"I would try and see her if I knew what to say, but when I even think of it I am scared. I never liked her, and I feel now as if I should be glad to pin together the pages of my memory of her, as I pinned together the pages of one of my story books when I was a little girl. There was a shark under water in the picture and two men were trying to get away from him. I hated that picture and shivered every time I looked at it, so I stuck in a pin and shut out the sight of it.
"Your father has had two letters from her since the day when he saw her in the Park. Bronson always brings the mail to me, and you know what a distinctive hand Hilda writes, there is no mistaking it. Your father dropped the letters into the fire, but she ought not to write to him, Derry, and I should like to tell her so.
"But if I told her, she would laugh at me, and that would be the end of it. For you can't rage and tear and rant at a thing that is as cold as stone. Oh, my dearest, I need you so much to tell me what to do, and yet I would not have you here—
"I met Alma Drew the other day, and she said, as lightly as you please, 'Do you know, I can't quite fancy Derry Drake in the trenches.'
"I looked at her for a minute before I could answer, and then I said, 'I can fancy him with his back to the wall, fighting a thousand Huns—!'
"She shrugged her shoulders, 'You're terribly in love.'
"'I am,' I said, and I hope I said it calmly, 'but there's more than love in a woman's belief in her husband's bravery—there's respect. And it's something rather—sacred, Alma.' And then I choked up and couldn't say another word, and she looked at me in a rather stunned fashion for a moment, and then she said, 'Gracious Peter, do you love him like that?' and I said, 'I do,' and she laughed in a funny little way, and said, 'I thought it was his millions.'
"I was perfectly furious. But you can't argue with such people. I know I was as white as a sheet. 'If anything should happen to Derry,' I said, 'do you think that all the money in the world would comfort me?'
"She stopped smiling. 'It would comfort me,' then suddenly she held out her hand. 'But I fancy you're different, and Derry is a lucky fellow.' which was rather nice and human of her, wasn't it?
"Life is growing more complicated than ever here in Washington. The crowds pour in as if the Administration were a sort of Pied Piper and had played a time, and the people who have lived here all their lives are waking to something like activity. Great buildings are going up as if some Aladdin had rubbed a lamp—. None of us are doing the things we used to do. We don't even talk about the things we used to talk about, and we go around in blue gingham and caps, and white linen and veils, and we hand out sandwiches to the soldiers and sailors, and drive perfectly strange men in our cars on Government errands, and make Liberty Bond Speeches from many platforms, and all the old theories of what women should do are forgotten in the rush of the things which must be done by women. It is as if we had all been bewitched and turned into somebody else.
"Well, I wish that Hilda could be turned into somebody else. Into somebody as nice as—Emily—. But she won't be. She hasn't been changed the least bit by the war, and everybody else has, even Alma, or she wouldn't have said that about your being lucky to have me. Are you lucky, Derry?
"And when Hilda sets her mind on a thing—. Oh, I can't seem to talk of anything but Hilda—when she sets her mind on anything, she gets it in one way or another—and that's why I am afraid of her."
Derry wrote back.
"Don't be afraid of anything, Jean-Joan. And it won't do any good to talk to Hilda. I don't want you to talk to her. You are too much of a white angel to contend against the powers of darkness.
"As for my luck in having you, it is something which transcends luck—it just hits the stars, dearest.
"I wonder what the fellows do who haven't any wives to anchor themselves to in a time like this? Through, all the day I have this hour in mind when I can write to you—and I think there are lots of other fellows like that—for I can see them all about me here in the Hut, bending over their letters with a look on their faces which isn't there at any other time.
"By Jove, Jean-Joan, I never knew before what women meant in the lives of men. Here we are marooned, as it were, on an island of masculinity, yet it isn't what the other fellows think of us that counts, it is what you think who are miles away. Always in the back of our minds is the thought of what you expect of us and demand of us, and added to what we demand and expect of ourselves, it sways us level. We don't talk a great deal about you, but now and then some fellow says, 'My wife,' and we all prick up our ears and want to hear the rest of it.
"It is a great life, dearest, in spite of the hard work, in spite of the stress and strain. And to me who have known so little of the great human game it is a great revelation.
