Zaidos, who was still on sick list and walked with a cane, was nevertheless put to work, in order to familiarize him with the position of the trenches. For two weeks the English had been expecting an attack, and the inaction was telling on the nerves of the officers.
The men are only kept under fire for four days. At the end of that time, they are sent back a few miles in shifts to the nearest village where they find quarters, and rest from the nerve-racking, soul-shaking clamor of guns and buzz of bullets. The trenches were wonderful. Zaidos and Velo, the Red Cross badges on their arms giving them free passage, soon explored every inch until they were perfectly familiar with them all. Zaidos drew a sketch of the plan to send to the fellows in school.
First of all, and nearest the opposing force, is the line of the small trenches for the snipers or sharp-shooters. These men, facing certain death in their little shelters, are picked shots, and keep up a steady, harassing fire at anything showing over the tops of the enemy's trenches or, failing that, at anything that looks like the crew of a rapid-fire gun. These, of course, they guess at from the line of fire as the guns are placed in the first line of trenches in little pits of their own. On his map Zaidos marked the positions of the guns with an A.
Behind the snipers are the barbed wire entanglements, a nightmare of tumbled wires piled high in cruel confusion. Close behind this are the observation trenches. There was no firing from these small trenches; they were simply what the name implied: look-outs. Leaving these, and passing down the zig-zag connecting trench, the first line trench was reached. This was fifty yards from the wire entanglements, and along here the rapid-fire guns were set.
Trench layout diagramTrench layout diagram
Trench layout diagramTrench layout diagram
When Zaidos and Velo made their first visit through the trenches, they were puzzled to see that the guns were all set at an angle, so that the line of fire intersected, usually just over the barbed wire entanglements.
Zaidos asked about it.
"We protect our guns in that way," explained the young Lieutenant who accompanied them. "With the fire coming at an angle, it is difficult for the enemy to get the exact position of our guns, and they are unable to follow the line of our fire with their own fire, and so cripple us. On the other hand, you notice that all trenches are either battlement shape or zig-zag."
"I wondered why," said Zaidos.
"Well, that is so a shot from the enemy, no matter what the angle, striking in a trench, will simply go a few feet, and plow into the bank of earth ahead of it. Formerly, a single shot, raking the length of a portion of a trench, would cost hundreds of men. Now it seldom means a loss of more than six or eight."
It was fifty yards between the entanglements and the first line trench, and in the two hundred yards between that and the second line trench, there was quite a little underground settlement.
The bomb-proof shelter was a regular cellar with sheets of steel over it, and earth over that. It was dark, and the dirt walls and floor gave out a damp and mouldy smell. The men had made crude provisions for comfort. Narrow benches were about the walls, a door from some wrecked building had been brought with much labor, and converted into a table, around which the men sat and played cards.
But Zaidos was most interested in the First Aid Station. He felt that much of his time might be spent here in this strange dug-out.
It was a strange mixture of the latest thing in surgical science and the crudeness of the caveman.
The walls were simply scooped out. They might have been dug with a gigantic spoon, so rough they were and so rounding. The floor had been packed, or trodden hard, and in the middle of the small space was a rude operating table. Beside it, however, on enameled, collapsible iron stands, looking as though they might have been just carried out of some perfectly appointed hospital, were rows of delicate instruments.
There had been no firing for some time, and the place was empty. The surgeon and his assistant sat reading a month-old copy of a London paper. They scanned the columns eagerly, and laughed heartily at the jokes. For London gallantly jests, even in war time.
The lieutenant introduced Zaidos and Velo to the doctors, and explained their presence.
"Well, me lad," said the older man, cordially taking note of Zaidos' sunny smile and fearless eyes, "I'm thinkin' that we need such as you. We can't hope those fellows over there beyond will keep still much longer, and we will have the deuce of a time to hold our position, I believe. Of course we will do it, but it will mean a lot of work for us in here, worse luck!
"You want to familiarize yourself with every turn of the place. A lost moment may mean a lost life, perhaps yours, perhaps the man you are trying to help. You may have to leave the connecting trench you are running along and take to the top of the ground. If a shell falls ahead of you, you will find your path stopped up. Have you ever been under fire?"
"I don't know just what you would call it," said Zaidos laughingly, and proceeded to tell the doctor how they happened to be in their present position.
"Well, well, well!" said the doctor. "You ought to do! First drowned, and then shot at, and submarined. It does seem as though you ought to be able to keep your head, with only a few simple bullets and gas bombs flying around."
He got to his feet stiffly, for living underground makes men rheumatic, and put down his paper.
"Just pay attention," he said in a crisp, business-like way. "When you serve wounded men, remember two things. Work deliberately, yet with the greatest speed. Many a man has died from one little twist given in getting him on his stretcher. Forget the fight, forget everything for the time but that the torn body is in your hands. Do you know anything at all about lifting a man?"
"I do," said Zaidos. "I'm a Boy Scout. Besides, we learned all that at school."
"Good!" said the doctor. "All you have to do is to remember what you know, when the necessity of using your information arrives. When you have your man on the stretcher, get here as soon as ever you can. Don't wait for anyone; private and General alike must stand aside for the Red Cross. Wonder if you could stop a cut artery?"
"Yes, sir," replied Zaidos.
"How?" said the doctor, reaching out his arm. Zaidos took it and demonstrated the thing and the doctor gave a grunt of satisfaction.
"When you get your man here, lay him down on one of the benches or on the floor or anywhere else that you see a place for him. Don't wait, for we will attend to him after that."
"Yes, sir," said Zaidos. He foresaw lively times.
"Good morning," said the doctor, sitting down and taking up his precious paper. The boys went out, feeling as though they had been dismissed from class.
