THE PEACE BABE
Peace had come again.
And in her shining bassinet Peace Europa breathed softly through a mouth
like a damp red rose, waved a tiny arm feebly, uncurled the new-born
hand, with its pearly nails, as if she would catch and hold to her baby
breast--forever and a day--the new-born happiness that had come to earth
with her.
Beside her in the wee hospital crib, sharing the soft blanket in which
the welcoming nurse had wrapped her, slumbered another, her Heavenly
Twin--the Babe of Peace.
So it seemed to nurses and doctors who stole near to look at her, lying
all oiled and shiny!
"If ever a baby was born at the hour of fate, she was!" breathed the
intern, the house-doctor, beaming through his glasses upon her. "And, by
George! the mite seems to know it, too. Did you ever before see such a
placid smile upon a new-born thing?"
"I never did," replied the feminine superintendent of the Hospital. "I'm
afraid I'll have to keep out of the 'baby-room,'--else I'll break every
rule--take her up now and again, to cuddle her, just for the sake of
this won-der-ful hour in which she first saw--the--light."
"Yes! and spoil her for her mother to take care of, afterwards--make her
as nervous as a witch. I guess even my young sister--fifteen-year-old
sister who's a Camp Fire Girl and has taken a course in Baby
Craft--would have more self-control than that," rebuked the intern, but
leniently, joy oozing through his glasses; for his dearest chum was at
the front, that devastated front, in far-away France--and now there was
a chance of seeing him again.
"I feel that way, too, doctor," said the superintendent, interpreting
the look, not the rebuke. "My twin brother is over there. He's been
wounded over and over again. Oh! how I dreaded his taking part in the
next big drive. No need for it now! Will you listen to the whistles and
horns--that hooting klaxon. Why! the world's gone mad. And to think that
this baby--a soldier's child, too--should be born just at the moment, or
a few minutes before it, that the word went out to cease firing!" The
superintendent wiped her eyes.
"Was ever such a heavenly herald?" breathed the doctor.
"Her mother feels so. She says the child is born for greatness. She has
named her already, Peace Europa--Peace Europa Bush."
"Gosh! Some name! A big contract to fasten upon six pounds and
three-quarters of soft pink flesh and gristly bone," mocked Dr. Lemuel
Kemp. "Well! I suppose the heavenly infant will hold an unconscious
reception, all day long, of those who are privileged to be admitted--in
this Hades of a room." He sniffed at the hothouse atmosphere of the
baby-room--extremely hothouse--in which humanity's latest
buds--seventeen of them, with Europa as the center--were unfolding.
"I'll have to tip that young sister of mine the word to come round and
see her. I suppose she's somewhere out at the heart of the clamor
now--in the crowded streets, with the rest of the family--the rest of
the world--gone mad over the Armistice being signed. But, oh! she'll
have a fringe of enthusiasm left for the Peace baby," smilingly. "She
has been taking care of a neighbor's child, two months old, for an hour
a day lately; she showed me a pretty flame-colored honor-bead she had
received for it."
"A neat way of gilding the pill of service!" smiled the superintendent.
"Say, rather, of transforming it into a sugar pellet," was the man's
reply, as the two left the tropical atmosphere of the hospital nursery.
Yes, War was over. Simultaneously with the birth of little Peace the
word had gone forth to a hacked and harrowed and weary world to cease
firing!
No wonder that the young Day, born with her, had gone mad--outside the
hospital--a brimming-over child that could not contain its own
happiness; that from shore to shore bells rang, sirens sang, klaxons
hooted themselves hoarse--men and women, too--while underneath the wild
riot--vociferous glee--tears baptized the dawn in many a home; radiant
joy-tears on behalf of those who would come back, through which, like a
reflection of the morning-star in ocean, shone the gold star of memory
for those who would not!
But the star of service had not set. The wings which had come through
the game, undrooping, must be spread anew for tried, if tamer, lights.
And so, as Europa still lay, oiled and shining, teasing the air with her
first pin-prick cries--ere yet she was four hours old--there arrived two
visitors to see her!
One was blinking like the sleepiest Owlet ever caught abroad at
daylight; she had been awake since three, abroad since thirty minutes
past; she was the doctor's sister, Lilla Kemp, Little Owl, of the
Morning-Glory Group of Camp Fire Girls--a Glory Unit now, as it paraded
the streets in a body, radiating ecstasy and anticipatory
reunion--longed-for reunion with the brothers over there.
