Young Hilda At The Wars Part 12

They spurted back to the square, and as they circled it, still puzzled for the way of escape, two sh.e.l.ls went sailing high over them and fell into the town beyond.

"Jack Johnsons," said Woffington. This time, he made the right turn, back of the Cloth Hall into the safe country.

Never had it felt so good to Hilda to leave a place.

"I am afraid," she said to herself. Now she knew why brave men sometimes ran like rabbits.

"Go back to London, and report what we have seen," urged Dr. McDonnell.

"We can set England aflame with it. The English people will rise to it, if they know their wounded are being neglected."

"It takes a lot to rouse the English," said Hilda; "that is their greatest quality, their steadiness. In our country we'd have a crusade over the situation, and then we'd forget all about it. But you people won't believe it for another year or so. When you do believe it, you'll cure it."

"You will see," replied the Doctor.

"I'll try," said Hilda.

It was one of those delightful mixed grills in Dover Street, London, where men and women are equally welcome. Dover Street is lined with them, pleasant refuges for the wives of army officers, literary women of distinction, and the host of well-to-do uncelebrated persons, who make the rich background of modern life. Dr. McDonnell's warm friend, the Earl of Tottenham, and his wife, were entertaining Hilda at dinner, and, knowing she had something to tell of conditions at Ypres, they had made Colonel Albert Bevan one of the party.

Hilda thought Colonel Bevan one of the cleverest men she had ever met.

He had a quick nervous habit of speech, a clean-shaven alert face, with a smile that threw her off guard and opened the way for the Colonel to make his will prevail. He was enjoying a brilliant Parliamentary career.

He had early thrown his lot with the Liberals, and had never found cause to regret it. He had been an under-secretary, and, when the war broke out, Kitchener had chosen him for his private emissary to the fighting line to report back to the Chief the exact situation. He was under no one else than K.; came directly to him with his findings, went from him to the front.

"My dear young lady," the Colonel was saying, "you've forgotten that Ypres was the biggest fight of the war, one of the severest in all history. In a day or two, we got things in hand. You came down on a day when the result was just balanced. It was a toss-up whether the other fellows would come through or not. You see, you took us at a bad time."

"How about the ambulances that weren't working?" asked Hilda. "The square was lined with them."

"I know," responded the Colonel, "but the city was likely to be evacuated at any hour. As a matter of fact, those ambulances were used all night long after the bombardment began, emptying the three military hospitals, and taking the men to the train. We sent them down to Calais.

You were most fortunate in getting through the lines at all. I shouldn't have blamed Captain Fitzgerald if he had ordered you back to Furnes."

"Captain Fitzgerald!" exclaimed Hilda. "How did you know I was talking with him?"

"I was there that day in Ypres," said the Colonel.

"You were in Ypres," repeated Hilda, in astonishment.

"I was there," he said; "I saw the whole thing. You came down upon our lines as if you had fallen out of a blue moon. What were we to do? A very charming young American lady, with a very good motor ambulance. It was a visitation, wasn't it? If we allowed it regularly, what would become of the fighting? Why, there are fifty volunteer organizations, with cars and nurses, cooling their heels in Boulogne. If we let one in, we should have to let them all come. There wouldn't be any room for troops."

"But how about the wounded?" queried Hilda. "Where do they come in?"

"In many cases, it doesn't hurt them to lie out in the open air,"

responded the Colonel; "that was proved in the South African War. The wounds often heal if you leave them alone in the open air. But you people come along and stir up and joggle them. In army slang, we call you the body s.n.a.t.c.hers."

"What you say about the wounded is absurd," replied Hilda.

"Tut, tut," chided the Colonel.

"I mean just that," returned the girl, with heat. "It is terrible to leave men lying out who have got wounded. It is all rot to say the open air does them good. If the wound was clean from a bullet, and the air pure, and the soil fresh as in a new country, that would be true in some of the cases. The wound would heal itself. But a lot of the wounds are from jagged bits of sh.e.l.l, driving pieces of clothing and mud from the trenches into the flesh. The air is septic, full of disease from the dead men. They lie so close to the surface that a sh.e.l.l, anywhere near, brings them up. Three quarters of your casualties are from disease. The wound doesn't heal; it gets gangrene and teta.n.u.s from the stale old soil. And instead of having a good fighting man back in trim in a fortnight, you have a sick man in a London hospital for a couple of months, and a cripple for a lifetime."

"You would make a good special pleader," responded the Colonel with a bow. "I applaud your spirit, but the wounded are not so important, you know. There are other considerations that come ahead of the wounded."

