THE LAST OF THE SURGICAL
Things have a way of beginning casually, so casually that you think they
are bound to spin themselves out into airy nothings. The first inkling you
have to the contrary is that headlong plunge into one of the big moments
of your life, perhaps the biggest. But you never cease to wonder at the
innocent, inconsequential way it began. These are the moments when you can
picture Fate, sitting like an omnipotent operator before some giant
switchboard, playing with signals and the like. I dare say he grins like a
mischievous little boy who delights in turning things topsy-turvy whenever
he has a chance.
Fate had been busy at this for some time when the sanitarium, quite
oblivious of any signal connection, set itself to the glorious business of
getting Sheila O'Leary married. Grief, despair, disappointment came often
to the San, death not infrequently, but happiness rarely, and there had
never before been such a joyous, personal happiness as this one. Small
wonder that the San should gather it close to its heart and gloat over it!
Was not Sheila one of its very own, born under its portals, trained in its
school, placed above all its nurses, and loved beyond all else? And Peter
Brooks. Had not the San given him his life and Sheila? It certainly was a
time for rejoicing. As Hennessy had voiced it:
"Sure, half the weddin's ye go to ye sit miserable, thinkin' the man isn't
good enough for the lass, or the lass is no mate for the man. But, glory
be to Pether! here's a weddin' at last that God Almighty might be cryin'
the banns for."
They were to be married within the month. Every one was agreed to this,
from the superintendent down to Flanders, the bus-driver--yes, and even
the lovers themselves. The San forgot its aches and sorrows in the
excitement of planning an early summer wedding.
"We'll make the chapel look lovely," chirped the Reverend Mrs. Grumble,
clasping and unclasping her hands in a fidget of anticipation. "There'll
be enough roses and madonna lilies in the gardens to bank every pew and
make an arch over the chancel."
"Well, if Leerie's married in the chapel, half of us can't get in." And
Madam Courot shook her head in emphatic disapproval. "She'd better take
the Congregational church. That's the only place large enough to hold
everybody who will want to come."
A mutinous murmur rose and circled the patients on the veranda. Not
married at the San! It was unthinkable. So this point and the final date
Sheila settled for them.
"We'll have the wedding in the gardens, save all the fuss and waste of
picking the flowers, be ever so much prettier, and everybody and his
neighbor can come."
When Hennessy heard of it he shirred his mouth into a pucker and whistled
ecstatically. "'Tis like her, just! Married out-o'-doors wi' the growin'
things to stand up wi' her and the blessed sun on her head. Faith,
Hennessy will have to be scrubbin' up the swans an' puttin' white satin
bows round their necks."
Sheila chose the hour before sunset on an early day of June, and the San
speedily set itself to the task of praying off the rain and arranging the
delightful details of attendants, refreshments, music, and all the other
non-essentials of a successful wedding. Miss Maxwell, the superintendent
of nurses, took the trousseau in hand and portioned out piles of napery
and underwear to the eager hands of the nurses to embroider. The whole
sanitarium was suddenly metamorphosed into a Dorcas Society; patients
forgot to be querulous, and refused extra rubbings and all unnecessary
tending, that more stitches might be taken in the twenty-four hours of the
hospital day. A great rivalry sprang up between the day and night nurses
as to which group would finish the most, and old Mr. Crotchets, the
cynical bachelor with liver complaint and a supposedly atrophied heart,
offered to the winning shift the biggest box of candy New York could put
up.
Through the first days of her happiness Sheila walked like a lambent being
of another world, whose radiance was almost blinding. Those who had known
her best, who had felt her warmth and beauty in spite of that bitterness
which had been her shield against the hurt she had battled with so long,
looked upon her now with unfathomable wonder. And Peter, who had worshiped
her from the moment she had taken his hand and led him back to the ways of
health, watched her as the men of olden times must have watched the
goddesses that occasionally graced their earth.
"Beloved, you're almost too wonderful for an every-day, Sunday-edition
newspaper-man like me," Peter whispered to her in the hush of one
twilight, as they sat together in the rest-house, watching Hennessy feed
the swans.