The large cook house was very close to the First Aid Station, and was equipped with wonderful field stoves and great kettles and pots. A number of cooks were in charge, and the boiling soup smelled good enough to eat!
Three zig-zag trenches led from the cook house and First Aid Station to the second line of trenches.
Here was a repetition of the first line trench, machine guns and all. Back of it stretched a line of snipers' trenches, and behind them another barbed wire entanglement. A tunnel led under this; several of them in fact, and large enough to permit the passage of a number of men at the same time. This was arranged in case the line was pushed back by the advancing enemy.
When Zaidos had arrived at this point in his drawing, his paper gave out, and he was obliged to write the rest on the back of the sheet.
"You will see, fellows," he wrote, "just how the second trench is laid out by looking at the first. Back of the barbed wire and the observation trenches come a lot of connecting trenches again. These are not laid out in exactly the same direction as the first group, of course, but are generally the same. Instead of a shelter for thirty men, there is a shelter for one hundred thirty men. The cook house is much larger, and the First Aid Station is really a sort of hospital, where the men can be placed until they are taken back to the regular field hospital which is back of the third trench, four hundred yards away. This makes the hospital proper pretty safe.
"The shelter for men in the third position holds three hundred men easily and the hospital is quite complete.
"You never saw such courageous fellows as these are. Just think, you chaps, kicking as you do over there about the feed and the beds and the barracks, what it is like to live underground against the bare earth!
"The men are never able to undress to sleep. Once in two weeks each man has a bath, which he has to take intwo minutes. He is then given a complete set of new underwear. The men spend four days in the trenches, almost always under fire night and day. There has been no firing since we struck the place, but there is going to be a bad time soon, they say. And then the noise is perfectly deafening, they tell me.
"When the men have been four days in the trenches under fire, they are sent back in squads to the nearest village for four days to rest and get their nerves back in shape.
"I was talking to a jolly young Englishman this morning, and he told me about the place he stayed in the village. He has just come back.
"He was quartered in a cellar, where they were perfectly safe from Zeppelin bombs or stray shells, but it was dark and damp and cold. When he went to sleep at night the rats ran all over him, and he and all the other fellows had to wrap their coats around their faces to keep the rats from running over the bare skin. Some rats, eh?
"A lot of chaps go to pieces with rheumatism, and have to be sent way back to the stationary hospitals in the cities.
"This Englishman I was talking to was over in France last Christmas, and he told me all about the time they had. Seems queer, but I think it is so. He said almost every fellow in the outer trench had some sort of a Christmas box with fruit-cake and candles, and 'sweets' as he calls candies. There they were, wishing each other a merry Christmas, and shaking hands, and laughing, and the snipers' guns popping away at the Germans a few feet away from them. Pretty soon a white flag went up in the enemies' trench, and they ran one up, too, and stuck up their heads to see what was what. They didn't know if it was a ruse or not; but there was a group of Germans sitting on the edge of their trench with their legs down inside ready to jump; and they were calling 'Merry Christmas, Englishmen!' as jolly as you please.
"Well, that was all our fellows needed, and they got out of their holes and advanced. But one of their officers went first, a young fellow who was pretty homesick on account of the day, and he went up to a big German officer, and they agreed that there should be a truce for the day, and shook hands on it. So the men came across and met, and tried to talk to each other and learned some words from each other. The Germans had Christmas boxes, too, and they swapped their funny pink frosted cakes for the English fruit-cake, and gave each other cigarette cases and knives for souvenirs.
"Then it came dinner time, and they brought their stuff out on the neutral ground, and ate it together. Then pretty soon they all went back to their own trenches, and commenced singing to each other. The English sang their Christmas carols, old as the hills of England; and the Germans boomed back their songs in their big, deep voices. I tell you, fellows, it must have been queer! Just before dark, the German lieutenant stood up once more, with his white flag, and the English officer went to meet him. The German talked pretty fair English and the men heard what he said.
"'We have a lot of dead men here to bury,' he explained. 'Will you come and help us?' So the English said yes, and they all came out again and helped to bury the fellows they had shot. Then they all stood together, and the German officer took off his helmet and everybody took off their caps, and the German officer looked down at the graves, and then up, and he said, 'Hear us, Lieber Gott,' and the fellow said he must have thought his English was not good enough to pray in; so he said a little prayer in German, but everybody sort of felt as though they understood it, and of course some did. And then he put his helmet back, and shook hands very straight and stiff with our officer, and said, 'Auf wiedersehn,' and turned away. And everybody shook hands and went back to their own trenches, and long after dark they kept calling to each other 'Good-bye! Good-bye!'
"Well, fellows, that was the end. Next morning they were peppering away at each other, struggling like a lot of dogs to get a throat hold. Seems sort of queer, don't you think so?
"I don't believe this could happen now, because they have been fighting so long that they hate each other now. I think at first that they were like dogs that someone sicks into a fight. They do it because they want to be obliging, or because they think they have to mind. They would just as soon stop and wag their tails and go to chasing cats or digging for rabbits together. But they have fought now until the bitterness of it has entered deep. I can't guess what the end will be. I don't believe anybody can.
"You had better stir up everybody over there about it, and 'rustle the requisite' as Main always said.Everythingfor field hospital work is badly needed. Seems to me you could send a few hundred dollars of stuff over, well as not. You, Corky, you had better sell that car of yours. You know the Commandant doesn't half approve of it, and Baxter can give up that motor-boat. You will drown yourself, Baxter, sure as sure! And think how much better you would feel to stay alive, and help a lot of shot-to-bits poor fellows in the bargain.
"Things look so different when you are right on the ground. What they tell me about some of the shot wounds that come to the hospitals makes me wonder if I have enough backbone to stand up under it, when the fighting really commences. I believe I am getting scared!
