INTO HER OWN
The last big drive was on. Somewhere on the road between what had been the
line of defense and what was the line of farthest advance rumbled a
hospital camion with its nose to the war trail like an old dog on a fresh
scent. In the camion sat Sheila O'Leary, late of the old San and later yet
of the American Military Hospital No. 10. She was in field uniform; a pair
of the chief's own boots were strapped over two pairs of woolen stockings.
She was contemplating those boots now with a smile of rare contentment
that showed its inwardness even in the gray light of early morning.
"Never thought I should step into the shoes of a great surgeon. They ought
to pass me through to the front if everything else fails, don't you
think?"
The chief eyed her quizzically. "They'll carry you as far as you'll care
to go and for as long as you'll stand. What's troubling me is what your
man will say when he knows?"
"Who--Peter?" Sheila's smile deepened. "He'll understand; he'll be glad.
Something both of us will remember always, something big to share. Oh, I
know it's going to be life and death, heaven and hell, rolled into a
minute, but I wouldn't be missing this chance--" She broke off suddenly,
and when she spoke again there was a great reverence in her voice. "I feel
as the littlest angel might have felt if God had asked him to be at the
Creation."
"Rather different, this." Griggs, the chief's assistant, spoke. There were
just the three of them in the ambulance.
"Not so very. It's another big primal happening, the hurling together of
elemental things and impulses and watching something more solid and
lasting come out. A new heaven and a new earth."
"What we see coming out won't be so solid or so lasting. We may not be
ourselves." Griggs was a pessimist, a heroic one, with an eye ever keen
for the grimmest and most disappointing in life and a courage to meet it
squarely.
The chief's glance brushed him on its way to the nurse; Griggs's share of
it was plainly commiserating. "And I say, blessed be those who shall
inherit it. But, girl, this doesn't settle the question of your man. I've
had to duck orders a bit to bring you along. Women aren't wanted at the
front. He may hold it up stiff against me for it."
"But I can help. Any woman who can stand it will be needed. They shouldn't
bar us out. That's all Peter'll think about. Don't worry."
There was no question in the girl's mind as to the wisdom or right in her
coming--or Peter's verdict in the matter. He would not fuss over this
plunge into danger any more than he had misunderstood her giving away her
wedding back at the old San and coming over at the eleventh hour. The last
words Peter had said when he left her for the front came back with
absolute distinctness:
"Whatever happens, do what you think best, go where you feel you must go.
Don't bungle your instincts. I'd trust them next to God's own."
No, Peter Brooks would have been the last person to deny her this chance,
and so all was well. She was wondering now if by some rare good luck she
might stumble on Peter at the front. She had not seen him since they
separated the day after their arrival in France. A few penciled
hieroglyphics had come from time to time telling her all was well with
him. She had written when she could and when she knew enough of an address
to risk a letter reaching him. But Peter, after the manner of all
correspondents, was like Hamlet's ghost--here, there, and gone; and Sheila
had no way of knowing if her letters had ever reached him.
For weeks it had seemed to the girl that her love had lain dormant, hushed
under the pressure of work. So vital and eternal were both love and
happiness that in her zeal for perfect, impersonal service she had thrust
them both out of sight, as one might put seeds away in the dark to wait
until planting-time, assured of their fulfilment when the time came. But
now in the lull between the work at the hospital and the work that would
soon claim her again she discovered that in some inexplicable manner love
would no longer be shut out. She was sick for the man she loved.
A funny little wistful droop took Sheila's lips, and her chin quivered for
an instant. It was so unlike the girl that the chief, seeing, reached
across and laid a hand on her knee.
"What is it? Not sorry?"
"Never. But I was thinking how pleasantly easy it might have been to stay
behind at the old San. Peter and I'd be climbing that mythical hilltop of
ours, with a home of our own at the end of the climb--if we'd stayed
behind."
"Well, why didn't you?"
The nurse laughed softly. Griggs volunteered to answer for her.
"Because you were a fool, like a lot of the rest of us."
"Because--oh, because of that queer something inside us all that pries us
away from our determinations just to be contented and happy all our lives
and hustles us somewhere to do something for somebody else. Remember in
the old fairy-tales they were always cleaning the world of dragons or
giants or chimeras before they married and lived happy ever after."
"Bosh! Remember that it's only in the fairy-tales that the giants or the
monsters don't generally get you, and you get an epitaph instead of a
wedding. You romantic idealists make me sick," and Griggs snarled openly.
Their mobile unit was held up that day in a little ruined city. Only one
other dressing-station was there, and the wounded were passing through so
fast and so wounded that many could not go on. So they set up another
dressing-station and worked through the night until the stars went out and
their orders came to hurry on. They caught two hours' sleep and by noon of
another day they were as close to the front as a hospital unit could go.
