CHAPTER XXA HAPPY WARRIOR
THE Field Hospital in which Jane was at work was now seeing its busiest days. A steady stream of wounded men poured into it, day and night, frequently augmented after a serious engagement at the Front by such a torrent of extra cases that every resource was heavily overtaxed. Surgeons and nurses worked to the limit and beyond it; they kept on long after they should have been released. In Jane’s whole experience in this place no doctor or nurse ever gave up and was sent to the rear until actually forced to do so, by pure physical inability longer to continue. It was amazing how endurance held out, when the need was great, by sheer force of nerve and will. Yet the strain told, and it showed more and more in the worn faces of those upon whom the responsibility fell heaviest.
At a time when the situation was most trying, and the whole hospital force was exhausting itself with effort to cover the demand, a visitor appeared upon the scene who changed the face of things in an hour. He was a surgeon from a famous Base Hospital, himself distinguished both in America, from which he came, and in France, where he had been long serving far in advance of most of his countrymen. He had chosen to spend a brief leave from his work in visiting various Field Hospitals and Casualty Clearing Stations, and on account of his reputation forremarkable success in his own branch of regional surgery his visits had been welcomed and made the most of by his colleagues in the profession.
Arriving at this particular Field Hospital he found its operating rooms choked with cases, its surgeons working in mad haste to give each man his chance for life, in spite of the rush; its nurses standing by to the point of exhaustion. Their forces had been depleted that very day by the sudden and tragic loss of their Chief, who at the conclusion of an incredible number of hours of unceasing labour at the operating table had dropped quietly at the feet of his assistants and been carried out, not to return. He was a man beyond middle age, a slender gray-haired hero of indomitable will, who had known well enough that he was drawing upon borrowed capital but had withheld none of it on that account. His removal from the head of his forces had had no outer effect upon them except to make them redouble their efforts to fill the gap; but not a man nor woman there who was not feeling the weaker for the loss.
It was at this hour that Doctor Leaver, looking in upon the shambles that the operating room had become, and recognizing the tremendous need, a need greater than he had left behind, took off his coat, put on the smeared gown in which Doctor Burnside had fallen at his post—there was not a clean one to be had in the depleted supply room—and went quietly to work. He waited for no authority from anywhere; he was needed for hurt and dying men, and there was no time to lose. Comparatively fresh because of his brief vacation from his own work, experienced beyond any of the men who had been the Chief’s associates, he assumed the control as naturally as they gave it to him.
“By George! I never saw anything like this!” burst smotheredly from the lips of one of the younger surgeons, as he received certain supplies from Jane’s hands. “Talk about rapid work!—Why, the man’s lightning itself. He’s speeded us all up, though we thought we were making a record before. If anybody’d told me this morning that before night I’d be fetching and carrying for Leaver of Baltimore, I’d have told him no such luck. Why, say—I thought I was tired! I’m fresh as a mule, as long as he stands there.”
Doctor Leaver remained for five days, until a man to take the dead Chief’s place could be found. During that period he stopped work only to snatch a few hours’ rest when he could best be spared—if such intervals ever came. His tall, sinewy figure and lean, aquiline face became the most vitally inspiring sight in the whole place, the eyes of surgeons, nurses, and patients resting with confidence upon this skilful quiet man who did such marvellous things with such assured ease.
“Why,” one nurse declared to Jane, as the two made ready trays of instruments just from the sterilizer, “it seems as if he had only to look at a case that’s almost gone to have it revive. I’ve got so that I shall expect to see the dead sit up, pretty soon, if he tells them to. That red-headed boy over there—I wouldn’t have said he had one chance in a million to recover from shock, two hours ago, when he came in. And now look at him—smiling at everybody who comes near him!”
“Yes, Doctor Leaver is wonderful,” Jane agreed, “But remember who he is—one of the very most famous American surgeons we have over here. And modern surgery does do miracles—in the right hands. I never cease to wonder at it.”
One nurse was like another to the busy chief surgeon, or so it seemed—they couldn’t be sure that he would ever know any of them again if he saw them after this was over. But on the fourth day of his stay, as somebody called sharply—“Miss Ray!”—Jane noted that he looked suddenly over at her with that quick, penetrating glance of his which was keeping everybody on the jump. That same evening, during the first lull—or what might be called that—which had occurred for hours on end, he came to her.
“I have a message for you, Miss Ray,” he said, “if you are the Miss Ray who comes from the same part of the States as a young man named Enos Dyer.”
“Oh, yes, Doctor Leaver.” Jane looked up eagerly.
“Come out here, please, where we can talk a minute,” and the tall surgeon led her across the ward to an open door. He paused beside her in this doorway, drawing in deeply the cool damp air which poured in from outside, for the night like so many nights in France was wet. He passed his hand across his brow, smoothing back the dark, straight hair, moist with his unceasing labours.