"Every woman is, when the miracle of her life has been wrought for her.
Man of mine," and Sheila reached out to Peter's ever waiting arms,
"wouldn't God be niggardly not to let me seem beautiful to you now?"
Peter laughed softly. "If you're beautiful now, what will you be when--"
Sheila hushed him. "Listen, Peter, our happiness frightens me, it's so
tremendous for just two people--almost more than our share of life. I know
I seem foolish, but long ago I made up my mind I should have to do
without love and all that goes with it, and now that it has come--sorrow,
death, never frightened me, but this does."
"Glad I have the courage for two, then. Look here, Leerie, the more
happiness we have the more we can spill over into other lives and the
brighter you can burn your lamp for the ones in the dark. This old world
needs all the happiness it can get now. So?"
Sheila smiled, satisfied. "You always understand. If I ever write out a
prescription for love, I shall make understanding one-third of the dose.
Let's go into partnership, Brooks and O'Leary, Distillers and Dispensers
of Happiness."
"All right, but the firm's wrong. It's going to be Brooks and Brooks," and
Peter kissed her.
"There is one thing," and Sheila gently disentangled herself. "There are
days and days before the wedding, and if everybody thinks I am going to do
nothing until then, everybody is very much mistaken. I'm going in this
minute to sign up for my last case in the Surgical."
It must have been just at this moment that Fate turned on an arbitrary
signal-light and changed a switch. I should like to think that back of his
grin lurked a tiny shadow of contrition.
"And what am I going to do?" Peter called dolefully after her.
"Oh, I don't know. You might write an article on the dangers and
uncertainties of marrying any woman in a profession." And she blew him a
farewell kiss.
The train from the city, that night, brought a handful of patients, and
one of these wore the uniform and insignia of a lieutenant of the
Engineers. His mother came with him. She had been an old patient, and
because of extraordinary circumstances--I use the government term--she had
obtained his discharge from a military hospital and had brought him to the
San to mend.
"The wounds are slow in closing, and there's some nervous trouble," Miss
Maxwell explained to Sheila. "The boy's face is rather tragic. Will you
take the case?"
She accepted with her usual curt nod and a hasty departure for her
uniform. A half-hour later she was back in the Surgical, her fear as well
as her happiness forgotten in the call of another human being in distress.
The superintendent of nurses was right: the boy's face was tragic, and a
frail little mother hovered over him as if she would breathe into his
lungs the last breath from her own. She looked up wistfully, a little
fearsomely, as Sheila entered; then a smile of thanksgiving swept her face
like a flash of sunlight.
"Oh, I'm so glad! I remember you well. I hoped--but it hardly seemed
possible--I didn't dare really to expect it. When I was here before, you
were always so needed, and my boy--of course there is nothing
serious--only--" and the shaking voice ended as incoherently as it had
begun.
The nurse took the withered hands held out to her in her young, warm ones.
In an instant she saw all that the little mother had been through--the
renunciation months before when she had given her boy up to his country;
the long, weary weeks of learning to do without him; the schooling it had
taken to grow patient, waiting for the letters that came sparingly or not
at all; and at last the news that he was at the front, under fire, when
the papers published all the news there was to be told. Sheila saw it
all, even to her blind, frantic groping for the God she had only half
known and into whose hands she had never wholly given the keeping of her
loved ones. And after that the cable and the waiting for what was left of
her boy to come home to her. As she looked down at her, Sheila had the
strange feeling that this frail little mother was dividing the care of her
boy between God and herself, and she smiled unconsciously at this new
partnership.
Gently she laid her hand on the lean, brown one resting on the coverlet;
the boy opened his eyes. "It's going to be fine to have a soldier for a
patient; I expect you know how to obey orders. You are our first, and
we're going to make your getting well just the happiest time in all your
life, the little mother and I."
The boy made no response. He looked at his mother as if he understood, and
then with a groan of utter misery he turned away his head and closed his
eyes again. "Ah-h-h!" thought Sheila, and a little later she drew the
mother into the corridor beyond earshot.