A dugout had been portioned out to them, and while orderlies brought in
their equipment and the surgeons were coupling up lights and sterilizer,
Sheila started to get a hot meal in two sterilizing basins. The nurse was
just drawing in her first breath of real war. Before she had time to
exhale it a despatch-bearer climbed down into the dugout and handed an
order to the chief. It was from headquarters, and brief. The division did
not intend to have any woman's name on its casualty list. Sheila was to
be returned at once. The bearer added the information that an ambulance
was returning with wounded; she could take it.
The chief had never seen the nurse turn so white. Her eyes spoke the
appeal her lips refused to make. He tried to put something into words to
make it easier for her, but gave it up in final despair. What was there to
say? In silence the girl put on her trench coat, jammed on her hat, and
was gone. For the first kilometer her senses were too numbed to allow for
much thinking. Mechanically she passed her canteen to one of the wounded,
readjusted a blanket over another. It was not until the division turned
loose its first barrage that day that she woke up to what was happening to
her. She was going back; she was not going to have her chance.
The noise was terrific. It drowned everything but the mutinous hammerings
of her own heart. In the flash of an eye she changed from the Sheila
O'Leary of civilized production to a savage, primitive woman. She had but
one dominating instinct, to stand by the male of her tribe, to succor
him, fight with him, die with him. It seemed as futile a thing to try to
stay this impulse as to try to put out the burning of a prairie when the
wind blows.
The ambulance stopped with a jerk. Something was wrong with the engine.
The driver climbed down and threw back the hood, and, unnoticed, the nurse
slipped down and passed him. When he had finished his tinkering, Sheila
was fifty rods away across the meadow.
"Here, you, you come back!" shouted the driver.
For answer Sheila doubled her speed.
The driver watched her, uncertain what to do. A shell whizzed from beyond
the barrage and burst a hundred yards from the nurse. The shock threw her,
but she was up in an instant, her course changed toward some deserted
trenches. The driver hesitated no longer. He climbed back and started the
engine.
"No use tacklin' them kind," he remarked to the empty seat beside him.
"She'll get there or she won't--but she won't turn back."
It was nightfall when Sheila came up with what she had chosen to call "her
division." She intended to possess it in spite of the commander. An
outpost sentry challenged what he thought a wraith. His tongue fumbled the
words, "Oh, Gawd! it's a woman!"
"Yes. Will you pass her? Lots to do."
He looked at the red cross on her arm and smiled foolishly. "You bet there
is! Sure I'll pass you."
She came up with the first battalion, bivouacked under a shell-riven
ridge.
"A woman!" The first boy whispered it, and the exclamation rippled on to
the next and the next like wind in dry leaves. Remembering the exodus of
the morning, the nurse knew if she was to stay she must prove her need and
prove it quickly. Her voice was as business-like as in the old San days.
"Dressing-station? Company's surgeon? Wounded? Doesn't matter which, only
get me some work."
A hand slipped out of the darkness and caught her elbow. "This way, lady,"
and she was drawn along the protecting shelter of the ridge. After rods of
stumbling she stumbled down irrational stairs into the same dugout she had
left that morning. She was almost as surprised as the two surgeons.
"You're a fool," muttered Griggs. "Wait till they order me back. I'll not
be crying for purgatory twice."
The chief smiled. "I reckon you got that S O S call I've been sending out
all day. We need help like sixty. Bichloride's under that basin. We'll be
ready for you when you've washed up. Night ahead--" His words trailed off
into an incoherent chuckling. He was wondering how the girl had managed
it. He was wondering more what the command would do when it found out. In
the mean time he was glorying in her courage; he would see she got full
measure of the work that had claimed her in spite of orders, while he
silently thanked a merciful God for providing her.
No one questioned her right to be there that night. Wounded poured in,
flooded the dugout to capacity, were cared for, carried away, and more
flooded again. It was daybreak before a lull came, and then there were
orders to be ready to follow the battalion in an hour. So they ate a
snatch, packed, and rolled on in the wake of the Allies' conquest.
Again it was nightfall before they caught up with their regiment. Even to
eyes as inexperienced as theirs it was easy to see it had been factored
and factored again, and not the half of it was standing. They found a
couple of regimental surgeons floundering through a sea of wounded. The
nurse had to bite her lips to keep back the cry of horror over the
apparent hopelessness of the task that lay before them. So many--and so
few hands to do it all!
A shout went up from the men who had come through whole, when they saw
her. They were wet, covered with mud, aching in every joint and sinew, but
they forgot it all in their joyful pride over the fact that the nurse was
standing by.
