Part 21 (1/2)
Have you noticed our uniform? ... It is most distinctive, and the white is so becoming both to blondes and brunettes. Then the cap which allows little curls over the ears--the fas.h.i.+onable coiffure--and the blue cape over the white suit, make a splendid contrast. With this outfit, a woman well shod, and with few jewels, may present a truly chic appearance. It is a mixture of nun and great lady which is vastly becoming.”
She was going to study with a regular fury in order to become really useful ... and sooner to wear the admired uniform.
Poor Desnoyers! ... The longing to see her, and the lack of occupation in these interminable afternoons which hitherto had been employed so delightfully, compelled him to haunt the neighborhood of the unoccupied palace where the government had just established the training school for nurses. Stationing himself at the corner, watching the fluttering skirts and quick steps of the feminine feet on the sidewalk, he imagined that the course of time must have turned backward, and that he was still but eighteen--the same as when he used to hang around the establishments of some celebrated modiste. The groups of women that at certain hours came out of the palace suggested these former days. They were dressed extremely quietly, the aspect of many of them as humble as that of the seamstresses. But they were ladies of the well-to-do cla.s.s, some even coming in automobiles driven by chauffeurs in military uniform, because they were ministerial vehicles.
These long waits often brought him unexpected encounters with the elegant students who were going and coming.
”Desnoyers!” some feminine voices would exclaim behind him. ”Isn't it Desnoyers?”
And he would find himself obliged to relieve their doubts, saluting the ladies who were looking at him as though he were a ghost. They were friends of a remote epoch, of six months ago--ladies who had admired and pursued him, trusting sweetly to his masterly wisdom to guide them through the seven circles of the science of the tango. They were now scrutinizing him as if between their last encounter and the present moment had occurred a great cataclysm, transforming all the laws of existence--as if he were the sole survivor of a vanished race.
Eventually they all asked the same questions--”Are you not going to the war? ... How is it that you are not wearing a uniform?”
He would attempt to explain, but at his first words, they would interrupt him:
”That's so... . You are a foreigner.”
They would say it with a certain envy, doubtless thinking of their loved ones now suffering the privations and dangers of war... . But the fact that he was a foreigner would instantly create a vague atmosphere of spiritual aloofness, an alienation that Julio had not known in the good old days when people sought each other without considering nationality, without feeling that disavowal of danger which isolates and concentrates human groups.
The ladies generally bade him adieu with malicious suspicion. What was he doing hanging around there? In search of his usual lucky adventure?
... And their smiles were rather grave, the smiles of older folk who know the true significance of life and commiserate the deluded ones still seeking diversion in frivolities.
This att.i.tude was as annoying to Julio as though it were a manifestation of pity. They were supposing him still exercising the only function of which he was capable; he wasn't good for anything else. On the other hand, these empty heads, still keeping something of their old appearance, now appeared animated by the grand sentiment of maternity--an abstract maternity which seemed to be extending to all the men of the nation--a desire for self-sacrifice, of knowing first-hand the privations of the lowly, and aiding all the ills that flesh is heir to.
This same yearning was inspiring Marguerite when she came away from her lessons. She was advancing from one overpowering dread to another, accepting the first rudiments of surgery as the greatest of scientific marvels. At the same time, she was astonished at the avidity with which she was a.s.similating these hitherto unsuspected mysteries. Sometimes with a funny a.s.sumption of a.s.surance, she would even believe she had mistaken her vocation.
”Who knows but what I was born to be a famous doctor?” she would exclaim.
Her great fear was that she might lose her self-control when the time came to put her newly acquired knowledge into practice. To see herself before the foul odors of decomposing flesh, to contemplate the flow of blood--a horrible thing for her who had always felt an invincible repugnance toward all the unpleasant conditions of ordinary life! But these hesitations were short, and she was suddenly animated by a das.h.i.+ng energy. These were times of sacrifice. Were not the men s.n.a.t.c.hed every day from the comforts of sensuous existence to endure the rude life of a soldier? ... She would be, a soldier in petticoats, facing pain, battling with it, plunging her hands into putrefaction, flas.h.i.+ng like a ray of sunlight into the places where soldiers were expecting the approach of death.
She proudly narrated to Desnoyers all the progress that she was making in the training school, the complicated bandages that she was learning to adjust, sometimes over a mannikin, at others over the flesh of an employee, trying to play the part of a sorely wounded patient. She, so dainty, so incapable in her own home of the slightest physical effort, was learning the most skilful ways of lifting a human body from the ground and carrying it on her back. Who knew but that she might render this very service some day on the battlefield! She was ready for the greatest risks, with the ignorant audacity of women impelled by flashes of heroism. All her admiration was for the English army nurses, slender women of nervous vigor whose photographs were appearing in the papers, wearing pantaloons, riding boots and white helmets.
Julio listened to her with astonishment. Was this woman really Marguerite? ... War was obliterating all her winning vanities. She was no longer fluttering about in bird-like fas.h.i.+on. Her feet were treading the earth with resolute firmness, calm and secure in the new strength which was developing within. When one of his caresses would remind her that she was a woman, she would always say the same thing,
”What luck that you are a foreigner! ... What happiness to know that you do not have to go to war!”
In her anxiety for sacrifice, she wanted to go to the battlefields, and yet at the same time, she was rejoicing to see her lover exempt from military duty. This preposterous lack of logic was not gratefully received by Julio but irritated him as an unconscious offense.
”One might suppose that she was protecting me!” he thought. ”She is the man and rejoices that I, the weak comrade, should be protected from danger... . What a grotesque situation!” ...
Fortunately, at times when Marguerite presented herself at the studio, she was again her old self, making him temporarily forget his annoyance.
She would arrive with the same joy in a vacation that the college student or the employee feels on a holiday. Responsibility was teaching her to know the value of time.
”No cla.s.ses to-day!” she would call out on entering; and tossing her hat on a divan, she would begin a dance-step, retreating with infantile coquetry from the arms of her lover.
But in a few minutes she would recover her customary gravity, the serious look that had become habitual with her since the outbreak of hostilities. She spoke often of her mother, always sad, but striving to hide her grief and keeping herself up in the hope of a letter from her son; she spoke, too, of the war, commenting on the latest events with the rhetorical optimism of the official dispatches. She could describe the first flag taken from the enemy as minutely as though it were a garment of unparalleled elegance. From a window, she had seen the Minister of War. She was very much affected when repeating the story of some fugitive Belgians recently arrived at the hospital. They were the only patients that she had been able to a.s.sist until now. Paris was not receiving the soldiers wounded in battle; by order of the Government, they were being sent from the front to the hospitals in the South.
She no longer evinced toward Julio the resistance of the first few days.
Her training as a nurse was giving her a certain pa.s.sivity. She seemed to be ignoring material attractions, stripping them of the spiritual importance which she had hitherto attributed to them. She wanted to make Julio happy, although her mind was concentrated on other matters.