"In the first place, there has been brought to me the knowledge of the joy of real labor. I shall never again be sorry for the man who toils. You see, I had never toiled, not in the sense that a man does whose labor counts. I was always a rather anxious and lonely little boy, looking after my father and trying to help my mother, and feeling a bit of a mollycoddle because I had a tutor and did not go to school with the other chaps. In the eyes of the world I was looked upon as a lucky fellow, but I know now what I have missed. In these days I am rubbing elbows with fellows who have had to hustle, and I am discovering that life is a great game, and that I have missed the game. If Dad had been different, he might have pushed me into things, as some men with money push their sons, making them stand on their own feet. But Dad liked an easy life, and he was perhaps entitled to ease, for he had struggled in his younger years. But I have never struggled. I have always had somebody to brush my clothes and to bring my breakfast, and I think I have had a sort of hazy idea that life was like that for everybody—or if it wasn't, then the people who couldn't be brushed and breakfasted by others were much to be pitied.
"Oh, I've been a Tin Soldier, Jean-Joan, left out not only of the war but of life. I've been on the shelf all these years in our big house, with the wooden trumpets blowing, 'Trutter-a-trutt' while other men have striven.
"When I first came here I had a sort of detached feeling. I had no experiences to match with the experiences of other men. I had never had to rush in the morning to catch a subway, I had never eaten, to put it poetically, by candlelight, so that I might get to the store by eight. I had never sold papers, or plowed fields, or stood behind a counter. I had never sat at a desk, I had never in fact done anything really useful, I had just been rich, and that isn't much of a background as I am beginning to see it here—.
"I find myself having a rather strange feeling of exaltation as the days go by, because for the first time I am a cog in a great machine, for the first time I am toiling and sweating as I rather think it was intended that men should toil and sweat. And the friends that I am making are the sign and seal of the levelling effects of this great war. Not one of the men of what you might call my own class interests me half as much as Tommy Tracy, who before he entered the service drove the car of one of Dad's business associates. I have often ridden behind Tommy, but he doesn't know it. And I don't intend that he shall. He rather fancies that I am a scholarly chap torn from my books, and he patronizes me on the strength of his knowledge of practical things.
"Tommy likes to eat, and he talks a great deal about his mother's cooking. He says there was always tripe for Sunday mornings, and corned beef and cabbage on Mondays, and Monday was wash-day!
"I wish you could hear him tell what wash-day meant to him. It is a sort of poem, the way he puts it. He doesn't know that it is poetry, though Vachell Lindsay would, or Masters, or some of those fellows.
"It seems that he used to help his mother, because he was a strong little fellow, and could turn the wringer, and they would get up very early because he had to go to school, and in the spring and summer they washed out of doors, under a tree in the yard, and his mother's eyes were bright and her cheeks were red and her arms were white, and she was always laughing. There's a memory for a man on the battlefield, dearest, a healthy, hearty memory of the day's work of a boy, and of a bright-eyed mother, and of a good dinner at the end of hours of toil.
"Perhaps with such a mother it isn't surprising that Tommy has made so much of himself. He has aspirations far beyond driving some other man's car, and if he keeps on he'll have a little flivver of his own before he knows it—when the war ends, and he can strike out, with his energy at the boiling point.
"There are a lot of men who have belonged not to the idle rich, but to the idle poor, and the discipline of this life is just the thing for them as it is for me. It rather contradicts the kindergarten idea of play as a preparation for life. These busy men, forced to be busy, are a thousand times more self-respecting than if left to lead the listless lives that were theirs before their country called them. I wonder if, after all, Kipling isn't right, and that the hump and hoof and haunch of it all isn't obedience? Not slavish obedience, but obedience founded on a knowledge of one's place and value in the pack?"
Jean, striving to follow Derry's point of view, found herself floundering.
