THE LAD WHO OUTSANG THE STARS
In the American Military Hospital No. 10 one could always count on Ward
7-A beginning the day with a genuine fanfare of good spirits--that is to
say, ever since that ward had acquired a distinction and personality of
its own. On this particular morning the doors of the wards were open, for
orderlies were scrubbing floors, and Sheila O'Leary in the operating-room
above could catch the words of the third chorus that had rung through the
hospital since the ban of silence had been raised.
"Gra-ma-cree ma-cruiskeen, Slainte-geal ma-vour-neen,
Gra-ma-cree a-coolin bawn, bawn, bawn,
Oh!"
As usual, Larry's crescendo boomed in the lead. How those lads could sing!
In the regular order of things it was time for dressings; but the regular
order of things was so often broken at No. 10 that it had nearly become a
myth. The operating staff had been steadily at it since eleven the night
before. If nothing more came in, they might be through by eleven now and
the dressings come only two hours late. That would be rare good luck.
Under the spell of the singing the tired backs of surgeons and nurses
straightened unconsciously; cramped muscles seemed to lose some of their
kinks; everybody smiled without knowing it--down to the last of the boys
who were waiting their turn in the corridor outside. The boys had not been
in the hospital long enough to know anything about Ward 7-A, but the
challenge to courage and good spirits in that chorus of voices was too
dominant to be denied, even among the sorest wounded of them. One after
another rallied to it like veterans.
"Gra-ma-cree ma-cruiskeen bawn," boomed Larry's voice to the finish.
The chief of the Surgical Staff looked at Sheila as she handed him the
sutures he was reaching for. "They're the best we've had yet, eh? Not one
with half a fighting chance, and just listen to the ones who are pulling
through."
"They're Irish." There was a tinge of pride in the nurse's voice.
The chief smiled. "It's like flipping a coin to find out whether you're
more Irish or American. Sometimes it's heads, sometimes it's tails. Which
is it, honestly?"
"Honestly, both!" Sheila laughed softly. Then the door opened to admit the
last of the stretchers, and she sobered for an instant until she saw the
faces of the boys. She knew why they were smiling, and her eyes shone in
the old luminous, Leerie fashion as she greeted them, each as if he had
been an old friend.
"There's a welcome for you. Those lads you hear have gone through what you
are going through, only a lot worse. Listen, and think of that as you go
under. They'll be singing again in a moment." And as she slipped the ether
cone over the face of the first, up from Ward 7-A in rollicking cadences
came another chorus:
"Wi' me bundle on me shoulder, sure, there's not a man that's bolder--
I am leavin' dear old Ireland without warnin'.
For I've lately took the notion for to cross the briny ocean,
An' I'm off for Philadelphia in the mornin'."
The smile on the face of the first boy spread to a grin under its covering
of gauze. "I'm off for Philadelphia, too," he mumbled, thickly, and the
eyes that looked into Sheila's for a few last nebulous seconds showed all
the comfortable security of a child's.
They were hard at it for another hour, and while Sheila O'Leary's hands
flew from sterilizer to ether cone, from handing instruments and holding
forceps to tying sutures and packing wounds, her mind was busy with
something that lay far beyond. To this girl, who had come across to do her
bit, life had become a jumble of paradoxes. She had come to give, out of
the bounty of her skill and her womanhood; instead she had received far
more abundantly from the largess of universal brotherhood and sacrifice.
She had come to minister, and she had been ministered unto by every piece
of human wreckage swept across the door-sill of the hospital. She had
thought to dispense life, and to her ever-increasing wonder she had been
given a life so boundless that it reached beyond all previous dreams of
space or time. She was learning what thousands had been learning since the
war began, those who had thrown their fortunes into its crucible, and
that is that if anything comes out at all, it comes out in the form of
spirit and not of flesh.
Back in the old days at the sanitarium she had felt herself bound only to
the problems and emergencies of war. It had never occurred to her then
that in an incredibly short time she would be bothering about matters of
adjustment afterward. With peace already on the horizon, she was troubled
a hundredfold more than she had been when indefinite war was the promise
for the future. From the beginning she had marveled at the buoyancy and
optimism of the men who were focusing their lives within the limits of
each day. Many of them never thought in terms of more than twenty-four
hours; often it was less. They had learned the knack of intensive living.
World-old truths were flashed into their minds like spot-lights; friends
were made and lost in a few hours; eternity was visioned and compassed in
a minute. The last words Jerry Donoghue of Ward 7-A had said before he
went west came back to Sheila with a curious persistence.
