Leerie Part 22

She was contemplating those boots now with a smile of rare contentment that showed its inwardness even in the gray light of early morning.

"Never thought I should step into the shoes of a great surgeon. They ought to pa.s.s me through to the front if everything else fails, don't you think?"

The chief eyed her quizzically. "They'll carry you as far as you'll care to go and for as long as you'll stand. What's troubling me is what your man will say when he knows?"

"Who--Peter?" Sheila's smile deepened. "He'll understand; he'll be glad.

Something both of us will remember always, something big to share. Oh, I know it's going to be life and death, heaven and h.e.l.l, rolled into a minute, but I wouldn't be missing this chance--" She broke off suddenly, and when she spoke again there was a great reverence in her voice. "I feel as the littlest angel might have felt if G.o.d had asked him to be at the Creation."

"Rather different, this." Griggs, the chief's a.s.sistant, spoke. There were just the three of them in the ambulance.

"Not so very. It's another big primal happening, the hurling together of elemental things and impulses and watching something more solid and lasting come out. A new heaven and a new earth."

"What we see coming out won't be so solid or so lasting. We may not be ourselves." Griggs was a pessimist, a heroic one, with an eye ever keen for the grimmest and most disappointing in life and a courage to meet it squarely.

The chief's glance brushed him on its way to the nurse; Griggs's share of it was plainly commiserating. "And I say, blessed be those who shall inherit it. But, girl, this doesn't settle the question of your man. I've had to duck orders a bit to bring you along. Women aren't wanted at the front. He may hold it up stiff against me for it."

"But I can help. Any woman who can stand it will be needed. They shouldn't bar us out. That's all Peter'll think about. Don't worry."

There was no question in the girl's mind as to the wisdom or right in her coming--or Peter's verdict in the matter. He would not fuss over this plunge into danger any more than he had misunderstood her giving away her wedding back at the old San and coming over at the eleventh hour. The last words Peter had said when he left her for the front came back with absolute distinctness:

"Whatever happens, do what you think best, go where you feel you must go.

Don't bungle your instincts. I'd trust them next to G.o.d's own."

No, Peter Brooks would have been the last person to deny her this chance, and so all was well. She was wondering now if by some rare good luck she might stumble on Peter at the front. She had not seen him since they separated the day after their arrival in France. A few penciled hieroglyphics had come from time to time telling her all was well with him. She had written when she could and when she knew enough of an address to risk a letter reaching him. But Peter, after the manner of all correspondents, was like Hamlet's ghost--here, there, and gone; and Sheila had no way of knowing if her letters had ever reached him.

For weeks it had seemed to the girl that her love had lain dormant, hushed under the pressure of work. So vital and eternal were both love and happiness that in her zeal for perfect, impersonal service she had thrust them both out of sight, as one might put seeds away in the dark to wait until planting-time, a.s.sured of their fulfilment when the time came. But now in the lull between the work at the hospital and the work that would soon claim her again she discovered that in some inexplicable manner love would no longer be shut out. She was sick for the man she loved.

A funny little wistful droop took Sheila's lips, and her chin quivered for an instant. It was so unlike the girl that the chief, seeing, reached across and laid a hand on her knee.

"What is it? Not sorry?"

"Never. But I was thinking how pleasantly easy it might have been to stay behind at the old San. Peter and I'd be climbing that mythical hilltop of ours, with a home of our own at the end of the climb--if we'd stayed behind."

"Well, why didn't you?"

The nurse laughed softly. Griggs volunteered to answer for her.

"Because you were a fool, like a lot of the rest of us."

"Because--oh, because of that queer something inside us all that pries us away from our determinations just to be contented and happy all our lives and hustles us somewhere to do something for somebody else. Remember in the old fairy-tales they were always cleaning the world of dragons or giants or chimeras before they married and lived happy ever after."

"Bos.h.!.+ Remember that it's only in the fairy-tales that the giants or the monsters don't generally get you, and you get an epitaph instead of a wedding. You romantic idealists make me sick," and Griggs snarled openly.

Their mobile unit was held up that day in a little ruined city. Only one other dressing-station was there, and the wounded were pa.s.sing through so fast and so wounded that many could not go on. So they set up another dressing-station and worked through the night until the stars went out and their orders came to hurry on. They caught two hours' sleep and by noon of another day they were as close to the front as a hospital unit could go.

A dugout had been portioned out to them, and while orderlies brought in their equipment and the surgeons were coupling up lights and sterilizer, Sheila started to get a hot meal in two sterilizing basins. The nurse was just drawing in her first breath of real war. Before she had time to exhale it a despatch-bearer climbed down into the dugout and handed an order to the chief. It was from headquarters, and brief. The division did not intend to have any woman's name on its casualty list. Sheila was to be returned at once. The bearer added the information that an ambulance was returning with wounded; she could take it.

