The Best Short Stories of 1918 Part 9

"Money? What for? Because the kid sc.r.a.ped an aileron? Forget it. I ain't puttin' up any holler. He's fetched an' carried for me all summer. I'm owin' him, if it comes down to that."

"But Richard had no right to damage your machine-"

"Well, he never meant to. That squally gust put him off tack, else he'd 'a' brought her down smooth's a whistle. For, take it from me, he's a flier born. Hand, eye, balance, feel, he's got 'em all. And he's patient and speedy and cautious and reckless all at once. And he knows more about engines than I do, this minute. There's not a motor made that can faze him. Say, he's one whale of a kid, all right. If his folks would let me, I'd take him on as flyin' partner. Fifty-fifty at that."

I stiffened a trifle.

"You are very kind. But such a position would hardly be fitting-"

"For a swell kid like him?" Under his helmet those keen eyes narrowed to twin points of light. "Likely not. You rich hill folks can't be expected to know your own kids. You'll send him to Harvard, then chain him up in a solid-mahogany office, with a gang of solid-mahogany clerks to kowtow to him, and teach him to make money. When he might be flyin' with me.

Flyin'-with me!" His voice shook on a hoa.r.s.e, exultant note. He threw back his head; from under the leathern casque his eyes flamed out over the world of sea and sky, his conquered province. "When he might be a flier, the biggest flier the world has ever seen. Say, can you beat it?

_Can_ you beat it?"

His rudeness was past excuse. Yet I stood before him in the oddest guilty silence. Finally-

"But please let me pay you. That broken strut-"

"Nothing doing, sister. Forget it." He bent to his work. "Pay me? No matter if my plane did get a knock, it was worth it. Just to see that fat guy in white pants hot-foot it for deep water! Yes, I'm paid.

Good-by."

Then, to that day of shards and ashes, add one more recollection-Buster's face when Aunt Charlotte laid it upon him that he should never again enter that hangar door.

"Aunt Charlotte! For Pete's sake, have a heart! I've got that plane eatin' out of my hand. If that plaguy cat's-paw hadn't sprung up-"

"You will not go to East Gloucester again, Richard. That ends it." Aunt Charlotte swept from the room.

"Gee!" Buster's wide eyes filled. He slumped into the nearest chair.

"Say, Cousin Edie! Ain't I got one friend left on earth?"

"Now, Richard-"

"Can't you see what I'm tryin' to put over? I don't expect Aunt Charlotte to see. She's a pippin, all right, but that solid-ivory dome of hers-"

"_Richard!_"

"But you're different. You aren't so awful old. You ought to understand that a fellow just has to know about things-cars, s.h.i.+ps, aeroplanes, motors, everything!"

"But-"

"Now, Cousin Edith, I'm not stringin' you. I'm dead in earnest. I'm not tryin' to bother anybody; I'm just tryin' to learn what I've got to learn." He leaped up, gripped my arm; his pa.s.sionate boy voice shrilled; he was droll and pitiful and insolent all in a breath. "No, sirree, I ain't bluffin', not for a cent. Believe me, Cousin Edith, us fellows have got to learn how everything works, and learn it quick. I tell you, we've _got_ to know!"

Well.... All this was the summer of 1914. Three years ago. Three years and eight months ago, to be exact. Nowadays, I don't wear tea-rose crepe frocks nor slim French slippers. Our government's daily Hints for Paris run more to coa.r.s.e blue denim and dour woollen hose and clumping rubber boots. My once-lily hands clasp a scrubbing-brush far oftener than a hand at bridge. And I rise at five-thirty and gulp my scalding coffee in the hot, tight galley of Field Hospital 64, then set to work. For long before the dawn they come, that endless string of ambulances, with their terrible and precious freight. Then it's baths and food and swift, tense minutes in the tiny "theatre," and swifter, tenser seconds when we and the orderlies hurry through dressings and bandagings, while the senior nurse toils like a Turk alongside and bosses us meanwhile like a slave-driver. Every day my heart is torn open in my breast for the pain of my children, my poor, big, helpless, broken children. Every night, when I slip by to take a last peep at their sleepy, contented faces, my heart is healed for me again. Then I stumble off to our half-part.i.tioned slit and throw myself on my bunk, tired to my last bone, happy to the core of my soul. But day by day the work heaps up. Every cot is full, every tent overflowing. We're short of everything, beds, carbolic, dressings, food. And yesterday, at dusk, when we were all f.a.gged to exhaustion, there streamed down a very flood of wounded, eight ambulance-loads, harvest of a bombed munitions depot.

"We haven't an inch of room."

"We've got to make room." Doctor Lake, sweating, dog-tired, swaying on his feet from nine unbroken hours at the operating-table, took command.

"Take my hut; it'll hold four at a pinch. You nurses will give up your cubby-hole? Thought so. Plenty hot water, Octave? Bring 'em along."

