CHAPTER IIAnother Volunteer
NEVERTHELESS, on that same evening, a little before midnight, seeing Barbara Thornton and her husband, Richard Thornton, together, one could not believe that the difference between them had been a serious one.
Barbara was sitting on the arm of her husband’s chair with her feet crossed and slowly swinging them back and forth. She was so small that this did not appear either unnatural or undignified. The brown hair, which a few years ago had been the trial of her life because it was so absurdly short and curling like a young boy’s, was now braided and tied with rose-colored ribbons, and Barbara wore a light silk dressing gown over her night dress.
Nevertheless her expression was no less serious, her eyes no further from tears than they were a few hours before when she had talked with Nona Davis.
“So you have decided, Dick, to do what you said, although you know it is against my judgment, and you promised to love, honor and protect me only a short time ago. It is a strange way to keep your word to leave the baby and me so soon. But I don’t supposewecount.”
If Barbara Thornton still looked almost as young as she had upon first meeting Dick Thornton in the front hall of his father’s home a little before dawn about three years before, Richard Thornton was very unlike the gay young society man who had first known and rescued her at that trying moment and whom she had afterwards married.
Richard Thornton was far more like his celebrated father than anyone at that time would have dreamed him capable of becoming. His brown eyes were steady, his lips firm, although tonight he appeared tired and overstrained.
“That is not fair, Bab, and not like you,” he returned slowly. “In most cases I suppose I should think a man had no right to do what I intend doing without hiswife’s consent. But I have been fighting this matter out with my conscience for weeks, even for months, and I can see no other way. Besides, I did not really believe you would oppose me, Bab, when the hour actually came. It is so unlike you! Who was it who woke me up and said, goodness only knows what dreadful things to me for not doing my part in the war not three years ago? I can’t understand you! Why, when Nona was here at dinner with us a short time ago, you spoke as if you had changed your opinion, or if not that, at least you had decided to forgive me. Youmust, you know, Bab, before I go and I do not know how soon that may be.”
However, Barbara continued to frown for another moment and to swing her feet more and more slowly back and forth. In her lap her hands were clenched tight over the same small lace handkerchief.
“Of course I had to pretend to feel differently before Nona Davis, Dick; you surely understood that,” she murmured finally. “Why, Nona was so entirely onyour side, so completely in sympathy with you, that she would never have forgiven me if she had realized how I really felt in this matter. You see, you and Nona always did sympathize with each other and you were almost in love with her, Dick Thornton, instead of with me. You need not deny it, for you know you were! There is no use arguing about it now. So I suppose if you were Nona’s husband at present, instead of mine, she would be buckling on your armor and urging you to France, instead of being selfish and just loving you and wanting to keep you here with me, in spite of your duty and country and all the other things which may be more important.”
Bab’s funny mixed speech ended with a catch in her breath and by dropping her face down upon her husband’s shoulder.
“But I won’t discuss the subject with you any more, Dick, because, of course, I know you are right to do your duty even when I pretend to disagree with you. After all, you could not act any differently. So I suppose your mother and father andbaby will have to get on withoutus. I realized all along that you would never allow the fact that the old trouble with your eyes would make you exempt from military service, to keep you at home when you know there is so much work to be done in beautiful wounded France that you are able to do. Your mother has been braver over your volunteering for ambulance work again than I have this time, dear. It is funny how being happy so often makes one selfish. I realized the difference between Nona Davis and me just this afternoon, and yet I was just as devoted to the Red Cross nursing as Nona, before I married you.”
Richard Thornton had placed his arm about his wife’s shoulders and was smiling at her with the expression Bab frequently invoke. One could never be perfectly sure whether she were wholly or only half-way in earnest, whether her big, wide-open eyes would be filled with laughter or tears. For whatever one might be with Bab, angry, hurt or pleased one could not be bored with her.
“I always knew what you expected of me in your heart, Bab, that is why I went on with my plans when you seemed to be objecting,” Dick answered. “Now it has been arranged that, because of my previous experience, I am to do the first line ambulance work in France. I am sorry I am not fit enough to be a real soldier, fighting in the first line as I should like. But my eyes do not seem to have recovered from that old accident as I hoped they would by this time. Of course I could stay here at home and after a while, perhaps, be able to help train the other men for actual service. I have been offered a commission in the second officer’s reserve corps. However, I do not want to work at home, but in France, and that as soon as possible.”
Dick Thornton paused a moment, and then asked, frowning: “What did you mean by saying ‘us’ a little while ago, Bab? That mother and father and baby would have to get along without us? Surely you did not mean that you intend to go to France with me, did you, dear? You cannot mean to leave the baby! Besides, much as Iwould love to have you near me, if you were in a perfectly safe place, far enough away from the fighting, still, the State Department has declared no passports will be issued to soldiers’ wives, and I should come under the same head as a soldier in that regard. The government does not wish to have to look after their women as well as their soldiers in a foreign county. They already have enough upon their hands. The department is very positive on this matter.”
During her husband’s lengthy speech Barbara had listened quietly, but she now made an odd little sound, which one would hardly like to describe as a sniff at the authority of the United States Government, nor yet at her husband.
“Oh you need not think I will interfere with you or your work, Dick, nor yet that the United States Government will consider my presence in France a burden. If I was useful to them once, when I knew much less about the Red Cross nursing than I do at present, I believe I can be useful to them again.”
Then Barbara paused, waiting for an exclamation of surprise, perhaps for one of disapproval.
