AT FOUR IN THE MORNING
The morning papers! How many did Red have of them?
Robert Black had been away for almost a year. Jane Ray’s little shop
had been so long closed that few now turned down the narrow street,
forgetting that the sign no longer told where the rarest and most
valuable things in town surely could be found. People had ceased to
ask who was the tall young man with the interesting face who was said
to write the most brilliant articles to be found in certain columns of
one of the great dailies. Tom Lockhart was gone, and Harry Perkins,
and many another figure from the suburban streets. Only an occasional
youth could be seen now and then upon a delivery wagon. Girls were
everywhere, taking the places of the young men who had gone. Everything
was changed--everything; now that war had come so near that it could be
felt.
Those morning papers! Red bought and bought, not satisfied with the
morning and evening editions delivered at his door. He came home with
bundles of them under his arm, and scanned them hurriedly, his face
darkening as he read. For the news was heavy news, of losses and
reversals, of a gathering tide which could not be stemmed, of worn
and wasted French and British regiments falling slowly but surely
back because it was not possible to hold another hour against the
tremendous odds of reinforced enemy lines.
“When will we get in? Great God, those fellows can’t hold out forever!”
Red would shout, dashing the latest paper to the floor where its black
and ominous headlines seemed to stare back at him with the inescapable
truth in each sinister word. “We’ll get into it too late--they can’t
stand such awful pressure. Oh, if we’d been ready!--instead of sleeping
on our arms. Arms--we hadn’t any--though they kept telling us--the men
who knew. We thought we were fine and fit--we--fat and heavy with easy
lives. Yes, we’re awake now but we’ve a long way yet to run to get to
the fire, and meanwhile, the world is burning up!”
So he would rage, up and down the long living room in his own home,
unable to find a ray of light in the whole dark situation. Even more
poignant than these were his anxieties of a personal sort. Where--when
he stopped to think about it--was Robert Black, that he hadn’t been
heard from now for many weeks? Black had gone across with one of the
first divisions, one made up of men many of whom had had former army
training, men fit to fight at once, who had gone away believing that
they would soon see active service. By great good fortune--or so Black
had esteemed it--he had been sent for at the last minute to take the
place of an old regimental chaplain who had fallen seriously ill. The
substitute’s early and persistent applications for a post had commended
him as one who meant to go anyhow, and so might as well be given the
opportunity first as last. That was the sort they had wanted, for that
was the sort they were themselves.
“Why, Bob’s last letter’s dated a good two months back,” Red announced,
one June morning of that second summer, scanning the well-worn sheets.
How many times had he read that letter, his wife wondered as she saw
him consulting its pages again. Black wrote remarkably interesting
letters. In spite of censorship he somehow managed to get in all
sorts of vivid paragraphs in which not the sharpest eye could detect
forbidden information--there was none there. But there was not lacking
keen character drawing, graphic picturing of effect of sun and shadow,
stimulating reactions, amusing anecdote. Red had never enjoyed any
correspondence in his life as he had that with the chaplain of the
----th regiment, ----th division. And this was for many reasons, chief
of which was the great and ever-growing bond of friendship between the
two men, which separation just after it had been made forever secure
had only served incredibly to strengthen and augment.
“I don’t understand it. I don’t like it. I wish I could hear,” Red
complained, replacing the thin sheets in the now tattered flimsy
envelope with the foreign postmarks and the official stamps of various
sorts which proclaimed it a military missive. “He was writing fairly
regularly up to that date, but then he stopped short off, as if he had
been shot. Oh, I didn’t mean that--queer how that old common phrase
needs to be avoided now. It’s none too improbable, either, in his
case, if he ever gets near the Front. He’ll be no rear-guard sort of
chaplain--that’s easy enough to know.”
He went off about his work, on this particular morning, with a heavier
heart than usual. He hadn’t counted up before, just how many weeks
it was since he had heard from Black; he only knew that he had been
scanning the mails with a disappointed eye for a good while now. Where
could Black be--what had happened to prevent his writing as before?