"I am glad you like it, but I don't see how you can. And you mustn't say that you've always been a Tin Soldier on a shelf. I won't have it. And you have played the game of life just as bravely as Tommy Tracy, only your problems were different—. And if you can't remember wash days you can remember other days—. But I like to have you tell me about it, because I can see you, listening to Tommy and laughing at him. I adore your laugh, Derry, though I shouldn't be telling you, should I—? I have pasted the picture you sent me of you and Tommy in my memory book and have written under it, 'When you and I were young, Tommy' and I've drawn a cloud of steam above Tommy, with washboilers—and tubs—and cabbages and soap suds, and his mother's face smiling in the midst of it all—. And in your cloud is your mother smiling, too, with her little crown on her head, and gold spoons for a border—and a frosted cake with candles—and a mountain of ice-cream. Perhaps you have other memories, but I had to do the best I could with my poor little rich boy—"
It was about this time that Jean's memory book! became chaotic. Most of the things in it had to do with Derry, a bit of pine from a young plume which Derry had sent her from the south—triangles cut from the letter paper on which he sometimes wrote—post-cards to say "Good-morning," telegrams to say "Good-night"—a service pin with its one sacred star.
There were reminders, too, of the things which were happening across the sea, a cartoon or two, a small reproduction of a terrible Raemaeker print; verse, much of it—
They have taken your bells, O God,The bells that hung in your towers,That cried your grace in a lovely song,And counted the praying hours!
The little birds flew away!They will tell the clouds and the wind,Till the uttermost places knowThe sin that the Hun has sinned!
Jean thought a great deal about the Huns. She always called them that. She hated to think about them, but she had to. She couldn't pin the pages together, as it were, of her thoughts. And the Huns were worse than the sharks that had frightened her in her little girl days. Oh, they were much worse than sharks, for the shark was only following an instinct when it killed, and the Huns had worked out diabolically their murderous, monstrous plan.
In the days when she had argued with Hilda, she had been told of the power and perfection of Prussian rule. "Everything is at loose ends in America," had been Hilda's accusation.
"Well, what if it is?" Jean had flung back at her hotly. "Having things in place isn't the end and aim of happiness. Just because a house is swept and garnished isn't any sign that it is a blissful habitation. When I was a child I used to visit my two great-aunts in Maryland. I loved to go to Aunt Mary's, but I dreaded Aunt Anne's. And the reason was this. Everything in Aunt Anne's house went by clock-work, and everything was polished and scrubbed and dusted within an inch of its life. When we arrived, we scraped our shoes before we kissed Aunt Anne, and when we departed, we felt that she literally swept us out—. We had hours for everything, and nobody thought of doing as she pleased. It was always as Aunt Anne pleased, and the meals were always on time, and nobody was ever expected to be late, and if she was late she was scolded or punished; and nobody ever dared throw a newspaper on the floor, or go out to the kitchen and make fudge, or pop corn by the sitting-room fire. Yet Aunt Anne was so efficient that her house-keeping was the admiration of the whole State.
"But we loved Aunt Mary's. She would come smiling down the stone walk to meet us, and she would leave the morning's work undone to wander with us in the fields or woods. And we had some of our meals under the trees, and some of them in the house, and when we made taffy, and it stuck to things, Aunt Mary smiled some more and said it didn't matter. And we loved the freedom of our life, and we went to Aunt Mary's as often as we could, and stayed away when we could from Aunt Anne's.
"And that's the way with America. It isn't perfect, it isn't efficient, but it is a lovely place to live in, because in a sense we can live as we please.
"Did you ever know a man who wanted to go back to slavery? As a slave he was fed and clothed and kept by his master, with no thought of responsibility—. Yet it was freedom he wanted, even though he had to go hungry now and then for the sake of it—"
"I like law and order," Hilda said. "We don't always have it here."
"I'd rather be a gipsy on the road," had been Jean's passionate declaration, "and free, than a princess with a 'verboten' sign at all the palace gates."
There were wisps of gauze, too, in her memory book, a red cross, drawings in which were caricatured some of the women who worked in the surgical dressing rooms.
"Emily," Jean asked, as she showed one of the pictures to her friend, "do such women come because it's fashion or because they really feel—?"
"I fancy their motives are mixed," said Emily, "and you mustn't think because they wear high heels and fluff their hair out over their ears that they haven't any hearts."