"There's something ailing him besides wounds. What is it?"
"Clarisse." The promptness of the answer brought considerable relief to
the nurse. It was easy to deal with the things one knew; it was the hidden
things, tucked away in the corners of the subconscious mind or the
super-sensitive soul, that never saw the light of open confession, that
were the baffling obstacles to nursing. Sheila never dreaded what she
knew.
"Well, what's the matter with Clarisse?" she asked, cheerfully.
The little mother hesitated. Evidently it was hard to put it into words.
"They're engaged, she and Phil, and Phil doesn't want to see her, shrinks
from the very thought of it. That's what's keeping him from getting
better, I think. She's very young and oh, so pretty. They were both young
when Phil went away--but Phil--" She stopped and passed a fluttering hand
across her forehead; her lips quivered the barest bit. "Phil has come back
so old. That's what war does for our boys; in just a few months it turns
them into old men, the serious ones--and their eyes are older than any
living person's I ever saw."
"And Clarisse is still young. I think I understand."
"That's why I brought him here. In the city there would have been no
reason for her not coming to the hospital, but she couldn't come here
unless we sent for her--could she?" Again the fluttering hand groped as if
to untangle the complexity of thoughts and feelings in the poor confused
head. "I write her letters. I make them just as pleasant as I can. I don't
want to hurt her; she's so young."
Sheila nodded. "Does he love her?" That was the most important, for to
Sheila love was the key that could spring the lock of every barrier.
"He did, and I think she loves him--I think--"
Sheila went back to her patient and began the welding of a comradeship
that only such a woman can weld when her heart is full with love for
another man. Day by day she made him talk more. He told her of his
soldiering; apparently everything that had happened before held little or
no place in his scheme of life, and he told it as simply and directly as
if he had been a child. He made her see the months of training in camp,
when he grew to know his company and feel for the first time what the
brotherhood of arms meant. He told of the excitement of departure, the
spiritual thrill of marching forth to war with the heart of a crusader in
every boy's breast. His eyes shone when he spoke of their renunciation, of
the glory of putting behind them home and love until the world should be
made clean again and fit for happiness.
Sheila winced at this, but the boy did not notice; he was too absorbed in
the things he had to tell.
He told of the days of waiting in France, with the battle-front before
them like a mammoth drop-curtain, screening the biggest drama their lives
would ever know. "There we were, marking time with the big guns, wondering
if our turn would come next. That was a glorious feeling, worth all that
came afterward--when the curtain went up for us."
He raised himself on an elbow and looked into Sheila's cool, gray eyes
with eyes that burned of battle. "God! I can't tell you about it. There
have been millions of war books written by men who have seen more than I
have and who have the trick of words--and you've probably read them; you
know. Only reading isn't seeing it; it isn't _living it_." He turned
quickly, shooting out a hand and gripping hers hard. "Tell me; you've seen
all sorts of operations--horrible ones, where they take out great pieces
of malignant stuff that is eating the life out of a man. You've seen
that?"
The nurse nodded.
"Did you forget it afterward, when the body was clean and whole again?
Could you forget the thing that had been there? For that's war. That's
what we're fighting, the thing that's eating into the heart of a decent,
sound world, and since I've seen the horror of it I can't forget. I can't
see the healing--yet."
"You will. Not at first, perhaps, but when you're stronger. That is one of
God's blessed plans: He made beauty to be immortal and ugliness to die and
be forgotten. And even the scars where ugliness was time whitens and
obliterates. Give time its chance."
It was the next day that the boy spoke of Clarisse. "Will time make them
all right, too? Leerie," he had picked up the nickname from the other
nurses and appropriated it with all the ardent affection of worshiping
youth, "we're miles--ages--apart. Can anything under God's canopy bring us
together, I wonder?"
"Perhaps." Sheila smiled her old inscrutable smile. "Tell me more."