Hang it!--Red wished he could hear this very day. His mental vision
called up clearly the man’s handwriting on the foreign envelope; he
always liked the look of it so well. It was rather a small script,
but very clear, black, and full of character; the t’s were invariably
crossed with vigour, and there were only straight forward marks, no
curlycues. He wished he could see that handwriting within the hour,
wished it with a queer certainty that he should most certainly not see
it, either to-day or to-morrow. Black was somewhere off the line of
communication, he grew surer and surer of it.
As the day advanced Red found his presentiment that his friend was
close to danger amounting to a conviction. Red was not an imaginative
person, and ordinarily he was a persistent optimist; to-day it seemed
to be impossible to summon a particle of optimism concerning either the
duration of the war or the personal safety of the man he cared for so
deeply. He did care for him deeply--he no longer evaded or made light
of his affection for Robert Black. What was the use? It was a fact
accomplished; nothing that happened or didn’t happen could now change
it; everything seemed to intensify it.
Close to eleven o’clock of the evening of this day Red was returning
from a call which had taken him out just as he was beginning to think
longingly of rest and sleep. Passing a news-stand he had bought the
latest evening edition of the latest city daily sent out to the
suburbs, and had found in it only a deepening presage of coming
disaster to the armies of the Allies. This paper was sticking out of
his pocket as he walked wearily along the deserted streets of the
residence district, through a night air still and heavy with the
lingering heat of the day. He took off his hat and mopped his forehead.
Was it hot and still and heavy with languor and dread over there at
this hour, too, he wondered, up on that bending Western front? Or were
the shells bursting and the sky red and yellow with the flares of the
guns, and black with smoke and death? Allowing for the difference in
time it was almost four in the morning over there. Wasn’t it about
this hour that things were apt to happen, over there, after a night of
waiting? Wasn’t this often the “Zero” hour--“over there”?
To reach his own home he would naturally go by the manse, unless
he went a little out of his way. It must be confessed that Red had
acquired the habit, since Black left town, of going that little out of
his way, when coming home at night from this part of town, to avoid
passing the Stone Church and the deserted manse close by in its large
shadow. He didn’t know quite why he should have yielded, at first
unconsciously, afterward with full recognition of his feeling about
it, to the wish not to see the drawn shades and darkened windows of
his friend’s former habitation. But on this evening, somehow, almost
without his own consent he found himself turning at that corner to go
by the house.
Dark? Yes, it was dark--almost darker than usual, it seemed; though
this was undoubtedly because the nearest arc-light was burning more
feebly than ordinarily to-night. Anyhow, the place was enveloped
in gloom. It presented a very different aspect from that which had
belonged to it during the term of Black’s residence. His study had been
one of the big square rooms upon the front, its windows always lighted
in the evening, the shades drawn only low enough to insure privacy, not
to prevent the warm glow of the study light from telling its friendly
tale of the occupant within, at home to all comers at all hours, as he
had been at pains to make understood.
Red didn’t like to look at those dark windows. Many and many a time
during the last months before Black’s departure, after the friendship
between the two men had become a known quantity no longer negligible,
the big doctor had turned aside from the straight road home to make
a late call in that study, the light beckoning him more and more
irresistibly. Weary, or blue, or fuming over some unlucky or harassing
happening in his work, he had gone stumbling or storming in, always to
find a hearty welcome, and such quiet understanding and comradeship as
soon eased the situation, whether he knew it then or only afterward.
Many a pipe had he smoked while sitting in Black’s old red-cushioned
rocker--to which he had taken an odd fancy--and many a story had he
told, or listened to.... There could be no pipe-smoking there to-night,
nor telling of stories. The fire upon that hearthstone was cold. God
only knew when it would be lighted again, or whose hand would light it.
Red turned in at the walk which led to the manse door. He did not want
to turn in, yet he could not go by. The lawn before the house was
shaven; it had to be kept up because there was no dividing line between
it and the close-cut green turf which surrounded the Stone Church.
Between the vestry door and side door of the manse ran a short walk,
so that the minister had only a few steps to take when he crossed the
narrow space. Somehow Red could almost see the tall, well-built figure
striding across that space, the strong face full of spirit....
