Young Hilda At The Wars Part 2

The days were filled with care of the hurt, and food for the hungry, and clothing for the dilapidated. And the nights--she knew she would not forget those nights, when the three of them took turns in nursing the wounded men resting on stretchers. The straw would crackle as the sleepers turned. The faint yellow light from the lantern threw shadows on the unconscious faces. And she was glad of the smile of the men in pain, as they received a little comfort. She had never known there was such goodness in human nature. Who was she ever to be impatient again, when these men in extremity could remember to thank her. Here in this worst of the evils, this horror of war, men were manifesting a humanity, a consideration, at a higher level than she felt she had ever shown it in happy surroundings in a peaceful land. Hilda won the sense, which was to be of abiding good to her, that at last she had justified her existence. She, too, was now helping to continue that great tradition of human kindness which had made this world a more decent place to live in.

No one could any longer say she was only a poor artist in an age of big things. Had not the poor artist, in her own way, served the general welfare, quite as effectively, as if she had projected a new breakfast food, or made a successful marriage. Her fingers, which had not gathered much gold, had at least been found fit to lessen some human misery. In that strength she grew confident.

As the fair spring days came back and green began to put out from the fields, the soldiers returned to their duty.

Now the killing became brisk again. The cellar ran full with its tally of scotched and crippled men. Dr. van der Helde was in command of the work. He was here and there and everywhere--in the trenches at daybreak, and gathering the harvest of wounded in the fields after nightfall.

Sometimes he would be away for three days on end. He would run up and down the lines for seven miles, watching the work. The Belgian nation was a race of individualists, each man merrily minding his own business in his own way. The Belgian army was a volunteer informal group of separate individuals. The Doctor was an individualist. So the days went by at a tense swift stride, stranger than anything in the story-books.

One morning the Doctor entered the cellar, with a troubled look on his face.

"I am forced to ask you to do something," began he, "and yet I hardly have the heart to tell you."

"What can the man be after," queried Hilda, "will you be wanting to borrow my hair brush to curry the cavalry with?"

"Worse than that," responded he; "I must ask you to cut off your beautiful hair."

"My hair," gasped Hilda, darting her hand to her head, and giving the locks an unconscious pat.

"Your hair," replied the Doctor. "It breaks my heart to make you do it, but there's so much disease floating around in the air these days, that it is too great a risk for you to live with sick men day and night and carry all that to gather germs."

"I see," said Hilda in a subdued tone.

"One thing I will ask, that you give me a lock of it," he added quietly.

She thought he was jesting with his request.

That afternoon she went to her cellar, and took the faithful shears which had severed so many bandages, and put them pitilessly at work on her crown of beauty. The hair fell to the ground in rich strands, darker by a little, and softer far, than the straw on which it rested. Then she gathered it up into one of the aged ill.u.s.trated papers that had drifted out to the post from kind friends in Furnes. She wrapped it tightly inside the double page picture of laughing soldiers, celebrating Christmas in the trenches. And she carried it outside behind the black stump of a house which they called their home, and threw it on the cans that had once contained bully-beef. She was a little heart-sick at her loss, but she had no vanity. As she was stepping inside, the Doctor came down the road.

He stopped at sight of her.

"Oh, I am sorry," he said.

"I don't care," she answered, and braved it off by a little flaunt of her head, though there was a film over her eyes.

"And did you keep a lock for me?" he asked.

"You are joking," she replied.

"I was never more serious," he returned. She shook her head, and went down into the cellar. The Doctor walked around to the rear of the house.

A few minutes later, he entered the cellar.

"Good-bye," he said, holding out his hand, "I'm going up the line to Nieuport. I'll be back in the morning." He turned to climb the steps, and then paused a moment.

"Beautiful hair brings good luck," he said.

"Then my luck's gone," returned Hilda.

"But mine hasn't," he answered.

"Let us go up the road this morning," suggested Mrs. Bracher, next day, "and see how the new men are getting on."

There was a line of trenches to the north, where reinforcements had just come in, all their old friends having been ordered back to Furnes for a rest.

"How loud the sh.e.l.ls are, this morning," said Hilda. There were whole days when she did not notice them, so accustomed the senses grow to a repet.i.tion.

"Yes, they're giving us special treatment just now," replied Mrs.

Bracher; "it's that six-inch gun over behind the farm-house, trying out these new men. They're gradually getting ready to come across. It will only be a few days now."

They walked up the road a hundred yards, and came on a knot of soldiers stooping low behind the roadside bank.

"What are those men looking at?" exclaimed Mrs. Bracher sharply.

"Some poor fellow. Probably work for us," returned Hilda.

Mrs. Bracher went nearer, peered at the outstretched form on the gra.s.s bank, then turned her head away suddenly.

"No work for us," she said. "Don't go near, child. It's too horrible.

His face is gone. A sh.e.l.l must have taken it away. Oh, I'm sick of this war. I am sick of these sights."

One of the little group of men about the body had drawn near to her.

"What do you want?" she asked crossly, as a woman will who is interrupted when she is close to tears.

"Will I identify him?" she repeated after him. "I tell you I never saw the man."

A little gasp of amazement came from the soldiers about the body.

"See what we have found," called one of the men--"in his pocket."

It was a lock of the very lightest and gayest of hair.

"Ah, my doctor," Hilda cried.

She spread the lock across the breast of the dead man. It was so vivid in the morning sun as to seem almost a living thing.

"And he said it would bring him luck," she murmured.

GOOD WILL

I looked into the face of my brother. There was no face there, only a red interior. This thing had been done to my brother, the Belgian, by my brother, the German. He had sent a splinter of sh.e.l.l through five miles of sunlight, hoping it would do some such thing as this.

II