"Gosh durn it, it's our girl!"
"Stuck fast to the old bat. Whoopee!"
"At-a-boy! Three cheers for the pluckiest girl on the front--our girl!"
and a young giant led the cheering that sprang as one yell from those
husky throats.
"She's all right--our girl's all right--'rah-'rah-'rah!"
Sheila's own voice was too husky to more than whisper, as she slipped
behind the giant, "Tell them my thanks and--good luck."
"You bet I will."
From that instant there was no more helplessness in the feelings of Sheila
O'Leary. She felt empowered to move mountains, to make new a mangled heap
of boys. As she joined the chief she stopped to see how it was with him.
His eyes met hers, and in the flash she read there the same fighting faith
that was in her own heart. He patted her shoulder.
"Didn't think you'd funk. Nothing like team-work when you're up against
it. Keeps you believing in the divinity of man, eh?"
And who can tell if at times like these the power of the Nazarene does not
pass on to those who go fearlessly forth to minister in the face of death!
It would not be so strange if he had passed over innumerable battle-fields
and so anointed those who had come to succor that their task was made
easier and their burden at least bearable.
There was no shelter for any of them that night. They worked in the open,
and volunteers came from the ranks to do what they could. The surgeons
would have scorned them, but the nurse mustered in a score or more to keep
the fires under the kettles burning, to hold supplies and lanterns, to
make coffee when the sterilizing basins could be surrendered for the
purpose; and she showed those with pocket-knives how to cut away the
blood-soaked clothing. Caked with mud herself and desperately hungry, she
dressed and comforted as she went. The scene was ghastly--Verestchagin
might have painted it--but Sheila saw none of it. It was for her a time
exalted, even for those she helped to die. There was no sting in this
death. As she passed on and on in the darkness the space about her seemed
filled with the shadowy forms of those whom God was mustering out,
peacefully, gloriously waiting His command to march into a land of full
promise. So acutely did she feel this that a prayer rose to her lips and
stayed there, mute, half through the night, that some time she might be
given the chance to make this clear for those who mourned at home, to make
them feel that death, here, held no sting.
In the midst of it Sheila felt a heavy hand laid on her arm, and turned to
look into the face of the commander.
"Are you the nurse I ordered back two days ago?"
"I believe so."
"Who ordered you back again?"
"No one."
"How did you come?"
The girl laughed softly. She could not resist the memory of that flight.
"Engine went wrong and I--beat it. Don't blame the driver; he did his best
to obey orders. I joined the division last night and came on with my
chief."
"So there's no use in ordering you back?"
"None in the least--that is, not so long as the boys are coming in like
this."
"How long can you stand it?"
"As long as they can, sir." And then without rhyme or reason tears sprang
into the nurse's eyes, to her great mortification and terror. That would
probably finish her; a woman who cried had no place at the front, and the
general would dismiss her promptly and with scorn.
But he did not. The hand that had touched her arm reached out and gripped
her hand. She caught a whimsical smile brushing his lips in the dark.
"Good night. When you want your discharge, I'll sign it."
He went as swiftly and silently as he had come. The nurse turned back to
her work with a sigh of relief. The regiment was hers officially now.
The next day they made another little town. So quickly and unexpectedly
had the enemy been forced to evacuate it that there had been no time to
destroy or pillage, and the shells had somehow passed it by. The town was
full of liberated French--the young and very old--who crowded the streets
and shouted their welcome as the troops passed through. The chapel was
flung open to receive the wounded, and the hospital unit was installed
therein.
As Sheila O'Leary crossed the threshold of the little church a strange
feeling sprang at her, so that her throat went dry and her heart almost
stopped beating. It was as if something apart from her and yet not apart
had spoken and said: "Here is where the big moment of your life will be
staged. Whatever matters for all time will happen here, and what has gone
before--the San, the hospital, everything you have felt, striven for,
believed in, and trusted--all that is but a prologue. The real part of
your life is just beginning--or--"
Griggs broke the terror that was clutching at her. "What's the matter?
Don't you know there's a war going on and about a million wounded coming
in? There are a few hundred of them up there, lying round under the images
of the saints. The saints may bless 'em, but they won't dress 'em. The
chief's growling for you. Come along!"
For once she was grateful to the pessimist. She tried to brush the
strangeness away as she hurried down the aisle, but it clung in spite of
her. And at the altar more strangeness confronted her. A slightly wounded
lad suddenly reached out a hand holding a crumpled paper.
"Guess you're Miss O'Leary, ain't you? He said there wasn't much of a
chance, but what you don't expect over here is what you get. You know?"
