The Search Part 15

In a room quite near there were soft sounds as of suppressed weeping.

Something made Ruth sure it was the mother who had been spoken of earlier in the evening as having come all the way from Texas and arrived too late to bid her boy good-bye.

Now and again the sound of a troop train stirred her heart to untold depths. There is something so weird and sorrowful about its going, as if the very engine sympathized, screaming its sorrow through the night. Ruth felt she never would forget that sound. Out there in the dark Cameron might be even then slipping past them out into the great future. She wished she could dare ask that sweet faced woman, or that dear little boy to pray for _him_. Maybe she would next day.

The two officer's wives seemed to sit up in bed and watch the train. They had discovered a flash light, and were counting the signals, and quite excited. Ruth's heart ached for them. It was a peculiarity of this trip that she found her heart going out to others so much more than it had ever gone before. She was not thinking of her own pain, although she knew it was there, but of the pain of the world.

Her body lying on the strange hard cot ached with weariness in unaccustomed places, yet she stretched and nestled upon the tan canvas with satisfaction. She was sharing to a certain extent the hards.h.i.+ps of the soldiers--the hards.h.i.+p of one soldier whose privations hurt her deeply. It was good to have to suffer--with him. Where was G.o.d? Did He care? Was He in this queer little hostel? Might she ask Him now to set a guard over Cameron and let him find the help he needed wherewith to go to meet Death, if Death he must meet?

She laid her hands together as a little child might do and with wide-open eyes staring into the dark of the high ceiling she whispered from her heart: "Oh G.o.d, help--_us_--to find _you_!" and unconsciously she, too, set her soul on the search that night.

As she closed her eyes a great peace and sense of safety came over her.

Outside on the road a company of late soldiers, coming home from leave noised by. Some of them were drunk, and wrangling or singing, and a sense of their pitiful need of G.o.d came over her as she sank into a deep sleep.

XV

She was awakened by the rattling of the pots and pans in the tiny kitchen. She sat up startled and looked about her. It was very early. The first sunlight was streaming redly through the window screens, and the freshness of the morning was everywhere, for all the windows were wide open. The stillness of the country, broken only by the joyous chorus of the birds, struck her as a wonderful thing. She lay down again and closed her eyes to listen. Music with the scent of clover! The cheery little home noises in the kitchen seemed a pleasant background for the peace of the Sabbath morning. It was so new and strange. Then came the thought of camp and the antic.i.p.ation of the day, with the sharp pang at the memory that perhaps even now Cameron was gone. Orders were so uncertain. In the army a man must be ready to move at a moment's notice. What if while she slept he had pa.s.sed by on one of those terrible troop trains!

She sat up again and began to put her hair into order and make herself presentable. He had promised that if such a thing as a sudden move should occur he would throw out an old envelope with his name written on it as they pa.s.sed by the hut, and she meant to go out to that railroad track and make a thorough search before the general public were up.

Mrs. Cameron was still sleeping soundly, one work-worn hand partly shading her face. Ruth knew instinctively that she must have been weeping in the night. In the early morning dawn she drooped on the hard little cot in a crumpled heap, and the girl's heart ached for her sorrow.

Ruth stole into the kitchen to ask for water to wash her face:

"I'm sorry," said the pleasant-faced woman who was making coffee and frying bacon, "but the wash basins are all gone; we've had so many folks come in. But you can have this pail. I just got this water for myself and I'll let you have it and I'll get some more. You see, the water pipes aren't put in the building yet and we have to go down the road quite a piece to get any. This is all there was left last night."

She handed Ruth a two-gallon galvanized tin bucket containing a couple of inches of water, obviously clean, and added a brief towel to the toilet arrangements.

Ruth beat a hasty retreat back to the shelter of the piano with her collection, fearing lest mirth would get the better of her. She could not help thinking how her aunt would look if she could see her was.h.i.+ng her face in this pittance of water in the bottom of the great big bucket.

But Ruth Macdonald was adaptable in spite of her upbringing. She managed to make a most pleasing toilet in spite of the paucity of water, and then went back to the kitchen with the bucket.