"The English fellow told me that after the first shot or two you didn't seem to mind anything; you just went right ahead, and tended to work as though, as he said, it was a May morning in an English lane. I suppose he thought that was about as near Paradise as he could imagine, but the finest placeIcan think of is—Oh well, fellows, you know. I wish I was close enough to the gang to have you pound me on the back, and to kick that big brute of a Mackilvane for trying to stuff me under the bed. I'd like to hear some of Gregg's rag-time, and see Mealy Jones try to ride the bay horse.
"But this is the end of my paper, and I've got to go back to the hospital. To-morrow I am to be put on regular duty. That's why I am writing you this long letter. It may be a good while before I write another; so good-bye, old pals. I'll come back some day if I live.
Yours,ZAIDOS."
Zaidos sent off his letter and continued his explorations.
He managed to slip away from Velo finally and was greatly relieved. Somehow everything went along better without Velo tagging at his heels. Zaidos felt ashamed when he tried to analyze his feelings. He was at a loss to understand himself. Even Nurse Helen, who frankly confessed to Zaidos that she disliked Velo, was obliged to say that there was nothing openly objectionable about him. His manners were easy and graceful, and he was quicker to jump to her assistance than any man on the detail.
He treated Zaidos with a protective fondness that was almost funny. He watched him, saw that he went to bed and arose on schedule time, helped dress his scratch, and looked after him generally like a faithful and devoted nurse.
Yet Nurse Helen pondered. She never once let him handle one of the dressings which were rapidly healing the ugly little tear in Zaidos' arm. Zaidos, escaping from Velo's watchful eye, felt like a glad little, bad little boy who has run away from school and who refuses to think of supper time, when he must go home and find that father has the note teacher has sent home by someotherlittle boy. He went here and there, his sunny smile and ready kindliness making friends everywhere.
Wherever he sat down to rest some soldier told him something of interest. Gunners explained the watch-like perfection of their guns. Snipers told thrilling tales of long shots. The cooks showed him how cleverly the big field stoves came apart, and how they could be assembled at a moment's notice.
At supper time his new friend, Lieutenant Cunningham, called him. He had kept a place for Zaidos beside him. Velo had been omitted from the group, so he smilingly sat down in another bend of the trench with his pannikin of stew and cup of coffee, seemingly quite content. But black hate raged in his black heart!
Velo was a strange sort. He was a coward; he dreaded danger and endured hardships badly. Yet the thought that harm might come to him never entered his head. He was deeply superstitious, and while he could and did change the bottles and place the poison within his cousin's reach, while he placed the rusty pin in the crutch where it would inflict a wound on Zaidos' body, while he could plan endlessly to rid himself of his cousin, he would nothimselfdirectly aim the blow or fire the deadly shot. He rejoiced in the battle that was threatening. Zaidos would die, and he wanted the evidence of his own eyes. Also he wanted the statements of witnesses. Sometimes when he heard Zaidos' ready laugh, and saw his bright, straightforward look, a flicker of pity shadowed his dastardly resolve. Then he remembered the soft living, the ease and luxury of the house of Zaidos, and remembering that he, as Velo Kupenol, must be all his life nothing but a dependent on his cousin's bounty, he steeled his wicked heart to its self-appointed task.
But he must change his tactics. Zaidos as usual was surrounding himself with friends. Velo felt that he must be doubly careful. There must be no more strange, unaccountable accidents to Zaidos. When the blow fell it must crush him utterly; until then, he must be left to move securely.
Velo thought of all this as he sat talking to the soldier beside him and eating the plain fare of the men in the field.
The talk was all of the coming attack. Spies had reported a movement of preparation in the enemy's ranks, and there was a stir of warning in the very air. To Velo's amazement, no one seemed worried or anxious. The conversation moved smoothly on, as though the battle was a test of skill on a chess-board. Not a man there seemed to regard the coming event in a personal light. Even the uncertainty did not distress anyone. The attack would surely come, but whether it would come the following night or in a week's time did not seem to matter in the least. Velo had expected to see in an event like this a lot of men brooding gloomily over the possible outcome, a dismal time with last farewells, and touching letters written home. He watched the young officer beside him. He had finished his meal and had taken out a pad of paper and an indelible pencil. He wrote rapidly, but with a calm and smiling face. Velo could not imagine any tragic farewells inthatletter.
Velo, still staring at the writer, listened to the conversation along the wall of the trench. It had at last turned from war to out-door sports. Velo, who never exercised if he could avoid it, listened idly. A small, pale boy in a lieutenant's uniform was violently upholding certain rules while the officer next to Zaidos disputed him smilingly. They argued pleasantly, but with the most intense earnestness.
"Who is that straw-colored chap?" Velo asked the writer beside him.
"Across?" questioned the scribbler. "We call him 'Sister Anne.' You know she was the lady in Bluebeard's yarn that kept looking out the window. He is always sticking his head out of the trenches, to see what he can see. He's going to get his some day."
"Don't you know his real name?" asked Velo. "He acts as though he thought he was somebody of importance."
"Why, when you come down to it, I suppose perhaps he is when he is at home," said the man. "He's a jolly good sort, though. He's the Earl of Craycourt."
"And who is the chap beside my cousin?" asked Velo, steadying his voice with difficulty.
"The Prince of Teck's second son," answered the writer. Velo's curiosity rather disgusted him. "Anybody else you would like to know about?"
"Well, who are you?" said Velo, trying to get back.
"Your very humble servant, John Smith," he said. He slid the pencil down into his puttee and stood up, bowing. He did not ask Velo for his name but, closing the pad, strolled off and slid an arm around the neck of the second son of the Prince of Teck.
