“Quite right, it’s nothing,” she said. “The artery is uninjured.”
She uncovered the wound and, very tenderly, staunched the blood that trickled from it:
“The peroxide, quick, mamma.”
She took the bottle which some one held out to her and, raising her head, saw Suzanne stooping like herself over the wounded man.
“M. Morestal is waking up,” said the girl. “Mme. Morestal sent me in her stead....”
Marthe did not so much as start. She did not even feel as though an unpleasant memory had flitted through her mind, compelling her to make an effort to suppress her hatred:
“Unroll the bandages,” she said.
And Suzanne also was calm in the face of her enemy. No sense of shame or embarrassment troubled her. Their mingled breath caressed the soldier’s face.
Nor did it seem that any memory of love existed between Philippe and Suzanne or that a carnal bond united them. They looked at each other unmoved. Marthe herself told Philippe to uncork a bottle of boracic. He did so. His hand touched Suzanne’s. Neither he nor Suzanne felt a thrill.
Around them continued the uninterrupted work of the men, each of whom obeyed orders and executed them according to his own initiative, without fuss or confusion. The servants were all in the drawing-room. The women aided in the work. Amid the great anguish that oppressed every heart at the first formidable breath of war, no one thought of anything but his individual task, that contribution of heroism which fate was claiming from one and all. What mattered the petty wounds of pride, the petty griefs to which the subtleties of love give rise! What signified the petty treacheries of daily life!
“He’s better,” said Marthe. “Here, Suzanne, let him sniff at the smelling-salts.”
Duvauchel opened his eyes. He saw Marthe and Suzanne, smiled and murmured:
“By Jingo!... It was worth while!... Duvauchel’s a lucky dog!...”
But an unexpected silence fell upon the great drawing-room, like a spontaneous cessation of all the organs at work. And, suddenly, a voice was heard on the threshold:
“They have crossed the frontier! Two of them have crossed the frontier!”
And Victor exclaimed:
“And there are more coming! You can see their helmets.... They are coming! They are in France!”
The women fell on their knees. One of them moaned:
“O God, have pity on us!”
Marthe had joined Philippe at the terrace-door and they heard Captain Daspry repeating in a low voice, with an accent of despair:
“Yes, they are in France ... they have crossed the frontier.”
“They are in France, Philippe,” said Marthe, taking her husband’s hand.
And she felt his hand tremble.
Drawing himself up quickly, the captain commanded:
“Not a shot!... Let no one show himself!”
The order flew from mouth to mouth and silence and immobility reigned in the Old Mill, from one end to the other of the house and grounds. Each one stood at his post. All along the wall, the soldiers kept themselves hidden, perched upright on their improvised talus.
At that moment, one of the drawing-room doors opened and old Morestal appeared on his wife’s arm. Dressed in a pair of trousers and a waistcoat, bare-headed, tangle-haired, with a handkerchief fastened round his neck, he staggered on his wavering legs. Nevertheless, a sort of gladness, like an inward smile, lighted his features.
“Let me be,” he said to his wife, who was endeavouring to support him.
He steadied his gait and walked to the gun-rack, where the twelve rifles stood in a row.
He took out one with feverish haste, felt it, with the touch of a sportsman recognizing his favourite weapon, passed in front of Philippe, without appearing to see him, and went out on the terrace.
“You, M. Morestal!” said Captain Daspry.
Pointing to the frontier, the old man asked:
“Are they there?”
“Yes.”
“Are you making a resistance?”
“Yes.”
“Are there many of them?”
“There are twenty to one.”
“If so ...?”
“We’ve got to.”
“But ...”
“We’ve got to, M. Morestal; and be easy, we shall stand our ground.... I’m certain of it.”
Morestal said, in a low voice:
“Remember what I told you, captain.... The road is undermined at two hundred yards from the terrace.... A match and ...”
“Oh,” protested the officer, “I hope it won’t come to that! I am expecting relief.”
