The New Book of Martyrs Part 25

Bride is dead. We had been working all day, and in the evening we had to find time to go and bury Bride.

It is not a very long ceremony. The burial-ground is near. About a dozen of us follow the lantern, slipping in the mud, and stumbling over the graves. Here we are at the wall, and here is the long ditch, always open, which every day is prolonged a little to the right, and filled in a little to the left. Here is the line of white crosses, and the flickering shadows on the wall caused by the lantern.

The men arrange the planks, slip the ropes, and lower the body, disputing in undertones, for it is not so easy as one might think to be a grave-digger. One must have the knack of it. And the night is very dark and the mud very sticky.

At last the body is at the bottom of the trench, and the muddy ropes are withdrawn. The little consumptive priest who stands at the graveside murmurs the prayer for the dead. The rain beats in our faces. The familiar demon of Artois, the wind, leaps among the ancient trees. The little priest murmurs the terrible words: Dies irae, dies illa....

And this present day is surely the day of wrath... I too utter my prayer: "In the name of the unhappy world, Bride, I remit all thy sins, I absolve thee from all thy faults! Let this day, at least, be a day of rest."

The little priest stands bare-headed in the blast. An orderly who is an ecclesiastic holds the end of an ap.r.o.n over his head. A man raises the lantern to the level of his eye. And the rain-drops gleam and sparkle furtively.

Bride is dead....

Now we meet again in the little room where friends.h.i.+p reigns.

Pierre and Jacques, gallant fellows, I shall not forget your beautiful, painful smile at the moment which brings discouragement to the experienced man. I shall not forget.

The beef and rice, which one needs to be very hungry to swallow, is distributed. And a gentle cheerfulness blossoms in the circle of lamplight, a cheerfulness which tries to catch something of the gaiety of the past. Man has such a deep-seated need of joy that he improvises it everywhere, even in the heart of misery.

And suddenly, through the steam of the soup, I see Bride's look distinctly.

It was no ordinary look. The extremity of suffering, the approach of death, perhaps, and also the hidden riches of his soul, gave it extraordinary light, sweetness, and gentleness. When one came to his bedside, and bent over him, the look was there, a well-spring of refreshment.

But Bride is dead: we saw his eyes transformed into dull, meaningless membranes.

Where is that well-spring? Can it be quenched?

Bride is dead. Involuntarily, I repeat aloud: "Bride is dead."

Have I roused a responsive echo in these sympathetic souls? A religious silence falls upon them. The oldest of all problems comes and takes its place at the table like a familiar guest. It breathes mysteriously into every ear: "Where is Bride? Where is Bride's look?"

VI

A lantern advances, swinging among the pines. Who is coming to meet us?

Philippe recognises the figure of Monsieur Julien. Here is the man, indeed, with his porter's livery, and his base air as of an insolent slave. He waves a stable-lantern which throws grotesque shadows upwards on his face; and he is obviously furious at having been forced to render a service.

He brandishes the lantern angrily, and thrusts out his chin to show us the advancing figures: two men are carrying a stretcher on which lies a big body wrapped in a coa.r.s.e winding sheet. The two men are weary, and set the stretcher down carefully in the mud.

"Is it Fumat?"

"Yes. He has just died, very peacefully."

"Where are you going?"

"There is no place anywhere for a corpse. So we are taking him to the chapel in the burial-ground. But he is heavy."

"We will give you a hand."

Philippe and I take hold of the stretcher. The men follow us in silence.

The body is heavy, very heavy. We drag our sabots out of the clay laboriously. And we walk slowly, breathing hard.

How heavy he is!... He was called Fumat... He was a giant. He came from the mountains of the Centre, leaving a red-tiled village on a hill-side, among juniper-bushes and volcanic boulders. He left his native place with its violet peaks and strong aromatic scents and came to the war in Artois. He was past the age when men can march to the attack, but he guarded the trenches and cooked. He received his death-wound while he was cooking. The giant of Auvergne was peppered with small missiles.

He had no wound at all proportionate to his huge body. Nothing but splinters of metal. Once again, David has slain Goliath.

He was two days dying. He was asked: "Is there anything you would like?"

And he answered with white lips: "Nothing, thank you." When we were anxious and asked him "How do you feel?" he was always quite satisfied.

"I am getting on very well." He died with a discretion, a modesty, a self-forgetfulness which redeemed the egotism of the universe.

How heavy he is! He was wounded as he was blowing up the fire for the soup. He did not die fighting. He uttered no historic word. He fell at his post as a cook.... He was not a hero.

You are not a hero, Fumat. You are only a martyr. And we are going to lay you in the earth of France, which has engulfed a n.o.ble and innumerable army of martyrs.

The shadow of the trees sweeps like a huge sickle across s.p.a.ce. An acrid smell of cold decay rises on the night. The wind wails its threnody for Fumat.

"Open the door, Monsieur Julien."

The lout pushes the door, grumbling to himself. We lay the body on the pavement of the chapel.

Renaud covers the corpse carefully with a faded flag. And suddenly, as if to celebrate the moment, the brutal roar of guns comes to us from the depths of the woods, breaks violently into the chapel, seizes and rattles the trembling window-panes. A hundred times over, a whole nation of cannon yells in honour of Fumat. And each time other Fumats fall in the mud yonder, in their appointed places.

VII

They ought not to have cut off all the light in this manner, and it would not have been done, perhaps, if...

There is a kind of mania for organisation which is the sworn enemy of order; in its efforts to discover the best place for everything, it ends by diverting everything from its right function and locality, and making everything as inopportune as itself. It was a mistake to cut off all the lights this evening, on some pretext or the other. The rooms of the old mansion are not packed with bales of cotton, but with men who have anxious minds and tortured bodies.

A mournful darkness suddenly reigned; and outside, the incessant storm that rages in this country swept along like a river in spate.

Little Rochet was dreaming in the liquid light of the lamp, with hands crossed on his breast, and the delicate profile of an exhausted saint.

He was dreaming of vague and exquisite things, for cruel fever has moments of generosity between two nightmares. He was dreaming so sweetly that he forgot the abominable stench of his body, and that a smile touched the two deep wrinkles at the corners of his mouth, set there by a week of agony.

But all the lamps have been put out, and the noise of the hurricane has become more insistent, and the wounded have ceased talking, for darkness discourages conversation.

There are some places where the men with whom the sh.e.l.ls have dealt mercifully and whose wounds are only scratches congregate. These have only the honour of wounds, and what may be called their delights....

But here, we have only the worst cases; and here they have to await the supreme decision of death.

Little Rochet awoke to a reality full of darkness and despair. He heard nothing but laboured breathing round him, and rising above it all, the violent breath of the storm. He was suddenly conscious of his lacerated stomach, of his lost leg, and he realised that the fetid smell in the air was the smell of his flesh. And he thought of the loving letter he had received in the morning from his four big sisters with glossy hair, he thought of all his lost, ravished happiness....

Renaud hurries up, groping his way among the dark ambushes of the corridor.

"Come, come quickly. Little Rochet has thrown himself out of bed."