“My word, but that feels good!” he said. “There are places in the world still, that don’t smell of carbolic and ether.” And he smiled at Jane, who smiled back. “How many hours’ sleep have you had in the last forty-eight?” he questioned suddenly, eyeing understandingly the violet shadows beneath her eyes.
“As many as you—or more—Doctor Leaver,” she answered lightly. “I’ve learned to do without, now—as you did, long ago.”
“Nobody ever learns to do without. Get some to-night, please, without fail.”
“You sound like a surgeon I know back home,” shesaid. She knew he would welcome a bit of relaxation from discipline during this brief interval of rest.
“Who? Red Pepper Burns?”
“Indeed, yes! How could you know?” she asked, though less surprised than she might have been if she had not already had many strange encounters, here in this land of strangers.
“He’s the best friend I have in the world—as he is that of plenty of other people. If you know him, Miss Ray, you understand that my heart warms at the very mention of him.”
She nodded. “You knew how he wanted to come over?”
“Yes! Hard luck. I wanted him badly with me. But he’s represented over here, Miss Ray, in the best way a man can be, short of actual personal service. I learned from him a method of overcoming traumatic shock which is more effective than any I’ve found in use here. It’s about our most difficult problem, you know. I scouted Burns’ theory in the beginning, but I’ve had a great chance to try it out over here, and it certainly does save some pretty desperate cases. If I can ever get a minute to write I’ll tell him a few things that will make him very happy.”
“I am so glad,” she said—and looked it.
“Now for my message. Back at Base I had a case that interested me mightily, not so much pathologically as psychologically. This boy Dyer was under my hands for a number of weeks—he’s back at the Front now—and a more naïve, engaging youngster from the back country I never knew. He had us all interested in him, he was so crazy to be under fire again. You had him here, I believe, on his way out.”
“Yes, Doctor. I shall always remember him.”
“And he, you, evidently. A number of weeks ago he heard me say that I intended to take this trip, and he figured it out that I might meet you. So he sent you this message, with instructions to me to deliver it somehow or answer to him.” He smiled over the recollection as he drew out a small paper. “Dyer could get away with more impudence—or what would be called that from anybody else—than any boy I ever saw. But it wasn’t really that—it was his beautiful faith that everybody was on his side, including the Almighty. He had an unshakeable and touching belief that God would see him through everything and permit him to render some big service before he was through. And since he hadn’t had his chance to do that yet, it followed as the night the day that he must get back to the Front and do it. I admit I came to feel much the same way about him myself. And when he gave me this message I understood that it must be delivered at any cost. So—without any cost at all—here it is.”
Jane received the folded paper with a curious sense of its importance, though it came from the most obscure young private in the A. E. F. With a word of apology she opened it, feeling that Doctor Leaver would like to know something of its contents, if they were communicable. After a moment during which she struggled with and conquered a big lump in her throat, she handed it to him. He read it with a moved face, and gave it back with the comment:
“That’s great—that’s simply great! Thank you for letting me see.”
The message was written in a cramped, boyishly uncertain hand, but there was nothing uncertain about the wording of it:
Miss Ray,Dear Friend:This is to tell you that it took longer than I expected to get me fixed up again but I am all O. K. now and never better and I am off for the place where things is doing. You know from what I said that I think there is something for me to do that nobody else could and I am going to do it if God lets me. Not that I think I am a Daniel but there sure is lions and just now they seem to be roaring pretty loud and I can’t get there too soon. I want to ask you to pray for me not that I won’t be afraid for I am not afraid but that I’ll be let to do something worth coming over here for. The preacher Mr. Black said that God always hears if we have anything to say to Him and I think He would hear you speshally—because anybody would. This leaves me well and hoping you are the same.Your friend,Private Enos Dyer.
Miss Ray,
Dear Friend:
This is to tell you that it took longer than I expected to get me fixed up again but I am all O. K. now and never better and I am off for the place where things is doing. You know from what I said that I think there is something for me to do that nobody else could and I am going to do it if God lets me. Not that I think I am a Daniel but there sure is lions and just now they seem to be roaring pretty loud and I can’t get there too soon. I want to ask you to pray for me not that I won’t be afraid for I am not afraid but that I’ll be let to do something worth coming over here for. The preacher Mr. Black said that God always hears if we have anything to say to Him and I think He would hear you speshally—because anybody would. This leaves me well and hoping you are the same.
Your friend,Private Enos Dyer.
“I suppose you have no idea where he is now,” Jane said, as she carefully put away the paper.
