all had corps, motor-cycles, men and more men caught him at his door-step. Too late! and more. ... The column of dust "If I had died," he thought, "a month spread like a volcanic blanket over the ago! If I had been buried in the early sky. It powdered the lawn, it whitened summer, deep in the hot, brown soil of the poplar leaves, it choked out the scent France! If I had never known!" At of the late roses, it fell like ashes on the first he felt a throb of self-pity, as if all neat vegetable rows and the trellised sum­ these men were playing a malicious trick, mer-house. . . . scheming to rob his existence of its per­ The doctor stood by the g:le with a fect symmetry. You can forgive him, crowd of peasants at his elbow, and felt simply because he was not capable of the earth shaking under him. The ground irony. He was resentful of the monster

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Drawn by H. J. Moivat. The peasants came to him for advice. He could not give it.—Page 704.

VOL. LX.—70 705

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED 706 The Victory in his paradise; he wanted to shout at failing good luck. He stood in his narrow the relentless tide, to turn it back before doorway looking'at the ragged procession it was too late; before he had seen hate straggling toward Paris, and smiled at and murder and despair, before he knew their fear and at their haste. disillusionment. He told me afterward While he watched there, a young man that he played Herzelaide to his soul's in uniform, mounted on a shiny bicycle, Parsifal. He became strangely numb. came along the road, stopping himself For a long time he had no emotion at all. now and then, by dragging one foot on And then a strange thing happened to the ground, to talk to the peasants. The him. doctor could not tell whether he was en­ A crowd of young men went by in a couraging them or warning them. One lumbersome mo tor-truck; they were sing­ or two of the women began to run. They ing at the tops of their lusty voices a were so awkward in their ballooning petti­ healthy, thrilling, joyous Marseillaise. coats ! The boy on the bicycle pedalled They saw the old man at the gate and along beside them until he reached the recognized him, lifting their caps and gate. There he stopped and looked di­ turning their young faces toward him as rectly up the cobbled path at the doctor. they passed. " Doctor Hirschfeld!" And "Hi, there!" he shouted. suddenly his heart expanded. He felt The doctor did not answer. He waited the blood rush to his head. He snatched in the doorway while the boy dismounted, off his straw hat and waved it in the air. clicked the gate open, and started along " Vive la France I" he screamed, " Vive the path. He was a handsome boy, one la France!" of those slim, wiry, red-cheeked, well- bred youths. He was the type of young­ The doctor was standing on his door­ ster that had always treated the doctor step that September morning when the with that nice combination of deference French and English finally checked the and candor assumed by well-bred French German drive. He knew that all the in­ boys of his age when talking to old men. habitants of Bercy had been warned to But he was wearing the glorious uniform, leave the village. They had been hurry­ so the doctor saluted him. ing along the highroad toward Paris "Bonjour," the youngster said. He ever since dawn, old men and children smiled engagingly. " May I have a drink and women, some of them carrying bun­ of water? It's confoundedly hot in the dles, others driving hay-carts loaded with sun." furniture. You know how tragicomic the The doctor turned and called for Ma- fhght of these soil-embedded, hearth- thilde. "Mathilde!" he said, and when rooted peasants can be. The doctor had he saw her frightened face in the shadows laughed at the very old woman shrieking of the hall behind him, "bring this gentle­ at her flock of erratic geese, at the little man some wine." girl with her doll baby-carriage, and the In telling me about it afterward he said grandfather staggering under the family that he plied the boy with eager questions. clock. The sun was hot, the sky cloud­ Where was the army? Was an engage­ less—it was like a game of make-believe. ment expected? Were further reinforce­ At dusk they would come back again and ments looked for? Why were the vil­ the thin spirals of blue smoke that always lagers being driven out? Oh, the most twisted out of the chimneys of Bercy innocent and ignorant questions imagi­ toward evening would rise as usual nable. He knew nothing; he had heard against the luminous sky. You see how nothing for several days. He chatted, hopelessly optimistic he was? how in­ in his amiable, guttural voice, while curably romantic? He had read of the the youngster drank the wine. He had retreat; he knew that the government never had the slightest trouble to win had abandoned Paris; throngs of Belgian over a stranger. All his life people had refugees had passed his gate. Even now, succumbed to his amazing charm. Never when the army rolled back toward Paris a failure! He told me that he didn't hke a tidal wave, he doubted. He had notice the youngster's silence until he some obscure and nameless faith in his un­ happened to meet his eyes and encoun-

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'^Pardoji," he said, "Pas Doclie—iiicrci—caiiia7'adc—Vive la France!"—Page 701