And so he told her of the girl who was so young, and oh, so pretty. It had
all seemed right before he had gone to camp; it was the great love for
him, something that had made his going seem the worthier. But at camp the
distance between them had begun to widen, her letters had failed to bridge
it, and through those letters he had discovered a new angle of her, an
angle so acute that it had cut straight to the heart and destroyed all the
love that had been there. At least that was what he thought.
"I knew she was young, of course, not much more than a child, and I knew
she loved fun and good times, and all that, but--Why, she'd write about
week-end parties, and how becoming her bathing-suit was, and what Tommy
Flint said about her fox-trotting. Lord!" He writhed under the coverlet
and ground his nails into his palms. "We marched through places where
there wasn't a shred of anything left for anybody. We saw old women
hanging on to broken platters and empty bird-cages because it was all they
had left--home, children, everything gone. And on top of that would come a
letter telling how much she'd spent on an evening gown, and how Bob Wylie
took them out to Riverdale and blew in a hundred and twenty dollars on the
day's trip. A hundred and twenty dollars! That would have bought a young
ocean of milk over there for the refugee kids I saw starving."
He jerked himself up suddenly and sat huddled over, his eyes kindling with
a vision of purging the world. Sheila knew it was useless to stop him, so
she propped him up with pillows and let him go on.
"And that wasn't all. Between the lulls in the fighting they moved us
along to a quiet sector, to freshen up, where we were so close to the
German side that we could look into one of their captured villages. There
we could see the French girls they'd carried off going out to work, saw
them corralled at night like--" He broke off, hesitated, then went
doggedly on. "With field-glasses we could see them plainly, the loads
they had to lift and carry, the beatings they got, the look in their
faces. Their shoulders were crooked, their backs bent from the long
slaving. They were wraiths, most of them--and some with babies at their
breasts. After I got back from seeing that, I found another letter from
Clarisse. She said the girls just couldn't buckle down to much Red Cross
work; it was so hard to do anything much in summer. They'd no sooner get
started than some one would say tennis or a swim. _And I saw women dying
over there--and bearing Boche babies!_"
All the agony of soul that youth can compass was poured forth in those
last words. The boy leaned back on his pillows, weary unto death with the
hopelessness of it all. So Sheila let him lie for a while before she
answered him.
"Do the boys want their girls to know the full horror of it all? I thought
that was one of the things you were fighting for, to keep as much of it
away from them as you could."
The boy raised a hand in protest, but Sheila silenced him. "Wait a minute;
it's my turn to talk now. I know what's in your mind. You think that
Clarisse--and the girls like her--are showing unforgivable callousness
and flippancy in the face of this world tragedy. Instead of becoming women
as you have become men, they stay silly, unthinking, irresponsible
creatures who dance and play and laugh while you fight and die. The
contrast is too colossal; it all seems past remedy. Isn't that so? Well,
there's another side, a side you haven't thought of. The girls are giving
you up. The little they know of life, as it is now, looks very
overwhelming to them. Perhaps it frightens them. And what do frightened
children do in the dark?"
The boy did not try to answer; he waited, tensely eager.
"Why, they sing; they laugh little short-breathed laughs; they tell
stories to themselves of nonsensical things to reassure them. All the time
they are trying not to think of what terrors the dark may hold; they are
trying not to cry out for some one to come and sit with them. Some of our
girls are doing a tremendous work. They meet trains at all hours of the
day or night and feed the boys before they sail; they wait all day in the
canteens until they're ready to drop; they put in a lot more time, making
comfort-kits, knitting, and rolling bandages, than they ever own to. And
suppose they don't grow dreadfully serious; isn't it better that way? The
girls are doing their bit as fast as they are learning how. It isn't fair
of the boys to judge them too soon. It isn't fair of you to judge your
Clarisse without giving her a chance."
"You didn't read those letters."
"Letters! Most of us, when we write, keep back the things that really
matter and skim off the surface of our lives to tell about. There may not
be the sixteenth part of your girl in those letters."
The boy's lips tightened stubbornly. "It wasn't just one--it was all of
them. Anyhow, I haven't the nerve or the heart to find out."
Again Sheila let the silence fall between them. When she spoke, her voice
was very tender. "Tell me, boy, what made you love her?"