The incoherency was lost on Sheila. She took the crumpled paper
wonderingly and found it covered with Peter's scribbled hieroglyphics:
BELOVED:
The boys have been telling me about you--to think you're really with
us and standing by! It may bring its dole of horror--bound to--we all
have our turn at it. If it comes, hold to your courage and take deep
hold of that wonder-soul of yours; that will steady you. And
remember, there is peace coming, and home--yours and mine. Close your
eyes when the sights get too bad, and you'll see that blessed house
of ours on the hilltop you've chosen; you'll see the little lamp
shining us good cheer. Think of that. I'm with the other wing now,
but any day I may be shifted to yours. Until then,
Yours,
"P. B."
The nurse thrust the paper into the front of her uniform, shook the hand
that had brought it to her, and passed up the steps to the work that was
waiting for her. The first day passed like a dream. Guns boomed, shells
screeched their way overhead and landed somewhere. Wounded came and went.
Many died, and a white-haired, tottering old sexton helped to carry them
away. The old palsied _abbe_ came and chanted prayers for the dying, and
some one played a "_Dies Irae_" on the little organ. Old French mothers
stole in timorously and offered their services, the service of their hands
and emptied hearts. When they found they might help they were pathetically
grateful, fluttering down between the aisles of wounded like souls with a
day's reprieve from purgatory. They were finding panacea for their
bereavement in this care of the sons of other mothers. And as they passed
Sheila, in broken sentences, almost inarticulate, they told their sorrow:
"Six--all gone, ma'm'selle."
"Jean, Francois, Paul, and Victor--Victor the last--he fell two months
ago."
"Four sons and four daughters--a rich legacy from my dead husband,
ma'm'selle. And I have paid it back--soul by soul--all--he has them all
now."
So they mourned as they went their way of tender service, the words
dropping unconsciously from their quivering old lips. A few there were who
stood apart, the envied mothers with hope. Sheila learned who they were
almost from the beginning. Each had a son somewhere not reported. Old
Madame d'Arcy whispered about it as she bathed the face of the boy who
looked so much like her own.
"Of course, ma'm'selle, my Lucien may be--I have not heard from him in
many months. It is not for me to hope too much. But I think--yes, I think,
ma'm'selle, he will come home to me when the war is over."
And Madame Simone, who brought fresh black coffee and little cakes for
those who could eat them, trembled with the gladness of ministering to the
boys who were fighting with hers for France. "I had almost ceased to pray
when the Americans came, but now--ah, ma'm'selle, now there is hope again
in this withered breast. I even dream now of mon p'tit--the youngest of
them all. I feel the good God is sparing him for me."
And old Isabelle, who came to scrub the floor and clean, muttered, as she
bent her willing back to the labor: "Moi, that is what I say, too. The
Lord will send my Jacques home to comfort my old age."
As Sheila listened, it epitomized for her the tragedy of the mothers of
France, this antiphonal chorus of the mothers who had lost all and those
who had yet one son left. To the girl's mind there came in almost cruel
contrast that chorus of Maeterlinck's mothers raised in rapturous
expectancy to the unborn; she knew she was hearing now the agonized
antithesis of it. Throughout the first day it rang incessantly, until she
could have hummed the haunting melody of it. Then night came. The patches
of reds and greens and blues that had sifted through the stained-glass
window in the chancel and played all day in grotesque patches on the white
cheeks of the wounded faded alike to gray, and the nurse lit the tall wax
candles on the altar that the work might go on without stopping.
The next day--and the next--passed much the same. There was no end to the
wounded. Griggs fainted twice the second day, and the chief and Sheila
carried the work alone for a few hours. Each of them was acutely conscious
of the strain on the other and did what he and she could to ease the
tension. For the girl her greatest comfort was in the scrap of paper
crumpled over her breast. It told her Peter was near, coming to her soon.
It seemed to transmit some of his strength and optimism. There were
moments when, but for his reassurance, the girl would have doubted every
normal, happy phase of life and acknowledged only the unending torture and
renunciation. Sometimes the horror seemed to wrap them in like an
impenetrable fog. As for the chief, it took every ounce of will and sanity
to keep him going, and he wondered how the girl beside him could brave it
through without a whimper.
Always about them roared the great guns like the last booming of a
judgment day, and under that noise the moaning chorus of the French
mothers. When the strain reached the breaking-point Sheila closed her eyes
and looked for the light on the hilltop that Peter had promised would be
there--and there it always was. Moreover, she could feel Peter's vital
presence and the marvelous reality of his love reaching nearer and nearer
to her through the darkness. So she kept her head clear and her hands
steady and forced a smile whenever the chief eyed her anxiously. She never
failed a boy "going west." To the last breath she let him see the
radiating faith of her own soul that believed in the ultimate Love above
everything else. Those old illuminating smiles that had won for her her
nickname of Leerie never had to be forced, and they lighted the way out
for many a groping soul in that little church. And the old Frenchwomen,
watching above their prayers for the return of Louis or Charles or
Jacques, said:
"See, for all she's so young, she knows what the mother-heart is. That is
why she feels for us. She knows how our hearts have bled."