The other, being by name and nature of the order of the flame, looked as
if she could never "drowse" again, as if she had caught the very heart
of the sunlight joy upon the tips of her shading eyelashes and held it
there in twinkling points of gold.
"I've made the duckiest--dearest--dandiest--little set of baby-clothes
for her--for Peace Europa--her mother told me, long ago, that if she
happened to be born on Peace Day, she would name her that," said Sesooā,
the Flame. "You should see them, Lil, the sweetest little dress--I put
every teeny, tiny, microscopic stitch in it myself,"--there was a drop
of water on the gold lashes now--"the daintiest fine linen gertrude and
tiny shirtie. You see, I knew she was a soldier's child--and due to
arrive about this time."
"And you'll exhibit them, won't you, at our next ceremonial meeting--a
Peace Ceremonial, the Guardian said it would be, if the Armistice went
through; she's planning for it already. They'll mean a new honor for
hand craft, a pretty green honor-bead--those dear little baby-clothes."
"Oh! I can hardly think about that now, or of anything, except--except
that they're a thanksgiving set--offering,"--the tears brimmed over at
this golden point, two of them dropped upon Peace Europa's blanket,
saluting the invisible peace twin, new-born Peace Angel, sleeping beside
her--"a thanksgiving offering because Iver's coming back.... Oh! I can't
be s-sure yet, of course! He's been wounded so often, burned with
mustard gas, lost--lost all his beautiful wig, as he jokingly said--his
hair, you know, burned off.
"But when you come back,
As you _will_ come back!"
The sister's tear-breathed chant--each word a whirling joy-center--was
crooned into Europa's hooding blanket. "Isn't she the darlingest baby
you ever saw--little Peace Angel?" added Sara Davenport very softly.
"I'm going to adopt her in a way; take care of her for an hour a day
later on, if her mother will allow me, as you have been doing with that
neighbor's baby--Lilla."
"Why don't we adopt her forthwith, as a Group, directly she's out of the
hospital, make her clothes for her, bring her toys, and when she's a
year old, or so, take her to camp with us in the summer? Fancy her
building sand-castles--little Peace Europa--among the cranberries on
that white beach from which you put off in your radio-smeared dory, to
signal the Coast Guards! Fancy that--our Peace Europa!"
Lilla's eyes spilled over with humid light upon the blanketed mite.
"Too lovely for anything--if her mother will allow it!"
"Bless you! She'll make no objection. They live in rather a stuffy
little street; when she was well she took a boarder or two to help out
while her husband was fighting over there--and she has three more
children, the oldest twins, a boy and girl, between four and five, and a
tot of two."
"How--how about leaving Europa to sleep with _her_ heavenly twin, the
Peace Babe, and our taking those other twins out to see the big parade
this afternoon--they're soldier's children," suggested Sesooā, with
sudden inspiration.
"Good idea! Only, of course, representatives from our group, from every
Camp Fire in the city, are supposed to march with the Red Cross for
which we have been knitting, sewing, making surgical dressings, working
in a war-canteen, and so forth, right along--to parade on this
won-der-ful Peace Day!" Little Owl's lip quivered; she, too, wore a
blue-starred service-pin for a young uncle, who had been to her
childhood a pal and a protector--prisoner now on enemy soil--would the
Armistice bring _him_ back?
"Oh! we'll let Blue Heron--Olive--hold our Morning-Glory end up in the
parade, with the Rainbow, Arline, to support her. They'll attract
attention enough. Olive is doing that now, I believe, since she made her
début in society two months ago, at her stepmother's wish, but very
quietly, the War not being over then and every one of us ready to stand
on our heads, as now, for joy.... For you _will_ come back!... Ah,
well!" the Flame's lip quivered. "Ah--well!"
The latter sigh introduced the least dark shade of panic into the day's
rainbowed panegyrics, lest he who was to return--Iver--Lieutenant O Pips
of the alert eye, the observation post astuteness--might fall short of
gaining his heart's desire when he did return, might not get all he
longed to ask from the Torch-Bearer whom he had seen in ceremonial
dress, or kneeling by a gassed soldier, many and many a time, over
there, when he missed the things that make life hum.