He smiled sheepishly. "Oh, I don't know. She was always a good sport,
never got grumpy over things that happened, never got cold feet, either.
She had a way of teasing you to do what she wanted, would do anything to
get her way; and then she'd turn about so quickly and give you your way,
after all--just make you take it. And she'd be so awfully sweet about it,
too. And she'd always play fair, and she had a way of making you feel the
best ever. Oh, I don't know--" The boy looked about him helplessly. "They
sound awfully foolish reasons for loving a girl."
Sheila's face had become suddenly radiant; her eyes sparkled like
rushlights in a wind. They actually startled the boy so that he
straightened up in bed again and gripped her hand. "I say, Leerie, what is
it? I never saw you look like this before. You're--Are you in love?"
"With one of the finest men God ever made. He's so fine that he trusted me
through a terrible bungle--believed in the real woman in me when I would
have denied it. That's what a man's love can do for a woman sometimes,
keep her true to the best in her."
That night, after many fluttering protests, the little mother wrote a
letter to Clarisse. It was dictated by Sheila and posted by her, and it
contained little information except what might have been extracted from a
non-committal railroad guide. It did mention at the last, however, that
Phil was slowly gaining.
With this off her mind, Sheila went to find Peter. She had
characteristically neglected him since she had been on the case, and as
characteristically he made no protest. Instead he met her with that quick
understanding that she had claimed as one of love's ingredients. He looked
her over well and proudly, then tapped his head significantly.
"I see, there's more to this soldier-boy case than just wounds. Want me to
run you down the boulevard while you work it out?"
"Thank God for a man!" breathed Sheila, and then aloud: "No, it's worked
out. But you might run me down, just the same."
"Feels almost like frost to-night," said Peter as he put the car into
first. "Do you think it will hold pleasant enough for--"
"For what?" Sheila's tone sounded blank.
Peter chuckled. "For the gardens and the old ladies, of course. Have you
by any chance forgotten that there's going to be a wedding in four days?"
"Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday--" counted Sheila. "Why, so it is!"
Then she echoed Peter's chuckle, "Oh yes, there's going to be a wedding, a
beautiful wedding in four days."
A strange little twinge took Peter's heart there in the dark at the queer,
impersonal note in what she had said. What did it mean?
Sheila gave the girl twenty-four hours to reach the San after receiving
the letter; she came in eighteen, and the nurse rejoiced at this good
omen. She had delegated Peter to meet all trains that day, take the girl
to her room, send for her at once, and tell nobody. Peter obeyed, and
early in the afternoon Sheila looked up from her reading to the boy to see
Peter standing in the doorway, the message on his lips.
"Baggage delivered," was Peter's announcement.
"Thank you. I'll come in a minute and see if my key fits." She hunted up
the little mother, left her in charge, and hurried over to the nurses'
home.
There in the big living-hall, perched in a wicker chair under the poster
of Old King Cole, Sheila found the girl, who was young and oh, so pretty.
She looked about as capable of taking a plunge into the grim depths of
life and coming out safely as a toy Pom of weathering the waters of the
Devil's Hole. "How shall I ever push her in?" thought Sheila as she held
out her hand in greeting.
Clarisse took it with all the hectic impulsiveness of youth. "You're his
nurse. Isn't it great his coming back this way? All our set is engaged--or
about to be--but I'm the only one that's got her man back with battle
scars all over him. Makes me feel like a story-book heroine."
Sheila O'Leary didn't know whether she wanted to laugh or cry. She ended
by doing what probably surprised her more than it did the girl. She sat
down in the wicker chair herself and gathered the girl into her lap. "Oh,
you blessed, blessed baby!" she crooned softly.
The girl pouted adorably. It was very evident that she liked to be petted,
coaxed, and spoiled. If there was a woman slumbering under all this
dimpling, infantile charm, she was quite indiscernible to the woman who
held her.
Slowly she bent over the girl and let her face show all the delight she
could feel in her prettiness and baby ways. There must be sympathy between
them or her task would be hopeless. "There, let me untie that bewitching
bonnet of yours and take off your gloves. We have a lot to tell each other
before you see your soldier."
