A. E. Merritt - Three Lines of Old French

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Title: Three Lines of Old French

Author: Abraham Merritt

* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *

eBook No.: 0602001h.html

Edition: 1

Language: English

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Date first posted: June 2006

Date most recently updated: June 2006

This eBook was produced by: Richard Scott

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Three Lines of Old French

Abraham Merritt

"BUT RICH AS WAS THE WAR for surgical science," ended Hawtry, "opening up through mutilation

and torture unexplored regions which the genius of man was quick to enter, and, entering, found ways to

checkmate suffering and death--for always, my friend, the distillate from the blood of sacrifice is

progress--great as all this was, the world tragedy has opened up still another region wherein even greater

knowledge will be found. It was the clinic unsurpassed for the psychologist even more than for the

surgeon."

Latour, the great little French doctor, drew himself out of the depths of the big chair; the light from the

fireplace fell ruddily upon his keen face.

"That is true," he said. "Yes, that is true. There in the furnace the mind of man opened like a flower

beneath a too glowing sun. Beaten about in that colossal tempest of primitive forces, caught in the chaos

of energies both physical and psychical--which, although man himself was its creator, made of their

maker a moth in a whirlwind--all those obscure, those mysterious factors of mind which men, for lack of

knowledge, have named the soul, were stripped of their inhibitions and given power to appear.

"How could it have been otherwise--when men and women, gripped by one shattering sorrow or joy,

will manifest the hidden depths of spirit--how could it have been otherwise in that steadily maintained

crescendo of emotion?" McAndrews spoke.

"Just which psychological region do you mean, Hawtry?" he asked.

There were four of us in front of the fireplace of the Science Club--Hawtry, who rules the chair of

psychology in one of our greatest colleges, and whose name is an honored one throughout the world;

Latour, an immortal of France; McAndrews, the famous American surgeon whose work during the war

has written a new page in the shining book of science; and myself. These are not the names of the three,

but they are as I have described them; and I am pledged to identify them no further.

"I mean the field of suggestion," replied the psychologist.

"The mental reactions which reveal themselves as visions--an accidental formation in the clouds that

becomes to the over-wrought imaginations of the beholders the so-eagerly-prayed-for hosts of Joan of

Arc marching out from heaven; moonlight in the cloud rift that becomes to the besieged a fiery cross held

by the hands of archangels; the despair and hope that are transformed into such a legend as the bowmen

of Mons, ghostly archers who with their phantom shafts overwhelm the conquering enemy; wisps of

cloud over No Man's Land that are translated by the tired eyes of those who peer out into the shape of

the Son of Man himself walking sorrowfully among the dead. Signs, portents, and miracles, the hosts of

premonitions, of apparitions of loved ones--all dwellers in this land of suggestion; all born of the tearing

loose of the veils of the subconscious. Here, when even a thousandth part is gathered, will be work for

the psychological analyst for twenty years."

"And the boundaries of this region?" asked McAndrews.

"Boundaries?" Hawtry plainly was perplexed.

McAndrews for a moment was silent. Then he drew from his pocket a yellow slip of paper, a cablegram.

"Young Peter Laveller died today," he said, apparently irrelevantly. "Died where he had set forth to

pass--in the remnants of the trenches that cut through the ancient domain of the Seigniors of Tocquelain,

up near Bethune."

"Died there!" Hawtry's astonishment was profound. "But I read that he had been brought home; that,

indeed, he was one of your triumphs, McAndrews!"

"I said he went there to die," repeated the surgeon slowly.

So that explained the curious reticence of the Lavellers as to what had become of their soldier son--a

secrecy which had puzzled the press for weeks. For young Peter Laveller was one of the nation's heroes.

The only boy of old Peter Laveller--and neither is that the real name of the family, for, like the others, I

may not reveal it--he was the heir to the grim old coal king's millions, and the secret, best loved pulse of

his heart.

Early in the war he had enlisted with the French. His father's influence might have abrogated the law of

the French army that every man must start from the bottom up--I do not know--but young Peter would

have none of it. Steady of purpose, burning with the white fire of the first Crusaders, he took his place in

the ranks.

Clean-cut, blue-eyed, standing six feet in his stocking feet, just twenty-five, a bit of a dreamer, perhaps,

he was one to strike the imagination of the poilus, and they loved him. Twice was he wounded in the

perilous days, and when America came into the war he was transferred to our expeditionary forces. It

was at the siege of Mount Kemmel that he received the wounds that brought him back to his father and

sister. McAndrews had accompanied him overseas, I knew, and had patched him together--or so all

thought.

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