“Yes, I have an idea.” The surgeon was looking off now into the night outside. Gusts of wind blew the rain into his face, but he seemed to welcome its refreshing touch. “I had a word with a young artilleryman just now on whom I operated yesterday for a smashed elbow joint. He doesn’t mind that in the least, but the thing he does mind is that he’s sure his ‘buddy,’ as he calls him, ‘Enie Dyer,’ was in that battalion of the ——nth Division that has just been wiped out. It had taken the objective it was sent for, and this boy has had to help shell the position where Dyer would have been if the battalion hadn’t been sacrificed. His idea is that it was a perhaps inevitable sacrifice, but the thought that he might have been pouring lead and steel in on his friend, still alive and hiding in a shell-hole, has got on his nerves till he’s all in pieces. He’s a giant physically, but Dyer is twice his size, nevertheless.”
“I’ll find him,” said Jane. She felt suddenly weak with dread. She had caught rumours before now of the battalion which had not been heard from and which seemed to have vanished from the earth, but she had no idea that anyone in whom she was especially interested had been among that ill-fated number. She had known young Dyer but a few days, yet he had made upon her one of the most deeply disturbing impressions of her experience. His own personality, reinforced by her knowledge that he owed this simple trust of his to Robert Black, had combined to make the thought of him a poignant one. As she went back to her work she realized that Dyer was not to be out of her mind until the question of his whereabouts was settled—if it could be settled.
And meanwhile—what was it that he had bade her do for him?
It was three days later that the rumour reached the Hospital that the battalion which had been supposed to be wiped out had been heard from. Two runners had come through the enemy’s lines, it was said, and had brought word that what was left of the four companies which formed the battalion was under constant barrage fire from the guns of its own side. The barrage had been stopped, rescue was on its way; the daring men who had brought the word would shortly be here to be fixed up—they had been completely exhausted when they arrived.
The artilleryman sat up in bed. He waved his good right arm and shouted, before anybody could restrain him:
“I’ll bet Enie Dyer’s one of ’em! I’ll bet he’s one of ’em! Darn his hide, he’d get through hell itself if he started to. He’d never know when he was beat—he neverdid. He wouldn’t know it if a seventy-five hit him—he’d tell it he had to be gettin’ along where he was goin’, and he’d pull it out and leave it layin’ where ’twas! I vum——”
A burst of joyous laughter from all down the ward greeted this triumph of the imagination. Then Jane laid him gently down upon his back again—he had other injuries than the smashed elbow joint, and sitting up wouldn’t do for him yet. In his ear she whispered, “I think it’s Enie too, somehow. But we mustn’t be too sure yet. Just try to wait quietly.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He owned her supremacy as they all did. But for the next twenty-four hours he hardly rested and never slept. Jane shared his vigil, while reports continued to arrive, some adding to their confidence, others taking it away. Finally, they knew that it was all true and the lost was found—what there was left of it.
And then came Enos Dyer, and the Polish boy who had been his companion. Five days without food before starting, eight hours on the trip, exhausted but game, they were brought back to the Field Hospital for the rest that was imperative, and the treatment of minor injuries. That night Jane sat beside Dyer’s bed and listened to his account, because he was too happy to be suppressed until he had told her the outlines. She looked at his thin, exalted face, and saw the lines and hollows that hunger and fatigue had brought there, but saw still more clearly the triumph of spirit over body. She had managed that he should lie in a bed next his big friend, and between the reunited pair she felt like a happy warrior herself.
“Why, it was thething, to start in the day time,” insisted Enos, in reply to big Johnny’s comment on the foolhardiness of this choice. “All the runners that triedit before in the night got killed or wounded, and somebody’d got to try the thing a different way. I figgered out that in the day time when there ain’t any scrap on, the enemy’s always half asleep, they’re so sure they can see everything that’s goin’ on. Nights everybody on both sides is keyed-up like jack-rabbits, expectin’ trouble. But day times—why they’s nothin’ to it—if they don’t happen to see you.”
Johnny chuckled: “No,ifthey don’t!”
“You see,” Enos went on, “we made things safe by leavin’ behind our helmets and gas masks and rifles——”
“Leavin’ ’em behind! Why, you’d need ’em.”
“Not much we didn’t. Tin hats hit on stones and ring out, when you’re crawlin’, and rifles and masks get in your way. One officer stopped us, though, and told us to go back and get ’em. I didn’t want to, so I went back to the Major and told him so. He said, ‘Don’t you want ’em?’ And I said, ‘No, sir, we don’t,’ and he laughed and said, ‘All right, go as you like.’ He was the same that told me when I and Stanislaus asked to go that ‘ifwe got through we was to——’ ‘Ifwe get through——’ I says to him—‘we’regoin’to get through! If God could take care of Daniel in that lions’ den, I guess He can of us.’ He looked at me a minute, and then he says; ‘You’ll make it.’” Enos laughed gleefully. “Nothin’ like standin’ up to an officer,” he said, by way of throwing a side-light on the affair. Jane thought of Doctor Leaver, and wished he had not gone back to his Base Hospital, and could hear.
