_Dimples Takes Part in a Ceremony_
During the first few weeks after his arrival in France Captain Shipp had
no time whatever for affairs of his own, but a day came finally when he
took a train for a certain base close up behind an American sector,
intending there to more definitely locate Dimples’s whereabouts and to
walk in upon him unannounced. It would be a memorable reunion; he could
hear now the big fellow’s shout of welcome. That genial behemoth would
have a tale to unfold, and they would talk steadily until Shipp’s leave
was up.
But bad news was waiting at the base—news that sent the captain hurrying
from first one hospital to another.
“Dalrymple? Oh yes, he’s here,” an orderly informed the distracted
visitor.
“Is he— May I see him?”
A small, hollow-eyed man with a red triangle upon his sleeve rose from a
chair and approached to inquire:
“Are you, by any chance, Captain Shipp?”
“I am.”
“Dimples has often spoken of you. He has been expecting you for weeks.
I’m just going in.”
“You are Doctor Peters—Pete?” The Y secretary nodded. “What ails him? I
heard he was wounded—”
“Yes. His leg. It’s very serious. I come every day.”
The speaker led the way, and Shipp followed down a long hall redolent of
sickly drug smells, past clean white operating-rooms peopled with
silent-moving figures, past doors through which the captain glimpsed
dwindling rows of beds and occasional sights that caused his face to
set. In that hushed half-whisper assumed by hospital visitors, he
inquired:
“How did it happen?”
“There was a raid—a heavy barrage and considerable gas—and it caught him
while he was up with supplies for the men. He began helping the wounded
out, of course. It was a nasty affair—our men were new, you see, and it
was pretty trying for green troops. They said, later, that he helped to
steady them quite as much as did their officers.”
“I can believe that. He’s a man to tie to.”
“Yes, yes. We all felt that, the very first day he came. Why, he was an
inspiration to the men! He was mother, brother, pal, servant to the best
and to the worst of them. Always laughing, singing—There! Listen!”
The Reverend Doctor Peters paused inside the entrance to a ward, and
Shipp heard a familiar voice raised in quavering song:
“By the star-shell’s light,
I see you; I see you.
If you want to see your father in the Fatherland,
Keep your head down, Fritzie boy.”
“Why”—Shipp uttered a choking cry—“he’s out of his head!”
“Oh yes; he has been that way ever since they amputated.”
“‘Amp—’ Good God!” Shipp groped blindly for support; briefly he covered
his eyes. Then, like a man in a trance, he followed down the aisle until
he stood, white-lipped and trembling, at the foot of Dalrymple’s bed.
It was difficult to recognize Dimples in this pallid, shrunken person
with the dark, roving eyes and babbling tongue. The voice alone was
unchanged; it was husky, faint as if from long, long use, but it was
brave and confident; it ran on ceaselessly:
“Keep your nerve up, pal; you’re standing it like a hero, and we’ll have
you out to the road in no time. Smokes! I tell you they must have smokes
if you have to bring ’em in on your back—Gangway for the soup-man! Come
and get it, boys. Hot soup—like mother used to make. Put on the Harry
Lauder record again. Now then, all together:
“I love a lassie, a bonnie, blue-eyed lassie.”
The little minister had laid a cool hand upon Dimples’s burning brow;
his head was bowed; his lips were moving.
“When did you write to your mother last?” the sick man babbled on. “Sure
I’ll post it for you, and I’ll add a line of my own to comfort
her—Water! Can’t you understand? He wants water, and mine’s gone. Too
fat to fight! But I’ll make good; I’ll serve. Give me a chance—Steady,
boys! They’re coming. They’re at the wire. Now give ’em hell! We’ll say
it together, old man: ‘Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy
name—’”
There were scalding tears in Shipp’s eyes; his throat was aching
terribly when Doctor Peters finally led him out of the ward. The last
sound he heard was Dalrymple’s voice quavering:
“Over there! Over there!
And we won’t come back till it’s over, over there.”
“I had my hands full at the hut, for the wounded were coming in,” Doctor
Peters was saying, “but every one says Dimples did a man’s work up there
in the mud and the darkness. Some of the fellows confessed that they
couldn’t have hung on, cut off as they were, only for him. But they did.
It was late the next day before we picked him up. He was right out in
the open; he’d been on his way back with a man over his shoulders. He
was very strong, you know, and most of the stretcher-bearers had been
shot down. The wounded man was dying, so Dimples walked into the
barrage.”
“And he was afraid he wouldn’t make good!” Shipp muttered, with a
crooked, mirthless smile.
“Yes—imagine it! There was never a day that he didn’t make me ashamed of
myself, never a day that he didn’t do two men’s work. No task was too
hard, too disagreeable, too lowly. And always a smile, a word of cheer,
of hope. Our Master washed people’s feet and cooked a breakfast for
hungry fishermen. Well, the spirit of Christ lives again in that boy.”
Shipp’s leave had several days to run; such time as he did not spend
with Doctor Peters he put in at Dimples’s bedside. He was there when the
delirium broke; his face was the first that Dimples recognized; his hand
was the first that Dimples’s groping fingers weakly closed upon.
They had little to say to each other; they merely murmured a few words
and smiled; and while Dimples feasted his eyes upon the brown face over
him, Shipp held his limp, wasted hand tight and stroked it, and vowed
profanely that the sick man was looking very fit.
Later in the day the captain said, with something like gruffness in his
voice:
“Lucky thing you pulled yourself together, old man, for you’re booked to
take part in a ceremony to-morrow. A famous French general is going to
kiss you on both cheeks and pin a doodad of some sort on your nightie.”
Dimples was amazed.
“Me? Why, the idea!”
“Sure!” Shipp nodded vigorously. “Ridiculous, isn’t it? And think of me
standing at attention while he does it. Pretty soft for you Y fellows.
Here you are going home with a decoration before I’ve even smelled
powder.”
“Oh, I’m not going home,” the other declared. “Not yet, anyhow. A
one-legged man can sell cigarettes and sew on buttons and make doughnuts
just as well as a centipede.”
A smiling nurse paused at the bed to say:
“You’re awfully thin, Mr. Dalrymple, but we’ll soon have you nice and
fat again. The doctor says you’re to have the most nourishing
food—anything you want, in fact.”
“‘_Anything?_’”
“Anything within reason.”
Dimples grinned wistfully, yet happily.
“Gee!” said he. “I’d like some cornstarch pudding.”
THE END
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Transcriber’s note:
Cover, full stop inserted after ‘D,’ “T. D. SKIDMORE”
Page 23, ‘pi’ changed to ‘pin,’ “striving to pin the man’s hateful”