Atlantic Narratives Part 39

'Well, why have I got to tell him? Why don't you?'

'He loves you best,' Miss Cynthia evaded.

'I don't believe any one will have to tell him,' Miss Lyman took her up, hopefully. 'I believe it will just drop out of his mind as he gets older. He'll just cease to believe it without any shock, without ever really knowing when he found out it wasn't so.'

But she reckoned without Mr. Grey. He, it appeared, had fixed a date for the great event.

'Gwey says,' Stanislaus announced, 'vat he got _his_ eyes open ve day he was five, an' he dest bets I'll get mine open ven too.'

Thereafter, all his dreams and plays were inspired by the magic words, 'When I'm five an' can see.' The sentence served as a mental spring-board to jump his imagination off into a world of wonder where he could see, 'dest--dest as good as big folks' or 'dest as good as Gwey.'

Every day his fifth birthday drew nearer, and Miss Cynthia's eyes said, You've got to tell; and everyday Miss Lyman avoided them.

At last it was the day before his birthday. He waked with the words, 'To-mowwow is my birfday,' on his tongue, and scrambled out of bed, a little night-s.h.i.+rted figure of ecstasy. His dressing that morning--the putting on of his shoes, the scrubbing of his fingers, the rather uncertain brus.h.i.+ng of his hair--all went off to the happy refrain of--

'To-mowwow is my birfday, my birfday, my birfday!'

Some deep wisdom kept him from letting the other boys suspect what Mr.

Grey had foretold for his birthday; but when he came to Miss Lyman that she might look him over before he went to school, he pulled her down close to whisper, 'I'm goin' to look at _you_ de very first one of all.'

And to seal the matter he deposited a kiss in the palm of her hand, and shut her fingers upon it.

'Keep vat till I come back,' he commanded, and went jauntily off to school, where in all probability he made the same engaging promise to Miss Cynthia, and sealed it with the same token. But if he did, one may be certain he hid the token safe away in her hand. He was always shy about kisses, not being quite sure but that they might be visible. You could certainly feel the things, so why mightn't they be seen as well, sticking right out on one's cheek, for seeing people to stare at? For this reason, he refused them on his own account, ''cause vey might show'; and those that he gave were always bestowed in the palm of the hand, where the fingers could be closed hastily upon them.

Miss Lyman sat in the clothes room that morning, and sewed and waited.

Her needle blurred, and her thread knotted, and the patches seemed more difficult than ever, and all because she had told herself that presently she must take a little boy up in her lap and shatter his dearest hope with truth. She had made up her mind that, when he came from school that morning, she would have to tell him. Therefore she sat and sewed, her whole being tense for the sound of his footsteps. She knew just how he would come--with a sudden scamper up the steps outside.

He always ran as soon as his fingers were sure of the rail, because much of his time he was an engine, 'An' vats ve way twains come up steps.'

Then he would whisk around the corner, fumble an instant for the door-handle, and burst in upon her.

But after all, none of these sounds came. Instead, there was suddenly the trampling of grown-up feet, the rush of skirts, and Miss Cynthia threw the door open.

'Oh, come--come quick!' she panted. 'Stanny is hurt--He ran away--Oh, I _told_ him to come straight to you! But he ran away down the road, and a motor--'

Together they sped down the long corridors to the hospital. They had brought Stanny there and laid him on one of the very clean little beds.

Such a tiny crushed morsel of humanity in the centre of the big bare room! But his hand moved and he found Miss Lyman's chatelaine as she bent over him.

'I knowed you was comin' by ve tinkly fings,' he whispered. Then--'I was dest playin' it was my birfday an' I could see.--Gwey said to.--Is you--is you goin' to punish me vis time?' he quavered.

'No, lovey, no--not this time,' she faltered, for she had caught the look on the doctor's face.

'Gwey said he al'us dest barked an' barked at aut'mobiles.--Let me hold ve tinkly fings so's I will know you is vere.' And by and by he murmured, 'It'll be my birfday soon--_weal_ soon now, won't it?'

'Very, very soon now,' she answered, and clinched her hand tight to keep her voice steady.

'Why,' he said, his restless fingers chancing upon her clinched ones, 'why, you is still got my kiss all tight in you hand. I'd fink it would be all melted by now.' A little startled moan cut him short. 'I hurts!'

he cried. 'Oh, I _hurts_!'

'Yes,' she answered breathlessly, 'yes, my darling, it will hurt a little.'

'Is it--is it 'cause my eyes is openin'?' he gasped.

'Yes, lovey, that's the reason.' Her hand held his tight. 'But it won't hurt long.'

'Gwey never--never said it would hurt like vis,' he sobbed.

The doctor stooped down and made a tiny p.r.i.c.k in the baby arm, and after a little Stanislaus lay still.

'He may be conscious again before the end,' the doctor said, 'but I hardly think it is likely.'