"But Phil--won't he be waiting, wondering why I don't come? Oh, I'm just
crazy to see him!"
"He doesn't know you're here yet."
"Oh!" The smooth, white forehead did its utmost to manage a frown. "Why,
didn't he send for me?"
"No."
"Who did? His mother wrote."
"I sent."
The round, childish eyes filled with apprehension; she wrenched herself
free of Sheila's arms. "He isn't going to--The letter said--?"
"He's better. Sit down, dear. That's what we have to talk over. His body
is mending fast, but his mind--well, his mind has been taken prisoner."
Clarisse tossed an adorable crown of golden curls. "I don't understand."
"Didn't expect you to, at first. It's this way. He's been through some
very big, very terrible experiences, and he can't forget them. He isn't
the boy you used to play with, the boy who was happy just having a good
time. He's grown very serious. That's what experience is likely to do for
us all in time, but with him it's come all in a heap. When that happens
you can't go back and be happy in the old way. Do you see?"
"Go on."
"He's bound fast and walled about with the memories of what he has been
through--killing human beings, watching his comrades die, seeing what the
Germans have done. For the moment it has made him forget that the sun
shines and birds sing and the world is a place to be glad in. The bright
colors have faded out of life for him; everything looks gray and somber."
"Gee! and how he used to like a good cabaret with a jazz band!" The girl
whispered it, and there was awe in her voice. "And colors! I had to wear
the gayest things I had, to please him."
"Yes, I know. And he'll like them best again, some day. Just be patient,
dear. And the waiting won't be hard, you'll have so much to do for him.
You'll have to be bringing the sunshine back, making him listen to the
bird-songs, teaching him how to be glad, to love doing all the happy,
foolish boy-things he used to like."
"I see--I can." The girl's voice was breathless.
"I'm sure you can." Sheila tried to put conviction into her words. "At
first you may find it a little hard. It means--"
"Yes?"
"It means creeping into his prison with him, so gently, so lovingly, and
staying close beside him while you cut the memory-cords one by one. Could
you do that?"
The girl sprang past Sheila toward the door. "Come! What are we waiting
for?"
"But he doesn't know you are here yet," parried the nurse.
"Let's go and tell him, then. He always adored surprises." The dimples in
her cheeks danced in anticipation while she took Sheila's hand and tried
to drag her nearer the door. But at the threshold something in the woman's
face stopped her. She hesitated. "Maybe--maybe he doesn't like surprises
any more." Again the impulsive hands were thrust into the nurse's. "Tell
me, tell me honestly--You said you sent for me. Was it--Didn't he want
me--to come?"
And Sheila, remembering what the boy had loved about her, gave her back
the truth: "No, he has grown afraid of you. That's another thing you will
have to bring back to him with the songs and the sunlight--his love for
you."
Her hand was flung aside and the girl flew past her, back to the wicker
chair under Old King Cole. Burying her head in her arms, she burst into
uncontrollable sobs, while Sheila stood motionless in the doorway and
waited. She must have waited an hour before the girl raised her eyes, wet
as her own. For Sheila knew that a woman's soul was being born into the
world, and none understood better than she what the agony of travail meant
to the child who was giving it birth.
"Come," said Sheila, gently.
The girl rose uncertainly; all the divine assurance of youth was gone. "I
think I see," she began unsteadily. "I think I can."
"I know you can." And this time there was no doubt in Sheila's heart.
She saw to it that the little mother had been called away before they
reached the Surgical, so that the room was empty except for the occupant
of the cot. "Hello, boy!" she called, triumphantly, from the doorway. "I
have brought you the best present a soldier ever had," and she pushed
Clarisse into the room and closed the door.
For a moment those two young creatures looked at each other, overcome with
confusion and the self-consciousness of their own great change.
The boy spoke first. "Clare!"