"If you will show me where you get the water I'll go for some more," she offered, anxious for an excuse to get out and explore the track.

The woman in the kitchen was not abashed at the offer. She accepted the suggestion as a matter of course, taking for granted the same helpful spirit that seemed to pervade all the people around the place. It did not seem to strike her as anything strange that this young woman should be willing to go for water. She was not giving attention to details like clothes and handbags, and neither wealth nor social station belonged to her scheme of life. So she smilingly gave the directions to the pump and went on breaking nice brown eggs into a big yellow bowl. Ruth wished she could stay and watch, it looked so interesting.

She took the pail and slipped out the back door, but before she went in search of water she hurried down to the railroad track and scanned it for several rods either way, carefully examining each bit of paper, her breath held in suspense as she turned over an envelope or sc.r.a.p of paper, lest it might bear his name. At last with a glad look backward to be sure she had missed nothing, she hurried up the bank and took her way down the gra.s.sy path toward the pump, satisfied that Cameron had not yet left the camp.

It was a lovely summer morning, and the quietness of the country struck her as never before. The wild roses s.h.i.+mmered along the roadside in the early sun, and bees and b.u.t.terflies were busy about their own affairs. It seemed such a lovely world if it only had not been for _war_. How could G.o.d bear it! She lifted her eyes to the deep blue of the sky, where little clouds floated lazily, like lovely aviators out for pleasure. Was G.o.d up there? If she might only find Him. What did it all mean, anyway?

Did He really care for individuals?

It was all such a new experience, the village pump, and the few early stragglers watching her curiously from the station platform. A couple of grave soldiers hurried by, and the pang of what was to come shot through her heart. The thought of the day was full of mingled joy and sorrow.

They ate a simple little breakfast, good coffee, toast and fried eggs.

Ruth wondered why it tasted so good amid such primitive surroundings; yet everything was so clean and tidy, though coa.r.s.e and plain. When they went to pay their bill the proprietor said their beds would be only twenty-five cents apiece because they had had no pillow. If they had had a pillow he would have had to charge them fifty cents. The food was fabulously cheap. They looked around and wondered how it could be done.

It was obvious that no tips would be received, and that money was no consideration. In fact, the man told them his orders were merely to pay expenses. He gave them a parting word of good cheer, and promised to try and make them more comfortable if they wanted to return that night, and so they started out for camp. Ruth was silent and thoughtful. She was wis.h.i.+ng she had had the boldness to ask this quaint Christian man some of the questions that troubled her. He looked as if he knew G.o.d, and she felt as if he might be able to make some things plain to her. But her life had been so hedged about by conventionalities that it seemed an impossible thing to her to open her lips on the subject to any living being--unless it might be to John Cameron. It was queer how they two had grown together in the last few months. Why could they not have known one another before?

Then there came a vision of what her aunt might have thought, and possible objections that might have come up if they had been intimate friends earlier. In fact, that, too, seemed practically to have been an impossibility. How had the war torn away the veil from foolish laws of social rank and station! Never again could she submit to much of the system that had been the foundation of her life so far. Somehow she must find a way to tear her spirit free from things that were not real. The thought of the social activities that would face her at home under the guise of patriotism turned her soul sick with loathing. When she went back home after he was gone she would find a way to do something real in the world that would make for righteousness and peace somehow. Knitting and dancing with lonesome soldiers did not satisfy her.

That was a wonderful day and they made the most of every hour, realizing that it would probably be the last day they had together for many a long month or year.

In the morning they stepped into the great auditorium and attended a Y.M.C.A. service for an hour, but their hearts were so full, and they all felt so keenly that this day was to be the real farewell, and they could not spare a moment of it, that presently they slipped away to the quiet of the woods once more, for it was hard to listen to the music and keep the tears back. Mrs. Cameron especially found it impossible to keep her composure.

Sunday afternoon she went into the Hostess' House to lie down in the rest room for a few minutes, and sent the two young people off for a walk by themselves.