On the 9th of November they were still there. The division had continued
its drive, but slowly, and no orders had come for the mobile unit to go
forward. And then came one of those lulls and flush-backs which for the
moment made one almost believe that the tide of battle had turned
again--and for the enemy. With the coming of the first wounded that day
came orders to evacuate the town at once.
At first the townsfolk would not believe, but as the muddy columns of the
first company could be seen on the outskirts, doubt gave place to
certainty, and without moan they gathered up what few belongings they
could and set their faces toward what they prayed would hold French soil.
Before the refugees had cleared the town, the shelling began, giving the
last impelling haste to their exodus. The hospital unit stayed in the
church. They got the wounded ready to be moved and waited for further
orders. They came in another ten minutes; everybody was to clear out.
Three ambulances from the east and a half-dozen from the west gathered up
the stretcher cases, while the others piled into the supply-trucks--that
is, all but the chief and Sheila. They stood in the church door with
minds for anything but going. It came to them both that, as the battalions
fell back, each would be bringing its wounded as far as it could. If there
was a place to drop them--and care waiting until a few more ambulances
could push through--many lives might be saved, and much suffering.
The chief looked down at the girl and saw what was in her mind. Linking
his arm in hers, he muttered under his breath, "Still game, bless you!"
And then aloud: "Miss O'Leary and I have a liking for this place. We'll
stay until the next orders."
Griggs had climbed to the footboard of an ambulance, and he faced them
with contempt. "We didn't volunteer to sit 'round and be blown to bits.
Don't be fools, you two. Come on while you've got a chance." And then,
when he saw how futile were his words: "If you haven't had enough
slaughter for one while, I have. Good-by."
As they waved them off, the muddy column of the first company swung down
the street. It was even as they had thought--wounded were with them, and
the nurse and surgeon hurried inside to make ready. The day wound itself
out in an almost ludicrous repetition of events. Straggling companies fell
back, dropped their wounded, and went on; a few ambulances made the town,
gathered up the worst cases, and went back. Desultory shells picked off
their belfry, smashed a group of monuments in the cemetery, and wiped out
a street of houses not far away. And every half-hour or so came the orders
to evacuate at once. Regiment after regiment fell back through the city;
the rest of the division must have passed to north and south of it. By
nightfall nearly all had passed and the town was left like a delta between
two dividing currents.
"They'll begin shelling in earnest by midnight. We'll get barrages from
both sides. We won't know it, but this town's going to be wiped off the
map to-night." The chief said it in his most matter-of-fact voice, but his
face showed gray.
The girl hushed him. "The boys might hear, and they've been through so
much. There's no harm in letting them hope." She turned back to the
emergency kettle she was stirring. They were making cocoa and feeding the
boys out of the chalice-cups from the altar. To the nurse it seemed like
passing the last communion, and though her hands kept steady, her heart
seemed drained.
Out of the noise and the gathering gloom outside came two more
stretcher-loads. The bearers whistled when they saw the red cross on the
door. They whistled harder when they pushed it open and looked inside.
"Gee! we thought all you outfits had been ordered back!" The bearers laid
down their burden on a pew, and the fore one groaned out the words.
"We were," the chief spoke. "Sorry we didn't go?"
"Dunno. Bet these chaps wouldn't be, though--if they knew. Don't know
whether it's any use trying; they're all but gone, Doc." The speaker
jerked his head over his shoulder and thumbed a command to the other
bearers. "Here you, Jake! You and Fritzie hustle along with yours."
As the surgeon bent over to examine, the nurse stopped an instant to
listen, then went on feeding her boys.
"This one's French." The chief was looking over the first stretcher. "How
did you pick him up?"
"Got mixed up with a company of _poilus_ in the last scrap. We fought all
together."
"Hmmmm! He'll need speed or he'll make it. Give me a hand with him, boys,
over to the table there."
"Wait, Doc. There's another just as bad. He's--the other's a Yank."
The spokesman again jerked his comrades into further evidence. One of the
bearers was an American, the other a captured German, slightly wounded.
Between them lay a figure in the gray uniform of a correspondent. A heavy
growth of beard made the man almost unrecognizable, but something tugged
at the chief's memory and set him speculating. He cast a furtive glance
over his shoulder toward the nurse, then lowered his voice.
