Leerie Part 15

"He's bound fast and walled about with the memories of what he has been through--killing human beings, watching his comrades die, seeing what the Germans have done. For the moment it has made him forget that the sun shines and birds sing and the world is a place to be glad in. The bright colors have faded out of life for him; everything looks gray and somber."

"Gee! and how he used to like a good cabaret with a jazz band!" The girl whispered it, and there was awe in her voice. "And colors! I had to wear the gayest things I had, to please him."

"Yes, I know. And he'll like them best again, some day. Just be patient, dear. And the waiting won't be hard, you'll have so much to do for him.

You'll have to be bringing the sunshine back, making him listen to the bird-songs, teaching him how to be glad, to love doing all the happy, foolish boy-things he used to like."

"I see--I can." The girl's voice was breathless.

"I'm sure you can." Sheila tried to put conviction into her words. "At first you may find it a little hard. It means--"

"Yes?"

"It means creeping into his prison with him, so gently, so lovingly, and staying close beside him while you cut the memory-cords one by one. Could you do that?"

The girl sprang past Sheila toward the door. "Come! What are we waiting for?"

"But he doesn't know you are here yet," parried the nurse.

"Let's go and tell him, then. He always adored surprises." The dimples in her cheeks danced in antic.i.p.ation while she took Sheila's hand and tried to drag her nearer the door. But at the threshold something in the woman's face stopped her. She hesitated. "Maybe--maybe he doesn't like surprises any more." Again the impulsive hands were thrust into the nurse's. "Tell me, tell me honestly--You said you sent for me. Was it--Didn't he want me--to come?"

And Sheila, remembering what the boy had loved about her, gave her back the truth: "No, he has grown afraid of you. That's another thing you will have to bring back to him with the songs and the sunlight--his love for you."

Her hand was flung aside and the girl flew past her, back to the wicker chair under Old King Cole. Burying her head in her arms, she burst into uncontrollable sobs, while Sheila stood motionless in the doorway and waited. She must have waited an hour before the girl raised her eyes, wet as her own. For Sheila knew that a woman's soul was being born into the world, and none understood better than she what the agony of travail meant to the child who was giving it birth.

"Come," said Sheila, gently.

The girl rose uncertainly; all the divine a.s.surance of youth was gone. "I think I see," she began unsteadily. "I think I can."

"I know you can." And this time there was no doubt in Sheila's heart.

She saw to it that the little mother had been called away before they reached the Surgical, so that the room was empty except for the occupant of the cot. "h.e.l.lo, boy!" she called, triumphantly, from the doorway. "I have brought you the best present a soldier ever had," and she pushed Clarisse into the room and closed the door.

For a moment those two young creatures looked at each other, overcome with confusion and the self-consciousness of their own great change.

The boy spoke first. "Clare!"

"Phil!" It came in a breathless little cry, like a bird's answer to its mate. Then the girl followed. Across the room she flew, to the bed, and down on her knees, hiding her face deep in the folds of coverlet and hospital shirt. Words came forth chokingly at last, like bubbles of air rising slowly to the surface.

"Those letters--those awful letters! Just foolish things that didn't matter. One of the boys at the canteen--I used to wait on the table and make believe every soldier I served was mine, and I always wore my prettiest clothes--he said--the boy--that over there they didn't want anything but light stuff--those were his words--said a chap couldn't stand hearing that his girl was lonely.... He said to cut out all the blue funks and the worries; the light stuff helped to steady a chap's nerve. So I--"

And then the boy lied like a soldier. "Don't, Clare darling. I knew all along you were playing off like a good sport. And it helped a lot. Gee!

how it helped!"

When Sheila looked in, hours later, the girl was still by the bed, her cheek on the pillow beside the boy's.

It was a strangely illusive Leerie that met Peter that night in the rest-house after the ailing part of the San had been put safely to bed.

Her eyes seemed to transcend the stars, and her face might have served for a young neophyte. As Peter saw, for the first time he glimpsed the signal Fate had been playing with so many days.

"What's happened? Anything wrong with those cubs?"

"Nothing. They're as right as right can be." Then with the old directness Sheila plunged headlong into the thing she knew must be done. "Man of mine, I'm going to hurt you. Can you forgive and still understand?"

"I can try." Peter did his best to keep his voice from sounding too heavy, for a fear was gripping at his heart, and his eyes sought Sheila's face, pleading as he would never have let his lips plead.

Sheila covered her eyes. She didn't want to see. It was too reminiscent of the little boy lying awake in a dark attic, afraid of sleep. "We have both done without happiness so long, don't you think we can do without it a little longer?"

"I suppose so--if we must." Peter's voice was very dull. "But why? I've always had an idea that happiness was something like opportunity; it had to be s.n.a.t.c.hed and held fast when it came your way, or you might never have another chance at it." Had Sheila brought him to the gates of Paradise only to bar them against his entering? he wondered.

