THE VICTORY by Mildred Cram

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.

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