"No, I suppose not," Jean admitted, "but I wonder what they think the veils are for when they fluff out their hair.
"And their rings," she went on. "You see, when they all have on white aprons and veils you can't tell whether they are Judy O'Grady or the Colonel's lady—so they load their hands with diamonds. As if the hands wouldn't tell the tale themselves. Why, Emily, if you and Hilda were hidden, all but your hands, the people would know the Colonel's lady from Judy O'Grady."
Emily smiled abstractedly, she was counting compresses. She stopped long enough to ask, "Is Hilda still in town?"
"Yes. I saw her yesterday on the other side of the street. I didn't speak, but some day when I get a good opportunity I am going to tell her what I think of her."
But when the opportunity came she did not say all that she had meant to say!
She went over one morning to her father's house to get some papers which he had left in his desk. The house had been closed for weeks and the hall, as she entered it, was cold with a chill that reached the marrow of her bones—it was dim with the half-gloom of drawn curtains and closed doors. Even the rose-colored drawing-room as she stood on the threshold held no radiance—it had the stiff and frozen look of a soulless body. Yet she remembered how it had throbbed and thrilled on the night that Derry had come to her. The golden air had washed in waves over her.
She shivered and went over to the window. She pulled up a curtain and looked out upon the grayness of the street. The clouds were low, and a strong wind was blowing. Those who passed, bent to the wind. She was slightly above the level of the street, and nobody looked up at her. She might have been a ghost in the ghostly house.
Well, she had to get the papers. She turned to face the gloom, and as she turned she heard a sound in the room above her.
It was the rather startling sound of muffled steps. She dared not go into the hall. She felt comparatively safe by the window—. If—anything came, she could open the window and call.
But she did not call, for it was Hilda who came presently on rubber-heels and stood in the door.
"I thought I heard some one," she said, calmly.
"How did you get in?" was Jean's abrupt demand.
"I had my key. I have never given it up."
"But this is no longer your home."
"It was never home," said Hilda, darkly. "It was never home. I lived here with you and your father, but it was never home."
Jean, more than ever afraid of this woman, had a sudden sense of something tragic in the fact of Hilda's homelessness.
"I don't quite see what you mean," she said, slowly.
"You couldn't see," Hilda told her, "and you will never see. Women like you don't."
"We didn't get on very well together," Jean said, almost timidly, "but that was because we were different."
"It wasn't because we were different that we didn't get on," Hilda said. "It was because you were afraid of me. You knew your father liked me."
With her usual frankness she spoke the truth as she saw it.
"I was not afraid," Jean faltered.
"You were. But we needn't talk about that. I am going to France."
"When?"
"As soon as I can get there. That's why I came here. To take away some things I wanted."
"Oh—"
"And one of the things I wanted was the picture of your father which hung in your room. I have taken that. You can get more of them. I can't. So I have taken it."
They faced each other, this shining child and this dark woman.
"But—but it is mine—Hilda."
"It is mine now, and if I were you, I shouldn't make a fuss about it."
"Hilda, how dare you!" Jean began in the old indignant way, and stopped. There was something so sinister about it all. She hated the thought that she and Hilda were alone in the empty house—
"Hilda, if you go to France, shall you see Daddy?"
"I shall try. I had a letter from him the other day. He told me not to come. But I am going. There is work to do, and I am going."
Jean had a stunned feeling, as if there was nothing left to say, as if Hilda were indeed a rock, and words would rebound from her hard surface.
"But after all, you didn't really care for Daddy—"
"What makes you say that?"
"You were going to marry the General."
"Well, I wanted a home. I wanted some of the things you had always had. I'm not old, and I am tired of being a machine."
For just one moment her anger blazed, then she laughed with something of toleration.
"Oh, you'd never understand if I talked a year. So what's the use of wasting breath?"
She said "Good-bye" after that, and Jean watched her go, hearing the padded steps—until the front door shut and there was silence.
After that, with almost a sense of panic, she sped through the empty rooms, finding the papers after a frantic search, and gaining the street with a sense of escape.
Yet even then, it was sometime before her heart beat normally, and always after that when she thought of Hilda, it was against the chill and gloom of the empty house, with that look upon her face of dark resentment.