He took a turn about the house, completely circling it, telling himself
that now he was here he might as well see that all was as it should
be from front to rear. Returning to the front, he heard a distant
clock in the centre of the town booming out the slow strokes of the
hour--eleven. Four o’clock it was then on that Western front, three
thousand miles away. Was Black there--or anywhere near there? Wherever
he was it might be that--well--was there any reason why Red shouldn’t
be able to get him out of his mind? And was there any reason why Red
shouldn’t do what he was now suddenly impelled to do? According to
Black’s own code there was every reason why he should do it--and none
conceivable against it. Sentimental superstition?--or great spiritual
forces at work of which he could know nothing, except to feel their
power?
He went over to the vestry door--a narrow door of classic outline and
black oak austerity, appearing in the deep shadow like the entrance
to the unknown. He leaned his uplifted arm against it, and rested his
bared head against his arm. Somehow he felt nearer to his absent friend
in this spot than he had ever felt before.
“O God,” he implored, under his breath, “wherever he is--take care
of him. He’s worth a lot of taking care of--and he won’t do it
himself--somehow I know that. Just do it for him--will You?”
* * * * *
On this same night, at a Field Hospital, ten miles back from the firing
line on a certain sector of the French Front, Jane Ray went about her
duties. It was a comparatively quiet night; no fresh casualties had
come in for several hours, and none was expected before morning.
Beginning as nurses’ helper Jane had worked and studied at all hours,
had faced several examinations, and was now, by virtue of the pressing
demand and the changed requirements which in war time hasten such
matters, an accredited nurse with a diploma. She had thought many times
gratefully of a certain red-headed surgeon back in the States, who had
put her through many grilling tests of his own since he had learned
what she had in view. Not once but often she had watched him operate;
hours on end had she listened to informal lectures from his lips,
delivered at the back of her shop when custom was slack. It had all
helped immensely in her work of preparation, and in her dogged purpose
to make herself fit for service in the least possible time. And now she
was at the very goal of her desires, having for the last month been
serving as near the active Front as a nurse may get, the Field Hospital
to which the wounded are sent from the First-Aid Station.
It had become to her an almost passionate joy to give these poor
fellows their first sense of real comfort. Though the resources at hand
were often far less than adequate to the demand, when cases poured in
till the hurriedly arranged accommodations were full to overflowing
and there was no such thing as supplying every need, this was the time
when Jane most exulted in her work. Physically strong, though she was
often weary to exhaustion, a few hours of sleep would put her on her
feet again, and she would go back to her task with a sense of being
at last where she was born to be. She managed somehow to give to her
patients the impression that no matter how busy or hurried she might
be she had something to spare for each one of them, and this perhaps
was one of the greatest services she rendered. Skilful though her
hands and brain had become at ministering to the wants of the wounded
bodies, her heart had grown still wiser in its knowledge of the larger
needs of the tried spirits of those who lay before her. Tender yet
bracing was the atmosphere which she carried everywhere with her. It
is the aura which to a greater or less degree surrounds every true
nurse, and Jane, in acquiring it, had but learned the rudiments of her
profession. Yet perhaps she had rather more than the ordinary capacity
for divination of the peculiar and individual necessities of the men
under her care, for certain it was that most of them preferred her to
any of the others, accomplished and devoted though they all were. It
is quite possible that the fact that she was, as the boys put it among
themselves, so “easy to look at,” may have accounted for a portion of
her popularity, but surely not for all.
They did not stay long with her; it was a matter of but a few days in
most cases, before they were moved back to the Evacuation Hospital,
many miles in the rear. She had not time to get to know any of them
well; yet somehow in even that brief interval of experience she and
they usually arrived at a feeling of acquaintance which often became a
memory not to be forgotten.
On this June night Jane found herself returning more than once to a
certain patient who had been brought in early in the evening suffering
from rather severe injuries. The surgeons had decided against immediate
operation; he was to be retained here only long enough to recover from
shock, and to be got into shape for the journey back to the Base.
He was only a boy, or looked so, in spite of the lines which pain
had brought into his face. He was not able to sleep, and for certain
definite reasons he had been given nothing to make him sleep. Each time
Jane came by she found him lying with eyes wide open; restless of body
his injuries did not permit him to be, for he was strapped and bandaged
into a well-nigh immovable position. Clearly his mind was doing double
duty, and being restless for both.
