Shelled by an Unseen Foe Part 17

Everything changed. He felt a kindliness and affection for Velo.

"You will get well, Velo, and we'll hit it off like twins."

"It's too late," said Velo, smiling; "too late for anything except to be happy to think you have forgiven me. Besides, it is as well for me to go. I think I'm a bad sort, Zaidos. . . . But I'm--so--glad--you--will--forgive me--"

There was a long silence. Then Velo opened his eyes once more.

"I'm going," he whispered. "Take my hand--"

Zaidos did so, and for a long, long time did not stir. The hand in his grew limp, then very cold. Zaidos held it loyally but he kept his eyes shut tight, because he could not bear to look.

The Red Cross orderlies did not find Zaidos until after dark. He was very cold, or else very hot, he did not know which, but tried to tell them all about it, and only succeeded in mumbling very fast before he dropped off into unconsciousness. He could not say farewell to Velo, lying there under the stars with a n.o.ble company about him. He was silent enough himself until he reached the big field hospital in the rear. He did not know Nurse Helen when she bent over him, but he commenced to talk in a low tone, and he kept on, as though he would never stop.

He told her all about everything, including a green dragon that sat on his leg, and felt heavy. He told her school jokes, and about the girl who came to the hop and about several million other things. Fever raged in him and his voice went down and down until it was as thin as a field mouse's squeak. Nurse Helen grew to look at him gravely and rather sadly and she spent no time at all with Tony Hazelden, who was almost well enough to get married. At least he could sit up an hour every day. But at last one day there came a change. Zaidos gave a sigh, and stopped talking and went to sleep.

The next time he opened his eyes, he looked straight into Nurse Helen's great, lovely, dark pools of silence and content. He looked at her a long time; then without speaking, he went to sleep again. The next time he woke up, he managed to whisper, "Got a lot to tell you!"

"Let it wait," she whispered back. "Don't talk at all. You will get well much sooner."

She was right, and he did, making great jumps toward recovery when he once got started. The time came when she let him talk and Zaidos told her all about everything. He even told her how hard he had been and how long it had taken him to forgive Velo.

So the days went on smoothly. Zaidos did not know how many; but one morning there awoke in him a great longing for his adopted land. And that happened to be the very morning when he heard something that might have made him very unhappy, but did not.

The doctor came along.

"What are you going to do with yourself when we discharge you, young man?" he demanded.

"I suppose I'll have to go back on the field," Zaidos replied.

"Don't you want to?" asked the doctor.

"I can't really say I do," said Zaidos regretfully. "You see I've never had the chance to fight. I was lame when they put me at the Hospital Corps work. At least my broken leg was tender. Now it's shot up, and I won't be good for anything else but Red Cross jobs."

"I may as well tell you," said the doctor. "You will always be a little lame, Zaidos. Not much, understand, but enough to bar you from any work here. I'm sorry, son. We did our best, but that shin bone didn't heal right. You have been given your 'honorable discharge.'"

For a little Zaidos was silent. No more running; no more jumping. It was a little hard, but he thought of the wounds of others, and was ashamed.

"Will I have to walk with a cane, doctor!" he asked.

"Oh, no," said the doctor. "Your limp will scarcely be noticeable."

"Then I guess I'll get on my job," said Zaidos, unconsciously quoting the boys at school.

"What's that?" asked the doctor.

"Why," said Zaidos, "I planned to go back to New York after all this was over, and study medicine."

"Couldn't do a better thing," said the doctor heartily. "That's the best thing you could possibly do. Nurse Helen has told me something about you, and I will say that I think you have planned wisely and well. If you had ties of family in this part of the world, it might be a different matter. No one has any right to carve out his destiny without some reference to the people nearest him. 'Honor thy father and thy mother' holds good to-day as well as it did when the old patriarchs walked the earth. And I'm not sure it isn't needed now more than it was then, when the scheme of life was simpler. Only now we usually have a few sisters and brothers, and perhaps an unmarried aunt or two to consider. But you are all alone, are you not?"

"Yes," said Zaidos. "I couldn't be more alone without being gone myself. I have lots of friends in school and I know a fellow in England; and so it's not so bad."

"No," said the doctor. "I should call it very good. And you have already found out, Zaidos, that sometimes blood relations fail a man.

