Chapter XII (2)

I tried to get into a more comfortable position, and sat up for a time. I kept constantly preventing myself from closing my eyes, for that state of half-slumber, with the consciousness of not being asleep, in which the most horrible fancy-pictures carried on their wild procession, was far too painful. Better to take part in the conversation of the other two, and tear myself away from my own thoughts. But the gentleman and lady were dumb. They were looking towards the place where now the luminary of night was really rising. And again in spite of me my eyes closed for a space. This time it _was_ sleep. In the one second during which I felt that I was going to sleep, that the world around me was ceasing to exist, I felt such a delight in annihilation that the brother of my benefactor, Death, would have been quite welcome to me.

I do not know how long a space I passed in this negatively happy state of removal from existence, but I was torn out of it suddenly and forcibly. It was no noise, no shock that woke me, but a vapour of intolerably poisoned air.

“What is that?”

The others called out the same question at the same time as I did.

Our waggon turned round a corner, and at the side of the way we found the answer. Brightly lighted by the moon there stood up a white wall, probably of a church. Anyhow, it had served as a cover from gunshot. At its foot, heaped up, lay numerous corpses. It was the smell of putrefaction, which rose up from their dead bodies, that had broken my sleep. As we drove by, a thick crowd of ravens and crows rose screaming from the heap of dead, fluttered for a time, as a black cloud against the clear background of the sky, and then settled down again to their feast.

“Frederick! my Frederick!”

“Calm yourself, Baroness Martha,” said Bresser consolingly. “Your husband could not have been present there.”

The soldier who was driving had pressed his team on in order to get away the quicker from the neighbourhood of the mephitic vapour--the conveyance clattered and jolted as if we were in wild flight. I thought the horses had run away ... trembling fear took hold on me. With both hands I clasped Bresser’s arm, but I could not help turning my head back to look _there_ at that wall, and--was it the deceptive light of the moon, or was it the movements hither and thither of the birds as they came back to their booty? I thought that the whole troop of the dead rose up, and that the corpses all stretched their arms towards us, and made ready to pursue us. I would have shrieked, but my throat was closed by fear and would not obey my impulse.

* * * * *

Again the waggon turned round the corner of a street.

“Here we are--this is Horonewos,” I heard the doctor say, and he ordered the driver to stop.

“What are we to do with the lady?” said Frau Simon complainingly. “She will be rather a hindrance than any help.”

I collected myself. “No, no,” I said, “I am better now; I will do all I can to help you.”

We found ourselves in the middle of the village at the gate of a château.

“We will first do here what there is to do,” said the doctor. “The château, which is deserted by its owners, must be filled from cellar to roof with wounded.”

We got out. I could hardly keep on my feet, but stiffened myself with all my force, so as not to give in.

“Forward,” said Frau Simon. “Have we all our luggage? What I am bringing with me will give the people some refreshment.”

“There are restoratives and bandages in my box too,” said I.

“And my hand-bag contains instruments and medicines,” added Bresser. Then we gave the needful orders to the soldiers who accompanied us; two were to wait with the horses and the others come with us.

We passed under the gate of the château. Stifled sounds of woe proceeded from various sides. All was dark.

“Light! the first thing is to strike a light!” called out Frau Simon.

Alas! we had brought all possible things with us--chocolate, meat essence, cigars, strips of linen, but no one had thought of a candle. There was no means of illuminating the darkness which surrounded us and the poor fellows. Only a box of lucifers, which the doctor had in his pocket, enabled us for a few seconds to see the terrible pictures which filled this abode of the wretched. The foot slipped on the floor, slippery with blood, if one tried to go on. What was to be done? To the hundred despairing men who were groaning and sighing here a few more people had come to despair and sigh. “What is to be done? What is to be done?”

“I will find out the clergyman’s house,” said Frau Simon, “or get some assistance somewhere else in the village. Come, doctor, you conduct me with your lucifer-matches to the egress, and you, Frau Martha, remain here meanwhile.”

Here, alone, in the dark, amongst all these wailing people, in this stifling odour? What a situation! I shuddered to the marrow of my bones. But I said nothing against it.

“Yes,” I replied, “I will remain on this spot, and wait till you come back with the light.”