"Ah, well! no use in anticipating. At all events, I've got over being
raspy on the score--the war-time score--of Olive's cousins!" A little
flaming shrug of shoulders now, as the two, with a last yearning look at
Peace Europa--beneficent babe--a last almost reverent touch upon the
tiny, pearly hand which had come to earth, as it seemed, bearing the
boon mankind desired--turned to leave the tropical baby-room, the quiet
hospital.
"Well! it's to be the twins _now_, is it, Europa's brother and sister?"
said Lilla, as they emerged into the open, where, on all sides, the day,
young yet, had gone mad, was running over with tomfoolery and innocent
riot--a madcap child that could not contain its own gladness.
But the twins were no "peace handful," as the two girls found. In the
absence of their mother they were martyring a grandmother. They had
baptized the joy of the day in mud-puddles and hung it out to dry from
spikey fences--the boy of four and a half, especially--until not a
clean, whole shred of clothing remained to him.
"Never mind! I'll find something for him to wear," proclaimed the
grandmama hopefully. "Will I allow them to go an' see the big parade
with you!" eyeing the visitors with almost tearful gratitude. "Oh! you'd
better believe I will. Now! to see how I can rig him up. There are these
rompers of Elsie's, fresh from the tub--I've just ironed them!"
"But I can't wear _them_. Oh! I c-can't wear--them!" The boy eyed the
tiny gingham garment as if Peace Day had, in aviator's slang, become a
pancake wreck, its joy all flattened. "They're girl's!"
He leveled a mud-caked forefinger at an utterly ignominious half-inch of
embroidery decorating those romper-leglets of his twin sister.
"Daddy-man w-wouldn't want me to wear them! Daddy-man's a soldier--_my_
Bob-daddy is! He's over in France--now!"
Bob-sonny of four and a half looked sidelong out of a rolling eye-corner
at the two spick and span Camp Fire Girls, in costume of red, white, and
blue.
In this contest, however, those victorious colors, so triumphant over
there, were coolly neutral.
He attacked the grandmother with pleadings--the two freshly laundered
rings of embroidery weaving chains about the manikin soul within him, as
he rebelliously eyed them.
"Come! Come! No more nonsense now!" Grandmama suddenly set her foot
down. "I wonder you aren't ashamed! You'll have to wear 'em--or stay at
home!"
She departed, on an errand, to the near-by kitchen.
Once more Bobbie's insulted eye implored the Minute-Girls, still
neutral.
Then he retreated into an adjoining bedroom, whose door was wide open,
and knelt upon a low chair--desperately, as soldiers kneel in the
trenches.
"O God," he pleaded, with full bursting heart of faith. "O God, please
don't let Her make me wear dem--dis day--dey're--_girl's_!"
Neutrality was at an end.
It was America's hour and her spirit flamed in her Minute-Girl
daughters, siding, all in an illumined flash, a tearful flash, with
Bob-sonny against any camouflaging of his sex on this day when
Columbia's sons, his father among them, decorated and re-decorated, over
there, were being hailed--and kissed (oft to their disgust) with
delirious cries that "America--America had saved France!"
"You _shan't_! You shan't!" cried Sesooā, seizing upon the manikin who,
not so many months ago, had seen them march away, his baby soul on fire.
"You shan't, Bobby! I'll save you! See--see if I don't!"
She was in the strange kitchen in an instant.
"Oh! Gran'ma," she wheedled, "I'm just _so_ used to the wash-tub. I've
done the whole family washing before now and won a flame-colored
honor-bead for that little performance," laughingly--tenderly. "As we're
going to take these heavenly twins off your hands for the rest of the
day--I promise not to bring them home until they're so tired an' sleepy
that they wouldn't see a puddle if 'twas spattering them--won't
you--won't you let me have one pair of Bob-sonny's little
knickerbockers, that cunning little blouse, too. Dear me! I'll launder
them for him in no time! When he sees the big parade go by he can hold
up his head as 'all boy,'--what there is of him--a fiery little son of
big, fiery Bob-daddy, over in France, who has helped to bring the War to
an end, ... and who doesn't know yet that his little Peace Europa is
waiting--waiting--for him on this side of the water, when he gets
back--as he _will_ get back!"