The chief had never seen the nurse turn so white. Her eyes spoke the appeal her lips refused to make. He tried to put something into words to make it easier for her, but gave it up in final despair. What was there to say? In silence the girl put on her trench coat, jammed on her hat, and was gone. For the first kilometer her senses were too numbed to allow for much thinking. Mechanically she pa.s.sed her canteen to one of the wounded, readjusted a blanket over another. It was not until the division turned loose its first barrage that day that she woke up to what was happening to her. She was going back; she was not going to have her chance.

The noise was terrific. It drowned everything but the mutinous hammerings of her own heart. In the flash of an eye she changed from the Sheila O'Leary of civilized production to a savage, primitive woman. She had but one dominating instinct, to stand by the male of her tribe, to succor him, fight with him, die with him. It seemed as futile a thing to try to stay this impulse as to try to put out the burning of a prairie when the wind blows.

The ambulance stopped with a jerk. Something was wrong with the engine.

The driver climbed down and threw back the hood, and, unnoticed, the nurse slipped down and pa.s.sed him. When he had finished his tinkering, Sheila was fifty rods away across the meadow.

"Here, you, you come back!" shouted the driver.

For answer Sheila doubled her speed.

The driver watched her, uncertain what to do. A sh.e.l.l whizzed from beyond the barrage and burst a hundred yards from the nurse. The shock threw her, but she was up in an instant, her course changed toward some deserted trenches. The driver hesitated no longer. He climbed back and started the engine.

"No use tacklin' them kind," he remarked to the empty seat beside him.

"She'll get there or she won't--but she won't turn back."

It was nightfall when Sheila came up with what she had chosen to call "her division." She intended to possess it in spite of the commander. An outpost sentry challenged what he thought a wraith. His tongue fumbled the words, "Oh, Gawd! it's a woman!"

"Yes. Will you pa.s.s her? Lots to do."

He looked at the red cross on her arm and smiled foolishly. "You bet there is! Sure I'll pa.s.s you."

She came up with the first battalion, bivouacked under a sh.e.l.l-riven ridge.

"A woman!" The first boy whispered it, and the exclamation rippled on to the next and the next like wind in dry leaves. Remembering the exodus of the morning, the nurse knew if she was to stay she must prove her need and prove it quickly. Her voice was as business-like as in the old San days.

"Dressing-station? Company's surgeon? Wounded? Doesn't matter which, only get me some work."

A hand slipped out of the darkness and caught her elbow. "This way, lady,"

and she was drawn along the protecting shelter of the ridge. After rods of stumbling she stumbled down irrational stairs into the same dugout she had left that morning. She was almost as surprised as the two surgeons.

"You're a fool," muttered Griggs. "Wait till they order me back. I'll not be crying for purgatory twice."

The chief smiled. "I reckon you got that S O S call I've been sending out all day. We need help like sixty. b.i.+.c.hloride's under that basin. We'll be ready for you when you've washed up. Night ahead--" His words trailed off into an incoherent chuckling. He was wondering how the girl had managed it. He was wondering more what the command would do when it found out. In the mean time he was glorying in her courage; he would see she got full measure of the work that had claimed her in spite of orders, while he silently thanked a merciful G.o.d for providing her.

No one questioned her right to be there that night. Wounded poured in, flooded the dugout to capacity, were cared for, carried away, and more flooded again. It was daybreak before a lull came, and then there were orders to be ready to follow the battalion in an hour. So they ate a s.n.a.t.c.h, packed, and rolled on in the wake of the Allies' conquest.

Again it was nightfall before they caught up with their regiment. Even to eyes as inexperienced as theirs it was easy to see it had been factored and factored again, and not the half of it was standing. They found a couple of regimental surgeons floundering through a sea of wounded. The nurse had to bite her lips to keep back the cry of horror over the apparent hopelessness of the task that lay before them. So many--and so few hands to do it all!

A shout went up from the men who had come through whole, when they saw her. They were wet, covered with mud, aching in every joint and sinew, but they forgot it all in their joyful pride over the fact that the nurse was standing by.

"Gosh durn it, it's our girl!"

"Stuck fast to the old bat. Whoopee!"

"At-a-boy! Three cheers for the pluckiest girl on the front--our girl!"

and a young giant led the cheering that sprang as one yell from those husky throats.

"She's all right--our girl's all right--'rah-'rah-'rah!"

Sheila's own voice was too husky to more than whisper, as she slipped behind the giant, "Tell them my thanks and--good luck."