Miss Kate did not argue the point. She put the freshly painted wooden
chicken on the table to dry in the sun. Her eyes fell upon a letter
bearing an American postmark and addressed to Sergeant Chester Ball,
with a lot of cryptic figures and letters strung out after it, such as
A.E.F. and Co. 11.
"Here's a letter for you!" She infused a lot of Glad into her voice. But
Chet only cast a languid eye upon it and said, "Yeh?"
"I'll read it to you, shall I? It's a nice fat One."
Chet sat back, indifferent, negatively acquiescent. And Miss Kate began
to read in her clear young voice, there in the sunshine and scent of the
centuries-old English garden.
It marked an epoch in Chet's life--that letter. But before we can
appreciate it we'll have to know Chester Ball in his Chicago days.
Your true lineman has a daredevil way with the women, as have all men
whose calling is a hazardous one. Chet was a crack workman. He could
shinny up a pole, strap his emergency belt, open his tool kit, wield his
pliers with expert deftness, and climb down again in record time. It was
his pleasure--and seemingly the pleasure and privilege of all lineman's
gangs the world over--to whistle blithely and to call impudently to any
passing petticoat that caught his fancy.
Perched three feet from the top of the high pole he would cling,
protected, seemingly, by some force working in direct defiance of the
law of gravity. And now and then, by way of brightening the tedium of
their job he and his gang would call to a girl passing in the street
below, "Hoo-Hoo! Hello, sweetheart!"
There was nothing vicious in it, Chet would have come to the aid of
beauty in distress as quickly as Don Quixote. Any man with a blue shirt
as clean, and a shave as smooth, and a haircut as round as Chet Ball's
has no meanness in him. A certain dare-deviltry went hand in hand with
his work--a calling in which a careless load dispatcher, a cut wire, or
a faulty strap may mean instant death. Usually the girls laughed and
called back to them or went on more quickly, the colour in their cheeks
a little higher.
But not Anastasia Rourke. Early the first morning of a two-weeks' job on
the new plant of the Western Castings Company Chet Ball, glancing down
from his dizzy perch atop an electric light pole, espied Miss Anastasia
Rourke going to work. He didn't know her name nor anything about her,
except that she was pretty. You could see that from a distance even more
remote than Chet's. But you couldn't know that Stasia was a lady not to
be trifled with. We know her name was Rourke, but he didn't.
So then: "Hoo-Hoo!" he had called. "Hello, sweetheart! Wait for me and
I'll be down."
Stasia Rourke had lifted her face to where he perched so high above the
streets. Her cheeks were five shades pinker than was their wont, which
would make them border on the red.
"You big coward, you!" she called, in her clear, crisp voice. "If you
had your foot on the ground you wouldn't dast call to a decent girl like
that. If you were down here I'd slap the face of you. You know you're
safe up there."
The words were scarcely out of her mouth before Chet Ball's sturdy legs
were twinkling down the pole. His spurred heels dug into the soft pine
of the pole with little ripe, tearing sounds. He walked up to Stasia and
stood squarely in front of her, six feet of brawn and brazen nerve. One
ruddy cheek he presented to her astonished gaze. "Hello, sweetheart," he
said. And waited. The Rourke girl hesitated just a second. All the Irish
heart in her was melting at the boyish impudence of the man before her.
Then she lifted one hand and slapped his smooth cheek. It was a ringing
slap. You saw the four marks of her fingers upon his face. Chet
straightened, his blue eyes bluer. Stasia looked up at him, her eyes
wide. Then down at her own hand, as if it belonged to somebody else. Her
hand came up to her own face. She burst into tears, turned, and ran. And
as she ran, and as she wept, she saw that Chet was still standing there,
looking after her.
Next morning, when Stasia Rourke went by to work, Chet Ball was standing
at the foot of the pole, waiting.
They were to have been married that next June. But that next June Chet
Ball, perched perilously on the branch of a tree in a small woodsy spot
somewhere in France, was one reason why the American artillery in that
same woodsy spot was getting such a deadly range on the enemy. Chet's
costume was so devised that even through field glasses (made in Germany)
you couldn't tell where tree left off and Chet began.
Then, quite suddenly, the Germans got the range. The tree in which Chet
was hidden came down with a crash, and Chet lay there, more than ever
indiscernible among its tender foliage.
Which brings us back to the English garden, the yellow chicken, Miss
Kate, and the letter.
His shattered leg was mended by one of those miracles of modern war
surgery, though he never again would dig his spurred heels into the pine
of a G.L. & P. Company pole. But the other thing--they put it down
under the broad general head of shell shock. In the lovely English
garden they set him to weaving and painting, as a means of soothing the
shattered nerves. He had made everything from pottery jars to bead
chains; from baskets to rugs. Slowly the tortured nerves healed. But the
doctors, when they stopped at Chet's cot or chair, talked always of "the
memory centre." Chet seemed satisfied to go on placidly painting toys or
weaving chains with his great, square-tipped fingers--the fingers that
had wielded the pliers so cleverly in his pole-climbing days.
"It's just something that only luck or an accident can mend," said the
nerve specialist. "Time may do it--but I doubt it. Sometimes just a
word--the right word--will set the thing in motion again. Does he get
any letters?"
"His girl writes to him. Fine letters. But she doesn't know yet
about--about this. I've written his letters for him. She knows now that
his leg is healed and she wonders--"
That had been a month ago. To-day Miss Kate slit the envelope postmarked
Chicago. Chet was fingering the yellow wooden chicken, pride in his
eyes. In Miss Kate's eyes there was a troubled, baffled look as she
began to read:
Chet, dear, it's raining in Chicago. And you know when it
rains in Chicago, it's wetter, and muddier, and rainier than
any place in the world. Except maybe this Flanders we're
reading so much about. They say for rain and mud that place
takes the prize.
I don't know what I'm going on about rain and mud for, Chet
darling, when it's you I'm thinking of. Nothing else and
nobody else. Chet, I got a funny feeling there's something
you're keeping back from me. You're hurt worse than just the
leg. Boy, dear, don't you know it won't make any difference
with me how you look, or feel, or anything? I don't care how
bad you're smashed up. I'd rather have you without any
features at all than any other man with two sets. Whatever's
happened to the outside of you, they can't change your
insides. And you're the same man that called out to me, that
day, "Hoo-hoo! Hello, sweetheart!" and when I gave you a piece
of my mind climbed down off the pole, and put your face up to
be slapped, God bless the boy in you--
A sharp little sound from him. Miss Kate looked up, quickly. Chet Ball
was staring at the beady-eyed yellow chicken in his hand.
"What's this thing?" he demanded in a strange voice.
Miss Kate answered him very quietly, trying to keep her own voice easy
and natural. "That's a toy chicken, cut out of wood."
"What'm I doin' with it?"
"You've just finished painting it."
Chet Ball held it in his great hand and stared at it for a brief moment,
struggling between anger and amusement. And between anger and amusement
he put it down on the table none too gently and stoop up, yawning a
little.
"That's a hell of a job for a he-man!" Then in utter contrition: "Oh,
beggin' your pardon! That was fierce! I didn't--"
But there was nothing shocked about the expression on Miss Kate's face.
She was registering joy--pure joy.