That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day

mortar and druggists' scales. Above the table a black wooden Crucifix hung against the whitewashed wall. "This is Soeur Catherine, who keeps the Hospital accounts and dispenses the medicines, and posts the register in which we set down the names of all the wounded received and discharged. Take care, Mademoiselle! That paint is new and comes off!" cried the chaperoning Sister, snatching aside the skirt of Patrine's long blue V.A.D. coat. She had brushed, in passing, against a wooden tablet that leaned against the wall near the door through which she had come. A big square of black-painted deal surmounted by a gabled and eaved Cross of German pattern, and bearing an inscription in white Gothic lettering: "HIER RUHT IM GOTT EIN DEUTSCHER FLIEGENDE OFFIZIER." "That is for the grave of the German officer who died yesterday. One of the Bavarian soldiers is painting it. He has not finished--he has only gone away for a moment to get some more _ceruse_ from Mother Madeleine." Sister Catherine offered the explanation. She added, as the tall English girl glanced at something that lay on the deal table beside the register: "That is his flying-cap, poor man! and the belt that shows his _rang militaire_. They will be placed upon the pall when they carry him to the cemetery. But pardon! One should have observed before that Mademoiselle was suffering! What! Mademoiselle is not ill, not even a little fatigued? Then what Mademoiselle needs is a _petit dejeuner_." And Patrine was whisked away to the guest's refectory to be refreshed with _pistolets_ and coffee. Monseigneur would follow a little later. Madame la Superieure had arranged for Monseigneur to take _dejeuner_ with M. l'Aumonier. Later, Monseigneur hoped for the pleasure of meeting the English Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle's tall rounded figure, ushered by the little active Ursuline Sister, had barely passed through the glazed swing-doors leading from the cloister to the Convent, when the short, spare, elderly priest who had celebrated Mass entered from the chapel, followed by the Convent Aumonier, who had served him at the altar. Even as the nun rose from her table, the vividly clear eyes of Monseigneur, set in the mask of dry walnut-brown wrinkles, dropped on the painted head-board propped against the wall. "That is for him?" The supple right hand of Monseigneur waved towards the chapel, then extended itself to the Sister, who curtsied and kissed his amethyst ring. "For him, Monseigneur," answered the Aumonier, to whom the question had been addressed. "_Dieu veuille avoir son ame!_" The left sleeve of Monseigneur's decidedly rusty serge soutane bore the well-known brassard. Its scarlet and white peeped between the folds of his heavy black mantle as he made the Sign of the Cross. "His name is missing from the inscription," he commented, producing a battered silver snuff-box and helping himself to a generous pinch. "Why, might one demand?" "The initials will be painted in presently, Monseigneur. There will be no name--by desire of the deceased!" "He preferred anonymity?" The amethyst ring of Monseigneur's prelacy flashed violet as he dusted the brown powder from his upper-lip with a blue checked handkerchief. "The Pere Aumonier tells me," his startlingly clear eyes were on the Sister, "that terrible as were his injuries, he might have recovered--that his death occurred suddenly and unexpectedly." "But yes, Monseigneur, he might have recovered!" The fair face framed in the narrow guimpe was shadowed and troubled. "The _coup d'obus_ had spared the brain, arteries, and vertebra. His sight was uninjured--M. le Commandant and his colleagues had achieved wonders in the partial restoration of the visage. Speech was difficult--but we could understand him--unless he was sullen and would only speak German to us. But at those times a Bavarian soldier interpreted--he who has painted the headboard for the grave." "He--the German officer--was grateful to those who nursed him?" inquired Monseigneur of the Aumonier. The stout little Chaplain visibly hesitated. It was the Sister who answered in her clear and gentle voice: "Alas! no, Monseigneur! He was arrogant, even brutal. But then--he suffered so terribly, in mind as in body--one could not be angry at anything he said. He could not resign himself to his disfigured condition. It was intolerable, he would cry, that he should now be an object of horror to women--women who had worshipped him almost as a god!" "Chut--chut! Eh--well! One presumes he meant a certain type of women," observed Monseigneur. "Possibly so, Monseigneur." The simplicity of the fair face in the narrow guimpe was touching. "For when we assured him that we did not regard him with horror he would say to us: 'That makes nothing! I speak of women. You are only nuns.'" "But nuns are women," objected Monseigneur. "Monseigneur, he said not. When his condition seemed to him most miserable he found relief in saying things--abusive--outrageous--about nuns. We didn't mind. We pitied him--poor Number Twenty! But the French and English officers in the same ward resented this. They entreated us to remove him to a separate room. This we did, and at his request the Bavarian was placed in the same apartment--he has been an officer's servant--and is active and useful, even though he has lost a leg. Thus things went better. Poor Twenty seemed more contented. He even looked forward to leaving the Hospital!" "And then? A change?