"When all's said and done, miss, it's been a grand life--Brave lads for
comrades--a lass who kept faith to the end--a good fight an' somethin'
good to fight for--Near five years of it--wi' perdition grinnin' ye in the
face an' the Holy Mother walkin' at your back--Sure, I might ha' lived
fifty year in Letterkenny an' never tasted life half so
plentiful--or--so--sweet."
That was the strange part of it; they had all found life "plentiful an'
sweet"--nurses, surgeons, soldiers alike. They might be homesick, worn out
with the business of fighting and patching up afterward, eternally aching
in body and heart with the long stretches of horror and work with little
sleep and less food, and yet not a handful out of every thousand of them
would have chosen to quit if they could.
But when the quitting-time came, when war was over, what was going to
happen then? Sheila wondered it about the boys who lay unconscious on
their stretchers, packed in the room about her. She wondered it about the
boys conscious in their cots below. Most of all she wondered it about Ward
7-A. It was going to hurt so many to have to look beyond the immediate
day into a procession of numberless days stretching into years and years.
The sudden relaxing from big efforts to little ones, that would hurt, too,
like the uncramping of over-strained muscles. And the being thrown back on
oneself to think, to act, to feel for oneself again--what of that? It was
like dismembering a gigantic machine and scattering the infinitesimal
parts of it broadcast over the earth to function alone. Only many of the
parts would be imperfect, and all would have souls to reckon with.
But of the puzzle of it one fact stood out grippingly vital to Sheila. No
soul must be thrown out of the melting-pot back into the old accustomed
order of life and be left to feel unfit or unnecessary. There must be a
big, compelling place for every man who came home. Of all the tragedies of
war, she could conceive no greater one than to have these men who had put
no limit to the price they were willing to pay to make the world safe for
democracy sent back useless, to mark time to eternity.
But who was going to keep this from happening? How were the thousands of
mutiles to be made free of the burden of dependence and toleration? Who
was going to guard them against atrophy of spirit? The nurse gathered up
the last of the instruments and threw them in the sterilizer. As she took
off her apron and wiped the beads of sweat from her face, her chief eyed
her suspiciously.
"Get your coffee before you touch those dressings in 7-A. Understand? When
did you have your clothes off last?" He growled like a good-natured but
spent old dog.
The girl gave her uniform a disgusted look. "Pretty bad, isn't it? I put
it on four--no, five days ago, but I've had my shoes off twice." She laid
an impulsive hand on the chief's arm. "Promise about the coffee if you'll
promise to do the dressings with me instead of Captain Griggs. He calls
them the 'down-and-outers.' I can't quite stand for that."
"Well, what would you call 'em?"
"The invincibles," she declared. "Wouldn't you?"
But for all her promise, Sheila O'Leary did not get past the door of 7-A
without putting in her head and calling out a "good morning." Whereupon
twelve Irish tongues, dripping almost as many brogues, flung it back at
her with a vengeance.
There were thirteen of them, all told, the remnants of a company of Royal
Irish that had crossed the Scheldt with Haig. As Larry Shea had put it on
the day of their arrival, they "made as grand leavin's as one could expect
under the circumstances." The ambulances that had brought them, along with
the additional seven who had gone west, had pivoted wrong at one of the
crossroads, so that the American Military Hospital No. 10 had fallen heir
to them instead of the B. H. T. It is recorded that even the chief showed
consternation when he looked them over, and Larry, catching the look and
being the only man conscious at the time, snorted indignantly:
"Well, sir, if ye think we're a mess, ye should have seen the Fritzies we
left behind. Furninst them we're an ordther of perfectly decent lads." And
Larry had crumpled up into a grinning unconsciousness.
It was Larry who led the singing; it was Larry now who, with an eye on the
one silent figure in the ward and another on the nurse in the doorway,
threw a wheedling remark to hold her with them a moment "by way of
heartenment to Jamie." "Wait a bit, miss. Patsy MacLean was just askin'
were ye a good hand at layin' a ghost?"
Before Sheila could answer, Harrigan, an Irish-American orderly, stepped
over the threshold and shook a fist at 7-A.
"Aw, cut it out. The way this bunch works Miss O'Leary makes me sick.
Don't cher know she hasn't been off duty for twenty-four hours? Let her
go, can't cher?"
Johnnie O'Neil, from the far end of the room, smiled the smile of a
cherub. "An' don't ye know, laddie, that it's always the saints in heaven
that has the worst sinners on their hands? 'Tis jealous ye are, not being
wicked enough to get a bit more of her attention yerself."