“Very well!” said Morestal. “But anything rather than let them come up to the Old Mill!”
“They won’t come up. It’s out of the question that they should come up before the arrival of the French troops.”
“Good! As long as the Old Mill remains in our hands, they won’t be able to man the heights and threaten Saint-Élophe.”
They could plainly see columns of infantry winding along the Col du Diable. There, they divided and one part of the men turned towards the Butte-aux-Loups, while the others — consisting of the greater number, for this was evidently the enemy’s object — went down towards the Étang-des Moines, to seize the high-road.
These disappeared for a moment, hidden by the bend of the ground.
The captain said to Morestal:
“Once the road is held and the assault begins, it will be impossible to get away.... It would be better, therefore, for the ladies ... and for you yourself ...”
Morestal gave him such a look that the officer did not insist:
“Come, come,” he said, smiling, “don’t be angry.... Rather help me to make these good people understand....”
He turned to the servants, to Victor, who was taking down a rifle, to the gardener, to Henriot, and warned them that none but combatants must stay at the Old Mill, as any man captured with arms in his hands exposed himself to reprisals.
They let him talk; and Victor, without thinking of retiring, answered:
“That’s as may be, captain. But it’s one of the things one doesn’t think about. I’m staying.”
“And you, Farmer Saboureux? You’re running a big risk, if they prove that you set fire to your farm.”
“I’m staying,” growled the peasant, laconically.
“And you, tramp?”
Old Poussière had not finished eating the piece of bread which he had taken from his wallet. He was listening and observing, with eyes wide open and an evident effort to attend. He examined the captain, his uniform, the braid upon his sleeve, seemed to reflect on mysterious things, stood up and seized a rifle.
“That’s right, Poussière,” grinned Morestal. “You know your country right enough, once it needs defending.”
A man had made the same movement as the tramp, almost at the same time. One more division in the gun-rack was empty.
It was Duvauchel, still rather unsteady on his pins, but wearing an undaunted look.
“What, Duvauchel!” asked Captain Daspry. “Aren’t we deserting?”
“You’re getting at me, captain! Let the beggars clear out of France first! I’ll desert afterwards.”
“But you’ve only one arm that’s any good.”
“A greaser’s arm, captain ... and a French greaser’s at that ... is worth two, any day.”
“Pass me one of them rifles,” said the gardener’s son. “I know my way about with ’em.”
Duvauchel began to laugh:
“You too, sonnie? You want one? You’ll see, the babes at the breast will be rising up next, like the others. Lord, but it makes my blood boil to think that they’re in France!”
All followed the captain, who allotted them a post along the parapet. The women busied themselves in placing ammunition within reach of the marksmen.
Marthe was left alone with her husband. She saw that the scene had stirred him. In the way in which those decent folk realized thei
r duty and performed it without being compelled to, simply and spontaneously, there was that sort of greatness which touches a man to the very depths of his soul.
She said to him:
“Well, Philippe?”
His face was drawn; he did not reply.
She continued:
“Well, go.... What are you waiting for? No one will notice your flight.... Be quick.... Take the opportunity while it’s here....”
They heard the captain addressing his lieutenant:
“Keep down your head, Fabrègues, can’t you? They’ll see you, if you’re not careful....”
Marthe seized Philippe’s arm and, bending towards him:
“Now confess that you can’t go ... that all this upsets your notions ... and that your duty is here ... that you feel it.”
“There they are! There they are!” said a voice.
“Yes,” said Captain Daspry, searching the road through the orifice of a loop-hole, “yes, there they are!... At six hundred yards, at most ... It’s the vanguard.... They are skirting the pool and they haven’t a notion that ...”
A sergeant came to tell him that the enemy had hoisted a gun on the slope of the pass. The officer was alarmed, but old Morestal began to laugh:
“Let them bring up as many guns as they please!... They can only take up positions which we command and which I have noted. A few good marksmen are enough to keep them from placing a battery.”
