The little group was gathered in the cellar of Pervyse. An occasional
shell was heard in the middle distance, as artillery beyond the Yser
threw a lazy feeler over to the railway station. The three women were
entertaining a distinguished guest at the evening meal of tinned rabbit
and dates. Their visitor was none other than F. Ainslie-Barkleigh, the
famous English war-correspondent. He was dressed for the part. He wore
high top-boots, whose red leather shone richly even in the dim yellow of
the lantern that lit them to their feast. About his neck was swung a
heavy black strap from which hung a pair of very elegant field-glasses,
ready for service at a moment's call. He could sweep a battle-field
with them, or expose a hidden battery, or rake a road. From the belt
that made his jacket shapely about his person, there depended a map of
the district, with heavy inked red lines for the position of friend or
foe. He was a tall man, with an immense head, on which were stuck, like
afterthoughts, very tiny features--a nose easily overlooked, a thin slit
of a mouth, and small inset eyes. All the upper part of him was
overhanging and alarming, till you chanced on those diminutive features.
It was as if his growth had been terminated before it reached the
expressive parts. He had an elaborate manner--a reticence, a drawl, and
a chronic irony. Across half of his chest there streaked a rainbow of
color; gay little ribbons of decoration, orange and crimson and purple
and white.
Mrs. Bracher, sturdy, iron-jawed, and Scotch, her pretty young
assistant, sat opposite him at table. Hilda did the honors by sitting
next him, and passing him tins of provender, as required.
"What pretty ribbons you wear," said Hilda. "Where did you get them?"
"Oh, different wars," returned Barkleigh carelessly.
"That's modest, but it's vague," urged Hilda. "If I had such pretty
ribbons, I should have the case letter and the exhibit number printed on
each. Now this one, for instance. What happened to set this fluttering?"
"Oh, that one," he said, nearly twisting his eyes out of their sockets
to see which one her fingers had lighted on. "That's one the Japs gave
me."
"Thank you for not calling them the little brown people," returned
Hilda; "that alone would merit decoration at their hands. And this gay
thing, what principality gave you this?"
"That came from somewhere in the Balkans. I always did get those states
muddled up."
"Incredible haziness," responded Hilda. "You probably know the exact
hour when the King and his Chief of Staff called you out on the
Town-hall steps. You must either be a very brave man or else write very
nice articles about the ruling powers."
"The latter, of course," returned he, a little nettled.
"Vain as a peacock," whispered Scotch to the ever-watchful Mrs. Bracher.
"I don't understand you women," said Ainslie-Barkleigh, clearing his
throat for action. But Hilda was too quick for him.
"I know you don't," she cut in, "and that is no fault in you. But what
you really mean is that you don't like us, and that, I submit, is your
own fault."
"But let me explain," urged he.
"Go ahead," said Hilda.
"Well, what I mean is this," he explained. "Here I find you three women
out at the very edge of the battle-front. Here you are in a cellar,
sleeping in bags on the straw, living on bully-beef and canned stuff.
Now, you could just as well be twenty miles back, nursing in a
hospital."
"Is there any shortage of nurses for the hospitals?" interposed Hilda.
"When I went to the Red Cross at Pall Mall in London, they had over
three thousand nurses on the waiting list."
"That's true enough," assented Barkleigh. "But what I mean is, this is
reckless; you are in danger, without really knowing it."
"So are the men in danger," returned Hilda. "The soldiers come in here,
hungry, and we have hot soup for them. They come from the trenches, with
a gunshot wound in the hand, or a piece of shell in a leg, and we fix
them up. That's better than travelling seven or eight miles before
getting attention. Why it was only a week ago that Mrs. Bracher here--"
"Now none of that," broke in the nurse sternly.
"Hush," said Hilda, "it isn't polite to interrupt when a gentleman is
asking for information."
She turned back to the correspondent.
"Last week," she took up her story, "a young Belgian private came in
here with his lower lip swollen out to twice its proper size. It had got
gangrene in it. A silly old military doctor had clapped a treatment over
it, when the wound was fresh and dirty, without first cleaning it out.
Mrs. Bracher treated it every two hours for six days. The boy used to
come right in here from the trenches. And would you believe it, that lip
is looking almost right. If it hadn't been for her, he would have been
disfigured for life."
"Very good," admitted the correspondent, "but it doesn't quite satisfy
me. Wait till you get some real hot shell fire out here, then you'll
make for your happy home."
"Why," began Scotch, rising slowly but powerfully to utterance.
"It's all right, Scotch," interposed Hilda, at a gallop, "save the
surprise. It will keep."
Scotch subsided into a rich silence. She somehow never quite got into
the conversation, though she was always in the action. She was one of
those silent, comfortable persons, without whom no group is complete.
Into her ample placidity fell the high-pitched clamor of noisier people,
like pebbles into a mountain lake.
"Now, what do you women think you are doing?" persisted the
correspondent. "Why are you here?"
"You really want to know?" queried Hilda.
"I really want to know," he repeated.