As she stopped beside his cot again, he looked up at her and spoke,
for the first time. His eyes had followed her all night, whenever she
came in range, but she was used to that. Eyes wakeful at night always
follow a nurse; she is a grateful vision to men long removed from the
sight of women; the very lines of the uniform are restful to look at.
The face beneath the veil-like head-dress need not be a beautiful one
to be attractive; it needs only to be friendly and compassionate; if
it can show a capacity for humour, so much the better. In Jane’s case,
actual loveliness of feature drew the gaze of those tired young eyes,
many of which had seen only ugliness and horror for a long, long time.
The casualty cases thus far had been confined almost entirely to the
French and British, with an occasional American enlisted in a foreign
division. It was only within the last few days that the men from Jane’s
own country had begun to come under her care, showing that at last, as
they had so longed to be, they were “in.”
This boy, beside whom Jane paused in her rounds, and who now spoke to
her, had had from the first something familiar about him. But she had
not been able to place him in her remembrance and had decided that it
was only the type she recognized, not the individual. Now, however, as
she bent to catch the low-spoken words, she realized what had happened;
here was a boy from home!
“You don’t know me, do you?” he said, with difficulty.
“I almost thought I did, but wasn’t sure. Do you come from my town and
ought I to know you? You see--you must have changed quite a bit.”
She was looking intently into his face, and her reassuring smile
answered his wistful one.
“No, I didn’t expect you to know me, but I--kind of hoped--you would.
I know you. You was there when I said I’d enlist--up on the hill.”
Her thoughts leaped back to that last Sunday of Robert Black’s
departure and to the service on the hillside. Her face lighted with
recognition, and the boy saw it.
“Oh, yes--I do remember--of course I do. I sewed a star on a service
flag for you and the other three who went from the hill, and took it up
to the schoolhouse before I went away. I think I know your name.” She
racked her memory hastily for it and found it, and the boy’s eyes were
suffused with joy as she spoke it. “Aren’t you--Enos Dyer?”
“Yes, I’m Enie Dyer, only I don’t like to be called that over
here ‘cause it sounds like ‘Heinie.’ Say,”--he scanned her face
anxiously,--“know anything ’bout where the preacher is now?”
“Mr. Black? Nothing at all. It is weeks since I had any news of him.
His division has been sent up toward the Front, and they may be in
things by now; we get only rumours here about what is happening on the
other sectors.”
“I wish I knew,” he said anxiously. “I get to thinkin’ ’bout him a lot.
He didn’t know me any, but I knew him all right. After that time he
buried the Dunstan girl I used to come down to his church. I liked to
hear him talk. But I always skun out the minute things was over, so he
never really did lay eyes on me till that last day. I don’t s’pose he’d
remember me.”
Jane would have liked to let him say more, to have questioned him
closely, herself eager to hear the least mention of the name which was
always in the background of her thoughts. But she knew that he must not
be allowed to use his feeble powers in this way. So after assuring him
that Black was not the man to forget the four boys from the hill who
had enlisted on that memorable day, she went on upon her rounds, her
own mind filled with the vivid recollections young Dyer’s words had
called up.
But she could not come near him on this night without his eyes
imploring her to give him another word. So she learned that he was
most unhappy lest the injuries he had received prevent his return to
the Front, and was worrying badly about it. She became presently so
interested in his state of mind that she called the attention of one
of the surgeons to him. Doctor Mills read the record upon his cot-tag,
looked at Dyer keenly through his big horn spectacles, and smiled, his
own tired, thin face relaxing its tense look of care.
“You’ll get back, my lad,” he said, “when they’ve fixed you up. With
that spirit you’ll get anywhere.”
Enos Dyer’s lips trembled. “It’s all right, then,” he murmured, with a
sigh of relief. “I haven’t done nothin’ yet, an’ I figger to, ’fore I
get through.”
“What were you doing when you got these?” The surgeon indicated Dyer’s
bandaged shoulder and his slung leg.
“Just tryin’ a little job o’ my own, sir.”
“Not under orders?”
“Well, I guess I was under orders, sir--but the gettin’ through was
sort o’ up to me.”
“I see. You’re a company runner?”
“Yes, sir.”
The surgeon went away. Jane did what she could to induce sleep for
Dyer, who needed it badly, but his eyes were still wide when dawn
drew near. By and by, as she came to give him water, which he drank
thirstily, he said slowly:
“Did you hear the preacher the time he told about that feller Daniel in
’mongst the lions?”