“No,” cried Bresser, putting his arm through mine. “Come with us. You must not be left behind in this purgatory, amongst men who may be in the delirium of fever.”

I was thankful to my friend for this speech, and clung tight to his arm. To stop behind in these rooms might perhaps have driven me mad with fear. Ah, I was still a cowardly, helpless creature, not brought up to the misery and the horror into which I had now plunged. Why had I not kept at home? Still, supposing I should find Frederick again? Who could tell whether he might not be lying in these same dark rooms, which we were just quitting? As we went out I called out his name more than once, but the answer which I hoped for and feared: “Here I am, Martha,” was not returned.

We got again into the open air. The waggon was standing in the same place. Dr. Bresser decided that I should get in again.

“Frau Simon and I are going meanwhile into the village to seek for aid, and you shall remain here.”

I willingly submitted, for my feet could hardly carry me. The doctor helped me to get up and arranged a convenient seat for me with the straw that was lying about. Two soldiers remained behind with the waggon. The rest Frau Simon and the doctor took along with them.

After about half-an-hour the whole expedition came back. No success. The parsonage was destroyed, like everything else, and empty. All the houses in ruins; no light to be obtained anywhere. So there was nothing else to be done except to wait till day dawned. How many of the poor wretches in whom our coming had already roused hope, and whom our aid might still have saved, might perhaps die during this night?

What a long, long night that was! Though in reality only between three and four hours passed before sunrise, how endless these hours necessarily seemed to us, their course being marked, not by the ticking of a clock, but by the helpless cries of fellow-men for aid.

At last the morning dawned. Now we could act. Frau Simon and Dr. Bresser took the road again to see whether they could rouse up some of the concealed inhabitants of the village. They succeeded. Out of the ruins here and there one or two peasants crawled forth, at first morose and distrustful. When, however, Dr. Bresser spoke to them in their own language, and Frau Simon urged them with her soft voice, they agreed to give their services. It was necessary before all things to recruit all the other hidden villagers, so that they might help in the work--bury the dead that were lying about, get the wells into working order so as to procure water for the living, collect the field kettles that lay scattered about the roads so as to have vessels, empty the knapsacks of the slain and the dead, and use the linen they contained for the wounded. Now arrived also a Prussian staff-surgeon with men and aid materials, and then the work of bringing help to these poor creatures could be undertaken with some success. Now the moment was come for me too, when I might perhaps discover him at whose fancied call I had undertaken this luckless journey, and whose recollection whipped up to some extent my failing powers.

Frau Simon betook herself, under the conduct of the Prussian surgeon, first to the château, where most of the wounded were lying. Dr. Bresser chose to search through the other places in the village. I preferred to keep with my friend, and went along with him. That Frederick was not lying in the château the doctor had discovered by a previous look round it.

We had hardly gone a hundred paces when loud cries of pain smote on our ears. They came from the open door of the little village church. We went in. There more than a hundred men were lying on the hard stone pavement, severely wounded, crippled. With feverish, wandering eyes they shrieked and cried for water. I had nearly sunk down even on the threshold; still I walked through the whole row. I was seeking for Frederick. He was not there.

Bresser with his people set themselves to attend to the poor fellows. I leaned against a side altar, and contemplated the scene of woe with infinite horror.

And _this_ was the temple of the God of Love! These were the wonder-working saints who were there folding their hands so piously in the niches and on the walls, and lifting up their heads with the golden glories round them! “Oh Mother of God--holy Mother of God, one drop of water; have mercy on me!” I heard a poor soldier pray. That prayer he had probably been addressing all the long day to the gaudily-painted dumb image. Ah poor men! Till you yourselves have listened to the command of love which God has put into your own hearts you will always call in vain upon God’s love. So long as cruelty is not overcome in your own selves you have nothing to hope from the compassion of heaven.

* * * * *

Ah, how much I had to see and to go through in the whole of this same day! It would in truth be the simplest way and the most pleasant to pursue the narrative no further. One shuts one’s eyes and turns away one’s head when something altogether too horrid presents itself--even the recollection has the power to make one shut one’s eyes. And if there is no more power to help (and what can be altered in this stony past?) why torture oneself and others by writing up these horrors?