Velo for once felt small, but he jotted young John Smith down on his black list for further reference! As for the others, he could not get over the fact of their noble birth. He stood staring at the group. Zaidos was as usual in the center of things, having the best sort of a time. That was Zaidos' luck, thought Velo. He stared at the bent head of "John Smith," bending over the "second son of the Prince of Teck." For a plain "John Smith" he seemed exceedingly chummy with the young nobleman. Velo was a natural-born toady. True worth, real nobility of mind and soul meant nothing to him. But he did not lack assurance. After a moment he braced up and joined the group where Zaidos and Lord Craycourt, who answered willingly to the nickname "Sister Anne" were swapping school yarns and the others were in gales of laughter.
And at that moment, without warning, in the arm of the trench where Velo had just been sitting, a great shell dropped and exploded with the noise of pandemonium. A wave of dirt and splinters were pushed towards them. As the air cleared, there was the sound of a feeble moan or two, then silence. "John Smith," rather white, stood looking at the fresh mound of earth.
"There were six fellows in there when I came away," he said. "Get to work, everybody!"
With sabers and pieces of wood and hands, they cleared away the wreckage. One by one they came to the pitiful fragments that had been men. One by one, they laid them reverently aside. It was only just as they had reached the angle leading to the cook house that they found a crumpled body that moved slightly as they touched it.
"We can't hurt him much; he's too far gone," said "John Smith." "Lift him up, and get him over to the First Aid!"
They kicked a rough way into the cook house, hurried through it and the connecting tunnel to the First Aid. There they laid the shattered body on the table, and with the exception of Zaidos and Velo, all went back to repair the trench.
Never again during his experience with the Red Cross did Zaidos find time to watch the marvelous skill of a field surgeon. The soldier, a large and muscular man, was almost in ribbons. His flesh was actually tattered, and the dirt had been driven into the wounds. A leg had been blown off, and both arms were broken. Yet he lived. There was quick and silent work for awhile. When the doctor finally stood up and looked critically at his finished task lying there bandaged like a mummy and breathing with the heavy slowness of insensibility, he nodded in satisfaction.
"I only wish all the other poor fellows who come in here had your luck, my boy," he said, nodding at the insensible patient. "If I could get you one at a time, it would be an easy matter; but when you come at us by the dozen, it is a different affair entirely. He's ready," he added to Zaidos. "Get a couple of bearers, and take him to the rear. Don't lift him yourself. There are plenty to do it to-night, and your leg is not too strong yet."
Zaidos called a couple of privates from the trench, and went with them back to the main hospital. The man on the stretcher lay like dead. Nurse Helen received him.
"I'm coming your way to-morrow, John," she said. "I have been detailed to the First Aid shelter."
"I'm sorry," said Zaidos. "It is too near the firing line in there for a woman."
"For a woman perhaps," said Helen with a little smile, "but not for a nurse. That is a different thing, John."
"I can't see it," said Zaidos.
As he spoke, another dull roar marked the falling of a second shell.
"I don't see why they start up to-night," said Zaidos. "I wonder if that did any damage."
"They want to worry us enough so that the men will lose sleep," said a soldier standing near. "But no one will bother about a few shells. The men will get into the bomb proof shelters until daylight. It is a waste of ammunition as it is."
An orderly entered with a written call for a nurse for the First Aid Station. Nurse Helen was called to the Head Nurse and in a moment came hurrying back to Zaidos.
"They have sent for me now," she said. "I suppose some other cases have come in."
"I'll go back with you," offered Zaidos, and together they stumbled along through the rapidly gathering dusk.
Three more men had been hurt, and when they had finally been sent back to the hospital, it was almost midnight.
Zaidos found Helen sitting at the opening of the shelter, looking up at the stars. She made room for him on the plank.
"I'm thinking hard about home, John," she said. "One's viewpoint changes so. I wish I knew that I have done right to come here and leave my parents and little sister. I'm justsolonely and troubled to-night that I have half a mind to tell you my story."
"I wish you would," said Zaidos, "if youfeellike telling me. I told you all about myself, and it would make me feel sort as if I was really am old friend of yours ifyoutoldmethings,too."
"Of course," said Helen. "I know how you feel. Well, John, you know, don't you, that we are certainly in for an attack as soon as it is daylight? Perhaps before, because the enemy has searchlights that make it easy for them to bother us in the dark. I know they are expecting a big battle because this is a much coveted position. A great number of fresh troops are on the way here. I learned that to-night, and that looks serious, because we have our full quota of men here now. They are going to change shifts all night. So there will doubtless be heavy work for the Red Cross people, and much of that may be field work. And, John, it may be that never again will you and I sit talking together."
"Nonsense!" said Zaidos. "Don't talk like that! You are too sweet and pretty to die, andIcan't die because I have got such a lot to do."
Helen shook her head. "I don't say that we will," she said. "But boys as busy as you, and women nicer than I could ever dream of being, have gone out into the dark—crowds of them, in this war."
Zaidos saw that she was deep in one of the black moods that sometimes comes over the sunniest natures.
"Well, never mind," he said. "You are going to tell me who you are, and all about things, and we are going to have the nicest sort of a visit, if we sit up all night."
"I shall have to sit up anyway," said Helen. "I'm on night duty."
"Well, then so am I," said Zaidos, "so begin!"
"Our home is in Devonshire," said Helen. "My father is rector of a large parish there. Everything for miles and miles around belongs to the Earl of Hazelden. He has three children, a girl and two boys, and we grew up together. We liked the same sports, and enjoyed the same pleasures. The daughter, Marion, who is only a year younger than I am, went to school with me near London, and afterwards to France where we were perfected in languages. My sister is four years younger than I, so in those days she did not really count. I forgot to say that my mother was well born, and had a large fortune in her own name, so we were able to live better and have more luxuries than a clergyman can usually provide. Of course we lived simply, but we could afford the best and most exclusive schools, and I had horses to ride that were exactly as good as the Hazelden children's.