They brought them along. Every stretcher, every bunk, every crack was crowded now. Then came the whir of a racing motor. One more ambulance plunged up the sodden road.

"Ah! _Grand blesse!_" murmured old Octave.

"_Grand blesse!_ And not a blanket left, even. Put him in the coal-hole," groaned the head nurse.

"Nix on the coal-hole." Thus the muddy young driver, hauling out the stretcher with its long, moveless shape. "This is the candy kid-hear me?

Our crack scout. Escadrille 32."

"Escadrille 32?" The number held no meaning for me. Yet I pushed nearer.

_Grand blesse_, indeed, that lax, pulseless body, that shattered flesh, that blood and mire. I bent closer. Red hair, s.h.i.+ning and thick, the red that always goes with cinnamon freckles. A clean-cut, ashen young face, a square jaw, a stubborn, boyish chin with a deep-cleft dimple.

Then my heart stopped short. The room whirled round me.

"Buster!" I cried out. "You naughty, darling little scamp! So you got your way, after all. You ran off from school, and joined the escadrille-oh, sonny-boy, don't you hear me? Listen! Listen!"

The gaunt face did not stir. Only that ashy whiteness seemed to grow yet whiter.

"We'll do our best, Miss Preston. Go away now, dear." The head nurse put me gently back. I knew too well what her gentleness meant.

"But Doctor Lake can save him! Doctor Lake can pull him through!"

"Doctor Lake is worn out. We'll have to manage without him."

"Don't you believe it!" I flamed. Then I, the greenest, meekest slavey in the service, dashed straight to the operating-room, and gripped Doctor Lake by both wrists and jerked him bodily off the bench where he crouched, a sick, lubberly heap, blind with fatigue.

"No, you sha'n't stop to rest. Not yet!" I stormed at him. Somehow I dragged him down the ward, to my boy's side. At sight of that deathlike face, the limp, s.h.i.+vering man pulled himself together with all his weary might.

"I'll do my level best, Miss Edith. Go away, now, that's a good girl."

I went away and listened to the ambulance-driver. He was having an ugly bullet scratch on his arm tied up. He was not a regular field-service man, but a young Y. M. C. A. helper who had taken the place of a driver shot down that noon.

"Well, you see, that kid took the air two hours ago to locate the battery that's been spilling sh.e.l.ls into our munitions station. He spotted it, and two others besides. Naturally, they spotted him. He scooted for home, with a shrapnel wound in his shoulder, and made a bad landing three miles back of the lines, and broke his leg and whacked his head. Luckily I wasn't a hundred yards away. I got him aboard my car and gave him first aid and started to bring him straight over here. Would he stand for that? Not Buddy. 'You'll take me to headquarters first, to report,' says he. 'So let her out.'

"No use arguing. I let her out. We reported at headquarters, three miles out of our way, then started here. Two miles back, a sh.e.l.l struck just ahead and sent a rock the size of a paving-brick smack against our engine. The car stopped, dead. Did that faze the kid? Not so you could notice it. 'You hoist me on the seat and let me get one hand on the wheel,' says he, cool's a cuc.u.mber. 'There isn't a car made but will jump through hoops for me.' Go she did. With her engine knocked galley west, mind you, and him propped up, chirk as a cherub, with his broken leg and his smashed shoulder, and a knock on his head that would 'a'

stopped his clock if he'd had any brains to jolt. Skill? He drove that car like a racer. She only hit the high places. Pluck? He wrote it.

"We weren't fifty yards from the hospital when he crumpled down, and I grabbed him. Hemorrhage, I guess. I sure do hope they pull him through.

But-I don't believe-"

Soon a very dirty-faced brigadier-general, whom I used to meet at dances long ago, came and sat down on a soap-box and held my hands and tried to comfort me, so gently and so patiently, the poor, kind, blundering dear.

Most of his words just buzzed and glimmered round me. But one thought stuck in my dull brain.

"This isn't your boy's first service to his country, Miss Edith. He has been with the escadrille only a month, but he has brought down three enemy planes, and his scouting has been invaluable. He's a wonder, anyhow. So are all our flying boys. They tell me that the German youngsters make such good soldiers because they're trained to follow orders blindfold. All very well when it comes to following a bayonet charge over the top. But the escadrille-that's another story. Take our boys, brought up to sail their own boats and run their own cars and chance any fool risk in sight. Couple up that impudence, that fearlessness, that splendid curiosity, and you've got a fighting-machine that not only fights but wins. All the drilled, stolid forces in creation can't beat back that headlong young spirit. If-"

He halted, stammering.

"If-we can't keep him with us, you must remember that he gave his best to his country, and his best was a n.o.ble gift. Be very glad that you could help your boy prepare himself to bestow it. You and his parents gave him his outdoor life and his daring sports and his fearless outlook, and his uncurbed initiative. You helped him build himself, mind and body, to flawless powers and to instant decisions. To-day came his chance to give his greatest service. No matter what comes now, you-you have your royal memory."