“No, I don’t think so, Enos.”
“I was just wonderin’ if _he_ was in ’mongst ’em now anywheres. If he
is, I guess he won’t get hurt. I’ve thought about that story a lot
since I heard him tellin’ it. I guess if God could take care of anybody
when lions was walkin’ all ’round him, He could do it when anybody was
fightin’, don’t you? And I guess the preacher’s fightin’, wherever he
is.”
Jane’s lips smiled a little. “Chaplains don’t fight, you know.”
“I’ll bet _he_ does,” Dyer insisted.
She didn’t try to change his conviction, but somehow it took hold of
her; and presently, in a strange hush that fell just before the dawn,
when there came a cessation of sound of the guns which usually were
to be heard clearly at this distance from the Front, she stood in
a doorway that faced the east and took a well-worn letter from her
pocket. In the faint light from within the ward her eyes once more
scanned lines she already knew by heart.
Letters from Black had reached her infrequently and the latest was
dated weeks ago. Of course he could give her no details of his
movements, neither past nor expected; she understood also that he could
say little of that which was personal to himself and Jane. No man
writes for the scrutinizing eye of a censor that which he would say to
one alone. Yet somehow he had managed to convey a very vivid sense of
his presence, and of his constant thought of her, in the midst of his
work among his men. The last paragraph, especially, was one to stay by
her while she should have a memory, reserved though the words were:
“I am very sure that in all this experience you are having you must
find the thing I so much want you to find. How can you escape it? It
is all around you. I can’t get away from it a minute. You know what
I mean. I never felt it so strongly, nor so depended upon it. Every
hour it is in my thought of you. You are well up toward the Front now,
I suppose. At any time a bomb may be dropped on your Hospital; it is
always a shining mark for the enemy. Yet I am not anxious about you.
For this I know:--whatever happens to you or me, it can do no harm to
the eternal thing which is ours.”
She read the words again and again. Well she knew what they meant; in
spite of the restraint in them they were full to the brim with his
feeling toward her. Where was he now--near--or far? There had been a
rumour here that the division in which he served had been suddenly
rushed from its training trenches to the Front, in a desperate attempt
to stem the creeping enemy tide threatening to become a deluge and
wash away all defences. There were many rumours; few could be trusted.
But it might easily be true; he might at this very hour be under fire,
even though he remained in the shelter of trench or dugout. Would he
stay in such shelter? The question had never occurred to her in just
this form before. Her ideas of the duties of a regimental chaplain were
all based on the knowledge that he was a non-combatant, like Cary. She
had had far more fears for her brother, with his temperament, full of
recklessness and daring, than for Robert Black. But now, though she
scouted the idea of Black’s actually fighting, she had a sudden vision
of him in danger. If he had gone with his men up to those front lines,
where was he to-night?
Suddenly the distant sky-line burst into flame before her eyes. She
had seen it before, that sky-line, during the months since she had come
to the Field Hospital, but always before it had been when she was too
busy to stop to look at it. Now, in the brief breathing space, she was
at leisure to study it in all its sinister significance, and to listen
to the distant thunder of the guns.
He might not be there--she was very sure he was not, for the returning
wounded brought fairly accurate reports of what divisions were engaged
in the fighting in this sector. But somewhere--somewhere--on that
long, bending line, stretching over so many long miles, and now grown
so thin and in many places so dangerously weak compared with the ever
augmenting enemy forces--somewhere there he might be. According to that
persistent rumour the American troops who had been rushed forward were
at a point less than twenty miles away. Whatever happened, however,
none of them would come through this particular Field Hospital, and it
might be very long before she would know definitely how near Black had
been to actual danger.
She looked at her little service watch--it was just past four. She
must go back: it would not be long now before the ambulances would be
rushing in with the fresh wounded sent back from that angry sky-line.
The stretcher-bearers would be setting their woeful burdens down before
her, and all she had to give must be theirs, for the hour.
For a moment she closed her eyes. She still held the letter in her
hand; she lifted it and laid her cheek against it; then she pressed it
to her lips.