--a relapse?" suggested Monseigneur. "A change. He became more gloomy--more violent after a letter arrived for him from England at the _Jour des morts_. Since two days comes another letter. We heard him raving of perfidy, the folly of his agents--the injustice of his Emperor--the revenge upon the Englishwoman that he would never have now! ... Then all was quiet. Towards morning the Bavarian came out of the room and called an orderly. The Herr Hauptmann was sleeping, he said, in such a queer way.... From that unnatural stupor he never awakened. All his letters and papers were torn up and scattered in fragments. There was a little cardboard box on the night-table and a pencil _billet_ for me. I am to send a ring he always wore to the address of a noble young lady at Berlin. She was his _fiancee_, I believe, Monseigneur. He thanks me for the little I have been able to do for him!--he begs the Sisters to pardon his rudeness.... He wishes no name upon his grave--but to be forgotten.... Poor broken body--poor rebellious heart--poor stubborn, desperate soul!" "You think, then, that--he killed himself?" asked Monseigneur with directness. "I dare not think!" She was searching in her table drawer with tears dropping on her hands. "I can only pray that the autopsy of the surgeon will not reveal that the death was not natural. Look, Monseigneur!--this is his ring. A big black-and-white pearl. And under the pearl, which lifts up--is a little box for something.... A relic perhaps--or a portrait, or a lock of a friend's hair." "It might serve as a reliquary--at need, my child," said Monseigneur, examining the platinum setting. He gave one swift glance at the unsuspicious Aumonier and another at the innocent nun. He peered again narrowly at the empty hiding-place, to the shallow sides of which a few atoms of glittering grey dust were adhering. He lifted the ring to his nose and sniffed, tapped the little box on his thumb-nail, and touched his tongue to one of the glittering grey specks. Then he hastily spat in his handkerchief, and thunder-clouds sat on the furrowed forehead over the great hooked beak. "Listen!" The nun started and grew paler still. She hurried to the glazed doors opening on the garden and threw them wide apart. As the chill outer air rushed in, sporting with the scant white locks of M. l'Aumonier, fluttering the purple lappets at the throat of Monseigneur, and tugging as with invisible hands at the Sister's thin black veil, approaching footsteps crunched over the sloppy gravel of the cloister walk. The small stout figure of the Sister-Keeper of the mortuary headed the small, solemn procession. She held up her habit out of the slush, and carried as well as a mammoth iron doorkey, a small bunch of spring flowers. A stretcher-squad of the French Red Cross followed the Sister of the mortuary. In life the man they bore must have been a magnificent specimen of humanity. In death the length of his rigid form appeared phenomenal. The black velvet pall, over which had been draped the black-red-white German War Ensign, was far too short to cover the stiff blanket-swathed feet. That they projected beyond the stretcher-end with an effect of arrogance and obstinacy, was the thought that occurred to one of the three people gathered in a little group upon the threshold of the cloister-doors. "Monseigneur.... My Father! ..." Sister Catherine was speaking in suppressed but eager accents. "It is Number Twenty. They are taking him to the mortuary. The Sister-Keeper promised to carry flowers as a sign that all was well. You understand, do you not? The surgeons have decided--thanks be to God!--that the poor man did not poison himself!" She dropped to her knees and began to say a decade of her Rosary, the wooden beads running between her fingers like brown water as she prayed. The priests made the Sign of the Cross silently as the body was borne past. When the last feather of the Black Eagle had vanished, and the crunching of footsteps on sloppy gravel had thinned away in distance, the nun rose. "You feel happier now, my sister, do you not?" Monseigneur asked kindly. "Much happier, Monseigneur," she said, "for now I may pray for him!" Monseigneur, who had retained the ring, shut the hiding-place with a decided click, snapped into its slot the end of the bar that held the magpie pearl in place, and said as he restored the bauble to the nun: "Who knows but that some ray of Divine Grace may yet shine upon that darkened soul! Do as the owner begged of you, and pray for him by all means!" "That I will!" she said fervently. "And you also, will you not pray for him? the poor, proud Pagan who believed no resurrection possible--unless one were to exist again as a vapour or a tree. Alas! I fear I have sinned much in yielding to the feeling he inspired in me!" She added, meeting the keen glance of Monseigneur's vivid eyes: "The feeling of repugnance. Of horror, Monseigneur! Here comes the Bavarian to finish the inscription. Well, my good Kuehler, you have got some more ceruse?" The glass-doors had been darkened by the shape of a one-legged man on crutches, a black-haired, swarthy fellow dressed in the maroon flannel uniform distinctive of the Hospital. A little pot with a brush in it dangled from one of his big fingers. He glanced up under his heavy brows, with a muttered word as he passed the Sister, and returned the greeting of Monseigneur with a clumsy attempt at a salute. "You are better? You are getting on?" said Monseigneur to him in German. "Better, _mein Vater_, and getting on." "That is well! And you have only a little bit to do, and then your work is done?" "Done, _mein Vater!_" echoed the one-legged man. He went to the head-board where it was near the door leading to the chapel, leaned his crutches against the wall, and began cautiously and painfully to let himself down. Monseigneur and the Aumonier hurried to his assistance, saw him safely squatted upon his folded sack, took leave of the Sister, who knelt to receive the blessing of the hand that wore the amethyst ring,--and vanished through the farther door at the urgent