"At last Marion and I returned from school, our education finished. Ellston Hazelden, the eldest son, was in the army, of course, and Frank, the second, was in London studying law. At Christmas Ellston came home on leave, and Frank came down from London. Oh, John, I wish you knew Ellston! He is the finest—there isnoone like him! Of courseanygirl would have fallen in love with him. I did. Oh, I did indeed! I shall never see him again, John, and I am not ashamed to tell you how I loved him and how I will always love him."
"Well, then—" interrupted Zaidos.
She silenced him. "Let me tell you the rest. I loved him, and when he told me that he loved me and wanted me to marry him, it seemed the sweetest, most natural thing in the world. I suppose here you think will come in the dark plot of the simple rector's daughter, and the haughty Earl who thinks she is not good enough for his son and heir. It was not abitlike that. Lord and Lady Hazelden were adorable. They came and welcomed me with open arms, and Lord Hazelden said he had been planning it ever since we were little tots!
"John, it just seemed as though they could not do enough for us. Lady Hazelden was in deep mourning for her mother, so we decided not to announce our engagement for six months. Then in three months more we would marry. Every day the Hazeldens drove over with some beautiful plan for our happiness. They had one entire wing of the castle done over for us. Ellston came down often as he could."
Helen lapsed into silence, and sat staring into the night.
"Well, what then?" asked Zaidos, staring at the lovely, sorrowful face beside him. "Did he die?"
"No," said Helen haltingly. "We quarreled."
"Quarreled?" echoed Zaidos. "Quarreled after all that? I don't see how you could!"
"I don't see now, either," said Helen. "It was my fault. I should havemadehim make up with me."
"What was the fuss about?" asked Zaidos. He was intensely interested. He had never been so close to a real love affair before. Of course he had met a girl at one of the hops; the one he gave the collar emblem to. Zaidos couldn't think of her name, but he remembered that he had been pretty hard hit. He knew she was a pretty girl; funny he couldn't think of her name! It occurred to Zaidos that a fellow ought to know a girl's name anyhow if he was crazy over her. And he had been quite crazy over her for a whole evening. Had itbad! Anyhow, he was sure she was a blonde. That was proof that he remembered and suffered! But Helen was speaking.
"I hate to tell you," she said. "It seems so trivial now."
"Well, let's hear about it," said Zaidos. "Perhaps we can get hold of the chap and fix things up."
"Not now," said Helen sadly. "It is too late. There always comes a time when it is too late, John. Don't forget that. I have found it out."
She paused again, and Zaidos was afraid she was never going on, but finally she took up her story.
"There is actually nothing to it. It commenced with the color of a dress I wore. Tony said it was the most unbecoming thing I had ever had on. I had just been visiting a friend in London, a very advanced girl, and she had been telling me what a mistake it was when one gave up to the prejudices of a man. She said do it once and you would do it always. So when Tony said quite calmly, 'Do please throw the thing away, or burn it up,' I thought I ought to take afirm stand. I said, 'I shall do neither. This is aperfectly new dress, and I mean to wear it all summer.' Tony laughed. He said, 'Well, I'm blessed if I take any leave until winter then!' Of course he was joking, and a girl with the least common sense would have known it; but I retorted, 'That is an excellent plan!' He said, 'Why, Helen, you don't mean that, do you?' and I said I certainly did. We parted rather stiffly. It was his last evening at home, and I had put on the frock in honor of it. He wrote as soon as he reached London, and referred to the dress again. He said such trivial things should never be permitted to come between two people who loved each other. I returned that it was not trivial, but a matter of principle, which I should support. John, it actually parted us. Actually parted us! Just think of it!"
"Well, I never heard such bosh!" Zaidos said. "Why didn't you write and tell him it was perfect nonsense, and that you were sorry?"
"That is the worst of it," said Helen. "I did just that, and told him how I loved him, and that it didn't matterwhatI wore, so long as he liked it. Oh, I said everything, John, that a silly and repentant and loving girlcouldsay, and sent the letter to his quarters in London. I even put my return address on the envelope."
"What did he say?" said Zaidos.
"Not a word!" said Helen sadly. "Not one word! I waited for two weeks, and then he was ordered to the front. Still he did not write. I sent him back his ring; it was all I could do, and left home for awhile. He came down for a day, but did not come to our house. Not a very exciting affair is it, John?"
"Perfect bosh!" declared Zaidos. "I'll bet anything,anythingthat he never received your letter at all, or else he answered and you did not get his letter. Why didn't you telephone him?Lettersare no good."
"I asked him to telephone me," said Helen. "I watched that telephone for three days all the time."
"Didn't you leave it at all?" said Zaidos.
"Only once for an hour," said Helen, "and then I had my own maid sit right beside it.
"That is all there is to my poor little story, John boy. Tony is somewhere in France, if he still lives, and I came out here when I could stand it no longer at home. You see I am not afraid of death because I don't in the least care to live without Tony."
"Well, it's too bad," said Zaidos. "Wish I had been there. I just know he never got your letter. I just know it!"
"The story is ended now, at any rate," said Helen. "If Tony lives he will go back home and marry some woman who has common sense to appreciate him, and as for me, to the end of my days, I shall be just Nurse Helen." She sighed softly, and for a moment looked into the night.
"Do you want to see him?" she asked. She drew from her uniform a slender chain with a big gold locket swinging on it. A crest was on it set with diamonds that flashed in the dim light. Zaidos looked at the open, handsome face.
"Look like him?" he asked.
"Exactly like him!" she replied.
"Well, when I meet him," promised Zaidos, "I'll tell him a few things!"