“Oh, wherever you are,” she breathed, “I think you need me. I think you
are thinking of me. But whether you are or not--I’m there.--Oh, Robert
Black--_I’m there_!”
In a narrow, winding, muddy ditch--which was all it was, though it
went by another name--with short, ladder-like places for the ascent of
its sides here and there, Robert Black was waiting, with a detachment
of his men, for a certain hour, minute and second previously fixed
by orders received in the early evening. He was at a crisis in his
experience which he had known would come some day, but it had been
long delayed. Now it was at hand. These men with whom he had been
stationed, throughout their voyage overseas, their foreign training,
and their slow and tedious progress toward the French Front, were about
to receive their first real test. At that fixed early morning hour they
were going for the first time “over the top.”
By now Black knew most of them pretty well. In the beginning they had
received him cautiously, watching him closely, as a man who comes to
a regiment with a cross on his collar is bound to be watched. They
hadn’t particularly liked their former chaplain, whose place Black had
taken at almost the last hour before they sailed. This man had never
been able to get very near to them, though he had tried conscientiously
and persistently to do so. They weren’t exactly prejudiced against
chaplains--they supposed they were somehow necessary and unavoidable
adjuncts of military service--but they didn’t see so very much use
in having them at all. So when Black came they had looked him over
curiously and not without a certain amount of prejudgment.
The voyage over had been a rough one; a large proportion of the men had
been seasick. Black, who had crossed the Atlantic many times on those
trips back home to see his mother, was a first-rate sailor, and he had
had his first chance with his men during those long days of storm and
wet and dark discomfort. He had made the most of it, though he had
taken care not to overdo the effort to bring cheer to those who if not
seasick were mostly homesick, whether they succeeded in concealing it
or not. He had gone about quietly but efficiently, and the impression
he had given had been that of one who had cast in his lot with his
regiment for better or for worse, though he wasn’t making any fuss
about it.
When they had reached the other side and gone into camp, they soon
discovered that the first impression they had had of their chaplain
held; that he meant to share and share alike with them whatever fell
to their lot. Though he rated as captain and had therefore the right
to associate with the officers and to mess with them, he didn’t seem
to be spending much time at it. He was very good friends with those in
authority, who seemed to like him; but he apparently cared more about
making friends with the private in the ranks than with the Major, or
the Colonel commanding. He was not a joke-maker; he didn’t slap the
boys on the shoulder nor shout at them; but he carried about with him
an atmosphere of good cheer of a quiet sort. And when, now and then, it
came to a contest of wits, and somebody tried to put the chaplain in a
corner, he was sure to find his way out with a quick and clever retort
which brought the laugh without making things too uncomfortable for the
cornerer--unless he deserved it, in which case he was pretty sure to
wish he hadn’t spoken.
As to preaching--they crowded to hear him, after the first tentative
experiment. The same unescapable logic, the same clear and challenging
appeal, the same unafraid plain-speaking which had won Redfield Pepper
Burns won these men--who were only boys after all. When it came to
the matter of preaching they were keen and merciless critics. They
didn’t want to be talked down to; they didn’t like to be beguiled into
listening with song and dance; they wanted a man if he were going to
speak to them at all to do it without mincing, or setting traps for
their attention. They wanted him to look like a man and act like a
man--and unequivocally and all the time _be_ a man. In the nature of
things, it wasn’t difficult for Robert Black to fill this bill. A
great many words have been written in the effort to tell what soldiers
want--if they want anything at all--from their chaplain. They are not
hard to satisfy, critical though they are and pitiless, when they
detect failure to measure up to their requirements. The greatest of
these requirements is certainly simple enough and just enough; it’s
only what is required of themselves, which is to be men and comrades,
to the last ditch.
It was not the last ditch, but the first one, to which they had come
this night. The trench was like other trenches, but they had not been
in a front-line trench before; somehow it seemed different. The troops
whose place they had taken were worn and dog-weary, they had quitted
the place with evident satisfaction; they had held it five days after
they had expected to be relieved--it was a mighty good place to get out
of. And now, it was the new arrivals’ turn to face the music of the
shells and the machine-gun fire and the snipers’ bullets--and all the
rest that was waiting for them. Their chance had come at last.