Sheila smiled impartially at them both, and with a parting promise of
dressings to come she hurried off. Ward 7-A settled itself to wait for the
worst and the best that the day had to offer. The room was a very small
one, and the thirteen cots barely crowded into it, with space at the foot
for Jamie O'Hara's wheel-chair to go the length and turn. They had been
kept together by Sheila's urgent plea that they should be given a ward to
themselves instead of scattering them through the larger wards, and it is
doubtful if in all the war a more quietly merciful act had been executed.
Not one of the thirteen but would have scorned to show any sign of
dependence on the others, yet intuitively the girl had guessed what they
would be able to give one another in the matter of spiritual succor. The
way they continually hectored and teased, matched wits and good humor, as
they had matched strength and daring in the old fighting-days before the
hospital, was meat and drink to the souls struggling for dominance over
mutilated bodies. United, they were men; separated--Sheila had often
shuddered to think what pitiful, pain-tortured beings they might have
been.
When she returned to the ward the chief was with her, and their combined
arrival brought forth a prolonged, fortissimoed wail shammed forth in good
Gaelic fashion. Larry's great hairy arm shot out, and a vindictive
forefinger was wagged in the direction of the third cot.
"Ye'd best begin with Patsy MacLean this day. He hasn't been laid out
first in a fortnight."
The others, taking the words from Larry's tongue, chorused, "Aye, begin
wi' Patsy, the devil take him!"
"Why the devil? Wouldn't Fritzie do as well?" The chief smiled indulgently
upon them all.
"'Tis a case for the devil, this time. Tell the colonel what you were
putting over us last night," Michael Kenney, lance-corporal, growled
through an undercurrent of chuckle.
Patrick MacLean, the color-sergeant, grinned as he reached out a welcoming
hand to both surgeon and nurse. He was a prime favorite with them, as with
his own lads. When pain wrestled for the upper hand, when things went
wrong, moods turned black, or nights stretched interminably long and
unendurable, Patsy could always turn the trick and produce something so
absorbingly interesting or ridiculous that the pain and the long nights
were forgotten. How well Sheila remembered that first time they had
dressed his wounds! The muscles had stood out on his arms like whipcords;
sweat poured down his face. He fainted twice, each time coming round to
drawl out his story in that unforgetable Irish way:
"We were dthrivin' them afore us like sheep, all so tame an' sociable I
was forgettin' where I was. Somehow the notion took me I was back on the
moorlan' drivin' the flocks for my father, when a Fritzie overhead drops a
bomb on our captain.... It spatters the mud in my eyes somethin' terrible,
an' when I rubs them clean again the machine-guns were cacklin' all round
us like a parcel o' hens layin' eggs; we'd stumbled on a nest of them.
Holy Pether, I was mad! I was for stickin' the colors in the muzzle o' one
o' their bloody guns, an' I sings out as I rush 'em, 'Erin go bragh!' Then
down I goes. Culmullen, there, comes staggerin' up. 'Take the colors,'
says I. 'I've got no legs to carry 'em on.' 'I can't,' says he; 'I've got
no arms to shoulder 'em.'... A bit aftherwards I sees Jamie--he's second
in command--come runnin' up wild, but his arms an' legs is still in pairs,
so I shouts afore things go black, 'The colors, Jamie, ye take the
colors.' 'Wish to God, Patsy, I could,' says he, 'but I can't see.'...
Faith, weren't we a healthy lot, miss? An' we the Royal Irish!" He had
grinned then as he was grinning now.
Culmullen in the next cot, a schoolmaster from Ballygowan, raised his
head. "Miss O'Leary, Patsy's the worst liar in Ulster. Ye might keep that
in mind whenever he has anything to tell. If I had had the schooling of
ye, I'd have thrashed the thruth into ye, ye rascal! Will ye kindly lean
over and brush the hair out of my eyes, and if ye tickle my nose this
time, I'll have Larry thrash ye for me the instant he's up."
The color-sergeant pulled himself over and gently brushed back the
straggling hair. "Such a purty lad!" he murmured, sarcastically. "What's
an arm or two so long's the Fritzies didn't ruin one o' them handsome
features--nor shorten the length o' your tongue."
"What is it this time, Sergeant?" Sheila spoke coaxingly as she bent to
the dressings.
"Well, ye know I've said from the beginnin' 'twas no ways natural havin'
them legs o' mine twistin' an' achin' same as if they were still hangin'
onto me. I leave it to both of yez. If they'd been anyways decent legs an'
considerate o' the kindness I've always shown them, wouldn't they have
quit pestherin' me when they took Dutch leave?"