However, partly through mystification, partly because Richard Thornton did not consider that his wife actually meant what she said, even if she had suggested it he continued silent.
Then with the suddenness which surprised no one who knew her intimately, Barbara Thornton’s manner all at once became very grave and sweet.
“I wonder if you understood me, dear?” she asked, turning so that her eyes now met her husband’s directly.
“If you did, I presume you think I spoke on the spur of the moment and without being in earnest. I know I often do talk in that way. But I have been thinking, oh, for a long time, even before you began to say it was your duty to go back into the ambulance work in France and not claim exemption because of your eyes, that I had no real right to give up my Red Cross work and be married and take things easily, before this terriblewar was ended. You and I, who have lived and worked in France since this war began know only too well how weary, how almost utterly exhausted by their long strain, the French now are. Why, sometimes I believe if our country had not entered the war just when she did—but then I must not speak of failure. For after all, nothing can stop the progress of evolution, no weariness, no mistakes, and evolution is what this war for democracy means. Still, that does not give any one of us the right to be a slacker, and that is the way I have been feeling lately.”
After this speech Richard Thornton gazed at his wife, not only with amazement, but with actual disfavor.
“Barbara,” he demanded, “isn’t being married and having a baby and doing what you can to help with the Red Cross work here and giving all the money we can possible afford sufficient to content you? I did not suppose you would allow even the war to change you into one of the sentimental women who neglect their own duties to take up with outside ones because theyare more interesting, more exciting, perhaps, than their own responsibilities.”
Barbara was silent an instant. Then she answered slowly, as if she were thinking quietly concerning her husband’s statement:
“Yes, Dick, but you also are married and also have a baby and also are doing what you can to help with the Red Cross work and giving all and more than you can afford to the war work! Yet you are not content to let the other fellows do the fighting. Why, you have been trying to enlist ever since the United States entered the war and have been terribly discouraged because you were found to be not up to the physical standard.”
Barbara now slipped down from the arm of her husband’s chair and took a low one of her own. In her dressing gown, with her braids hanging over her shoulders and her chin resting thoughtfully in her hand, she sat apparently deep in thought.
“You know it is a funny thing to me, Dick, why in this world there are in so many cases two rules of conduct, one for a woman and another for a man. I know, of course,that war has always been considered a man’s work, but it is not really, at least not this war. When democracy comes, when it isrealdemocracy, and women have their share in it as well as men, I expect it will mean even more to women. You know when things are hard and unfair and there is much poverty and oppression women have always suffered more. You believe that, don’t you, Dick? I have heard you say so,” Barbara added, with an appealing note, as if she wished to find her husband in sympathy with her on this general subject, if not on the personal one.
“But, Dick, I know, of course, that most women should stay in their own homes and look after their families,” she went on with unusual humility. “I am not a real suffragette. Now when I speak or even think about leaving baby I do feel like a criminal and as if I could not bear it. And yet, oh, Dick, I can be more useful with the Red Cross nursing. How much do I do for baby at present, when your mother insists on his having a trained nurse and keeps him with her at the Long Islandplace most of the time, because she says New York City is too hot for him in the summer time? And I am so afraid something may happen to him. I allow him to remain away from me because I feel you need me more here in town and because, oh, because I want to be with you even more than with baby, Dick. Do you think I am a very unnatural mother?”
Barbara asked this question so seriously that in spite of his unhappiness and disapproval of her point of view, Dick Thornton laughed aloud.
“You probably are, Bab, but I must say I am glad you still like me as much as you do our son. It is not usual.”
“Then you will let me go to France to take up my Red Cross nursing again, Dick dear, won’t you, so I may be near you if anything happens to you as it did before? I can go to Mildred and Eugenia and so you need not worry about me; perhaps I can cross with Nona. I did not tell her my plan this afternoon because I wanted your consent first. Now don’t you think you ought to permit me to use my consciencesince you have decided you must use yours, regardless of my wish? Perhaps my country also needs me, Dick. I am not very important, but do you know I have been thinking recently that what Christ said about, ‘leaving father and mother and giving up everything to follow Him,’ is what most of the countries of the world are also asking of us these days.”
Dick nodded quietly, deciding not to argue with Barbara any more for the present.
Tonight she was in a mood in which few people ever saw her. However, her husband had known her in just such moods before their marriage, in the days when they were both doing Red Cross work in Europe, soon after the outbreak of the war. So, although he could not accept his wife’s suggestion, could not make up his mind that Barbara should again endure the dangers and discomforts of the Red Cross nursing, now that she was his wife and so much nearer and dearer to him, yet he realized that he must discuss the matter with her fairly and squarely. Barbarawould not go unless he gave his consent, but she must not feel that he had been arbitrary or selfish in his decision.
“Let us not talk about this any more tonight, Bab. Listen, the clock is striking midnight and we are both tired. However, even if I do give my consent, you know mother and father——”
Barbara laughed. “Oh, for once your mother approves of what I wish to do, husband of mine,” she interrupted “First of all, I spoke to her about baby and she is glad to have the chance to look after him without any foolish interference from me. Then do you know I believe she has another reason, Dick. I don’t suppose you can guess what it is! Yet she seems to feel that she and father would both be a little happier about you, if I were only near enough to take care of you, should anything happen. You know I saved your life once, Richard Thornton, although you apparently have forgotten all about it. Of all the ungrateful people——”
However, Barbara did not finish her accusation, for at this instant Dick picked her up and carried her from the room.