Somewhere in France, Drusilla had found the Captain. Or, rather, he had found her. He had come upon her one rainy afternoon, and had not recognized her in her muddy uniform, with a strap under her chin. Then all at once he had heard her voice, crooning a song to a badly wounded boy whose head lay in her lap.
The Captain had stopped in his tracks. "Drusilla—"
The light in her eyes gave him his welcome, but she waved him away.
The boy died in her arms. When she joined her lover, she was much moved. "It is not my work to look after the wounded; I carry blankets and things to refugees. But now and then—it happens. A shell burst in the street, and that poor lad—! He asked me to sing for him—you see, I have been singing for them as they go through, and he remembered—"
He was holding both of her hands in his. "Dear woman, dear woman—" There were people all about them, but there were no conventions in war times, and nobody cared if he held her hands.
Her face was dirty, her hair wind-blown. She was muddy and without a trace of the smartness for which she had been famous. She was simply a hard-worked woman in clothes of masculine cut, yet never had she seemed so beautiful to her lover. He bent and kissed her in the market-place. He was an undemonstrative Englishman, but there was that in her eyes which carried him away from self-consciousness.
"I saw McKenzie in Paris," he said. "He told me that you were here."
"We came over together. Did you get my letter?"
"I have had no letters. But now that I have you, nothing matters."
"Really? Somehow I don't feel that I deserve it."
"Deserve what?"
"All that you are giving me. But I have liked to think of it. It has been a prop to lean on—"
"Only that—?"
"A shield and a buckler, dearest, a cross held high—" Her breath came quickly.
* * * * * *
They sat side by side on the worn doorstep of a shattered building and talked.
"I am in a shack—abaraque,—they call it," Drusilla told him, "with three other women. We have fixed up one room a little better than the others, and whenever the men come through the town some of them drift in and are warmed by our fire, and I sing to them; they call me 'The Singing Woman.'"
She did not tell him how she had mothered the lads. She was not much older than some of them, but they had instinctively recognized the maternal quality of her interest in them. With all her beauty they had turned to her for that which was in a sense spiritual.
Hating the war, Drusilla yet loved the work she had to do. There was, of course, the horror of it, but there was, too, the stimulus of living in a world of realities. She wondered if she were the same girl who had burned her red candles and had served her little suppers, safe and sound and far away from the stress of fighting.
She wondered, too, if women over there were still thinking of their gowns, and men of their gold. Were they planning to go North in the summer and South in the winter? Were they still care-free and comfortable?
People over here were not comfortable, but how little they cared, and how splendid they were. She had seen since she came such incredibly heroic things—men as tender as women, women as brave as men—she had seen human nature at its biggest and best.
"I have never been religious," she told the Captain, earnestly; "our family is the kind which finds sufficient outlet in a cool intellectual conclusion that all's right with the world, and it doesn't make much difference what comes hereafter. You know the attitude? 'If there is future life, we shall be glad to explore, and if there isn't, we shall be content to sleep!'
"But since I have been over here, I have carried a little prayer-book, and I've read things to the men, and when I have come to that part 'Gladly to die—that we may rise again,' I have known that it is true, Captain—"
He laid his hand over hers. "May I have your prayer-book in exchange for mine?" He was very serious. With all his heart he loved her, and never more than at this moment when she had thrown aside all reserves and had let him see her soul.
She drew the little book from her pocket. It was bound in red leather, with a thin black cross on the cover. His own was in khaki.
"I want something else," he said, as he held the book in his hand.
"What?"
"This." He touched a lock of hair which lay against her cheek. "A bit of it—of you—"
A band ofpoilus—marching through the street, saw him cut it off. But they did not laugh. They had great respect for a thing like that—and it happened every day—when men went away from their women.
They separated with a promise of perhaps a reunion in Paris, if he could get leave and if she could be spared. Then she drove away through the mud in her little car, and he went back to his men.
Thus they were swept apart by that tide of war which threatened to submerge the world.
Drusilla, arriving late at herbaraque, made tea, and sat by an infinitesimal stove.