He was not. He tossed a little, and murmured broken s.n.a.t.c.hes of words, but he was too busy going along this new exciting path to turn back to the old ways, even to speak to his friends.

Miss Lyman sat beside him all through the bright afternoon, through the tender dusk, and through the dark. Late in the night, he stirred, and cried out with a little happy breath,--

'My _birfday_! It's _come_!'

And by the time it was morning he had gone.

Miss Lyman closed the eyes that had opened so wide upon another world, drew up all the curtains, that the room might be flooded with the dancing light of his birthday morning, said a little prayer, committing him to his angel, and stole softly away.

A SOLDIER OF THE LEGION

BY E. MORLAE

IT was almost daylight, and things were visible at two to three metres.

The bombardment had died down, and the quiet was hardly disturbed by occasional shots. Our captain marched ahead of the second section, swinging a cane and contentedly puffing on his pipe. Nearly everybody was smoking. As we marched along we noticed that new trenches had been dug during the night from sixty to a hundred metres in rear of the position we had held, and were filled by the Twenty-ninth Cha.s.seur Regiment, which replaced us.

Very cunningly these trenches were arranged. They were deep and narrow, fully seven feet deep and barely a yard wide. At every favorable point, on every little rise in the ground, a salient had been constructed, projecting out from the main trench ten to fifteen metres, protected by heavy logs, corrugated steel sheets, and two to three feet of dirt. Each side of the salients bristled with machine-guns. Any attack upon this position would be bound to fail, owing to the intense volume of fire that could be brought to bear upon the flanks of the enemy.

To make a.s.surance doubly sure, the Engineer Corps had dug rows of cup-shaped bowls, two feet in diameter, two feet deep, leaving but a narrow wedge of dirt between each two; and in the centre of each bowl was placed a six-pointed twisted steel 'porcupine.' This instrument, however it is placed, always presents a sharp point right at you. Five rows of these man-traps I counted, separated by a thin wall of dirt not strong enough to maintain the weight of a man, so that any one who attempted to rush past would be thrown against the 'porcupine' and be spitted like a pigeon. As an additional precaution a ma.s.s of barbed wire lay in rolls, ready to be placed in front of this ouvrage, to make it safe against any surprise.

We marched along, talking and chatting, discussing this and that, without a care in the world. Every one hoped we were going to the rear to recuperate and enjoy a good square meal and a good night's rest.

Seeger[A] wanted a good wash, he said. He was rather dirty, and so was I. My puttees dangled in pieces round my calves. It seems I had torn them going through the German wire the day before. I told Haeffle to keep his eyes open for a good pair on some dead man. He said he would.

[A] Alan Seeger, the poet, who was later killed in battle.

The company marched round the hill we descended so swiftly yesterday and, describing a semi-circle, entered again the _Schutzengraben Spandau_ and marched back in the direction we had come from. The trench, however, presented a different appearance. The bad places had been repaired, the loose dirt had been shoveled out, and the dead had disappeared. On the east side of the trench an extremely high parapet had been built. This parapet was complete even to loop-holes--rather funny-looking loop-holes, I thought; and when I looked closer, I saw that they were framed in by boots! I reached my hand into several of them as we walked along, and touched the limbs of dead men. The engineers, it seems, in need of material, had placed the dead Germans on top of the ground, feet flush with the inside of the ditch, leaving from six to seven inches between two bodies, and laying another body cross-wise on top of the two, spanning the gap between them. Then they had shoveled the dirt on top of them, thus killing two birds with one stone.

The discovery created a riot of excitement among the men. Curses intermingled with laughter came from ahead of us. Everybody was tickled by the ingenuity of our genie. 'They are marvelous!' we thought. Dowd's face showed consternation, yet he could not help smiling. Little King was pale around the mouth, yet his lips were twisted in a grin. It was horribly amusing.

Every 200 metres we pa.s.sed groups of the One Hundred and Seventieth, on duty in the trench. The front line, they told us, was twelve hundred metres farther east, and this trench formed the second line for their regiment. We entered the third-line trench of the Germans, from which they ran yesterday to surrender, and continued marching in the same direction--always east. Here we had a chance to investigate the erstwhile German habitations.

Exactly forty paces apart, doorways opened into the dirt bank, and from each of them fourteen steps descended at about forty-five degrees into a cellar-like room. The stairs were built of wood and the sides of the stairways and the chambers below were lined with one-inch pine boards.

These domiciles must have been quite comfortable and safe, but now they were choked with bodies. As we continued our leisurely way, we met some of our trench-cleaners, and they recited their experiences with gusto.

The Germans, they told us, pointing down into the charnel-houses, refused to come and give up, and even fired at them when summoned to surrender. 'Then what did you do?' I asked. 'Very simple,' answered one.

'We stood on the top of the ground right above the door and hurled grenade after grenade through the doorway until all noise gradually ceased down below. Then we went to the next hole and did the same thing.

It wasn't at all dangerous,' he added, 'and it was very effective.'