Helen smiled. "You will never meet," she said. "But if ever anything happens to me, John, take this and send it to him. You'll remember the name, won't you?"
"Oh, yes!" said Zaidos, "I'll remember! But just you take notice, he never got that letter!"
"What a stubborn boy you are!" exclaimed Helen.
"Not stubborn at all," declared Zaidos, looking at the lovely face. "I'm merely a manmyself, if Iamyoung."
Again Helen laughed.
"All right," said Zaidos. "Have it all your own way, but I know I am right about this affair. A fellow with a face like that, engaged to a girl like you, would have acknowledged that letter just in common politeness if nothing else. Just to say, 'Thank you, but I don't care to play with you any more!' Oh, yes, he would have answered it!"
"Whether he would or not," said Helen, "the breach is too wide to cross now. It is all over. I deserved to lose him and I feel no bitterness about it. My fate is what I deserve."
Zaidos hated to hear her self-reproaches. "I don't know about that," he defended awkwardly. "Probably he ought to have come half way. It looks so to me."
"It is growing light in the east," said Helen. "We have talked all night about my poor little affairs. Let us think of something else now, let us—"
She was interrupted by a shattering boom of artillery. It seemed to crack the very air. They sprang upright and stood for a moment listening.
"The beginning!" said Helen solemnly.
"Well, good-bye," said Zaidos. "I must see where they want me to go. Where's that doctor?"
The doctor and his assistants as well were there. They hurried into the dug-out, calm, collected, business-like.
"Set out the antiseptics, nurse," said the doctor. "You were on night duty, but I can't let you go until someone comes to relieve you. This is very apt to be a big day. You, Zaidos, get out in the first line trench, and don't lose your head. That cousin of yours is hunting for you. I sent him forward too. Nurse, the new troops are here; every trench and shelter is full of men. A big day, children, a big day!"
He rubbed his muscular, sensitive hands together. Another roar shook the ground and balls of dirt rolled down the walls of the First Aid Station. They heard the muffled beat-beat of feet running through the trenches toward the front.
Zaidos, shivering, his teeth chattering with excitement, buckled on his aid kit and bolted out with a last wave of the hand. He hurried over through the short trench into the cook house, and then made his way along the trench toward the front. A return fire was beginning now, and high in the sky was seen the first Zeppelin. Like a great bird of prey it circled high in air above the lines. Then from somewhere in the rear an English airship skimmed to meet it. The bull-nosed Zeppelin soared and the lighter machine followed, light as a swallow. Zaidos stared, fascinated. He could see spurts of smoke from one and then the other. Another delicate craft passed overhead and joined the first English ship in pursuit. Zaidos stumbled on, still trying to watch the chase. He was suddenly thrown violently to the ground, and covered with earth. Screams of agony came from the trench ahead. He scrambled to his feet and ran forward. A dozen men, tumbled together in horrible confusion, lay tossing and shrieking. Zaidos turned faint for a moment. They were the awful flat, senseless cries of hurt animals. "A-a-a-a-a-a-a!" they shrilled and some of them tore at their wounds. Zaidos ran for the nearest man and knelt beside him. He tried to turn what was left of his body, and could not. He glanced around for help. Sneaking past toward the rear he saw a familiar figure. It was Velo Kupenol. Zaidos called him sharply, and the stern note of authority made Velo turn.
"Come here quickly!" commanded Zaidos.
"I can't!" panted Velo. "Zaidos, it makes me sick! I'm going to the rear for a little while."
Zaidos looked up at the face, white with cowardice.
"Come here!" said Zaidos. Still kneeling he pointed a small but business looking revolver at his cousin's heart. "Come here!" he ordered.
Velo obeyed, the look on his face changing from white terror to black hate.
Zaidos saw the look, and read it with unconcern.
"Come here, Velo!" He held Velo's shifty eyes. "You get to work here. If you don't, I shall shoot you, just as I would shoot a dog. There is no time to talk. Get to work! You hear what I tell you. Turn this man!"
Velo shudderingly put himself to the horrid task of lifting the bleeding and torn body. Zaidos talked as he worked in a deep, earnest tone that carried to Velo's ears even in the noise of battle.
"I'm going to be after you every minute, Velo Kupenol! You won't disgrace me if I can help it. Go get your stretcher. If you drop it I will kill you!"
He spoke so fiercely, and with such meaning, that Velo felt that for once his easy-going cousin had the upper hand.
As the doctor had said, they were suffering for lack of help, so Zaidos could not afford to let the coward run away. Hehadto have assistance if he was to save some of the lives which he felt were in a measure entrusted to him. So Velo had to be used. He stopped the gush of blood from a dozen wounds and, lifting on one end of the stretcher, ordered Velo, with a nod of his head, to lead on toward the First Aid Station.
Almost immediately they had the wounded man on the table, and again were off. The guns roared. Shrapnel dropped and exploded, or exploded in air. Overhead Zaidos was conscious that the duel in the clouds still went warily on, but he could not give it a glance. He lost all track of time. He saw others with the Red Cross badge, working, working with the same feverish haste with which he kept at his task. A sort of dreadful haze came over him. He labored with desperate haste, with strong certainty and sureness of touch, but he seemed to feel nothing of human anguish or human sympathy. He was a machine set in motion by the pressing needs of battle, and he went on and on in a haze. Men died in his arms or were transported to the First Aid where the doctors and Nurse Helen worked with incredible swiftness and skill.
He did not speak to Helen, nor did she notice him. Velo, still pale, kept doggedly at his task, only an occasional gleam of hatred lighting his eyes when he had to look at his fearless cousin. He was more than ever like a treacherous dog, watching, always watching for its chance for a throat-hold.
