Where the Souls of Men are Calling Part 16

When Jeb sweated in behind Hastings at one o'clock he staggered down the road without seeing it. From lack of food, and the horrible wrenching nausea he had suffered, as well as the terror gnawing more and more into his soul, he was pretty well done for.

Barrow, noting this with the eye of a skilful physician, sent a nurse for black coffee and a bowl of soup, but Jeb rebelled in disgust at the thought of it.

"Come, now," his chief said commandingly, when the nurse returned, "shut your eyes and drink them down, I tell you! We need you, Jeb; you mustn't kick up sick the first day!"

We need you! The words stirred new life in him. Then came a vision of the great Bonsecours as he had pointed toward No Man's Land and cried: "It is those whom the good G.o.d expects us to bring in!"

He swallowed the soup and coffee, doggedly turned and followed Hastings up the slope again. But, behind the back of his lanky partner, he was whimpering softly. Never before had the battle scene beyond inspired him with so much terror as now, for its ebb and flow was leaving a greater human wreckage than the Red Cross men could handle. The wounded were arriving at longer periods, because the stretcher-bearers were having farther and farther to go for them; and the disturbing fact was becoming evident that there were less stretcher-bearers than had started out in the morning.

Before Jeb's eyes now the third division barged over the top, leaving the front trench deserted. He saw the line hold beautifully for the first hundred yards, then become more and more phantom-like as it plunged deeper into the pall of smoke. He wondered dully if the fellow who had said: "Watch for me!" had found his nerve, or was still grinning the sickly leer of cowardice.

"That smoke ain't such a bad screen, Jeb," Hastings shouted. "Come on; let's get busy!"

Into it again they pa.s.sed; many times that afternoon they came out and pa.s.sed again into it. The last trip took them nearly to the old German first line--since morning blasted level with the ground--before they found a man who had not pa.s.sed the point of aid. There were plenty about them of the other kind, for machine-guns here had done frightful work.

Leading the way back, confused by sounds and smoke, Hastings lost direction, coming within a trice of being picked up and carried by a sudden rush of the French troops. Jeb, more insane with fear than anger, cursed him with every oath he had ever heard, but the forward stretcher-bearer, making allowances, went indifferently on.

They had got about halfway when the wounded man suddenly raised up, clutched at Jeb, and fell over to the ground. Jeb dropped the handles and screamed with terror, for it had been a ghastly sight, just a little more than his already badly rattled nerves could stand. But Hastings, turning, kneeled down for a better look; then solemnly arose and pointed with his thumb toward the conflict. Back they started for another load, but this last experience had almost been Jeb's undoing. He was obsessed with the idea that it had been the omen of Death reaching for him; he was gasping pitifully, ever alert for sh.e.l.l fire, and cringing at detonations too far off to be of danger. Try as he would to make his feet go forward, his hands pulled against the stretcher handles, until Hastings turned and repaid him with a longer string of oaths. These, and a memory of the enn.o.bling words of Bonsecours, gave him strength for a new spurt; yet both soon began to lose efficiency.

They had found a wounded chap and were well on their way out, crossing the crater-scarred stretch which had been No Man's Land that morning--for No Man's Lands shift from day to day. They moved slowly, and Jeb was dragging; yet in an effort to keep going he had riveted his gaze on the shoulders of Hastings. Then, suddenly, although Hastings'

shoulders remained unchanged, his head disappeared; evaporating into air.

For an instant it seemed to Jeb as though his eyes were playing a trick, but the next second the lanky middle-westerner crumpled up. A warm mist settled upon Jeb's face. With a piercing shriek of uncontrollable terror he dropped the handles and sprang into the nearest sh.e.l.l hole; cowering close under its side, pressing his mouth against the earth and moaning.

CHAPTER XII

The last case in Bonsecours' unit had just been lifted from the table.

Swathed in bandages it was laid once more upon a stretcher and carried rearward to a waiting ambulance whose racks would then be filled.

Carefully, to spare his charges added pain, the driver engaged the clutch and started, but in so vile a condition was this road that the heavily loaded machine plunged as a mired horse. Yet there were no groans. Teeth might have been grit within that canopy of suffering, but the men were too game to make an outcry.

A nurse having come as far as the ambulance, now gave a stifled sob as she watched it lumber, like a huge beetle, over the uneven terrain. Her arms stiffened and her hands closed into little brown fists--for she knew too well what those b.u.mps and plunges were doing to the lacerated human freight!

Standing alone upon a mound of earth and staring after it, her face touched by the amber glow of a westering sun that hung as an immense orange in the smoke of battle, all of Hillsdale would have gasped at her amazing beauty. For the mere prettiness which they had known, enhanced by happiness and laughter, was now transformed. As the chisel of Michael Angelo first carved but a placid face for the Mary in his masterful Pieta, and later gnawed into it shadows of pain and love until it became a part of G.o.d, so had the chisel of suffering humanity brought out the wonderful character which had been a latent part of this Nurse Marian.

Her figure, while always the embodiment of grace, though attuned to the easy things of life, now stood as if it were akin to war's great sinew.

She seemed indeed to be an ivory column of strength and softness, of support and beauty, of courage and tenderness.

In another minute she turned and went back to the dressing-stations where there was much cleaning up to be done--or as much as could be done--before the next stretcher arrived. Yet it did not come. The room, the table, the instruments had been put in order; the great Bonsecours sat resting on a box, and the other nurses had stepped outside the entrance, furtively watching. It seemed incredible that in all the head-splitting noises so near to them there should not be wounded men for the gathering!