"I'll answer you to-morrow," said Hilda. "Come out here to-morrow
afternoon and we'll go to Nieuport. We promised to go over and visit
the dressing-station there, and on the way I'll tell you why we are
here."
* * * * *
Next day was grey and chilly. A low rumble came out of the north. The
women had a busy morning, for the night had been full of snipers perched
on trees. The faithful three spread aseptics and bandaged and sewed, and
generally cheered the stream of callers from the Ninth and Twelfth
Regiments, Army of the King of the Belgians. In the early afternoon, the
buzz of motors penetrated to the stuffy cellar, and it needed no yelping
horn, squeezed by the firm hand of Smith, to bring Hilda to the surface,
alert for the expedition. Two motor ambulances were puffing their lungs
out, in the roadway. Pale-faced Smith sat in one at the
steering-gear--Smith, the slight London boy who would drive a car
anywhere. Beside him sat F. Ainslie-Barkleigh, bent over upon his war
map, studying the afternoon's campaign. In the second ambulance were
Tom, the Cockney driver, and the leader of the Ambulance Corps, Dr. Neil
McDonnell.
"Jump in," called he, "we're off for Nieuport."
She jumped into the first ambulance, and they turned to the north and
took the straight road that leads all the way from Dixmude to the sea.
Barkleigh was much too busy with his glasses and his map to give her any
of his attention for the first quarter hour. They speeded by sentinel
after sentinel, who smiled and murmured, "Les Anglais." Corporals,
captains, commandants, gazed in amazement and awe at the massive figure
of the war-correspondent, as he challenged the horizon with his
binoculars and then dipped to his map for consultation. Only once did
the party have to yield up the pass-word, which for that afternoon was
"Charleroi." Finally Barkleigh turned to the girl.
"We had a discussion last evening," he began, "and you promised to
answer my question. Why are you out here? Why isn't a hospital good
enough for you, back in Furnes or Dunkirk?"
"I remember," returned Hilda. "I'll tell you. I could answer you by
saying that we're out to help, and that would be true, too. But it
wouldn't be quite the whole truth, for there's a tang of adventure in
Pervyse, where we can see the outposts of the other fellows, that there
isn't in the Carnegie Library in Pittsburg, let us say. Yes, we're out
to help. But we're out for another reason, too. For generations now, you
men have had a monopoly of physical courage. You have faced storms at
sea, and charged up hills, and pulled out drowning children, and footed
it up fire-ladders, till you think that bravery is a male
characteristic. You've always handed out the passive suffering act to
us. We had any amount of compliments as long as we stuck to silent
suffering. But now we want to see what shells look like. As long as sons
and brothers have to stand up to them, why, we're going to be there,
too."
"But you haven't been in the thick of it," objected Barkleigh. "When the
danger is so close you can see it, a woman's nerve isn't as good as a
man's. It can't be. She isn't built that way."
"That's the very point," retorted Hilda, "we're going to show you."
"Damn quick," muttered Smith.
In the pleasant heat of their discussion, they hadn't been noticing the
roadway. It was full of soldiers, trudging south. The rumble had become
a series of reports. The look of the peaceful day was changing.
Barkleigh turned from his concentration on the girl, and glanced up the
road.
"These troops are all turning," he said.
"You are right," Hilda admitted.
"Can't you see," he urged, "they're all marching back. That means
they've given the place up."
"Oh, hardly that," corrected Hilda; "it simply means that Nieuport is
hot for the present moment."
"You're not going in?" continued Barkleigh. "It is foolish to go into
the town, when the troops are coming out of it."
"True enough," assented Hilda, "but it's a curious fact that the wounded
can't retreat as fast as the other men, so I'm afraid we shall have to
look them up. Of course, it would be a lot pleasanter if they could come
to meet us half-way."
Smith let out his motor, and turned up his coat collar, a habit of his
when he anticipated a breezy time. They pounded down the road, and into
the choice old town.
They had chanced on the afternoon when the enemy's guns were reducing it
from an inhabited place into a rubbish heap. They could not well have
chosen a brisker hour for the promised visit. The shells were coming in
three and four to the minute. There was a sound of falling masonry. The
blur of red brick-dust in the air, and the fires from a half dozen
blazing houses, filled the eyes with hot prickles. The street was a mess
over which the motor veered and tossed like a careening boat in a heavy
seawash. In the other car, their leader, brave, perky little Dr.
McDonnell, sat with his blue eyes dreaming away at the ruin in front of
him. The man was a mystic and burrowed down into his sub-consciousness
when under fire. This made him calm, slow, and very absent-minded,
during the moments when he passed in under the guns.
They steamed up to the big yellow Hôtel de Ville. This was the target of
the concentrated artillery fire, for here troops had been sheltering.
Here, too, in the cellar, was the dressing-station for the wounded. A
small, spent, but accurately directed obus, came in a parabola from over
behind the roofs, and floated by the ambulance and thudded against the
yellow brick of the stately hall.
"Ah, it's got whiskers on it," shouted Hilda in glee. "I didn't know
they got tired like that, and came so slow you could see them, did you,
Mr. Barkleigh?"