"But don't the wounded come first?" asked Hilda, in a hurt tone.

"Certainly not," answered the Colonel. "We have to keep the roads clear for military necessity. This is the order in which we have to regard the use of roads in war-time." He checked off his list on his fingers--

"First comes ammunition, then food, then reinforcements, and fourth, the wounded."

IN RAMSKAPPELE BARNYARD

Thirteen dead men were scattered about in the straw and dung. Some of them were sitting in absurd postures, as if they were actors in a pantomime. Others of them, though burned and shattered, lay peacefully at full length. No impress of torture could any longer rob them of the rest on which they had entered so suddenly. I saw that each one of them had come to the end of his quest and had found the thing for which he had been searching. The Frenchman had his equality now. The German had doubtless by this time, found his G.o.d "a mighty fortress." The Belgian had won a neutrality which nothing would ever invade.

As I looked on that barnyard of dead, I was glad for them that they were dead, and not as the men I had seen in the hospital wards--the German with his leg being sawn off, and the strange bloated face of the Belgian: all those maimed and broken men condemned to live and carry on the living flesh the pranks of sh.e.l.l fire. For it was surely better to be torn to pieces and to die than to be sent forth a jest.

VI

THE CHEVALIER

Hilda's friends in England had prepared a "surprise" for her. It was engineered by a wise and energetic old lady in London, who had been charmed with the daring of the American girl at the front. So, without Hilda's knowledge, she published the following advertis.e.m.e.nt:--

"'HILDA'--Will every Hilda, big and little, in Great Britain and Ireland, send contributions for a 'Hilda' motor ambulance, costing 500, to be sent for service in Pervyse, to save wounded Belgian soldiers from suffering? It will be run by a nurse named Hilda. 'Lady Hildas' subscribe a guinea, 'Hildas' over sixteen, half-guinea, 'Little Hildas', and 'Hildas' in straightened circ.u.mstances, two-shillings-and-sixpence."

That was the "Personal" on the front page of the London _Times_, which had gone out over the land.

Hilda's life at the front had appealed to the imagination of some thousands of the Belgian soldiers, and to many officers. The fame of her and of her two companions had grown with each week of the wearing, perilous service, hard by the Belgian trenches. Gradually there had drifted out of the marsh-land hints and broken bits of the life-saving work of these Pervyse girls, all the way back to England. The Hildas of the realm had rallied, and funds flowed into the London office, till a swift commodious car was purchased, and shipped out to the young nurse.

And now Hilda's car had actually come to her, there at the dressing-station in Pervyse. The brand new motor ambulance was standing in the roadway, waiting her need. Its brown canopy was shiny in the sun.

A huge Red Cross adorned either side with a crimson splash that ought to be visible on a dark night. The thirty horse-power engine purred and obeyed with the sympathy of a high-strung horse. Seats and stretchers inside were clean and fresh for stricken men. From Hilda's own home town of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, had come a friendship's garland of one hundred dollars. She liked to fancy that this particular sum of money had pa.s.sed into the front wheels, where the speed was generated.

"My car, my very own," she murmured. She dreamed about it, and carried it in her thoughts by day. She had fine rushes of feeling about it, too.

It must do worthy work, she said to herself. There could be no retreating from bad pockets with that car. There must be no leaving the wounded, when the firing cuts close, no joy-riding.

She could not help feeling proud of her position. There was no other woman out of all America who had won through to the front. And on all the Western battle-line of four hundred miles, there were no other women, save her and her two friends, who were doing just this sort of dangerous touch-and-go work. With her own eyes she had read the letters of more than two hundred persons, begging permission to join the Corps.

There were women of t.i.tle, professional men of standing. What had she done to deserve such lucky eminence? Why was she chosen to serve at the furthest outpost where risk and opportunity went hand in hand?

Dr. Neil McDonnell, leader of the Ambulance Corps, had brought a party of her friends from Furnes, to celebrate the coming of the car. Dr.

McDonnell was delighted with every success achieved by his "children."

When the three women went to Pervyse, and the fame of them spread through the Belgian Army, the Doctor was as happy as if a grandchild had won the Derby. He was glad when Mrs. Bracher and "Scotch" received the purple ribbon and the starry silver medal for faithful service in a parlous place. He was now very happy that Hilda's fame had sprung to England, taken root, and bloomed in so choice a way. He had a curiously sweet nature, the Doctor, a nature without animosities, absent-minded, filmed with dreams, and those dreams large, bold and kindly.