into the darkness beyond them the better I felt. I came nearer and
nearer to feeling good, for an hour; then we found the bridge still
standing, and I felt entirely good. We crossed it and destroyed it,
and then I felt–but I cannot describe what I felt. One has to feel it
himself in order to know what it is like.
We had expected to hear the rush of a pursuing force behind us,
for we thought that the real Captain Raymond would arrive and
suggest that perhaps the troop that had been mistaken for his
belonged to the Virgin of Vaucouleurs; but he must have been
delayed seriously, for when we resumed our march beyond the
river there were no sounds behind us except those which the storm
was furnishing.
I said that Joan had harvested a good many compliments intended
for Captain Raymond, and that he would find nothing of a crop left
but a dry stubble of reprimands when he got back, and a
commander just in the humor to superintend the gathering of it in.
Joan said:
“It will be as you say, no doubt; for the commander took a troop
for granted, in the night and unchallenged, and would have
camped without sending a force to destroy the bridge if he had
been left unadvised, and none are so ready to find fault with others
as those who do things worthy of blame themselves.”
The Sieur Bertrand was amused at Joan’s na‹ve way of referring to
her advice as if it had been a valuable present to a hostile leader
who was saved by it from making a censurable blunder of
omission, and then he went on to admire how ingeniously she had
deceived that man and yet had not told him anything that was not
the truth. This troubled Joan, and she said:
“I thought he was deceiving himself. I forbore to tell him lies, for
that would have been wrong; but if my truths deceived him,
perhaps that made them lies, and I am to blame. I would God I
knew if I have done wrong.”
She was assured that she had done right, and that in the perils and
necessities of war deceptions that help one’s own cause and hurt
the enemy’s were always permissible; but she was not quite
satisfied with that, and thought that even when a great cause was
in danger one ought to have the privilege of trying honorable ways
first. Jean said:
“Joan, you told us yourself that you were going to Uncle Laxart’s to
nurse his wife, but you didn’t say you were going further, yet you
did go on to Vaucouleurs. There!”
“I see now,” said Joan, sorrowfully. “I told no lie, yet I deceived. I
had tried all other ways first, but I could not get away, and I had to
get away. My mission required it. I did wrong, I think, and am to
blame.”
She was silent a moment, turning the matter over in her mind, then
she added, with quiet decision, “But the thing itself was right, and I
would do it again.”
It seemed an over-nice distinction, but nobody said anything. I few
had known her as well as she knew herself, and as her later history
revealed her to us, we should have perceived that she had a clear
meaning there, and that her position was not identical with ours, as
we were supposing, but occupied a higher plane. She would
sacrifice herself–and her best self; that is, her truthfulness–to save
her cause; but only that; she would not buy her life at that cost;
whereas our war-ethics permitted the purchase of our lives, or any
mere military advantage, small or great, by deception. Her saying
seemed a commonplace at the time, the essence of its meaning
escaping us; but one sees now that it contained a principle which
lifted it above that and made it great and fine.
Presently the wind died down, the sleet stopped falling, and the
cold was less severe. The road was become a bog, and the horses
labored through it at a walk–they could do no better. As the heavy
time wore on, exhaustion overcame us, and we slept in our