"Stop moralizin'," shouted Johnnie O'Neil, the piper from Antrim. "Get
down to the p'int o' your tale."
"It hasn't any point: it's flat," growled the lance-corporal.
Unembarrassed, Patsy MacLean went on: "I was a-thinkin' this all over
again last night, a-listenin' to the ambulances comin' in, when a breath
o' wind pushes the door open a bit, an' in walks, as natural as life, the
ghost o' them two legs. 'Tis the gospel truth I'm tellin' ye. They walked
a bit bowlegged, same as they always did, straight through the door an'
down the ward. An' the queer thing is they never stopped by Larry's cot or
Casey Ryan's--the heathen!--but came right on to me."
"Faith, they wouldn't have had the nerve to stop. The leg Casey lost was
as straight as a hazel wand, same as mine." Larry snorted contemptuously.
"The two of yez are jealous." Patsy lowered his voice to a mock whisper
and confided to the chief and Sheila, "They know they'll have to be buyin'
a good pair o' shoes an' throwin' the odd away, while I'll be sayin'
enough from the shoes I'll never have to be buyin' to keep mysel' in
cigars for the rest o' my life."
"But Patsy's wondtherin' can ye lay the ghost, miss?" Timothy Brennan, who
had lost the "cream of his face," repeated the question Larry had asked a
half-hour before. The rest of the ward tittered expectantly.
"Let me see--" The Irish blood in her steadied the nurse's hands, while
she drew her lips into quizzical solemnity and winked at Culmullen over
her shoulder. "I always thought it was restlessness that sent ghosts
walking. Maybe these have come back, looking for their boots."
The titter broke into a roar of delight. "Thrue for ye!" shouted
Parley-voo Flynn, pounding the arm of Jamie's chair with his one fist.
"All ye've got to do, Patsy, is to be puttin' your boots beside your chair
onct more, an' them legs will scrooch comfortably into them an' never
haunt ye again. The lass is right, isn't she, Jamie?"
Eleven pairs of eyes and an odd one shifted apprehensively from the lad
who was being dressed to the lad in the wheel-chair, and the eyes all
showed varying degrees of trouble, uncertainty, and sorrow. They had a way
of searching Jamie out in this fashion many times a day, while he sat very
still, with eyes bandaged and lips that never flinched but never broke to
a smile.
Larry shook a hairy fist at Parley-voo and answered the question himself:
"Of course she's right! Isn't she always? An' who but a heathen would be
doubtin' the manners of a ghost?"
"Aye, but where will I be gettin' the boots?" Patsy made a sour grimace.
"Me own purty ones had Christian burial somewhere back in that tremendous
mud-puddle. Would any gentleman, now, still havin' two good legs, give me
the loan of his boots for one night? Size eleven, if I don't disremember."
"That's Teig's number. Lend him yours, Teig, like a good lad, or we'll
never be rid o' them ghosts." Mat O'Shaughnessy, at the other end of the
line, fairly shook with the depth of his wail.
Teig Magee chuckled. He had lost an inch or so of back and was waiting the
glad day when they could mend it with an inch or so of shin-bone; in the
mean time he was paralyzed. "Say, Docthor, would ye mind reachin' undther
my pillow an' fetchin' them out for me? The lads have a way of forgettin'
my hands are temporarily engaged. Thank ye. Ye can have them, Patsy, but
ye'll have to go bail your ghosts won't up an' thramp off wi' them
entirely."
It ended by the schoolmaster giving security--a half-crown with a bullet
hole through it. Sheila was appointed custodian, and the boots were placed
beside the color-sergeant's cot "against the comin' night."
As the chief and Sheila passed on from cot to cot, the spirits of Ward 7-A
never wavered. Johnnie, who had piped the lads into battle and out for
four years, and who daily rejoiced over the fact that Fritzie had shown
the good sense to take a foot instead of a hand, told them that he was in
rare luck now, for there would be time to make wee Johnnie at home the
grandest piper in all of Ireland--an honor he could never have promised
himself before.
There was "Bertha" Milliken, named for the big gun he had put out of
commission and the gun crew he had captured. He had been given the V. C.
for that. His pet joke was telling how the Fritzies grudged him its
possession by shooting it away on the Scheldt along with a good bit that
was under it. The nurse and surgeon handled "Bertha" very carefully; there
was no knowing just what was going to happen to him. Casey Ryan had lost
the odd of 'most everything the Lord had started him with, as he put it.
