Leerie Part 14

"Did you forget it afterward, when the body was clean and whole again?

Could you forget the thing that had been there? For that's war. That's what we're fighting, the thing that's eating into the heart of a decent, sound world, and since I've seen the horror of it I can't forget. I can't see the healing--yet."

"You will. Not at first, perhaps, but when you're stronger. That is one of G.o.d's blessed plans: He made beauty to be immortal and ugliness to die and be forgotten. And even the scars where ugliness was time whitens and obliterates. Give time its chance."

It was the next day that the boy spoke of Clarisse. "Will time make them all right, too? Leerie," he had picked up the nickname from the other nurses and appropriated it with all the ardent affection of wors.h.i.+ping youth, "we're miles--ages--apart. Can anything under G.o.d's canopy bring us together, I wonder?"

"Perhaps." Sheila smiled her old inscrutable smile. "Tell me more."

And so he told her of the girl who was so young, and oh, so pretty. It had all seemed right before he had gone to camp; it was the great love for him, something that had made his going seem the worthier. But at camp the distance between them had begun to widen, her letters had failed to bridge it, and through those letters he had discovered a new angle of her, an angle so acute that it had cut straight to the heart and destroyed all the love that had been there. At least that was what he thought.

"I knew she was young, of course, not much more than a child, and I knew she loved fun and good times, and all that, but--Why, she'd write about week-end parties, and how becoming her bathing-suit was, and what Tommy Flint said about her fox-trotting. Lord!" He writhed under the coverlet and ground his nails into his palms. "We marched through places where there wasn't a shred of anything left for anybody. We saw old women hanging on to broken platters and empty bird-cages because it was all they had left--home, children, everything gone. And on top of that would come a letter telling how much she'd spent on an evening gown, and how Bob Wylie took them out to Riverdale and blew in a hundred and twenty dollars on the day's trip. A hundred and twenty dollars! That would have bought a young ocean of milk over there for the refugee kids I saw starving."

He jerked himself up suddenly and sat huddled over, his eyes kindling with a vision of purging the world. Sheila knew it was useless to stop him, so she propped him up with pillows and let him go on.

"And that wasn't all. Between the lulls in the fighting they moved us along to a quiet sector, to freshen up, where we were so close to the German side that we could look into one of their captured villages. There we could see the French girls they'd carried off going out to work, saw them corralled at night like--" He broke off, hesitated, then went doggedly on. "With field-gla.s.ses we could see them plainly, the loads they had to lift and carry, the beatings they got, the look in their faces. Their shoulders were crooked, their backs bent from the long slaving. They were wraiths, most of them--and some with babies at their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. After I got back from seeing that, I found another letter from Clarisse. She said the girls just couldn't buckle down to much Red Cross work; it was so hard to do anything much in summer. They'd no sooner get started than some one would say tennis or a swim. _And I saw women dying over there--and bearing Boche babies!_"

All the agony of soul that youth can compa.s.s was poured forth in those last words. The boy leaned back on his pillows, weary unto death with the hopelessness of it all. So Sheila let him lie for a while before she answered him.

"Do the boys want their girls to know the full horror of it all? I thought that was one of the things you were fighting for, to keep as much of it away from them as you could."

The boy raised a hand in protest, but Sheila silenced him. "Wait a minute; it's my turn to talk now. I know what's in your mind. You think that Clarisse--and the girls like her--are showing unforgivable callousness and flippancy in the face of this world tragedy. Instead of becoming women as you have become men, they stay silly, unthinking, irresponsible creatures who dance and play and laugh while you fight and die. The contrast is too colossal; it all seems past remedy. Isn't that so? Well, there's another side, a side you haven't thought of. The girls are giving you up. The little they know of life, as it is now, looks very overwhelming to them. Perhaps it frightens them. And what do frightened children do in the dark?"

The boy did not try to answer; he waited, tensely eager.

"Why, they sing; they laugh little short-breathed laughs; they tell stories to themselves of nonsensical things to rea.s.sure them. All the time they are trying not to think of what terrors the dark may hold; they are trying not to cry out for some one to come and sit with them. Some of our girls are doing a tremendous work. They meet trains at all hours of the day or night and feed the boys before they sail; they wait all day in the canteens until they're ready to drop; they put in a lot more time, making comfort-kits, knitting, and rolling bandages, than they ever own to. And suppose they don't grow dreadfully serious; isn't it better that way? The girls are doing their bit as fast as they are learning how. It isn't fair of the boys to judge them too soon. It isn't fair of you to judge your Clarisse without giving her a chance."

"You didn't read those letters."

"Letters! Most of us, when we write, keep back the things that really matter and skim off the surface of our lives to tell about. There may not be the sixteenth part of your girl in those letters."

The boy's lips tightened stubbornly. "It wasn't just one--it was all of them. Anyhow, I haven't the nerve or the heart to find out."

Again Sheila let the silence fall between them. When she spoke, her voice was very tender. "Tell me, boy, what made you love her?"