And somehow, without a spoken word, the thing became clear to Zaidos. All at once he knew how deeply and utterly his cousin hated him. He knew as well as if Velo had shouted it aloud that he meant to be the instrument of his death in some way or other, sooner or later. And Zaidos, filled with the frenzy of the battle, did not care. He was not afraid of Velo. He put him aside as though he was something that might be attended to later.
A sort of mental illumination came to Zaidos. He cared for wounded men with a quick skill that he had never known that he possessed. He grew so weary that he staggered under his part of the stretcher's load. His leg pained him so that it was like a whip, keeping him awake and at work when all his body cried to drop down and sleep.
Once when he waited in the opening of the First Aid shelter, he was conscious that someone asked, "Have they broken our lines?"
"Not quite, but they are through the barbed wire. Our troops are massing along the first trench."
"If we can hold out until dark we are all right," said the first speaker, a captain with one leg gone at the knee, awaiting his turn with the doctor without the quiver of a muscle.
"The chaps over there beyond are pretty well tired out. I can tell by the way they are fighting. They are trying to save men."
Zaidos hurried out and lost the rest. It seemed to him that the whole world was in conflict just ahead there. The bomb-proof shelter was crammed with reserves. On and on and on went the fighting; for years and years and years it seemed to Zaidos. He did not know that the day waned and night was near. All he knew was that at last, while he and Velo waited in the First Aid for the stretcher to be emptied, silence fell, a silence punctuated with scattering explosions. The darkness had ended the fighting, and the enemy had only reached the first line of trenches.
"It is over!" said the doctor, glancing up.
Velo sank down on a plank and covered his face with his hands. Zaidos, standing, closed his eyes.
"Let those boys rest for five minutes," ordered the doctor.
Nurse Helen gently pushed Zaidos down on a bench. He toppled over and she put a folded cloak under his head. Then for thirty happy minutes he lost consciousness of everything. When an aide shook Zaidos awake, he came to himself with as much physical pain as though his body had actually felt the shock of wounds. He groaned involuntarily. Velo was sobbing dryly from fatigue and pain.
"Come, come, boys!" said the doctor. "Finish your good work! Here, take this." He mixed something in a glass, and gave it to Zaidos, and then repeated the dose for Velo. It braced them at once, and after they had visited the cook house and had taken some hot soup, they prepared to go out on the field again and look for wounded.
The night seemed very dark as they stumbled along. The dead lay piled everywhere in hideous confusion. There seemed to be no wounded. Man after man they scanned with their flashlights. The unsteady lights often gave the dead the effect of motion. As they sent the ray here and there they thought they saw eyes open or close, arms move, legs stretch out, or mangled and tortured bodies twist in agony. But under their exploring hands the dead lay cold.
They reached the first line trench and passed beyond it. Here lay ranks of the enemy, mowed down under the pitiless English fire.
"There is someone living over here," said Velo. "I heard a groan."
They turned and found a group of men; three dead, and across their bodies two who surely moved.
Zaidos propped his light on the breast of one of the dead soldiers and lifted the head of a young officer whose shattered leg held him helpless. He was quite conscious, and spoke to Zaidos in a weak whisper.
"I'm gone!" he said. "See what you can do for the man lying on my leg. I would have bled to death long ago if it hadn't been for his weight."
Zaidos looked in his kit anxiously. It was almost empty and the bandage was all gone.
"Velo, get back to the station and bring me a fresh kit," he ordered. "I'm going to hold this artery until you get back, and see if I can't keep a little blood in here." He sat down and pressed a finger on the fast emptying vein. With his free hand he held a flask to the lips of the almost dying man. Velo disappeared in the dark.
"Really, my dear chap," said the wounded officer, "it's a waste of time for you to do that. I wish you would jolly well leave me for some other chap. I'm done; and I don't care in the least, so you need not trouble your conscience about me."
Hurt to death as he was, the officer smiled; and Zaidos was all at once filled with the conviction that he was someone whom he had met. But where?
"That's nonsense!" said Zaidos. "We will fix you up if you will make up your mind to hang on to yourself."
"I've been hanging on for a good while," said the officer pleasantly. "I've been here for a year or two, I think. I only came down from London for the night, you see. Not very long, eh, old chap?" He nodded his head.
"You what?" said Zaidos stupidly.
"London, you know," said the officer. "I came down right away. I couldn't be sure it was true. Seemed sort of unofficial, don't you know?" He smiled again. Zaidos understood. He was delirious. He went on muttering disjointed sentences which Zaidos paid no attention to; but every time the man smiled his gay, light-hearted, unconscious smile, Zaidos felt the strange sense of acquaintance. He could see that the man was almost gone. He had lost almost all the blood in his body, and Zaidos did not dare to move him, nor even shift the weight of the unconscious but living man who laid across the shattered leg. Zaidos felt sure that he would die before Velo returned. And he was still more convinced that the man was at his end when after a few moments of stupor, he opened his eyes quite sanely and looked at Zaidos.
"That was a pretty bad blow for me, wasn't it, old chap?" he said quietly. "I think I won't make out to stop much longer. I've been here since eleven this morning. Pretty long for a man hurt like this. I am glad you ran across me. There's a lot of papers in my blouse. Would you mind sending them to the address on the outside envelope? And I wish you would write to my father. Tell him it's all right. Tell him not to let Frank enlist if he can help it. He's too young. And if you can mark the place they put me, it would be a mighty kind thing. Mother would be so glad if she could have me safe in the church at home, some day. Will you do this?"
"Of course I will," said Zaidos. "But I think you have got a chance."
"I don't want it," said the wounded man. "I could not fight again, and there are reasons—I really don't care a hang about living. Just send those letters for me. And one thing more," he tried to lift his hand to his throat, but was too weak. "Will you kindly take off the chain under my blouse," he said, "before anyone else gets here?"
