The Living Present | Page 8

look, and I have only a vague and mercifully fading impression of a hideousness never before seen in this world.
On the other hand I saw a man propped up in bed, with one entire side of his face bandaged, his mouth twisted almost into his right ear, and a mere remnant of nose, reading a newspaper with his remaining eye and apparently quite happy.
The infirmi��re told me that sometimes the poor fellows would cry--they are almost all very young--and lament that no girl would have them now; but she always consoled them by the assurance that men would be so scarce after the war that girls would take anything they could get.
In one of the wards a young soldier was sitting on the edge of his cot, receiving his family, two women of middle age and a girl of about seventeen. His face was bandaged down to the bridge of his nose, but the lower part was uninjured. He may or may not have been permanently blind. The two older women--his mother and aunt, no doubt--looked stolid, as women of that class always do, but the girl sat staring straight before her with an expression of bitter resentment I shall never forget. She looked as if she were giving up every youthful illusion, and realized that Life is the enemy of man, and more particularly of woman. Possibly her own lover was in the trenches. Or perhaps this mutilated boy beside her was the first lover of her youth. One feels far too impersonal for curiosity in these hospitals and it did not occur to me to ask.
Madame Balli had also brought several boxes of delicacies for the private kitchen of the infirmi��res, where fine dishes may be concocted for appetites still too weak to be tempted by ordinary hospital fare: soup extract, jellies, compotes, cocoa, preserves, etc. Mr. Holman-Black came staggering after us with one of these boxes, I remember, down the long corridor that led to the private quarters of the nurses. One walks miles in these hospitals.
A number of American men in Paris are working untiringly for Paris, notably those in our War Relief Clearing House--H.O. Beatty, Randolph Mordecai, James R. Barbour, M.P. Peixotto, Ralph Preston, Whitney Warren, Hugh R. Griffen, James Hazen Hyde, Walter Abbott, Charles R. Scott, J.J. Hoff, Rev. Dr. S.N. Watson, George Munroe, Charles Carroll, J. Ridgeley Carter, H. Herman Harges--but I never received from any the same sense of consecration, of absolute selflessness as I did from Mr. Holman-Black. He and his brother have a beautiful little h?tel, and for many years before the war were among the most brilliant contributors to the musical life of the great capital; but there has been no entertaining in those charming rooms since August, 1914. Mr. Holman-Black is parrain (godfather) to three hundred and twenty soldiers at the Front, not only providing them with winter and summer underclothing, bedding, sleeping-suits, socks, and all the lighter articles they have the privilege of asking for, but also writing from fifteen to twenty letters to his filleuls daily. He, too, has not taken a day's vacation since the outbreak of the war, nor read a book. He wears the uniform of a Red Cross officer, and is associated with several of Madame Balli's oeuvres.
VI
A few days later Madame Balli took me to another hospital--H?pital Militaire Villemin--where she gives a concert once a week. Practically all the men that gathered in the large room to hear the music, or crowded before the windows, were well and would leave shortly for the front, but a few were brought in on stretchers and lay just below the platform. This hospital seemed less dreary to me than most of those I had visited, and the yard was full of fine trees. It was also an extremely cheerful afternoon, for not only was the sun shining, but the four artists Madame Balli had brought gave of their best and their efforts to amuse were greeted with shouts of laughter.
Lyse Berty--the most distinguished vaudeville artist in France and who is certainly funnier than any woman on earth--had got herself up in horizon blue, and was the hit of the afternoon. The men forgot war and the horrors of war and surrendered to her art and her selections with an abandon which betrayed their superior intelligence, for she is a very plain woman. Miss O'Brien, an Irish girl who has spent her life in Paris and looks like the pictures in some old Book of Beauty--immense blue eyes, tiny regular features, small oval face, chestnut hair, pink-and-white skin, and a tall "willowy" figure--was second in their critical esteem, because she did not relieve their monotonous life with fun, but sang, instead, sweet or stirring songs in a really beautiful voice. The other two, young entertainers