Why? I will answer the question afterwards. Now I can only say I _must_ do it.

More still. I will not merely tax my own memory that I may be able to relate what I have in view, for my powers of perception were far too weak to bear the burden of the events, but I will also add what Frau Simon, Dr. Bresser, and the Saxon inspector of field hospitals, Dr. Naundorff, told me. As in Horonewos, so also in many of the villages in this neighbourhood, Hell had set up branch establishments. It was so in Sweti, in Hradeck, in Problus. So in Pardubitz, where, when the Prussians first took possession of it, “over _one thousand_ severely wounded men, operations and amputations, were lying about, some dying, some already dead, corpses mixed with those in the act of death, and those who envied them their end, many with nothing on but bloody shirts, so that no one could tell even what countrymen they were. All those who had still a spark of life in them were shrieking for water and bread, writhing with the pain of their wounds, and begging for death as a blessing.”

“Rossnitz,” writes Dr. Bauer in his letters--“Rossnitz, a place whose picture will live in my memory till the hour of my death--Rossnitz, whither I was sent by the St. John’s Society six days after the murderous fight, and where the greatest misery which the human fancy can picture was still reigning down to that day. I found there ‘R.’ of ours with 650 wounded, who were lying in wretched barns and stables without any nursing in the midst of death and half-dead men, some of them lying for days in their own offal. It was here that after the erection of the funeral mound of the fallen Lt.-Col. von F---- I was so overcome with pain that _for an hour I poured out the hottest tears_ and could hardly regain self-control in spite of the expenditure of all my moral force. Though as a medical man I am accustomed to look at human suffering in all its forms, and in the exercise of my profession have learnt to bear the shrieks of tortured human nature, yet here in very truth tears which I could not repress welled from my eyes. It was here in Rossnitz that when, on the second day, I found that our powers were not equal to cope with such misery, I lost courage and left off dressing the wounds.”

“In what condition were these 600 men?” It is Dr. Naundorff who is speaking this time. “It is impossible to depict it accurately. Flies were feeding on their open wounds, which were covered with them; their gaze, flaming with fever, wandered about asking and seeking for some help--for refreshment, for water and bread! Coat, shirt, flesh and blood formed in the case of most of them one repulsive mass. _Worms were beginning to generate in this mass and to feed on them._ A horrible odour filled every place. All these soldiers were lying on the bare ground; only a few had got a little straw on which they could repose their miserable bodies. Some who had nothing under them but clayey, swampy ground had half sunk into the mud it formed; they had not the strength to get out of it. Others lay in a puddle of horrible filth which no pen could consent to describe.”

“In Masloved,” so says Frau Simon, “a place of about fifty houses, there were lying, eight days after the battle, about 700 wounded. It was not so much their shrieks of agony as their abandonment without any consolation which appealed to heaven. In one single barn alone sixty of these poor wretches were crowded. Every one of their wounds had originally been severe, but they had become hopeless in consequence of their unassisted condition, and their want of nursing and feeding; almost all were gangrenous. Limbs crushed by shot formed now mere heaps of putrefying flesh, faces a mere mass of coagulated blood, covered with filth, in which the mouth was represented by a shapeless black opening, from which frightful groans kept welling out. The progress of putrefaction separated whole mortified pieces from these pitiable bodies. The living were lying close to dead bodies which had begun to fall into putrefaction, and for which the worms were getting ready.

“These sixty men, as well as the greater number of the others, lay for a week in the same situation. Their wounds were either not dressed at all, or only in a most imperfect way--since the day of the battle they lay there, incapable of moving from the spot--only scantily fed, and without sufficient water. The bedding under them corrupting with blood and excrement--that is how they passed eight days! living corpses--through whose quivering limbs a stream of poisoned blood hardly circulated. They had not been able to die, and yet how could they expect ever again to return to life? Which is the more astonishing in this matter,” says Frau Simon, in concluding her tale, “the eternal living force of human nature, which could endure all this and yet go on breathing, or the want of efficient assistance?”