And, turning to his son, he said to him, quite naturally, as though nothing had ever parted them:
“Are you coming, Philippe? We’ll demolish them between us.”
Captain Daspry interfered:
“Don’t fire! We are not discovered yet. Wait till I give the order.... There’ll be time enough later....”
Old Morestal had moved away.
Philippe walked resolutely towards the gate that led to the garden, to the open country. But he had not taken ten steps, when he stopped. He seemed to be vaguely suffering; and Marthe, who had not left his side, Marthe, anxious, full of mingled hope and apprehension, watched every phase of the tragic struggle:
“All the past is calling on you, Philippe; all the love for France that the past has bequeathed to you. Listen to its voice.”
And, replying to every possible objection:
“Yes, I know, your intelligence rebels against it. But is one’s intelligence everything?... Obey your instinct, Philippe.... It’s your instinct that is right.”
“No, no,” he stammered, “one’s instinct is never right....”
“It is right. But for that, you would be far away by now. But you can’t go. Your whole being refuses to go. Your legs have not the strength for flight.”
The Col du Diable was pouring forth troops and more troops, whose swarming masses showed along the slope. Others must be coming by the Albern Road; and, on every side, along every path and through every gap, the men of Germany were invading the soil of France.
The vanguard reached the high-road, at the end of the Étang-des-Moines.
There was a dull roll of the drum; and, suddenly, in the near silence, a hoarse voice barked out a German word of command.
Philippe started as though he had been struck.
And Marthe clung to him, pitilessly:
“Do you hear, Philippe? Do you understand? The German speech on French soil! Their language forced upon us!”
“Oh, no!” he said. “That can’t be.... That will never be!”
“Why should it never be? Invasion comes first ... and then conquest ... and subjection....”
Near them, the captain ordered:
“Let no one stir!”
Bullets spluttered against the walls, while the sounds of firing reverberated. A window-pane was smashed on the floor above. And more bullets broke fragments of stone from the coping of the parapet. The enemy, surprised at the disappearance of the French troops, were feeling their way before passing below that house, whose gloomy aspect must needs strike them as suspicious.
“Ah!” said a soldier, spinning on his heels and falling on the threshold of the drawing-room, his face covered with blood.
The women ran to his assistance.
Philippe gazed haggard-eyed at that man who was about to die, at that man who belonged to the same race, who lived under the same sky as himself, who breathed the same air, ate the same bread and drank the same wine.
Marthe had taken down a rifle and handed it to Philippe. He grasped it with a sort of despair:
“Who would ever have told me ...?” he stammered.
“I, Philippe ... I was sure of you. We have not to do with theories, but with implacable facts. These are realities, to-day.... The enemy is treading the bit of earth where you were born, where you played as a child. The enemy is forcing his way into France. Defend her, Philippe....”
He clenched his fists around his rifle and she saw that his eyes were full of tears.
He murmured, quivering with inward rebellion:
“Our sons will refuse ... I shall teach them to refuse.... What I cannot do, what I have not the courage to do they shall do.”
“Perhaps, but what does the future matter!” she said, eagerly. “What does to-morrow’s duty matter! Our duty, yours and mine, is the duty of to-day.”
A voice whispered:
“They’re coming near, captain.... They’re coming near....”
Another voice, beside Philippe, the voice of one of the women tending the wounded man, moaned:
“He’s dead.... Poor fellow!... He’s dead....”
The guns roared on the frontier.
“Are you coming, Philippe?” asked old Morestal.
“I’m coming, father,” he said.
Very quickly, he walked out on the terrace and knelt beside his father, against the balusters. Marthe knelt down behind him and wept at the thought of what he must be suffering. Nevertheless, she did not doubt but that, notwithstanding his despair, he was acting in all conscience.
The captain said, clearly, and the order was repeated to the end of the garden:
“Fire as you please.... Sight at three hundred yards....”