She found herself alone, for the other women were away on various errands. She uncovered all the glory of her lovely hair, and in her little mirror surveyed pensively the ragged lock over her left ear.
A man like that, oh, a man like that. What more could a woman ask—than love like that?
Yet even in the midst of her thought of him, came the feeling that she was not predestined for happiness. She must go on riding over rough roads on her errands of mercy. Nothing must interfere with that, not love or matters of personal preference—nothing.
She was very tired. But there was no time for rest. A half dozen kilted Highlanders hailed her through the open door and asked for a song. She gave them "Wee Hoose Amang the Heather—" standing on the step. It was still raining, and they took with them a picture of a girl with glorious uncovered hair, and that cut tell-tale lock against her cheek.
Drusilla watching them go, wondered if she would ever see them again, with their pert caps, the bare knees of them—the strong swing of their bodies.
She stretched her arms above her head. "Oh, oh, I'm tired—"
She went in and poured another cup of tea. She left the door open. Indeed it always stood open that the room might shine its welcome.
Snatching forty winks, she waked to find a woman standing over her—a tall woman in a blue cloak and bonnet, who held in her hand a dripping umbrella.
She felt that she still dreamed. "It can't be Hilda Merritt?"
"Yes, it is." Hilda set the umbrella in the wood box. "I knew you were here."
"Who told you?"
"Dr. McKenzie."
"Oh, you are with him, then?"
"He won't have me. That's why I came to you."
"To me?"
"Yes. I want you to tell him not to—turn me away."
Drusilla showed her bewilderment. "But, surely nothing that I could say would have more weight with him than your own arguments."
"You are his kind. He'd listen. Things that you say count with him."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Well, I've offended him. And he won't forgive me. Not even for the sake of the work. And I'm a good nurse, Miss Gray. But he's as hard as nails. And—and he sent me away."
"Oh, I'm sorry," Drusilla said gently. Hilda was a dark figure of tragedy, as she sat there statuesquely in her blue cloak.
"You could make him see how foolish it is to refuse to have a good worker; men may die whom I could save. He thinks that—those things don't mean anything to me, that I am arguing from a personal standpoint. He wouldn't think that of you."
"I'll do what I can, of course," Drusilla said slowly. She was not sure that she wanted to get into it, but she was sorry for Hilda.
"Won't you have a cup of tea," she said impulsively, "and take off your cloak? I am afraid I haven't seemed a bit hospitable. I was so surprised."
Hilda gave a little laugh. "I'm not used to such courtesies—so I didn't miss it. But I should like the tea, and something to eat with it. I left Dr. McKenzie's hospital early this morning, and I haven't eaten since—I didn't want anything to eat—"
She watched Drusilla curiously as she set forth the food. "It must seem strange to you to live in a room like this."
"I like it."
"But you have always had such an easy life, Miss Gray."
Drusilla smiled. "It may have looked easy to you. But I give you my word that keeping up with the social game is harder than this."
"You say that," Hilda told her crisply, "not because it's true, but because it sounds true. Do you mean to tell me that you like to be muddy and dirty and live in a place like this?"
"Yes, I like it." Something flamed in the back Of Drusilla's eyes. "I like it because it means something, and the other didn't."
"Well, I don't like it," Hilda stated. "But nursing is all I am fit for. I came over with a lot of other nurses, and they tell me at the hospital I am the best of the lot—and in war times you can't afford to miss the experience. But then I am used to a hard life, and you are not."
"Neither are the men in the trenches used to it. That's the standard I apply to myself—for every hard thing I am doing, it is ten times harder for them. I wish all the people at home could see how wonderful they are."
"That's Jean McKenzie's word—wonderful. Everything was wonderful, and now she has married Derry Drake."
"Yes, she has married Derry," Drusilla stood staring into the little round stove.
She roused herself presently. "I call them Babes in the Wood. They seem so young, and yet Derry isn't really young—it is only that there's such a radiant air about him."
Hilda's bitterness broke forth. "Why shouldn't he be radiant? Life has given him everything. It has given her everything; in a way it has given you everything. I am the one who goes without—it looks as if I should always go without the things I want."