What is most astonishing, according to my way of looking at it, is, that men should bring each other into such a state--that men who have seen such a sight should not sink on their knees and swear a passionate oath to make war on war--that if they are princes they do not fling the sword away--or if they are not in any position of power, they do not from that moment devote their whole action in speech or writing, in thought, teaching or business to this one end--Lay down your arms.

* * * * *

Frau Simon--she was called the Mother of the Lazarettos--was a heroine. For weeks she stayed in that neighbourhood and bore all privations and dangers. Hundreds were saved by her agency. Day and night she worked, provided, directed. Sometimes she was doing the lowest offices beside the sick-beds, sometimes ordering the transport of wounded, sometimes requisitioning necessaries. When she had provided assistance in one place, she hastened without any rest to another; she got a copious supply from Dresden, and conveyed it in spite of all opposing difficulties to the points when help was needed. She undertook to represent the Patriotic Aid Society on the soil of Bohemia, and made a position for herself there equal to that which Florence Nightingale took in the Crimea. And as to me? Exhausted, comfortless, overpowered by pain and disgust, I had no power to render any help. Even in the church--our first station--I had fallen fainting with fatigue on the steps of that altar of the Virgin, and Dr. Bresser had a good deal of trouble to bring me round again. Thence I tottered a little further by his side, and we got into just such a barn as Frau Simon has depicted. In the church there was at least a large space, in which the poor fellows lay side by side; here they were crowded upon each other, or in each other’s arms, in heaps or rolls. Into the church there had come nurses--probably some sanitary corps on its march through--and these had given some help, though insufficient. But here they were mere castaways quite undiscovered--a crawling whining mass of half-putrefied remains of men. Choking disgust laid hold of my throat, the bitterest grief of my breast. I felt as if my heart was breaking in two, and I gave utterance to a resounding shriek. This shriek is the last thing remaining in my memory of that scene.

* * * * *

When I came to my senses again, I found myself in a railway carriage in motion. Opposite me sat Dr. Bresser. When he perceived that I had opened my eyes, and was looking about me astonished and questioning, he took my hand.

“Yes, yes, Lady Martha,” he said, “this is a second-class carriage. You are not dreaming. You are here in company with a slightly wounded officer and your friend Bresser, and we are on our way to Vienna.”

So it was. The doctor had brought a detachment of wounded from Horonewos to Königinhof, and from thence another detachment had been given into his charge to transport to Vienna. Me, in my fainting state, fainting in both senses of the word, he had taken with him and was bringing home. I had shown myself to be entirely useless and incapable in those abodes of misery, only a hindrance and a burden. Frau Simon was very glad when Dr. Bresser got me out of the way. And I was obliged to allow that it was better so. But Frederick? I had not found him. Thank God that I had not found him, for then all hope was not dead, and if I had been obliged to recognise my beloved husband among those shapes of woe, I should have gone mad. Perhaps I should find at home a letter for me from my Frederick! This hope, no, it would be too much to say “hope,” but the thought of this bare possibility poured balm into my wounded soul. Yes, wounded. I felt my inmost soul wounded. The gigantic woe which I had seen had cut so deep into my own heart that I felt as if it would never be healed again completely. Even if I were to find my Frederick again, even if a long future of brilliancy and love were granted me, could I ever forget that so many others of my poor human brothers and sisters had had to bear such unspeakable misery? And must go on bearing it till they come to see that this misery is no fatality but a crime.

I slept almost the whole way. Dr. Bresser had given me a slight narcotic, so that a longer and sounder sleep might to some extent calm my nerves, which had been so shattered by the occurrences at Horonewos.

When we arrived at the Vienna station, my father was already there to take me away. Dr. Bresser, who thought of everything, had telegraphed to Grumitz. It was not possible for him himself to see me there, for he had his wounded to see into the hospital, and wished then to return to Bohemia without delay.

My father embraced me in silence, and I also did not find a word to say. Then he turned to Dr. Bresser.

“How can I thank you? If you had not taken this little crazy thing under your protection----”

But the doctor pressed our hands hastily.

“I must go,” he said. “I have duty to do. May you get home safely. The young lady wants forbearance, your excellency. She has had a terrible shaking. No reproaches, no questioning. Get her quick to bed. Orange-flower water--rest. Good-bye.” And he was gone.