The woman who loved him understood and laid her hand on his breast as if she would stay the hurt there if she could. "It may make it easier if you know that the giving up is going to be hard for me, too. I've thought about that home of ours so long that I've begun to see it and all that goes with it. I even stumble upon it in my dreams. It's always at the end of a long, tired road, going uphill. If I thought I should have to give it up, I wouldn't have the courage to do what I'm going to now."

She sat down on the bench, laid her arms over the sill of the rustic window, and looked toward the pond. The night was very still; the blurred outlines of the swans, huddled against the bank, were the only signs of life. When she spoke it was almost to herself.

"When they sent me away from the San three years ago I thought I could never bear it--to go away alone, that way, disgraced, to begin work over again in a strange place, among strange people. But I had to do it, just as I have to do this." She straightened and faced Peter. Her voice changed; it belonged to the curt, determined Sheila.

"I'm going across, to nurse the boys over there. The boy over in the Surgical pointed the way for me. There's a big thing going on in the world--something almost as big as the war--it's the business of getting the boys ready for life after their share in the war is over, and I don't mean just nursing their bodies back to health. Everything is changed for them; they've got new standards, new interests, new hearts, new souls, and we women have got to keep pace with them. And we mustn't fail them--don't you see that? Oh, I know I have no place of my own in the war: you are safe, and I have no brothers. But I'm a woman--a nurse, thank G.o.d! And I'm free to go for the mothers and sweethearts who can't. Don't you understand?"

And Peter answered from an overwhelmingly full and troubled heart, "Oh yes, I understand."

"I knew you would." Sheila raised starry eyes to the man who had never failed her. "Those boys will need all the sympathy, all the wholesome tenderness we can send across to them, and they'll need our hands at their backs until they get their foothold again. I've served my apprenticeship at that so long I can do it."

Peter gathered her close in his arms. "G.o.d and I know how well."

It was not until they were leaving the gardens that Peter asked the question that had been in his mind all through the evening. "What about the wedding? I suppose you're not going to marry me, now."

"Can't. Haven't the courage. Man of mine, don't you know that after I once belonged to you I couldn't leave you? I've only had sips of happiness so far. If I once drained the cup, only G.o.d's hand could take it from me."

"And the wedding? The old San's just set its heart on that wedding."

The radiant smile crept back to Sheila's lips. Even in the dark Peter could tell that the old luminous Leerie was beside him once more. "Why, that's one of the nicest parts of it all. We're going to pa.s.s our wedding on to those children--make them a sort of wedding-present of it. Won't that be splendid?"

"Oh yes," said Peter, without enthusiasm. "Does it suit them?"

"They don't know yet. Guess I'd better go and tell them."

It is doubtful if anybody but Sheila O'Leary could have managed such an affair and left every one reasonably happy over it--two of them unreasonably so. She accepted the wedding collation bestowed by the wealthy old ladies of the sanitarium and pa.s.sed it over to the boy and his betrothed as if it had been as trivial a gift as an ice-cream cone. In a like manner she pa.s.sed on the trousseau, kissed all the nurses rapturously for their work, and piled it all into Clarisse's arms with the remark that it was lucky they were so nearly of a size. When she brought the wedding-dress she kissed her, too, and said that she was going to make the prettiest picture in it that the San or the soldier had seen in years. She placated the management; she wheedled Miss Maxwell into a good humor; she even coaxed Doctor Fuller into giving away the bride. Only Hennessy refused to be propitiated.

"Are ye thinkin' of givin' Mr. Brooks away with everythin' else?" he asked, scornfully; and then, his indignation rising to a white wrath, he shouted, "I'll not put bows on the swans, an' I'll not come to any second-hand weddin'."

But he did come, and held with Flanders the satin ribbons they had promised to hold for Sheila. And the wedding became one of the greenest of all the memories that had gone down on the San books.

As the sun clipped the far-away hills the boy was wheeled down the paths to where the gold and white of early roses were ma.s.sed in summer splendor.

Then came the girl with Sheila at her side; the girl had begged too hard to be refused. But Sheila's face was as white as it had been the day they operated on Doctor Dempsy, and only Peter guessed what it cost her to stand with the bride. To Peter's care had been intrusted the little mother, and he let her weep continually on his shoulder in between the laughs he kept bringing to her lips.

And it all ended merrily. Sheila saw to that. But perhaps the thing that gave her the keenest pleasure was wheedling out of Mr. Crotchets his bungalow that stood on the slopes beyond the golf-links for a honeymoon.

"They'll have all the quiet they want and the care he still needs," she told Peter when they were alone. "And n.o.body but the nurse in charge knows about it--yet." Then seeing the great longing in Peter's eyes, she drew him away from the crowd. "Listen, man of mine! I have the feeling that when we are married there will be no wedding, just you and I and the preacher. And in my heart I like it better that way."

"So do I," agreed Peter.