"I don't understand it," he arose and crossed to Marian. "But, surely, some will be here soon!"--for, unlike Barrow's unit stationed a hundred yards away, his orderlies and a.s.sistants had been trained in many battles. There could be only one answer if they remained out much longer!--and he would then go himself, to fetch his own cases. He had done it many times before, which was one of the reasons the French army worshipped him.

"I'll run up and look," she cried.

"No, I'm afraid," he said.

"The great Bonsecours afraid?" she laughed--for, no matter how tired her own body might feel, she always managed to laugh when he showed signs of great fatigue.

"Afraid I could not live if anything happened to you, _mon chere_," he murmured.

A startled look flashed into her eyes, slightly different than that caused by the excitement of battle. Many weeks ago her intuition had measured the strength of this man's love for her, and had seen with unerring accuracy his honorable resistance to its pleading, when, during temporary lulls in their work, he might have spoken. That he had said this much now, indicated an overpowering mental and physical exhaustion.

Even as she realized this, he realized his weakness, and hastened to add:

"I will go; you must stay inside."

"No, no," she sprang between him and the dug-out entrance. "You are so tired! I know you've not slept for two days!"

"Have you?" he smiled at her.

"Lots!" she lied--and he knew she lied. "I want you to rest--you owe it to them out there! It will take only a second for me to run up and have one peep!--there's no danger in that, and I can tell you if they're coming!"

"It will bring them no sooner," he sighed, sinking back again upon the box, "and there is danger--plenty of it."

Almost immediately he was asleep. She looked at him tenderly for a moment, then ran into the quadrangle, turning and following the steep path which led to the high ground above the dug-outs.

The scene beyond, as she now crouched and peered over the crest, was what she might have expected--yet one can never become quite used to such pictures as that! Below was the first-line trench, deserted since the third division had been sent forward, and its emptiness gave her a feeling of insecurity. She would have preferred a visual line of stalwart fellows between her and the maddened enemy, instead of one that had gone into the smoke. She looked back to see if another division were coming up, but the intervening world seemed dest.i.tute of habitation, save along the smoke-fringed horizon where French artillery spoke. Once more she turned to the empty trench, her face perplexed and somewhat frightened.

Just ahead lay the No Man's Land of eight hours ago; the new one for tomorrow had not yet been plotted out, but would doubtless lie a mile or so nearer the Rhine. Her staring eyes then caught and held two men, walking tandem, and she knew they carried a stretcher. They were two hundred yards away, obscured by smoke, and coming slowly. For an instant she glanced over the field hoping to discover others, and, on looking back, was amazed to find that the first were nowhere in sight. The air was already more or less thick with death, and she gasped at the thought of what their disappearance must mean.

Indifferent to the warning of Bonsecours--whom she knew would never hesitate were he in her place--she ran swiftly down to the trench, kneeled on the narrow bridge and frantically called in the hope that some one, slightly wounded or ill, perhaps, had been left behind who now might help her. But the solitude was ghastly. She called again and again, screaming that some of her unit had been sh.e.l.led with the man they were bringing in. The pity of this seemed infinitely worse than the wounding of combatants; yet the ditch remained utterly devoid of life--the only answer she seemed to catch was that it waited merely to embrace the dead. Without giving a further thought to dangers, she sprang up and ran out across the field.

Going breathlessly, she watched for a glimpse of the brown stretcher.

p.r.o.ne bodies might not have guided her aright, for there were several of these; but the point she sought would have a stretcher, and there had been no other stretchers within sight. Then she came upon it. Hastings lay as he had fallen. One hand still grasped the handle--it was his left hand, the side whereon he wore the Red Cross emblem. Quick tears blinded her, but she brushed them away and kneeled by the wounded soldier. He lived, although merciful unconsciousness had come to him. She looked hastily around to see--at the same time wanting not to see--where the other man had fallen, and shuddered when she realized that he must have been blown to dust. The wounded soldier, then, was the only one here who needed her! She started to roll him on the stretcher, intending to drag it behind her and in this way sled him in; but its poles had been shattered. She tried to lift him, and found that to be utterly impossible.

The confusion was maddening out there upon that deserted No Man's Land.

To the dug-out openings, pointing away from it, noises had been partially tempered; certainly the acrid smoke was less down in the quadrangle, and she had therefore not been prepared for quite such a cataclysm. Now a sh.e.l.l burst within fifty feet of her, providentially first burrowing, but sending a fountain of earth into the air that fell upon her like hail. Another burst.

In desperation dragging the wounded soldier to a nearby crater she slid him into it, and was about to follow when checked by a curious sight--for a man crouched there with his face against the side. One could have died in that position, yet this man lived because his body trembled visibly. Encircling his sleeve was the band of the Red Cross, and upon seeing this she leaped down to him, asking fearfully:

"Are you badly wounded?"

He did not look around, and she laid a hand gently on his arm, not daring to touch it firmly lest it be shattered.

"Tell me," she began again, in a louder voice, "are you badly wounded?"

Slowly he turned a face matted with sweat and powdered earth, haggard, as though it had been drawn up from a grave. She uttered a wild scream of recognition.

"Jeb!"

Her eyes opened to him. They suggested fluid-vague sympathies and fears that many a man would have bartered his life for; but this one before her only stared back with a look that was hardly sane, then turned again to the crater wall. He seemed to be stunned; without feeling, indeed, because dust and grit were plastered on one of his eye-b.a.l.l.s.

"Jeb," she screamed, horrified at this, "tell me quickly where you're hurt!--oh, Jeb!"

He shook his head, muttering something she could not hear; but his gesture implied a negative. At first she did not understand; she could not reconcile this with the fact that he crouched inactive when wounded men were gasping for relief.

"Not hurt?" she insisted, taking hold of his arm. "But you must be, Jeb!

You must be--to be _here_!"