"Phil!" It came in a breathless little cry, like a bird's answer to its
mate. Then the girl followed. Across the room she flew, to the bed, and
down on her knees, hiding her face deep in the folds of coverlet and
hospital shirt. Words came forth chokingly at last, like bubbles of air
rising slowly to the surface.
"Those letters--those awful letters! Just foolish things that didn't
matter. One of the boys at the canteen--I used to wait on the table and
make believe every soldier I served was mine, and I always wore my
prettiest clothes--he said--the boy--that over there they didn't want
anything but light stuff--those were his words--said a chap couldn't stand
hearing that his girl was lonely.... He said to cut out all the blue funks
and the worries; the light stuff helped to steady a chap's nerve. So I--"
And then the boy lied like a soldier. "Don't, Clare darling. I knew all
along you were playing off like a good sport. And it helped a lot. Gee!
how it helped!"
When Sheila looked in, hours later, the girl was still by the bed, her
cheek on the pillow beside the boy's.
It was a strangely illusive Leerie that met Peter that night in the
rest-house after the ailing part of the San had been put safely to bed.
Her eyes seemed to transcend the stars, and her face might have served for
a young neophyte. As Peter saw, for the first time he glimpsed the signal
Fate had been playing with so many days.
"What's happened? Anything wrong with those cubs?"
"Nothing. They're as right as right can be." Then with the old directness
Sheila plunged headlong into the thing she knew must be done. "Man of
mine, I'm going to hurt you. Can you forgive and still understand?"
"I can try." Peter did his best to keep his voice from sounding too heavy,
for a fear was gripping at his heart, and his eyes sought Sheila's face,
pleading as he would never have let his lips plead.
Sheila covered her eyes. She didn't want to see. It was too reminiscent of
the little boy lying awake in a dark attic, afraid of sleep. "We have both
done without happiness so long, don't you think we can do without it a
little longer?"
"I suppose so--if we must." Peter's voice was very dull. "But why? I've
always had an idea that happiness was something like opportunity; it had
to be snatched and held fast when it came your way, or you might never
have another chance at it." Had Sheila brought him to the gates of
Paradise only to bar them against his entering? he wondered.
The woman who loved him understood and laid her hand on his breast as if
she would stay the hurt there if she could. "It may make it easier if you
know that the giving up is going to be hard for me, too. I've thought
about that home of ours so long that I've begun to see it and all that
goes with it. I even stumble upon it in my dreams. It's always at the end
of a long, tired road, going uphill. If I thought I should have to give it
up, I wouldn't have the courage to do what I'm going to now."
She sat down on the bench, laid her arms over the sill of the rustic
window, and looked toward the pond. The night was very still; the blurred
outlines of the swans, huddled against the bank, were the only signs of
life. When she spoke it was almost to herself.
"When they sent me away from the San three years ago I thought I could
never bear it--to go away alone, that way, disgraced, to begin work over
again in a strange place, among strange people. But I had to do it, just
as I have to do this." She straightened and faced Peter. Her voice
changed; it belonged to the curt, determined Sheila.
"I'm going across, to nurse the boys over there. The boy over in the
Surgical pointed the way for me. There's a big thing going on in the
world--something almost as big as the war--it's the business of getting
the boys ready for life after their share in the war is over, and I don't
mean just nursing their bodies back to health. Everything is changed for
them; they've got new standards, new interests, new hearts, new souls, and
we women have got to keep pace with them. And we mustn't fail them--don't
you see that? Oh, I know I have no place of my own in the war: you are
safe, and I have no brothers. But I'm a woman--a nurse, thank God! And I'm
free to go for the mothers and sweethearts who can't. Don't you
understand?"
And Peter answered from an overwhelmingly full and troubled heart, "Oh
yes, I understand."
"I knew you would." Sheila raised starry eyes to the man who had never
failed her. "Those boys will need all the sympathy, all the wholesome
tenderness we can send across to them, and they'll need our hands at their
backs until they get their foothold again. I've served my apprenticeship
at that so long I can do it."
Peter gathered her close in his arms. "God and I know how well."