"No, no, of course not," he muttered, "they don't. What's that?"
The clear, cold tinkle of breaking and spilling glass had seized his
attention. The sound came out from the Hôtel de Ville.
"The window had a pane," said Hilda.
"The town is doomed," said Barkleigh.
"Can't we get out of this?" he insisted. "This is no place to be."
"No place for a woman, is it?" laughed Hilda.
"Don't let me keep you," she added politely, "if you feel you must go."
"Listen," said the war-correspondent. About a stone's throw to their
left, a wall was crumpling up.
Dr. McDonnell had slowly crawled down from his perch on the ambulance.
His legs were stiff from the long ride, so he carefully shook them one
after the other, and spoke pleasantly to a dog that was wandering about
the Grand Place in a forlorn panic. Then he remembered why he had come
to the place. There were wounded downstairs in the Town-hall.
"Come on, boys," he said to Tom and Smith, "bring one stretcher, and
we'll clear the place out. Hilda, you stay by the cars. We shan't be but
a minute."
They disappeared inside the battered building. Barkleigh walked up and
down the Grand Place, felt of the machinery of each of the two
ambulances, lit a cigarette, threw it away and chewed at an unlighted
cigar.
"It's hot," he said; "this is hot."
"And yet you are shaking as if you were chilly," observed Hilda.
"We should never have come," went on Barkleigh. "I said so, away back
there on the road. You remember I said so."
"Yes, the first experience under fire is trying," assented Hilda. "I
think the shells are the most annoying, don't you, Mr. Barkleigh? Now
shrapnel seems more friendly--quite like a hail-storm in Iowa. I come
from Iowa, you know. I don't believe you do know that I come from Iowa."
"They're slow," said Barkleigh, looking toward the Town-hall. "Why can't
they hurry them out?"
"You see," explained Hilda, "there are only three of them actively at
work, and it's quite a handful for them."
In a few moments Smith and Tom appeared, carrying a man with a bandaged
leg on their stretcher. Dr. McDonnell was leading two others, who were
able to walk with a little direction. One more trip in and out and the
ambulances were loaded.
"Back to Pervyse," ordered Dr. McDonnell.
At Pervyse, Scotch and Mrs. Bracher were ready for them. So was an
English Tommy, who singled out Ainslie-Barkleigh.
"Orders from Kitchener, sir," said the orderly. "You must return to
Dunkirk at once. No correspondent is allowed at the front."
Barkleigh listened attentively, and assented with a nod of his head. He
walked up to the three ladies.
"Very sorry," explained he. "I had hoped to stay with you, and go out
again. Very interesting and all that. But K. is strict, you know, so I
must leave you."
He bowed himself away.
"Oh, welcome intervention," breathed Mrs. Bracher.
* * * * *
A few weeks had passed with their angry weather, and now all was green
again and sunny. Seldom had the central square of Poperinghe looked
gayer than on this afternoon, when soldiers were lined up in the middle,
and on all the sides the people were standing by the tens and hundreds.
High overhead from every window and on every pole, flags were streaming
in the spring wind. Why shouldn't the populace rejoice, for had not this
town of theirs held out through all the cruel winter: refuge and rest
for their weary troops, and citadel of their King? And was not that
their King, standing over yonder on the pavement, higher than the
generals and statesmen on the steps of the Town-hall back of him? Tall
and slender, crowned with youth and beauty, did he not hold in his hand
the hearts of all his people? And to-day he was passing on merit to two
English dames, and the people were glad of this, for the two English
dames had been kind to their soldiers in sickness, and had undergone no
little peril to carry them comfort and healing. Yes, they were glad to
shout and clap hands, when, as Chevaliers of the Order of Leopold, the
ribbon and star pendant were pinned on the breast of the sturdy Mrs.
Bracher, and the silent, charming Scotch. The band bashed the cymbals
and beat the drum, and the wind instruments roared approval. And the
modest young King saluted the two brave ladies.
In a shop door, a couple of hundred yards from the ceremony, Hilda was
standing quietly watching the joyous crowds and their King. Pushing
through the throng that hemmed her in, a massive man came and stood by
her.
"Ah, Mr. Barkleigh," said Hilda, "this is a surprise."
"It's a shame," he began.
"What's a shame?" asked Hilda.
"Why aren't they decorating you? You're the bravest of the lot."
"By no means," said Hilda; "those two women deserve all that is coming
to them. I am glad they are getting their pretty ribbon."
With a sudden nervous gesture, Barkleigh unfastened the bright
decorations on his chest, and placed them in Hilda's hand.
"Take them and wear them," he said, "I have no heart for them any more.
They are yours."
"I didn't win them, so I can't wear them," she answered, and started to
hand them back.
"No, I won't take them back," he said harshly, brushing her hand from
him, "if you won't wear them, keep them. Hide them, throw them away. I'm
done with them. I can't wear them any more since that afternoon in
Nieuport."
Hilda pinned the ribbons upon his coat.
"I decorate you," she said, "for, verily, you are now worthy."