"I think I will write out a discharge for you, and as soon as you can move you had better get away, and move toward the first seaport where you can get an American ship. I will pull all the wires I can. You had a pretty bad fever, my boy. You need a change, and you need it soon. I'll see what I can do. In the meantime, lie still and get your strength together. Things are frightfully crowded, but a lot of supplies and more nurses have been promised. Has Nurse Helen told you any news?"

"No," said Zaidos, "not a thing. About the hospital, do you mean, doctor?"

"Not exactly," said the doctor, smiling. "Just some little plans of her own."

"I'll bet Tony Hazelden is in them!" said Zaidos.

The doctor chuckled. "Well, these girls! You never can tell," he said. "She will tell you herself, I've no doubt."

He got up and straightened his bent back. "This sort of thing is hard on an old man," he said. "It is just two weeks since I have been to bed."

"Well, this one feels good to me," said Zaidos. "I was so surprised when I woke up and found something smooth and clean under me. I don't see how the nurses manage to keep things so neat."

"You would not wonder if you could see what they do," said the doctor solemnly. "I tell you every woman who goes into the field deserves a place in the Legion of Honor. She deserves a crown, and a big pension.

She's an angel. You want to honor all women, all kinds, all your life, my boy, for the sake of these nurses. Some day, perhaps, I will come over to your America, if you would like to see an old derelict, and we will talk and talk, and I will tell you some stories."

He touched Zaidos' bandaged head gently, nodded farewell and walked on down the line of cots. Zaidos continued to sleep and eat. His blood was so clean that his wounds healed almost at once. Helen came to his bedside one day with a queer little smile on her face.

"Do you remember, John, what I said when you brought Tony to me? I told you that just as soon as he was able to hold my hand, I meant to marry him."

"Did you do it?" asked Zaidos.

"Not yet," said Helen.

"Goodness!" said Zaidos. "I didn't think Tony was as sick as all that!

I would have to be a good deal worse than he looks to be so sick I couldn't hold your hand!"

"Silly!" said Helen, blushing. "If you will attend with the gravity the occasion requires, I will explain things to you. Perhaps Tony has been able to hold my hand a _little_; but he was not strong enough to hold it very hard. Now, however, he is growing better fast. On the other hand, the doctors say _I_ am worn out. I don't think so myself.

I think they are making it up, the dears, so I can honorably go home with Tony. But be that as it may, I am going home. We are going to be married a week from tomorrow, John, dear, and then in a few days I will begin to move my dear Tony by slow stages homeward. And I want you to come with us."

"Me on a honeymoon trip? Well, I think not!" Zaidos exploded. "Nay, nay, pretty lady, you won't get me to chaperone you!"

"Now, John!" cried Helen. "Oh, I could shake you! What will I do crossing Europe with a sick man on a cot, unless someone comes to help me? I didn't think you were so ungallant!"

Zaidos stared at her. "That's another way to look at it," he said.

"Of course I will go with you, and glad enough to do it. I never thought of that, Helen. Of course you could not go alone! Why can't I get up and go talk things over with Tony? You can't yell that sort of conversation the whole length of a ward."

"You are to be allowed to get up tomorrow," said Helen, "and, oh, John, _please_ get well fast, because really I don't see how we can go without you. No one else can be spared, and I want to go home. I want to see my father and mother. Just think of it, I will have to be married all alone. Not one of my own people to give me away, and kiss me, and say, 'G.o.d bless you.' I suppose I am an ungrateful girl. I ought to be thinking only that I have Tony, and how happy I am; but you know after all, John, a girl's wedding day is a wonderful time. It is all so different to what we had planned. At home, we would have had the service in our own dear church, trimmed by all the little girls in the parish. And everyone would be there. The church would not hold them; the churchyard would be full of beaming faces, everybody bobbing and curtsying and wishing us good luck. And if I felt that I _must_ shed a few happy tears, my mother's shoulder would be near."

"Do you _have_ to cry?" asked Zaidos.

"Why, I don't suppose one _has_ to," said Helen musingly, "but generally you do."

"That's awful," said Zaidos dismally, and then repeated, "Awful!

However, I don't know the first thing about girls, and of course you do. If you must cry on somebody, why, you must; and you can use me, if you like."