It was not until they were leaving the gardens that Peter asked the
question that had been in his mind all through the evening. "What about
the wedding? I suppose you're not going to marry me, now."
"Can't. Haven't the courage. Man of mine, don't you know that after I once
belonged to you I couldn't leave you? I've only had sips of happiness so
far. If I once drained the cup, only God's hand could take it from me."
"And the wedding? The old San's just set its heart on that wedding."
The radiant smile crept back to Sheila's lips. Even in the dark Peter
could tell that the old luminous Leerie was beside him once more. "Why,
that's one of the nicest parts of it all. We're going to pass our wedding
on to those children--make them a sort of wedding-present of it. Won't
that be splendid?"
"Oh yes," said Peter, without enthusiasm. "Does it suit them?"
"They don't know yet. Guess I'd better go and tell them."
It is doubtful if anybody but Sheila O'Leary could have managed such an
affair and left every one reasonably happy over it--two of them
unreasonably so. She accepted the wedding collation bestowed by the
wealthy old ladies of the sanitarium and passed it over to the boy and his
betrothed as if it had been as trivial a gift as an ice-cream cone. In a
like manner she passed on the trousseau, kissed all the nurses rapturously
for their work, and piled it all into Clarisse's arms with the remark that
it was lucky they were so nearly of a size. When she brought the
wedding-dress she kissed her, too, and said that she was going to make the
prettiest picture in it that the San or the soldier had seen in years. She
placated the management; she wheedled Miss Maxwell into a good humor; she
even coaxed Doctor Fuller into giving away the bride. Only Hennessy
refused to be propitiated.
"Are ye thinkin' of givin' Mr. Brooks away with everythin' else?" he
asked, scornfully; and then, his indignation rising to a white wrath, he
shouted, "I'll not put bows on the swans, an' I'll not come to any
second-hand weddin'."
But he did come, and held with Flanders the satin ribbons they had
promised to hold for Sheila. And the wedding became one of the greenest
of all the memories that had gone down on the San books.
As the sun clipped the far-away hills the boy was wheeled down the paths
to where the gold and white of early roses were massed in summer splendor.
Then came the girl with Sheila at her side; the girl had begged too hard
to be refused. But Sheila's face was as white as it had been the day they
operated on Doctor Dempsy, and only Peter guessed what it cost her to
stand with the bride. To Peter's care had been intrusted the little
mother, and he let her weep continually on his shoulder in between the
laughs he kept bringing to her lips.
And it all ended merrily. Sheila saw to that. But perhaps the thing that
gave her the keenest pleasure was wheedling out of Mr. Crotchets his
bungalow that stood on the slopes beyond the golf-links for a honeymoon.
"They'll have all the quiet they want and the care he still needs," she
told Peter when they were alone. "And nobody but the nurse in charge knows
about it--yet." Then seeing the great longing in Peter's eyes, she drew
him away from the crowd. "Listen, man of mine! I have the feeling that
when we are married there will be no wedding, just you and I and the
preacher. And in my heart I like it better that way."
"So do I," agreed Peter.
"I'm leaving--train to-night," Sheila hurried on. "No use putting it off;
better sail as soon as the passport's ready. There's just one thing more I
want to say before I leave you."
Then Peter chuckled for the first time that day. "You can say it, of
course, but if you think you're going to leave me behind, you're mistaken.
I wired the chief the day you told me. They need another correspondent
over there. When it comes to passports there is some advantage in not
being a husband, after all. Well--are you glad?"
When Hennessy came upon them, a few minutes later, they looked so
supremely happy and oblivious of the rest of the world that he was forced
to stop. "Sure, ye might be the bride an' groom, afther all, by the looks
of ye. What's come over ye all of a sudden?" And when Peter told him, and
they both put their hands in Hennessy's in final parting, he shirred his
lips and whistled forth evidence of a satisfied emotion to which he added
a word of warning to Peter:
"I'm not envyin' ye, just the same, Mr. Brooks. Afore ye get her home
again ye'll find the Irish say right, 'A woman's more throuble to look
afther than a thorn in the foot or a goat fetched back from the fair!'"