An eye, an ear, a lung, and a leg were gone, and he was beating all the
others at getting well. Mat O'Shaughnessy had it in the "vital." He was
continuously boasting that it was the handiest place of all, and if it
didn't get him he'd be the only perfect specimen invalided home.
"Parley-voo," the only one of them who essayed French, had wounds many but
inconspicuous. He was given to counting a hypothetical fortune that might
be his if the Empire would give him a shilling for every time he had been
hit. Joseph Daly and "Gospel" Smith, the one Methodist, carried head
wounds, while "Granny" Sullivan, the oldest, wisest, and most comforting
of the company, had one smashed hip and a hole through the other, "the
devil of a combination." Never had the atmosphere of 7-A been keener or
spicier. Jamie alone sat still and silent.
Jamie was the last to be dressed, and because there was little to do the
chief slipped away and left him to Sheila. As the nurse passed from Mat's
cot to the wheel-chair, eleven pairs of eyes and an odd one followed her.
A hush fell suddenly on the ward. The lads never intended this should
happen, but somehow, at the same time everyday, the silence gripped them,
and they seemed powerless to stay it. It was "Granny" Sullivan who first
threw it off.
"'Tis a grand day outside, Jamie. Maybe ye're feeling the sun, now, comin'
through the window?"
The nurse had lifted the bandage from the eyes. There was nothing there
but empty sockets, almost healed. One could hear the quick intake of
breath from the watching twelve, while every face registered an agony it
had scorned to show for its own disablement. But for Jamie, "the singing
lad from Derry" as they lovingly called him, it was different. They could
face their own conditions with amazing jocularity, but they writhed daily
under the torment of Jamie's. They could brave it no better than could
he. For to put eternal darkness on the lad who loved the light, who would
sit spellbound before the play of colors in the east at dawn or the flash
of moonlight across troubled water, who could make a song out of the smile
of a child or the rhythm of flying birds in the sky, that was damnable. An
arch-fiend might have conceived it, but where was God to let it happen? A
crippled Jamie without an arm or a leg was endurable--that cried out for
no blasphemy--but a Jamie without eyes--God in heaven, how could it be!
The face of the singing lad was the face of a dreamer, as exquisite as a
piece of marble that might have been fashioned by Praxiteles for a sun
god. Since the battle on the Scheldt it had become a white mask, shorn of
all dreams. Almost it might have been a death-mask for the soul of Jamie
O'Hara. It showed no response now when "Granny" spoke; only the lad's
hands fluttered a moment toward the window, then dropped heavily back into
his lap.
"Aye, maybe I feel it." The voice was colorless and tired. "I can't be
remembering clear sunlight any more. The last days of the fighting, smoke
was too thick in the sky, or the rains fell."
Eleven pairs of eyes and one odd one cast about for some inspiration.
"Sure, think o' somethin' pleasanter nor cannon smoke an' rain. Think
o'--" "Granny" floundered for a moment, then gave up in despair.
"That's all I see when I look up. When I look down, it's worse--an
everlasting earth, covered with mud and dying men!" Jamie shivered.
Larry struggled out of his torment. "I say, Jamie, don't ye mind the song
ye were makin' for us the day we fell back from Cambrai? 'Twas an Irish
one, full o' the sun an' the singin' birds of Donegal. Wi' the Fritzies
risin' like a murdtherous tide behind us, 'twas all that kept the heart in
us that day. Ye say it for Miss O'Leary. Sure, ye've never said a song for
her yet."
Jamie shook his head. "I'm sorry, lad; I've lost it. I was making so many
songs those days--ye couldn't be expecting a body to carry them all about
in his head. Now could ye?" The lips tried bravely to smile, and failed
again.
But Larry grinned triumphantly. "Sure 'Granny' has it wrote down. He
showed it to me once. Fetch it, 'Granny,' an' let Jamie be re--" He broke
off, aghast; the lads about him were staring in absolute horror. Only the
singing lad showed nothing. He might not have heard, or, hearing, the
words were meaningless.
So Sheila took matters into her own hands. She covered the eyes with fresh
gauze, wrapped Jamie up, and bundled him out in his chair to Harrigan with
the remark that the day was too fine to miss and there was more of it
outside the hospital than in. She watched until she had seen Harrigan take
him to a sunny, wind-sheltered corner of the gardens, and then she came
back to 7-A. She was thinking of Peter Brooks, her man at the front, and
she was trying to fathom with all her heart what manner of healing she
would give had Peter come back to her as Jamie O'Hara had come. She closed
the door of the ward behind her and faced the twelve.