“Well, that’s about all there was to it.—Gee, but this pillow does feel good under a fellow’s head!—We crawled down the hill, and across the valley, and we crossed a road three times, right under them Fritzies’ noses, and they never see us. Quite a lot of times I thought theysure had seen us, and was comin’ straight for us, but we laid low, and every time they’d turn off before they got to us, just as if——” his eyes met Jane’s and looked straight into them—“a hand was holdin’ back the lions. I knew then just as sure that we’d get through. We crossed three wire entanglements, and two German trenches, and we run right onto a sniper’s post, only the sniper wasn’t there—gone off for water or somethin’, not thinkin’ there was anythin’ to snipe in broad daylight. About dark it begun to rain—and it got black as a pocket. We was soaked through. But we kep’ a-comin’, and quite awhile after dark we got near our own lines.”
He paused and drew a long breath. Jane laid an exploring finger on his pulse, but it was not unduly excited or more weak than was safe. Johnny, propping himself upon his uninjured elbow, had to be made to lie down again.
“Gee!” muttered the artilleryman, “that was about the worst of all. They keep an awful lookout, our fellows do. Wonder they didn’t shoot you.”
“We thought of that,” admitted Enos mildly, “so we decided to keep a talkin’ as we come near, so they could hear we was English-speakin’. So we did. The outpost heard us and challenged us, and we told our story. They was bound to make sure we wasn’t spies, so they kep’ askin’ us questions. By and by they called the corporal of the guard, and after he’d asked us forty-’leven more questions he took us back to Regimental Headquarters, and there was some officers there that I’d see before. I was surprised that they remembered me, but they did.”—Jane was not surprised to hear this.—“And then, well, there wasn’t anything too good for us. They had some chow heated up for us, and they told us we couldhave the best there was to sleep on—and we did—only the best there was was the floor,” he explained with a laugh. “This bed certainly feels good,” he added.
That was his whole story of an exploit which had saved a battalion. Seven hundred men had gone forth to take the objective, two hundred and twenty-seven of them had been able to walk out, when the rescue came. The chances of a runner getting through the enemy lines by which the men were surrounded had been desperate ones, and Dyer had taken them and had come through without a hair of his head having been touched.
He turned to Jane, lowering his voice. “Did you ever get my letter I sent you?” he asked.
“Yes, Enos. Doctor Leaver brought it to me.”
“I knew it,” he said triumphantly. “I knew you was prayin’ for me to get my chance, or I wouldn’t have got it so easy.”
Jane’s eyes fell before his.
“You did do what I asked, didn’t you?” he insisted, confidently.
She shook her head. “No, I didn’t pray for that, Enos. All I could think of was that you might come through safely.”
“Andthatwas what you prayed for?”
She nodded.
“Why,thatwasn’t the big thing!” he cried, under his breath. “Except, of course—if us fellows didn’t get through the rest of ’em wouldn’t. Oh, yes, of course, that was what you did have to pray for, and I’m glad you did. It’s wonderful how it works out, things like that!”
She stole away presently, forbidding either of the two friends to exchange any further talk that night. Theplace was a little quieter to-night, though by to-morrow the wounded from the rescued battalion would be brought in and everything would speed up again. She went outside the hospital and found a sheltered corner where in the darkness she could be alone—until somebody should come by. The rain had stopped, the clouds had broken away; a myriad stars filled the sky.
After a time she took from her pocket her pen and a letter blank, and coming around where she could get a faint light from a window upon her paper slowly wrote these words, afterwards folding and sealing the letter and addressing it.
I know, at last, that you are right. I don’t understand it yet—but I believe it. Somebody does hear—and it is possible to speak to Him. I have learned the way through a boy from the “hill” where we went that last Sunday afternoon. He says you taught him—and now he has taught me. You were right when you said that I would find it all around me here. I have, but it took this dear, wise boy to make it real to me—as you made it real to him. So—it has come through you after all, and I am very, very glad of that.God keep you safe, Robert Black,—I pray for it on my knees.Jane.
I know, at last, that you are right. I don’t understand it yet—but I believe it. Somebody does hear—and it is possible to speak to Him. I have learned the way through a boy from the “hill” where we went that last Sunday afternoon. He says you taught him—and now he has taught me. You were right when you said that I would find it all around me here. I have, but it took this dear, wise boy to make it real to me—as you made it real to him. So—it has come through you after all, and I am very, very glad of that.
God keep you safe, Robert Black,—I pray for it on my knees.
Jane.
It was two days afterward that a despatch reached her from Dr. John Leaver, back at his Base Hospital, near Paris.
Operated to-day Chaplain Black ——nth Regiment ——nth Division, severe shrapnel wounds shoulder and thigh. Doing well.Leaver.
Operated to-day Chaplain Black ——nth Regiment ——nth Division, severe shrapnel wounds shoulder and thigh. Doing well.
Leaver.