He smiled sheepishly. "Oh, I don't know. She was always a good sport, never got grumpy over things that happened, never got cold feet, either.

She had a way of teasing you to do what she wanted, would do anything to get her way; and then she'd turn about so quickly and give you your way, after all--just make you take it. And she'd be so awfully sweet about it, too. And she'd always play fair, and she had a way of making you feel the best ever. Oh, I don't know--" The boy looked about him helplessly. "They sound awfully foolish reasons for loving a girl."

Sheila's face had become suddenly radiant; her eyes sparkled like rushlights in a wind. They actually startled the boy so that he straightened up in bed again and gripped her hand. "I say, Leerie, what is it? I never saw you look like this before. You're--Are you in love?"

"With one of the finest men G.o.d ever made. He's so fine that he trusted me through a terrible bungle--believed in the real woman in me when I would have denied it. That's what a man's love can do for a woman sometimes, keep her true to the best in her."

That night, after many fluttering protests, the little mother wrote a letter to Clarisse. It was dictated by Sheila and posted by her, and it contained little information except what might have been extracted from a non-committal railroad guide. It did mention at the last, however, that Phil was slowly gaining.

With this off her mind, Sheila went to find Peter. She had characteristically neglected him since she had been on the case, and as characteristically he made no protest. Instead he met her with that quick understanding that she had claimed as one of love's ingredients. He looked her over well and proudly, then tapped his head significantly.

"I see, there's more to this soldier-boy case than just wounds. Want me to run you down the boulevard while you work it out?"

"Thank G.o.d for a man!" breathed Sheila, and then aloud: "No, it's worked out. But you might run me down, just the same."

"Feels almost like frost to-night," said Peter as he put the car into first. "Do you think it will hold pleasant enough for--"

"For what?" Sheila's tone sounded blank.

Peter chuckled. "For the gardens and the old ladies, of course. Have you by any chance forgotten that there's going to be a wedding in four days?"

"Sat.u.r.day, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday--" counted Sheila. "Why, so it is!"

Then she echoed Peter's chuckle, "Oh yes, there's going to be a wedding, a beautiful wedding in four days."

A strange little twinge took Peter's heart there in the dark at the queer, impersonal note in what she had said. What did it mean?

Sheila gave the girl twenty-four hours to reach the San after receiving the letter; she came in eighteen, and the nurse rejoiced at this good omen. She had delegated Peter to meet all trains that day, take the girl to her room, send for her at once, and tell n.o.body. Peter obeyed, and early in the afternoon Sheila looked up from her reading to the boy to see Peter standing in the doorway, the message on his lips.

"Baggage delivered," was Peter's announcement.

"Thank you. I'll come in a minute and see if my key fits." She hunted up the little mother, left her in charge, and hurried over to the nurses'

home.

There in the big living-hall, perched in a wicker chair under the poster of Old King Cole, Sheila found the girl, who was young and oh, so pretty.

She looked about as capable of taking a plunge into the grim depths of life and coming out safely as a toy Pom of weathering the waters of the Devil's Hole. "How shall I ever push her in?" thought Sheila as she held out her hand in greeting.

Clarisse took it with all the hectic impulsiveness of youth. "You're his nurse. Isn't it great his coming back this way? All our set is engaged--or about to be--but I'm the only one that's got her man back with battle scars all over him. Makes me feel like a story-book heroine."

Sheila O'Leary didn't know whether she wanted to laugh or cry. She ended by doing what probably surprised her more than it did the girl. She sat down in the wicker chair herself and gathered the girl into her lap. "Oh, you blessed, blessed baby!" she crooned softly.

The girl pouted adorably. It was very evident that she liked to be petted, coaxed, and spoiled. If there was a woman slumbering under all this dimpling, infantile charm, she was quite indiscernible to the woman who held her.

Slowly she bent over the girl and let her face show all the delight she could feel in her prettiness and baby ways. There must be sympathy between them or her task would be hopeless. "There, let me untie that bewitching bonnet of yours and take off your gloves. We have a lot to tell each other before you see your soldier."

"But Phil--won't he be waiting, wondering why I don't come? Oh, I'm just crazy to see him!"

"He doesn't know you're here yet."

"Oh!" The smooth, white forehead did its utmost to manage a frown. "Why, didn't he send for me?"

"No."

"Who did? His mother wrote."

"I sent."

The round, childish eyes filled with apprehension; she wrenched herself free of Sheila's arms. "He isn't going to--The letter said--?"

"He's better. Sit down, dear. That's what we have to talk over. His body is mending fast, but his mind--well, his mind has been taken prisoner."

Clarisse tossed an adorable crown of golden curls. "I don't understand."

"Didn't expect you to, at first. It's this way. He's been through some very big, very terrible experiences, and he can't forget them. He isn't the boy you used to play with, the boy who was happy just having a good time. He's grown very serious. That's what experience is likely to do for us all in time, but with him it's come all in a heap. When that happens you can't go back and be happy in the old way. Do you see?"

"Go on."