Leerie Part 23

"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 pa.s.s on to those who go fearlessly forth to minister in the face of death!

It would not be so strange if he had pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed on and on in the darkness the s.p.a.ce about her seemed filled with the shadowy forms of those whom G.o.d 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 sh.e.l.ls had somehow pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed up the steps to the work that was waiting for her. The first day pa.s.sed like a dream. Guns boomed, sh.e.l.ls screeched their way overhead and landed somewhere. Wounded came and went.

Many died, and a white-haired, tottering old s.e.xton 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 pa.s.sed 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't.i.t--the youngest of them all. I feel the good G.o.d 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 ant.i.thesis 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-gla.s.s 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--pa.s.sed 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 sc.r.a.p 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 rea.s.surance, 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 sh.e.l.ling 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."