Cameron took Ruth to the log in the woods and showed her his little Testament and the covenant he had signed. Then they opened their hearts together about the eternal things of life; shyly, at first, and then with the a.s.surance that sympathy brings. Cameron told her that he was trying to find G.o.d, and Ruth told him about their experiences the night before.

She also shyly promised that she would pray for him, although she had seldom until lately done very much real praying for herself.

It was a beautiful hour wherein they travelled miles in their friends.h.i.+p; an hour in which their souls came close while they sat on the log under the trees with long silences in the intervals of their talk.

It was whispered at the barracks that evening at five when Cameron went back for "Retreat" that this was the last night. They would move in the morning surely, perhaps before. He hurried back to the Hostess' House where he had left his guests to order the supper for all, feeling that he must make the most of every minute.

Pa.s.sing the officers' headquarters he heard the raucous laugh of Wainwright, and caught a glimpse of his fat head and neck through a window. His heart sank! Wainwright was back! Then he had been sent for, and they must be going that night!

He fled to the Hostess' House and was silent and distraught as he ate his supper. Suppose Wainwright should come in while they were there and see Ruth and spoil those last few minutes together? The thought was unbearable.

n.o.body wanted much supper and they wandered outside in the soft evening air. There was a hushed sorrow over everything. Even the roughest soldiers were not ashamed of tears. Little faded mothers clung to big burly sons, and their sons smoothed their gray hair awkwardly and were not ashamed. A pair of lovers sat at the foot of a tree hand in hand and no one looked at them, except in sympathy. There were partings everywhere. A few wives with little children in their arms were writing down hurried directions and receiving a bit of money; but most desolate of all was the row of lads lined up near the station whose friends were gone, or had not come at all, and who had to stand and endure the woe of others.

"Couldn't we _walk_ out of camp?" asked Ruth suddenly. "Must we go on that awful trolley? Last night everybody was weeping. I wanted to weep, too. It is only a few steps from the end of camp to our quarters. Or is it too far for you, Mrs. Cameron?"

"Nothing is too far to-night so I may be with my boy one hour longer."

"Then we must start at once," said Cameron, "there is barely time to reach the outskirts before the hour when all visitors must be out of camp. It is over three miles, mother."

"I can walk it if Ruth can," said the mother smiling bravely.

He drew an arm of each within his own and started off, glad to be out of Wainwright's neighborhood, gladder still to have a little longer with those he loved.

Out through the deserted streets they pa.s.sed, where empty barracks were being prepared for the next draft men; past the Tank Headquarters and the colored barracks, the storehouses and more barracks just emptied that afternoon into troop trains; out beyond the great laundry and on up the cinder road to the top of the hill and the end of the way.

There at last, in sight of the Military Police, pacing back and forth at the entrance to camp, with the twinkling lights of the village beyond, and the long wooded road winding back to camp, they paused to say good-bye. The cinder path and the woods at its edge made a blot of greenish black against a brilliant stormy sky. The sun was setting like a ball of fire behind the trees, and some strange freak of its rays formed a golden cross resting back against the clouds, its base buried among the woods, its cross bar rising brilliant against the black of a thunder cloud.

"Look!" said Ruth, "it is an omen!" They looked and a great wonder and awe came upon them. The Cross!

Cameron looked back and then down at her and smiled.

"It will lead you safely home," she said softly and laid her hand in his.

He held her fingers close for an instant and his eyes dared some of the things his lips would never have spoken now even if they two had been alone.

The Military Police stepped up:

"You don't have to stay out here to say good-bye. You can come into the station right here and sit down. Or if your friends are going to the village you may go with them, Comrade. I can trust you to come back right away."

"I thank you!" Cameron said. "That is the kindest thing that has happened to me at this camp. I wish I could avail myself of it, but I have barely time to get back to the barracks within the hour given me. Perhaps--" and he glanced anxiously across the road toward the village. "Could you just keep an eye out that my ladies reach the Salvation Army Hut all right?"