"Lads, what are we going to do for Jamie?"
Larry groaned out loud. It was the first luxury of expression he had
indulged in since Jamie had been wheeled out. "Aye, what are we goin' to
do? That's what every man of us has been askin' himself since--since he
knew."
"We act like a crowd o' half-wits, a-thryin' to boost his spirits a bit,
an' all the time he grows whiter an' quieter." Patsy turned his head away;
his lips were twitching.
"Aye, that's God's truth." "Bertha's" hoarse croak was heavy with despair.
"Ye can see for yourself, miss, it's noways nat'ral for Jamie--that's the
worst of it. It's been Jamie, just, that always put heart back in us when
things went blackest. Wasn't it him that made it easy goin' for them that
went west? Can one of us mind the time he wasn't ready with a song to
fetch us over the top, or through the mud--or straight to death, if them
was the orders? No matter how loud the guns screeched, we could always
hear Jamie above them."
"We could hear him when we couldn't have heard another sound," Culmullen
mumbled.
"Gospel" Smith raised a bandaged head and leveled piercing eyes at Sheila.
"You know what the Gospel says about the stars singing in the morning--all
together like? Well, Jamie was the lad who could outsing them. You know
how it feels at that gray, creepy hour o' dawn, when a man's heart jumps
to his throat and sticks there, and his hands shake like a girl's? Often's
the time we'd be waiting orders to attack just like that. The stars might
have shouted themselves clear o' the sky, for all the good they'd have
done us; but Jamie was different. He'd make us a couplet or a verse to
sing low under our breath, something you could put your teeth into. And
when the orders came our hearts were always back where the Lord had put
them."
"Granny" Sullivan plucked nervously at his blanket. "An' now, when we want
to hearten him, we're hurtin' instead. Seems as if the devil took hold of
our tongues an' spilled the wrong words off."
"Shall I tell you what I would try to do, if I were one of you Irish lads
who had fought with him?" Sheila's face was as drawn as any of the twelve.
"In God's name tell us!" Johnnie, the piper, spoke as reverently as if he
were at mass.
"You heard what he said just now about seeing nothing but mud and dying
men? Well, that's the trouble. He can't see any longer things he loves,
the things he has always carried in his heart. All the beautiful memories
have been lost, and all he has left are the horrors of those last days.
He's got nothing left to make into songs any more. Don't you see? You've
got to bring that back to him, that power to see--here." The girl's hand
pressed her heart.
"Aye, but how?" Patsy asked it breathlessly.
"Bring him back his memories--memories of Ireland, of the things he loved
best to sing about. You have eyes; make him see."
A hush fell on Ward 7-A. Then Timothy Brennan muttered as a man alone:
"'Tis the words of a woman. God's blessin' on her!"
All through the day there rang through Sheila's ears the last words Jamie
had said to her that morning. He had turned his face back, as Harrigan had
wheeled him away, to answer her "All right, Jamie?" with "As right as ever
I'll be. Do ye know, the O'Haras are famous for their long living? My
grandfather lived to be ninety-eight, and his father to be over a hundred.
That leaves me seventy-five years, maybe. Seventy-five years! And already
I'm fearin' the length of a day." She was still hearing them when she came
back to the ward at day's end to find Jamie in his old accustomed place by
the window. His face was as masklike as ever, and Larry was talking:
"Sure, I mind often an' often how the neighbors used to tell me if I'd lie
asleep with my ear to a fairy rath I'd be hearin' their music an' seein'
their dancin'. But I never did. But I saw a sight as grand, the flight o'
the skylark at ring-o'-day. Many's the time I've seen them leave the marsh
an' go liltin' into the blue."
"And the lilting!" Culmullen closed his eyes the better to recall it. "I
mind the last time I heard one. The sky was turned orange, and the lough
turned gold. The marsh was glistening with mist, and out of the reeds
where her nest was she flew. It was like a feathered bundle of song thrown
skyward."
"Aye, what a song!" Johnnie, the piper, spoke with ecstasy. "Hark! I can
make it." He puckered his lips, and through them came the sweet, lilting
notes of the lark's matin song.
"Make it again." Jamie was leaning forward in his chair, his hands
gripping the arms.
Again the piper whistled it through, and then again and again. A smile
brushed Jamie's lips, and the others, watching, breathless, saw.
"What is it?" asked "Granny," softly.
"Naught. Only for the moment I was thinking I could be smelling the dew on
the bogs, yonder. Can ye pipe for the blackbirds, Johnnie?"