707

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED 708 The Victory tered there a suspicion, a deep hostility, remember sweeping all the bric-a-brac on a rising hate that frightened him. He one of the tables onto the floor. I couldn' t stopped midway in a sentence, staring. even hear the crash in the roar of burst­ "Excuse me," the boy said, tightening ing shells. Of course you know how it his fists and stepping back onto the lawn. feels to be caught in such a din. At first, "But what is your name?" thought seems impossible. Every nerve, "My name?" ("I hesitated," he said every ounce of strength is concentrated later, "as if I were ashamed of it. God on the shrieking overhead. Then, at last, knows why, at such a moment.") you get control of your thoughts—like "If you please " faint voices infinitely far away. You act "My name is Hirschfeld." on them disjointedly. You aren't afraid, The youngster shrugged his shoulders. but you are horribly alert. You say what He made an insulting gesture. "I every soldier and nurse says under fire: thought so." He turned his back and "The next one hits me, I shan't know it." walked swiftly to the gate. There he I remember seeing Mathilde crouched stopped and said loudly, with a venom in the fireplace, her face as white as her that matched the furious hostility of his cap. No one paid the slightest attention eyes: "Sale allemand ! Boche !" to her. We put our wounded in rows on Then he swung his leg over his bicycle the floor. Some one came from the bed­ and rode away. He didn't even glance rooms up-stairs carrying blankets and back. piUows. Doctor de Lattre motioned to The doctor stood in the doorway. He me to clear the big table in the dining- told me that everything was black before room, and this time I gathered all the his eyes, his heart contracted. He was dishes into the table-cloth, and threw sick at his stomach. Mathilde, who had them out of the window. One of the been lurking behind him, ran out just as other nurses was cutting the blodd-soaked he went down in a heap on the door-step. coat away from the back and shoulders She tried to drag him up onto his feet of a boy who lay on his face where the again, but he was a dead weight. He stretcher-bearers had put him down. She hung his head down between his knees asked me to help her to turn him over on and moaned. If you had branded him his back. I'll never forget how he looked with irons, if you had driven him naked at me. Somehow we nurses never get through the market-place, if you h.ad used to being appealed to as God, as hanged him on a gibbet, you couldn't mother, as charity, as pity—if he had have humiliated him more. yelled aloud he couldn't have said more. " Sale allemand ! Boche t" He was a clean white boy; oh, a splendid youngster! When we swung him up on He swears that he didn't hear the be­ the table he fainted. ginning of the engagement, and I believe Doctor de Lattre looked at him. "I'll him. His house was well within the lines, have to operate," he said, "get him and the boy on the bifeycle had not warned ready." him, mahciously and purposely. When Just then Hirschfeld came into the we were driven out of our Red Cross post room. He was very erect and calm. He farther along the road toward Bercy and went directly to the table, glanced at the fell back on his farm as a safer place for boy's face—you've guessed that it was our wounded, we found him still crouched the youngster on the bicycle, of course— in the doorway with a blind face, huddled and put his cool fingers on the fluttering up like a dead man. But he wasn't dead. eyelids. The boy reached up, caught the He staggered to his feet when we spoke to doctor's hand and whispered something. him. Even then I don't think he heard Hirschfeld stooped over, put his ear to the hellish confusion overhead. the boy's lips and heard him say, distinct­ It was my first time under fire. The ly, "Sale allemand! Boche! I should house down the road had been in flames have shot you. . . ." when we left it, but we had got our wounded out. We rushed across Hirsch- Hirschfeld performed the operation feld's sill and invaded his cool house. I himself, using his own instruments, work-

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED After the Journey 709 ing as delicately, as fastidiously as if he wonder! I saved his life; I brought him were in the quiet white rotunda at St. back into the world. Do you think I was Antoine. The house shuddered and rat­ sorry for him? Do you think I pitied tled; pictures clattered down off the him? Good God, I hate him!" shelves; the windows shivered into frag­ "Doctor!" ments under the violent concussion of ex­ "I saved him so that I could make him ploding shells. It was the chaos of hell eat his words. I'll nurse him like a wom­ and damnation. But I have never as­ an, I'll feed him out of a spoon. I'll be sisted at a greater operation. I knew his father and his mother." that much, back in the distant calm of He was exalted. He bent over and my terrified soul. . . . stared at the boy's perfectly still face. I Toward dawn there was a lull and I think he was fighting his first battle. went out into the garden to get away And I was fortunate enough to witness from the sickening odor of blood and his first victory—for all the rest of his chloroform that made the house unen­ successes had had no hint of struggle. If durable. It was a dark, close night—the he had failed then, I think it would have thick, pressing blackness that comes just killed him. before the first light. I went back toward The boy opened his eyes heavily, as if the trellised summer-house I've told you his white hds were weighted. He stared about. Hirschfeld was there, sitting on at the doctor. I am certain that he had the ground by his youngster. He had a heard every word, for it often happens candle in one hand, and its flame, fhckering that apparently unconscious people think slightly in some fragile breeze, lighted the with amazing swiftness. And his surren­ drawn, still face of the unconscious boy. der was heroic. The doctor looked up as I came into the "Pardon," he said, "Pas Boche—merci circle of light, and I think he recognized —camarade—Vive la France !" me for the first time. He beckoned to me. He shut his eyes again and fell instantly "Nurse," he said, "this boy called me into a profound sleep. Sale allemand. He called me Boche. He The doctor looked up at me. He called me both of those things not once, shrugged his shoulders and smiled. Then but twice. He called me Sale allemand he put both hands on his breast with an when his soul was fluttering on the edge almost ecstatic gesture. of eternity. You stare at me. I don't "Vous voyez? Camarade!"

AFTER THE JOURNEY By Robert Emmet Ward

WHEN he went home, who went the other day. There was an eager scamper of wee feet To welcome him, and faces small and sweet Uplifted, and bright eyes, blue, brown, and gray. Danced with delight as only child-eyes may When joy is overflowing and complete: And he was crowded on some shady seat. Both knees, both arms, flUed in the old-time way.

"Teh us a 'tory!" "Say a rhyme again!" "Oh, Little Orphanf Annie, please, once more!" "No, Old John Henry!" "No, The Raggedy Man!' Was it not so, O best-beloved of men? You cannot answer from the farther shore. But so, I know, your first day home began.

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