The Debacle - Emile Zola [215]
At once he insisted on going himself, tired as he was, to find her at the hospital, where she had been on duty all night, and his uncle fumed because now he could not get away with his cart and two sheep on his butcher’s round through the villages until this dratted business of the wounded man who had landed on him was settled.
When Maurice brought back Henriette they caught old Fouchard carefully looking over the horse that Prosper had taken to the stable. A very tired animal, but jolly strong, and he liked the look of it! The young man laughed as he said he would make him a present of it. Henriette meanwhile took her uncle to one side and explained that Jean would pay, and that she would look after him in her little room behind the cowshed where certainly no Prussian would ever go and look for him. Old Fouchard, sulking and still unconvinced that there would be any real profit for him in all this, did eventually jump into his cart and go off, leaving her to do as she thought fit.
Then, with the help of Silvine and Prosper, Henriette only took a few minutes to rearrange her room and have Jean carried there, where he was put into a clean bed, but still he gave no sign of life beyond a few vague mutterings. He opened his eyes and looked round but did not appear to see anybody. Maurice was just finishing a glass of wine and a bit of meat and was suddenly overcome with fatigue, when Dr Dalichamp came, as he did every morning on his way to the hospital, and Maurice did just find the strength to go with him and his sister to the wounded man’s bedside, in his anxiety to find out.
The doctor was a short man with a big round head fringed by greying hair and beard. His fresh face had gone leathery like those of the peasants, with his continual open-air life of journeys to alleviate suffering, and his keen eyes, inquisitive nose and kindly mouth spoke of the whole life of a good, charitable man, a bit off the target sometimes, and no medical genius, but long experience had made him an excellent healer.
Having examined the still semi-conscious Jean he murmured:
‘I’m afraid there’ll have to be an amputation.’
This was grievous news to Maurice and Henriette. But he did add:
‘Perhaps it will be possible to save his leg, but it will need a great deal of care and it will be a very long job… Just now his vitality and morale are in such a low state that the only thing to do is to let him sleep… We’ll see tomorrow.’
Having dressed the wound he turned his attention to Maurice, whom he had known as a child long ago.
‘And you too, my boy, would be better in a bed than on that chair.’
The young man stared straight in front of him with unseeing eyes, as though he had not heard. In his utterly exhausted state his own feverishness was coming back in the form of abnormal nervous excitement due to all the accumulated sufferings and revulsions since the beginning of the campaign. The sight of his stricken friend, the sense of his own defeat, naked, disarmed, good for nothing, the thought that so many heroic efforts had ended in such distress, all threw him into a frantic need to rebel against fate. Then at length he answered:
‘No, no! It’s not all over, no! I’ve got to go… No, as he has got to be here for weeks and perhaps months I can’t stay, I must go at once. You will help me, won’t you, doctor? You will give me the means to escape and get back to Paris.’
Terrified, Henriette threw her arms round him.
‘What are you talking about? Weak as you are, after going through so much! I shall keep you here, I’ll never let you go! Haven’t you paid your debt? Think of me as well, you are leaving me alone and now I’ve nobody left but you.’
They wept together. They kissed each other desperately with that adoring love of twins, closer than normal love as if it dated from before birth. But he worked himself up more and more.
‘But I tell you, I must go… They’re waiting for me and I should die of distress if I didn’t go.