"Don't think that," Drusilla said in her pleasant fashion. "Nobody is set apart—and some day you will see it. Did you know that Derry may be over now at any time, and that Jean is to stay with the General?"
"Yes," Hilda moved restlessly. There came to her a vision of the big house, of the shadowed room, of the room beyond, and of herself in a tiara, with ermine on her cloak.
What a dream it had been, and she had waked to this!
She rose. "If Dr. McKenzie doesn't take me back he may be sorry. Will you write to him?"
"I shall see him Saturday—in Paris. I have promised to dine with him. Captain Hewes is coming, too, if he can."
Hilda, going away in the rain, dwelt moodily on Drusilla's opportunities. If only she, too, might dine in Paris with men like Dr. McKenzie and Captain Hewes. There were indeed, men who might ask her to dine with them, but not as Drusilla had been asked, as an equal and as a friend.
The way was long, the road was muddy. There was not much to look towards at the end. It was not that she minded the dreadfulness of sights and sounds—she had been too much in hospitals for that. But she hated the ugliness, the roughness, the grinding toil.
Yet had she been with Dr. McKenzie, she would have toiled gladly for him. There would have been the sight of his crinkled copper head, the sound of his voice, his teasing laugh to sustain her. And now it was Drusilla who would see him, who would sit with him at the table, who would tempt his teasing laugh.
Well—if he didn't take her back, he would be sorry. There had been a patient in the hospital who in his delirium had whispered things. When he had come to himself, she had told him calmly, "You are a spy." He had not whitened, but had measured her with a glance. "Help me, and you shall see the Emperor. There will be nothing too good for you."
Drusilla, after Hilda's departure, sat by her little stove and thought it over. She divined something which did not appear on the surface. She was glad that she had promised to plead Hilda's cause. The woman's face haunted her.
And now the other workers who shared Drusilla's shack returned, bringing news of many wounded and on the way. Then came the darkness of the night, the long line of ambulances, the ghastly procession that trailed behind.
And all through the night Drusilla sang to men who rested for a moment on their weary way, out of the shadows came eager voices asking for this song and that—then they would pass on, and she would throw herself down for a little sleep, to rouse again and lift her voice, while the other women poured the coffee.
She was hoarse in the morning, and white with fatigue, but when one of the women said, "You can't keep this up, Drusilla, you can't stand it," she smiled. "They stand it is the trenches, and some of them are so tired."
She was as fresh as paint, however, on Saturday, when she met Dr. McKenzie in Paris. "I have had two hot baths, and all my clothes are starched and ironed and fluted by an adorable Frenchwoman who opened her house for me," she announced as she sat down with him at a corner table. "I never wore fluted things before, but you can't imagine how civilizing it is after you've been letting yourself down."
The Doctor was tired, and he looked it. "No one has starched and fluted me."
"Poor man. I'm glad you ran away from it all for a minute with me. Captain Hewes thought he might be able to come. But I haven't heard from him, have you?"
"No. But he may blow in at any moment. It seems queer, doesn't it, Drusilla, that you and I should be over here with all the rest of them left behind."
She hesitated, then brought it out without prelude. "Hilda came to see me."
"To see you? Why?"
"She is broken-hearted because you won't let her work with you."
"I told her I could not. And she hasn't any heart to break."
"I wonder if you'd mind," Drusilla ventured, "telling me what's the matter."
"A rather squalid story," but he told it. "She wanted to marry the General."
"Poor thing."
He glanced at her in surprise. "Then you defend her?"
"Oh, no—no. But think of having to marry to get the—the fleshpots, and to miss all of the real meanings. I talked to Hilda for a long time, and somehow before she left she made me feel sorry. She wants so much that she will never have. And she will grow hard and bitter because life isn't giving her all that she demands."
"Did she ask you to plead her cause?"
"Yes," frankly. "She feels that you ought to give her another chance."
He ran his fingers through his crinkled hair. "I don't want her. I'm afraid of her."
"Afraid?"
"She sees the worst that is in me, and brings it to the surface. And when I protest, she laughs and insists that I don't know myself. That I am a sort of Dr. Jekyll, with the Mr. Hyde part of me asleep—"
"And you let her scare you like that?"