"You haven't any idea who it is, have you?"
"Sure. He's the A. P. man that's been with our division from the first.
His name's Brooks."
The chalice fell through Sheila's fingers and struck the altar steps with
a sharp, metallic ring. The next instant she was beside the chief, looking
down with wide, unbelieving eyes at the stretcher which held nothing
familiar but the gray uniform--and there were many men wearing the same.
It could not be. This was not the way Peter was coming back to her. In all
the days of horror, of caring for the hundreds of wounded, it had never
entered her mind that war might claim the man she loved. Her love, and the
fulfilment thereof, had stood out as the one absolute reality of life, the
thing that could not fail. This simply could not be; Peter was still far
away, but coming, supreme in his strength, invulnerable in his love and
promise to her.
"You--don't know him?" The chief asked it hopefully.
The girl shook her head. "He can't be--The beard--Wait." Her hand slipped
through the opening in his uniform to an inside pocket. She drew out a
flat bundle of papers, and the first glance told her all she needed to
know. There was Peter's unmistakable scribbling on the uppermost, and from
under it showed the corner of one of her letters to him.
The chief's hand steadied her. "No time to lose, girl, but we'll pull him
through. We've got to fight for it, but we'll do it. Easy there, boys.
Take him over to the table, there, under the light."
But Sheila O'Leary put out a detaining hand. Her eyes were no longer on
Peter; she was looking at the figure on the other stretcher. "What did you
say about that French boy?"
"He'll have to go, poor chap! There isn't time for both. Listen, Leerie,"
as a flash of pain swept the girl's face, "it's a toss-up between them
who's worse, and it's down now to a matter of minutes. It means the best
team-work we've done yet to save just your man."
Still the girl made no move. Her eyes were turned away. In her ears was
ringing the chorus of the mothers, those waiting for Louis or Jacques or
Lucien to come home. Dear God, what was she to do?
The chief pulled her sleeve. "Wake up, girl. There's a chance for your
man, I tell you, only in Heaven's name don't waste it! Come."
She tried to take her eyes away from the boy, tried to shut her ears to
the cry that was ringing in them. She wanted to look at Peter and say the
word that would start the bearers carrying him to that little zone of
light about the altar where they had saved so many during those days. But
her eyes clung, in spite of her, to the white boy-face and the faded blue
uniform below it. Peter had no mother, no one but herself to face the
grief and mourn the loss of him, and the hearts of French mothers had been
drained--bled almost to the last drop? Wouldn't Peter say to save that
drop? Had she the right to shed it and spare her own heart's bleeding? The
questions filtered through her mind with the inevitableness of sands in an
hour-glass. With a cry of agony she wrenched her eyes away at last and
faced the chief.
"We'll let Peter--wait. We'll take the boy--first."
Dumfounded, the chief stared for the fraction of a moment; then he shook
her. "For God's sake, wake up, Leerie! You've gone through so much, your
thinking isn't just clear. Get rational, girl. You'd be deliberately
killing your man, to leave him now. You don't realize his condition, or
you wouldn't be wasting time this way. By the time we finish with the
first there'll be no chance for the second; they're both bleeding in a
dozen places. Here, boys! Help me over with Mr. Brooks."
But Sheila put out a quick hand and held them back. "And if I put Peter
first I shall be deliberately killing the other. Don't you see? I can't do
it--Peter wouldn't wish it--it would mean--Boys, carry over the other. The
chief's going to save a lad for France."
There was no denying her. She stood guard over Peter's stretcher until the
other had been lifted and carried away. Grimly the surgeon followed, and
Sheila turned to the two who were still holding the stretcher.
"Would you mind putting him down there? Now, will you leave us just a
minute?" She spoke to the American, but the German must have understood,
for he led the way to the church door and stood with his back to her.
Even the comfort of staying with Peter to the last was denied her. The
chief had said it must be team-work, the best. She mustn't waste many
seconds. She thought of the many she had helped to die, the courage a warm
grip of the hand had given, the healing strength in a smile, and her
heart cringed before this last sacrifice of giving Peter over to a
desolate, prayerless death. Hardly breathing, she slipped down and laid
her cheek to his bearded one. She could offer one prayer, that he need
never wake to know. Kneeling there, his last words came back to her almost
in mockery:
"Don't bungle your instincts. I'd trust them next to God's own."
Dear God, if she only could bungle them! If only they had not wrenched
from her this torturing, ghastly choice! She knew the meaning now of the
strangeness that had met her as she first crossed the threshold of the
little church. She knew why the chorus of mothers had been sung so deep
into her heart. The greatest moment of her life had come--a terrible,
soul-rending moment. And beyond it lay nothing. She choked out an
incoherent, futile prayer into the dulled ears--and left him. This--this
was her farewell to Peter Brooks--her man--her man for all time.