My father put my arm in his and led me through the crowd to the exit. There again a long row of ambulance waggons was standing. We had to go some distance on foot till we could get to the place where our carriage was waiting.

The question: “Has any news of Frederick come during this while?” rose several times to my lips, but I could not find courage to give voice to it. At last, when we had driven some distance, while my father kept silence all the way, I brought it out.

“Not up to yesterday,” was the reply. “It is possible that we may find news to-day. It was, of course, yesterday, immediately after the receipt of the telegram, that I left for the city. Oh, what a fright you have given us, you silly creature! To go to the battlefields, where you might meet the most cruel enemies, for these folks are just like savages. They are perfectly intoxicated with the victories of their needle-rifle, and all; they are no disciplined soldiers, these landwehr fellows; from such men you may be sure of the worst outrages, and you--a lady--to run into the midst of them--you---- However, the doctor just now ordered me not to scold you.”

“How is my son Rudolf?”

“He is crying and moaning about you, seeking you all over the house, will not believe that you could have gone away without giving him a parting kiss. And do not you ask after the rest? Lilly, Rosa, Otto, Aunt Mary? You seem to me altogether so indifferent.”

“How are they all? Has Conrad written?”

“They are all well. A letter arrived yesterday from Conrad. Nothing has happened to him. Lilly is happy. You will see that good news will very soon arrive about Tilling too. Unfortunately there is nothing good to be hoped in a political point of view. You have surely heard of the great calamity?”

“Which? In the present state of things I have seen nothing but great calamities.”

“I mean Venice. Our beautiful Venice given away--made a present of to that intriguer Louis Napoleon, and that after such a brilliant victory as we won at Custozza! Instead of getting back our Lombardy to give up our Venice as well! It is true that by this means we get free from our enemies in the South, have Louis Napoleon too on our side, and can now with our whole force take our revenge for Sadowa, chase the Prussians out of our country, follow them up and gain Silesia for ourselves. Benedek has committed great mistakes, but now the chief command will be put into the hand of the glorious commander of the Army of the South. But you make no reply? Well, then, I will follow Bresser’s prescription and give you repose.”

After a drive of two hours we arrived at Grumitz.

As our carriage drove into the court of the château my sisters ran out to meet me.

“Martha! Martha!” both of them shouted from a distance. “He is there.”

And again at the carriage door: “He is there”.

“Who?”

“Frederick, your husband.”

* * * * *

Yes, so it was. It was the day before, late in the evening, that Frederick had been brought with a consignment of wounded from Bohemia to Vienna and from thence here. He had received a bullet in his leg, a wound which rendered him for the moment unfit for service and in need of nursing, but was entirely free from danger.

But joy is also hard to bear. The news then shouted to me by my sisters, so entirely without preparation, that “Frederick was there,” had just the same effect as the terror of the past days--it deprived me of consciousness.

They were obliged to carry me from the carriage into the château, and put me to bed. Here, whether from the after-effect of the narcotic, or the violence of the shock of joy, I spent several hours in unconsciousness, sometimes slumbering, sometimes delirious. When I came to myself and found myself in my own bed I believed myself to have awoke from a dreadful dream, and thought I had never left Grumitz. Bresser’s letter, my resolution to start for Bohemia, my experiences there, the homeward journey, the news of Frederick’s return home--all was a dream.

I looked up. My _femme de chambre_ was standing at the foot of the bed. “Is my bath ready?” I asked. “I want to get up.”

Now Aunt Mary rushed forward out of a corner of the room.

“Oh Martha! poor dear, are you at last awake and restored to your senses? God be praised. Yes, yes; get up and take your bath. That will do you good, when one is covered, as you are, with the dust of the roads and railways.”

“Dust from railways; what do you mean?”

“Quick; get up. Netty, get everything ready. Frederick is almost dying with impatience to see you.”

“Frederick--my Frederick?”

How often had I during these last days called out this name, and with what pain! But now it was a cry of joy--for now I had comprehended. It was no dream. I had been away and come back again, and was to see my husband.

A quarter of an hour afterwards I went into his room, alone. I had requested that no one should go with me. No third person should be present at our meeting.

“Frederick!” “Martha!” I rushed to the couch on which he lay and sobbed on his bosom.