And Johnnie piped.
So a new order of things was established in Ward 7-A, and as heretofore
the lads had vied in witty derision of their calamities they vied now with
one another in telling tales of Ireland. Each marshaled forth his dearest,
greenest memory, clothed in its best, to fill the ears and heart of Jamie
O'Hara. Sometimes he smiled, and then there was a great, silent rejoicing
among the twelve; sometimes he asked for more, and then tongues tripped
over one another in mad effort to furnish forth a memory more wonderful
than all that had gone before. But more often he sat still and white, as
if he heard nothing. And in the midst of it all, as the lads drew each
day nearer to health, Sheila noted a new uneasiness among them. It was
Larry who spoke the trouble while the nurse was doing his dressings. He
whispered it, so the others should not hear.
"By rights we don't belong here. Well, they'll be movin' us soon as we're
mended, won't they?"
The nurse nodded.
"Invalided home. Ye know what that means?"
Again the nurse nodded.
"Mind ye, there's been never a word dropped atween us, but we're all
fearin' it like--" Larry rubbed his sleeve over his mouth twice before he
went on. "While we've got Jamie to think about, we can manage, but when
he's packed off somewheres--to learn readin' an' writin' for the
blind--an' we're scattered to the four winds o' Ireland, we'll be
realizin' for the first time what we are, just. Then what are we goin' to
do? I ask ye it honest, miss."
And honestly Sheila answered, "I don't know."
A day later "Granny" whispered over his dressings: "Faith there's a shadow
creeping over the sill. Can't ye be feeling it?" And the color-sergeant's
spirits failed to rise that day at all.
Yet for all their fears the inevitable day came upon them unawares and
caught them, as you might say, red-handed. Sheila had stolen a half-hour
from rest and was sitting with them, listening to Casey Ryan, the Galway
lad, tell of the fishing in Kilkieran Bay.
Larry took the words out of his mouth. "'Twill be the proud day for us all
when we cast our eyes on Irish wather again, whether 'tis in Dublin Bay or
off the Skerries."
"Aye, and smelling the thorn bloom and hearing the throstles sing!"
"Granny's" rejoicing followed on the heels of Larry's, while he shook his
fist at him in warning.
Larry threw a helpless look at Jamie and sank back on his pillow, while
Patsy roared his ultimatum: "I'd a deal sight rather hear a throstle sing
than see all the bloody wather in the world. Larry's fair mad about wather
ever since he went dirty for a fortnight at Vimy."
"Sure, the thing I'm most wantin'," croaked "Bertha," "is to hear the wind
in the heather again, deep o' the night. There isn't a sweeter sound than
that, so soft an' croony-like."
"Yes, an' I'll be wantin' to hear the old cracked voice o' Biddy Donoghue
callin' cockles at the Antrim fair. Faith, she's worth thravelin' far to
be hearin'. An' think o' gettin' your tooth on a live cockle!" Johnnie
moistened his lips in anticipation as he broke forth in a falsetto:
"Cockles--good cockles--here's some for your dad,
An' some for your lassie--an' more for your lad."
Amid the appreciative chuckle of the listeners, the door of Ward 7-A
opened and the chief stood on the threshold. He smiled as a man may when
he has a hurting thing to do and grudges the doing of it. He saluted the
remnants of Company--of the Royal Irish:
"Orders, lads. You'll be leaving to-morrow for--Blighty."
There was nothing but silence, a silence of agony and apprehension, until
Patsy whispered, "Leavin' _together_, sir?"
"I--hope so."
"Thravelin'--the same?" It was Timothy Brennan this time.
"I don't know."
"Will we be afther makin' the same hospital yondther--do ye think?" It
took all Larry's fighting soul to keep his voice steady.
"I--It isn't likely."
"Thank ye, sir."
That was all. The chief left, and Sheila sat on in the stillness of Ward
7-A, wondering wherein lay the value of theories when in the face of the
first crucial need one sat stunned and helpless. The mask of good spirits
had dropped from the lads like a camouflaged screen; behind it showed the
naked, bleeding souls of twelve terror-stricken men. For Jamie's mask was
still upon him. If the orders had brought any added misery to him, no one
could have told.