The American orderly had disappeared. Sheila stumbled over to the door and
gripped the sleeve of the German.
"If he opens his eyes"--she opened and shut her own eyes in
pantomime--"come for me, quick. Verstehen?"
The German nodded.
For the next half-hour, with nerves keyed to their utmost and hands
working with the greatest speed and skill they were capable of, Sheila
O'Leary's soul went down into purgatory and stayed there. Not once did she
look beyond the boy she was helping to save; not once did she let herself
think what might be happening beyond the circle of light that hemmed them
in. With all the woman courage she could muster, she was stifling every
breath of love or longing--or self-pity. If she could have killed her body
and known that when that night's work was done she would be laid in the
cemetery outside with Peter, she would have been almost satisfied.
Suddenly she realized they had finished. The chief was repeating something
over and over again.
"The boy is safe. You'd better lie down."
The bearers were moving the boy back to the pews and the chief was leading
her down the steps of the chancel. But it was Sheila who guided their
steps at the bottom. She led the way toward the German and the thing he
had been asked to watch. Terror shook her. It seemed as if she could never
look at what she knew would be waiting for her, and yet no power on earth
could have held her back.
As she reached the prisoner she saw in bewilderment a strange scattering
of things on the floor about him--forceps, some knives, a roll of gauze,
and a syringe. There was an odor of a strange antiseptic which made her
faint. She tottered and would have fallen had the German not helped the
chief to steady her.
"He has not gained consciousness, madam. He has lost too much blood for
that." The German spoke in English. He also spread his hands in mute
apology for what he had done. "I have stanched his wounds with what poor
supplies I had with me. It has merely kept him alive. He will require more
care, better dressing."
No one answered. Words seemed the most impossible and absurd means of
expression just then.
The German smiled at the look Sheila gave him, and the smile was arrogant.
"You Americans have always made such a fuss over what you have been
pleased to call our brutalities. What is war if it isn't a consistent
effort to exterminate the enemy? The women are the wives of the enemy and
the breeders of more; the wounded are still the enemy--if they recover,
they fight again. But a German knows how to honor a brave act. And when
you go back, madam, you can tell how Carl Tiefmann, a German surgeon,
wounded and taken prisoner, so far forgot his Prussian creed as to spare
an enemy for a brave woman."
He bowed and went back to the church doors. Sheila watched him go through
a trailing of mist; then she dropped through the chief's arms,
unconscious, on the floor beside Peter's stretcher.
The Germans never reached the little town, and by some merciful stroke of
luck neither did any more of the shells. So it came to pass that on the
11th of November a very white nurse, holding fast to the hand of a man
unconscious on a stretcher, followed Peace across the threshold of the
American Military Hospital No. 10. It was days before Sheila spoke above a
husky whisper or smiled, for it was days before Peter was out of
danger, but there came a morning at last when a shaven and shorn Peter,
looking oddly familiar, opened clear, sane eyes and saw the woman he loved
bending close above him.
[Illustration: "He will require more care, better dressing"]
He gave the same old cry that he had given ages before when he had come
out of another nightmare of unconsciousness and fear, "It's Leerie--why,
it's Leerie!"
And Sheila smiled down at him again with the old luminous smile.
When he was sufficiently mended to look about him and take reckoning of
what had happened, he asked first for the ring that he had bought for that
long-before wedding and that he had carried ever since with him. And he
asked, second, for the chaplain.
Sheila drew the gold chain from about her neck and dangled the ring in
front of his nose. "I took it when we cut off your coat that night, and
I've kept it handy ever since. The chaplain's handy, too. He's
promised--any hour of the day or night. Shall we send for him--now?"
Peter nodded.
The nurse turned to go, hesitated, and then came back to the cot. Peter
thought he had never seen her eyes so full of wonder.
"Man o' mine, maybe you won't want me when you know I almost let you go,
that I intended to let you die to save first a French lad that came in
with you."
Peter grinned. "Same old Leerie! Well, we're quits, sweetheart, and I'm
glad to have it off my conscience. Sort of did the same thing myself.
Rushed off in the shelling to bring in that same poor chap--he'd got a
bullet in his leg--and all the time I knew I ought to be thinking of you
first and hanging on to safety. Funny, isn't it, how something queer gets
you in the midst of it all and you do the last thing in the world you want
to do? A year or two and the whole thing will be unexplainable."
Sheila bent over and laid her lips to Peter's. She knew that in a year--in
a century--they would still understand why they had done these things, and
she was glad they had both paid their utmost for the love and happiness
that she knew was theirs now for all time.