He nodded. "Every man has a weak spot, and mine is wanting the world to think well of me."
"Think well of yourself. What would Jean say if she heard you talking like this?"
"Jean?" she was startled by the breaking up of his face into deep lines of trouble. "Do you know what she is doing, Drusilla? She is staying in that great old house playing daughter to the General."
"Marion says the General's affection for her is touching—he doesn't want her out of his sight."
"And because he doesn't want her out of his sight, she must stay a prisoner. I say that he hasn't done anything to deserve such devotion, Drusilla. He hasn't done anything to deserve it."
"You are jealous."
"No. It isn't that. Though I'll confess that something pulls at my heart when I think of it—. But I want her to be happy."
"I think she is happy. Life is giving her the hard things—but you and I would not be without the—hard things; we have reached out our hands for them, because the world needs us. Are you going to deny your daughter that?"
"Oh, I suppose not. But I hate it. Women ought to be happy—care-free, not shut up in sick rooms or running around in the rain."
"Oh, you men, how little you know what makes a woman happy." She stopped, and half rose from her chair. "Captain Hewes is coming."
"I don't know that I am glad, Drusilla," the Doctor turned to survey the beaming officer, "for now you won't have eyes or ears for me."
But she was glad.
While the Captain held her hand in his as if he would never let her go, she told him about being fluted and starched. "I don't look as dishevelled as I did the other day."
"You looked beautiful the other day," he assured her with fervor, "but this is better, because you are rested and some of the sadness has gone out of your eyes."
Dr. McKenzie watched them enviously, "I realize," he reminded them, "that I am the fifth wheel, or any other superfluous thing, but you can't get rid of me. I am homesick—somebody's got to cheer me up."
"We don't want to get rid of you," Drusilla told him, smiling.
But he knew that her loveliness was all for the Captain. She was lighted up by the presence of her betrothed, made exquisite, softer, more womanly. Love had come slowly to Drusilla, but it had come at last.
When the Doctor left them, he was in a daze of loneliness. He wanted Jean, he wanted sympathy, understanding, good-comradeship.
For just one little moment temptation assailed him. There was of course, Hilda. She would bring with her the atmosphere of familiar things which he craved. There would be the easy give and take of speech which was such a relief after his professional manner, there would be his own teasing sense of how much she wanted, and of how little he had to give. There would be, too, the stimulus to his vanity.
A broken-hearted Hilda, Drusilla had said. There was something provocative in the situation—elements of drama. Why not?
He thought about it that night when once more back at his work he and his head nurse discussed a case of shell shock—a pitiful case of fear, loss of memory, complete prostration.
The nurse was a plain little thing, very competent, very quiet. She was, perhaps, no more competent than Hilda in the mechanics of her profession, but she had qualities which Hilda lacked. She was not very young, and there were younger nurses under her. Yet in spite of her plainness and quietness, she wielded an influence which was remarkable. The whole hospital force was feeling the effect of that influence. It was as if every nurse had in some rather high and special way dedicated herself—as nuns might to the conventual life, or sisters of charity to the service of the poor. There was indeed a heroic aspect to it, a spiritual aspect, and this plain little woman was setting the pace.
And Hilda, coming in, would spoil it all. Oh, he knew how she would spoil it. With her mocking laugh, her warped judgments, her skeptical point of view.
No, he did not want Hilda. The best in him did not want her, and please God, he was giving his best to this cause. However he might fail in other things, he would not fail in his high duty towards the men who came out of battle shattered and broken, holding up their hands to him for help.
"I am going to let Miss Shelby have the case," the plain little nurse was saying, "when he begins to come back. She will give him what he needs. She is so strong and young, so sure of the eternal rightness of things—and she's got to make him sure."
The Doctor nodded. "Some of us are not sure—"
She agreed gravely. "But we are learning to be sure, aren't we, over here? Don't you feel that all the things you have ever done are little compared to this? That men and women are better and bigger than you have believed?"
"If anyone could make me feel it," he said, "it would be you."
When she had gone, he wrote letters.
He wrote to Jean—he wrote every day to Jean.
He wrote to Hilda.