As Sheila looked into their faces and saw all that was written there, she
gripped her hands behind her and tried to tell them what she had thought
out so clearly in the operating-room days and days before. But the message
she had thought was hers to give had somehow become meaningless. What
guarantee had she to make that their lives would go on being vital,
necessary to the big scheme of humanity? How could she promise that out
of their share in the war and the price they had paid would be wrought
something so fine, so strong and eternal, that the years ahead must needs
hold plenty for their hearts and souls? She could not get beyond the
realization that it was all only theory, the theory of one glowingly
healthy mind in a sound body. If such a promise could be given at all, it
must not come from such as she; if it was to bear faith, it must be spoken
by one who had gone through the crucible as they had gone through--and
come out even as they had come.
She looked at Jamie. If Jamie had only had eyes to catch the meaning of
the thing she was trying to say! If he who had sung courage into their
hearts in the old days could sing it once again! A message from Jamie
would bring it home.
But there was nothing in that blank, white face Sheila could reach. He
seemed as he had seemed from the beginning, a soul apart, so wrapped in
its own despair that no human cry of need could shake it free. In
desperation she looked at Larry. His eyes were closed; his face had gone
almost as white as Jamie's. Patsy was gazing at the ceiling; the veins on
his arms stood out as they had on that first day when he had fainted twice
from the pain of his dressing. Down the line of cots the nurse's eyes
traveled, and back again. Every lad was past speaking for another; each
lay transfixed with his own personal fear.
The minutes seemed intolerable. The silence grew heavy with so much
muffling of despair. Sheila found herself praying that the men would
groan, cry out, curse, anything to break the ghastly hush. Then suddenly
"Bertha" propped himself as best he could on an elbow and croaked: "For
the love of Mary, miss, can't ye cram us with morphine the night? 'Twould
save the British Empire a few shillin's' expense and them at home a deal
o' misery."
And the color-sergeant choked out, "Aye, in God's mercy send us west,
along wi' them lucky seven that has gone already!"
Without knowing why she did it, Sheila reached over and gripped one of
Jamie's hands. "Help, can't you?" she whispered. The late afternoon sun
was shining through the window back of him. The glory of it was full on
his face, so that every lad in the ward saw plainly the smile that crept
into the lips, a tender, whimsical smile that belonged to the Jamie of
old. And the deep, vibrating voice was the voice of the Jamie of fighting
days.
"Patsy, ye rascal! I'm thinking it was like yourself to come breaking into
the first song I've had on my lips in a month. You've nearly ruined it for
me, lad."
Amazement, incredulity, thanksgiving swept over the faces like puffs of
wind over young wheat. Unnoticed, Sheila turned to the window and wept a
scattering of tears that could no longer be held back. Jamie pulled
himself out of the wheel-chair and found his way down the space at the
foot of the cots to the door. He was very straight, and his head was high.
"Just a minute, lads." He dug his hands deep into his pockets. "Before I
give ye the song I've made for ye, there's something I have to be saying
first. Miss O'Leary was right when she said a man has more than one pair
of eyes to see with. He can see grand with his heart--if he's shown the
way. That's what I have to thank ye for this day, the wiping of my memory
clean of those last days, and the showing me how to see anew. Ye've given
Ireland back to me with her lark songs, her blue, dancing water, her
wind-brushed heather like a purple sea. Ye've made the world beautiful for
me again, and ye've given me the heart to sing."
He stopped a minute and smiled again. "I was thinking all this when the
chief came in, and after that I was so busy with the song that sprang into
my mind that I came near forgetting the lot o' ye. If that rascal Patsy
hadn't interrupted me, faith, I might have made the song longer."
Sheila turned back from the window. There was a grin on the face of every
lad, and on the face of Jamie was the look of a man who had found his
dreams again. The song being new to his tongue, he gave it slowly:
"They say the earth's a bit shot up--well, we can say the same,
But, praise to every lad that's fought, the scars they show no shame.
And for those who have prayed for us--why, here's an end to tears.
Sure, God can do much healing in the next handful of years.
"So, Johnnie, set your chanter and blow your pipes full strong,
And, Larry, raise your voice again and lead our marching song.
Let Mac unfurl the colors--till they sweep yon crimson west,
For we're still the Royal Irish, a-fighting with the best."
And that is precisely the way they went when they left the American
Military Hospital No. 10 the next morning. The color-sergeant led. Jamie
walked beside the stretcher to give a hand with the staff. Johnnie sat
bolt upright, bolstered with many pillows, to enable him to get a firm
grip on the pipes, and he skirled the "Shule Aroon" as he had never
skirled before. Larry's voice again boomed in the lead, and every man in
the hospital that had breath to spare cheered them as they passed. And for
every one who saw or heard the going of the Royal Irish, that day, was
left behind a memory green enough to last till the end of time.