Black had been ordered to stay in the rear, but he had courteously
disputed the order, had had it out with his superior officer and had
been told to go along. This, he understood, was a mere matter of form,
to try him out. A chaplain had a perfect right to go where he would
with his men, provided he had the nerve. And why shouldn’t Black have
the nerve? He had been cultivating it for a good many years now, and
having been born in Scotland he had started out with rather more than
his share of it in the beginning. Besides, are shot and shell the only
things to try what a man is made of?
The men in the trench liked having their chaplain with them; there
could be no doubt of that, though they by no manner of means said so.
They hadn’t been expecting to have him accompany them to the very
Front, and when he came along as a matter of course they were glad of
it. His uniform by now was quite as mud-stained and worn as theirs;
the only difference was that they were expecting to get bullet holes
in theirs, while his, they considered, with any sort of luck would be
kept intact. Even so, he was a good sport to stay by until the very
last moment, and they appreciated it. He was a comfortable sort to have
around. He wasn’t old enough to be the father of any of them, but he
was something like an older brother. And there was one thing about him
they very definitely enjoyed, and that was his smile. It wasn’t a broad
grin, but it was a mighty nice one, and when any man had said something
that brought that pleasant laugh to Bob’s lips, that man always felt
decidedly warm and happy inside. Because--well--the chaplain didn’t go
around grinning conscientiously at everybody all the while, and his
smile wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to win. Yes, the secret is
out--they called him “Bob” behind his back, and they called him that
because they liked him in that capacity of elder brother. To his face
they called him “Parson.”
It was very still and dark in the trench; the raid was to start with
the opening of the barrage which would cover the advance. Night--and
darkness--and quiet--and the hour before dawn at which the courage of
the sons of men is at its lowest--no wonder that hearts beat fast and
faces slackened colour beneath the tan, and the minutes at once crawled
and raced. They were unquestionably nervous, these boys, hard as they
tried to keep cool as veterans. How would they acquit themselves?--that
was the thing that worried them. For the fact was that in this
particular company there was not one who had ever seen actual warfare;
they were all yet to be tried.
Black went from one to another, taking whispered messages, hastily
scrawled notes, which they gave to him, and making clear his
understanding of the various requests. They all wanted to shake hands
with him, seeming to feel that this was the proper farewell to take of
him who was to stay behind. He wasn’t armed, though he wore a helmet
and gas mask, like themselves; his hands were free to take their
consignments, as his spirit was free to put courage into them. Not that
they realized that he was doing it; all they knew was that somehow
after they had had a word with him, and felt that warm handshake of
his, they knew that they were stronger. He believed in them--they
understood that--and they meant to measure up. That was about what his
presence amounted to, which was quite enough.
One boy, a slender fellow, not long out of hospital where he had
been sent for a run of an epidemic disease, came to Black at almost
the last moment with a diffident question. “Parson,” he whispered,
“I want you to do something for me. If I--if I should get scared out
there--or anything--and the boys should know about it--and it got
around--or anything--I--I--wish you’d see it didn’t get back to my
Dad. He--always said I’d get over bein’--shaky--when the time came.
But--Parson, would you think it was awful wrong to--lie about it for me
a little? You see, it would cut Dad up like everything--and I couldn’t
bear----”
Black put his lips close to the young ear. “I won’t have to lie, Joe,”
he said. “I haven’t the least doubt of you--not the least. Do you get
that? I’m telling you the absolute truth.”
In the darkness Joe smiled. After a moment he whispered back. “Well, I
guess I’ll have to buck up,” he said.
“You’ve bucked up now,” came back the whisper, and Black’s hand clasped
his arm tight for an instant. “What a muscle you’ve got, Joe!” he
declared.
The arm stiffened, the muscle swelled. “You bet,” agreed the boy
proudly, and hitched up his cartridge belt. “That’s what trainin’ does
to a fellow. Well--good-by, Parson.”
“God be with you, Joe! He will--remember that.”
“Yes, sir--if you say so.” And Joe walked away, less “shaky” than he
had come.
Then, presently, it was the “Zero” hour. With the first boom and crash
of the covering barrage the men were up and over the top. The farthest
man in the line was Joe. No, not the farthest, though Joe had been
assigned that place, for beyond and beside him, as he went over, was
Robert Black.