Zaidos felt for the chain with his free hand, still pressing the artery with the other. As he found the chain, a large locket was released from the man's blouse and, swinging against his buttons, sprung open. Unconsciously Zaidos looked at it.
"Send that with the rest," said the officer. He closed his eyes.
"Here, you!" cried Zaidos. "Quit that! Don't youdarego and die! Do you hear me? Don't you do it! Do you hear? I want to talk! I don't need to send this anywhere. If you just hang on, you will see her!Helen is here! Don't die now! You want to see her, don't you? I know who you are! You are Tony Hazelden!"
"Helen here?" gasped the man.
"Yes," said Zaidos. "She is a nurse over there, a few yards away."
"Helen here?" said the man again.
"Yes, I tell you!" cried Zaidos. "Hang on to yourself! You want to tell her why you did not answer that letter she wrote you; don't you?"
"I never received a letter," said Hazelden, for it was he.
"That's what I told her," said Zaidos. "Now you just hang on to yourself. Don't you let go! Do whatever you like afterwards, but don't make me go back there and tell her you have gone and died before I could get you in hospital. I'd like to know where that Velo is with my kit! Here, take another drink of this!"
He pressed the flask once more to Hazelden's white lips. The man seemed sinking into a stupor. Zaidos watched him with secret terror. After the miracle of finding Hazelden here, when he was supposed by Helen to be far off in France, and after the brief joy of thinking that he might be the one to reunite the parted lovers, it was too hard to face the loss of his man. Zaidos kept calling him by name. Finally—it seemed a long, long time—Hazelden opened his eyes again.
"I can't see just how it is," he said. "Are you sure Helen is here?"
"Yes, she is here, I promise you," said Zaidos. "And you want to brace up for her sake. For her sake, do you understand? Her heart is about broken. Don't you go and die now after all the trouble you have made."
Hazelden gave Zaidos a straight look.
"What are you thinking of?" he said in his weak whisper. "You don't suppose I could dienow, do you?"
"Here's my kit," said Zaidos, as Velo came hurrying up.
He fastened the artery rudely but well, and lifting off the unconscious soldier, they carefully placed Hazelden on the stretcher. Many, many times that day Zaidos had been thankful for his steel muscles and man's stature, and now he was more thankful than ever. With all the care possible they carried their burden over the rough, uneven ground back to the First Aid Station.
Zaidos' heart sang within him. The impossible had happened. He was bringing Tony Hazelden back to the girl who loved him, and Hazelden loved her. Zaidos knew that, not only because of the picture Tony carried, but because no one could have seen Hazelden's face when he spoke Helen's name and not know that his heart was breaking for her. Zaidos knew that Hazelden's life hung on the merest thread, but he stoutly believed that his love for Helen would keep him alive until he reached her, at least, and after that Zaidos was willing to trust Helen to do the rest. Zaidos watched his helpless burden with anxiety as they approached the shelter. When they arrived he gave the word to Velo and they gently lowered the stretcher to the ground.
"Stay here a minute," he ordered Velo, and slid down into the underground room. There was a lull in the dug-out as all the men had for the minute been cared for and sent back to the rear, which always is done as much as possible in the darkness.
The doctor and his aids, resting on the hard planks that served as seats, sat upright against the dirt wall, sound asleep. Nurse Helen stood at the white table cleaning the instruments. Zaidos scarcely recognized her. She was haggard and worn as a woman old in years. Color, energy, life itself seemed to have been drained out of her in the terrible ordeal of the past day. Zaidos hesitated. He was filled with fears all at once. It seemed so like planning the meeting of a couple of ghosts. Hazelden, unconscious and at the point of death, and Helen fagged out, worn, and looking like an old woman.
He went to her, tenderly laying a stained hand on hers.
"Helen," he said, speaking rapidly, "I've no time to break the news to you. The most impossible sort of a thing has happened. You have got to hear it all at once, because there is a man almost dying out there and I've got to hurry. You know the reserves that came in to-day? Now hang on, Helen! Captain Hazelden was with them. Oh, Helen," as she wavered and almost fell, "if you go to pieces you will always regret it!"
"Dead?" she murmured.
"No, but he's outside awfully shot, and he has been keeping himself alive just to see you. You will have to help, Helen, if you can."
He left her standing beside the table. She could not call the doctor. She could not speak. They came in with the stretcher, and as she saw its ghastly burden and gave a quick professional glance at his maimed body, the tender woman and the trained nurse struggled for the mastery. The nurse won. Swiftly she prepared the table, called the doctor and helped to lift him from the stretcher.
Zaidos and Velo left to rescue the man whose weight had kept the captain from bleeding to death. His scalp wound was serious but not dangerous, Zaidos decided, and they returned to the First Aid with lighter hearts.
The room was empty. Hazelden was not there. Zaidos' heart dropped. Had he died?
Helen answered the question in his face. She came to meet Zaidos. Her eyes shone, her cheeks were the loveliest pink. Her step was light.
"Well?" said Zaidos.
"More than well!" said Helen. "Oh, John, it is wonderful! Wonderful! And you brought me my happiness! I am to be transferred to the field hospital tomorrow, where I can nurse him myself. He will live; hemustlive! We could not talk, but he knew me. And I know everything is all right!"
"Certainly it's all right!" said Zaidos. "Didn't I tell you so? I knew just how it would be," and the hero of a single ballroom looked as wise as only a fellow could who had been dead-crazy over a girl all one evening.
"What are you going to do about things?" asked Zaidos. "Go on being engaged?"
"Indeed I'm not!" said Helen as she bathed the soldier's head. "Not at all! Just as soon as he can hold my hand, we will be married by the chaplain. I'll never, never risk another misunderstanding!"
"See that you don't!" said Zaidos quite gruffly.