There were a few seconds of solemn waiting ... then the terrible word:
“Fire!”
Yonder, along the barrel of his rifle, near an old oak in whose branches he once used to climb, Philippe saw a great lubber in uniform throw up his hands, bend his legs one after the other and stretch himself along the ground, slowly, as though to sleep....
THE END
The Three Eyes
Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
Published in 1921 in New York by A L Burt in collaboration with Macaulay, this novel sits firmly within the genre of fantasy. Leblanc clearly draws on topical news stories for his fiction, as here, he uses the death of nurse Edith Cavell during the First World War and the subsequent erection of a statue in her honour, unveiled by Queen Alexandra on 17 March 1920; this would undoubtedly have been reported in the newspapers in his own country of France. Death in tragic circumstances was a preoccupation of the French in the years immediately after the end of the First World War; the nation lost 1.3 million men in the conflict and a further 450,000 citizens in the Spanish Flu epidemic. The war also created 760,000 orphans, 600,000 widows and 1.2 million disabled individuals. This impacted badly on the post war recovery and understandably was a source of insecurity amongst many. A lingering national anti-German sentiment has also informed parts of this story. The themes of eyes, how we perceive and interpret what we see and vision in a biological and esoteric sense, are major aspects of the narrative.
The reader is thrown into the action immediately by the narrator, Victorien, who is the nephew of inventor, Noël Dorgeroux, a man generally of placid temperament who has suddenly appeared from a spell in his laboratory in a wild-eyed and dishevelled state. He is shocked to see Dorgeroux in this state, as is the uncle’s god-daughter, Bérangère. On discussing the disturbing state of mind of Dorgeroux, Berangere reveals that she has w
itnessed the trigger for this: ‘I saw, with your uncle, on a wall in the Yard, the most frightful things: images which represented three — sort of eyes. Were they eyes? I don’t know. The things moved and looked at us. Oh, I shall never forget it as long as I live.’ On questioning Dorgeroux, Berangere is told that the strange moving images may be caused by ‘B-rays’.
Victorien is now sufficiently intrigued to effect an entry into his uncle’s workshop, where he finds his elder in a state of feverish excitement mixed with paranoia. It seems that a completely ordinary section of roughly finished wall, now covered with a black serge curtain, is the cause of all the agitation. When Dorgeroux pulls back the curtain, strange shapes begin to appear, “three geometrical figures which might equally well have been badly described circles or triangles composed of curved circles. In the centre of these figures was drawn a regular circle, marked in the middle with a blacker point, as the iris is marked by the pupil.” This is only the beginning; the three triangular shapes seem to take on a life of their own. ‘We were conscious of the scrutiny of those three eyes, without lids or lashes, but full of an intense life which was due to the expression that animated them, a changing expression, by turns serious, proud, noble, enthusiastic and, above all, sad, grievously sad.’
As times passes, both uncle and nephew become increasingly obsessed by the mysterious images. They evolve into a form of moving picture show — one depicting the execution of First World War nurse, Edith Cavell — and yet there is no equipment anywhere that could be creating or projecting these images: ‘…a screen…received everything from within… The images did not come from the outside. They sprang to the surface from within. The horizon opened out on the farther side of a solid material. The darkness gave forth light.’
The uncle then reveals some of the historical scenes he has witnessed when alone and states his conviction that what they are seeing is not a re-enactment of historical events, but the events themselves, that in some fantastical way, they are actually time travelling by witnessing these images. The scenes they witness become more personal, but Victorien is forced to remove himself from the mystery when he is called to take up a new academic post at Grenoble. He hears nothing for some time, even from Berangere, with whom he is passionately in love; then he receives a letter from his uncle, tainted with a fresh paranoia – or is he genuinely in danger and by default, the beloved Berangere also? Victorien returns to his uncle’s home and workshop to unsettling messages from the ‘visions’ and a genuine physical threat to them all…
Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17) Page 345