Peter broke on her reverie with a chuckle. "Remember old Hennessy saying
once that he believed you would give me away with everything else--if you
thought anybody else needed me more? He'd certainly wash his hands of the
pair of us."
"Hennessy's an old dear. I'll get the chaplain, and afterward let's send
Hennessy the first--and the best--cable he's ever had. Sort of owe it to
him, don't we?"
Without any of the original splendor of decorations, collation, and
attire, with no one but the chaplain to marry them and the chief to bless
them, Sheila O'Leary came into her own at last. As for Peter--he looked as
Hennessy described him on the day the Brookses came home--"wi' one eye on
the thruest lass God ever made an' the other on Paradise."
AFTERWORD
I thought I had to have a better ending to the story than the scraps of
things I had made over from Leerie's letters and what Peter had told me.
So I went to Hennessy.
It was midwinter. I found him cracking the ice on the pond to let the
swans in for a cold bath.
"'Tis not docthor's ordthers," he grinned by way of explanation; "but they
get so blitherin' uneasy there's no housin' them. That's the why I give
them a bit of a cold nip onct the while--sure 'tis good threatment for us
all--an' then they settle down."
I huddled deeper into a fur coat and tried to agree with Hennessy.
"Did ye see Leerie, then, since she came home?"
"Have you?"
He shirred his lips into an ecstatic pucker and whistled triumphantly.
"Wasn't I always sayin' she'd marry the finest gentleman in the land, same
as the King o' Ireland's only daughter, and go dandtherin' off to a fine
home of her own?"
"And she has."
"She has that."
"And so the story's told, Hennessy."
"Told nothin'. Sure, it isn't half told--it isn't more than half begun,
just."
"But you can't end a book that way. You have to end with an ending."
"'Tis the best way to end a book, then. Haven't ye taken the lass over the
worst o' the road an' aren't ye leavin' her with the best ahead?"
"But what is there left--to find along the way? She's found her
work--that's over with. She's found her man--that's over with. She's found
love--that's over--"
Hennessy interrupted me almost viciously. I think he wanted to prod me
instead of the ice. "What kind of talkin' is that for a person who thries
to write books about real folk? Ye harken to me. Do ye think because love
is found 'tis over with? Sure, Leerie's only caught a whiff of it
yet--'tis naught but budded for her. By an' by there come the blossom of
it an' the fruit of it. An' when death maybe withers it for a
spell--'twill be but a winther-time promise to bud an' blossom again in
the Counthry Beyond. There's no witherin' to love like hers. An' do ye
think because she has her man found there's no pretty fancy or adventure
still waitin' them along the way? An' do ye think Leerie's work will ever
be done? Tell me that!"
The shirr tightened into something like contempt. Hennessy looked down
upon me with undisguised pity.
"Did ye ever know Leerie at all, at all, I'm wondtherin'--to be savin'
things like that? Don't ye know for the likes o' her there'll be
childher--Saint Anthony send them a nestful!" He crossed himself to
further the wish. "An' over an' above the time it takes tendin' an' lovin'
them an' rearin' them into the finest parcel o' youngsters God ever
made--wi' the help o' their parents--there'll be time left to light the
way for every poor, sorry soul within a hundred miles o' her. Ye can take
my word for it; an' if she never did another stroke o' work so long as she
lived--bein' Leerie, just, would be enough."
"You may be right, Hennessy, but it's still no way to end a book."
He came a step nearer and shook a warning finger at me. "Will ye listen?
Faith, I'm wondtherin' sometimes that folk read your books when ye have so
little sense wi' the endin' o' them. Don't ye know that a book that ends
wi' the end is a dead book entirely? An' who cares to be readin' a dead
book? Tell me that."
His contempt changed to commiseration. I might have been Brian Boru, the
gray swan, the way he looked at me.
"The right way of endin' is with a beginnin'--the beginnin' o' something
bigger an' betther an' sweeter. 'Tis like ye were takin' a friend with ye
up a high hill--showin' him all the pretty things along the way. Then just
afore ye get to the top--an' afore ye can look over an' see what's waitin'
beyond--ye leave him, sayin', 'Go ye alone an' find whatever ye are most
wishin' for.'"
He stopped, pushed his hat back and pulled his forelock as if for more
inspiration. "Do ye see? Just be leavin' it to folk the world over. They
can read in a betther endin' than ye can be writin' in in a hundthred
years. An' let Leerie be as I'm tellin' ye--wi' the road windin' over the
hill an' out o' sight. Sure the two of us know what she'll be findin'
there; an' do ye think the readers have less sense than what we have?"
THE END