Part 4 (1/2)

”Oh, yes,” answered the Eager Soul to our enquiring eyes. ”Mrs.

Chesman--this is practically her hospital. I mean she and her group are keeping it equipped and going--a wonderful work. I mean here is a real thing for a woman to do. And, oh, the need of it!”

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Oh, yes,” answered the Eager Soul to our enquiring eyes. ”Mrs. Chessman--this is practically her hospital”]

”Nice sort?” This from Henry, observing that there was no move toward us, on the part of the Gilded Youth and Auntie. Henry may have had his theory for their splendid isolation. But it received no stimulus when the Eager Soul answered:

”Oh, yes, I believe so. I haven't met her yet. They all say she is charming.” Henry looked at me. She caught the glance. Then to cover his tracks he grinned and said: ”Charm seems to run in their family.”

”Yes,” she returned amiably. ”One meets so many nice people on the boat.”

And Henry, still in pursuit of useful social information, insisted: ”Well, are they as nice in the war zone as they are--on the boat?”

We got our first dimple then, and the Eager Soul tucked in a wisp of red hair, as she answered: ”Well, really, I've been too busy to know.” She turned absent-mindedly toward the figure of the Gilded Youth, across the court. But the dimples and the smile faded and she closed the door firmly and finally on romance, when she said: ”On the record of service shown by my entrance card, they have made me a.s.sistant to the new head nurse who is coming over from Souilly to-night.”

After we had told her that we were going to American headquarters soon, she smiled again, to show us that she knew that when we went probably we would see the Young Doctor. But she let the smile stand as her only response to Henry's suggestion of a message. In another moment she turned to her work.

”Well,” said Henry, ”some pride! 'One meets so many nice people on the boat!' The idea being that her outfit at home is just as good as Auntie's group in New York, even if he didn't introduce her!

You know I rather like the social s.p.u.n.k of our Great Middle West!”

While we were talking the Gilded Youth began moving Auntie slowly but rather directly around the court to us. It occurred to me that perhaps he realized that we were the only social G.o.dfathers that the Eager Soul had in Europe, and that if he introduced us to Auntie it would be an indication that the affair of the boat, if it was an affair, was to be put upon a social basis! And in two minutes more he had docked Auntie at our pier. A large, brusk, well-groomed, good-looking woman of fifty was Auntie. Her Winthrop and Endicott blood advertised itself in her Bostonese, but she was sound and strong and the way she instantly got at the invoice price of Henry and his real worth, pleased me. She was genuine American. The thing that troubled me was the fear that Henry would begin too soon to lambast onion soup. But he didn't and in a few moments we were having this dialogue:

HENRY: ”Oh, yes, indeed; we've grown fond of her. Her father was--”

AUNTIE: ”Oh, yes, I knew her father. Mr. Chesman and he were interested together in New Mexican mining claims in the eighties; I believe they made some money. But--”

THE GILDED YOUTH: ”Well, Auntie--would you mind telling me how--?”

AUNTIE: ”Why, on her application blank, of course, with her father's name, age and residence.”

THE GILDED ONE: ”But you never mentioned it to me?”

AUNTIE: ”Nor to her, either. Why should I? This is hardly the place to organize the Colonial Dames! I believe you said a few minutes ago that you had met her on the boat.”

HENRY: ”One meets so many nice people on the boat!”

ME: ”You've heard of the woman who said she didn't know the man socially, she had just met him coming over on the boat!”

The Gilded Youth looked quickly at me, catching me suppressing a wink at Henry, who grinned at the expiring ghost of it. Then Auntie led the talk to the raid of the night before; and invited us to come up for a night's sleep in a civilized bed in the hospital. We were quartered for the night with the Ambulance boys, sleeping in a barn loft, so naturally, we accepted her invitation. Just as we were leaving to get our baggage, out into the court came the Eager Soul bearing a letter. We did not see the address, but it was, alas, plainly dimpled in her face, for the Gilded Youth to see, and after greeting him only pleasantly, she handed the letter to us, saying: ”Would you be good enough to deliver this for me at Gonrecourt next week, as you are pa.s.sing? It is to a friend I met on the boat!”

”Yes,” said Henry; ”one meets so many nice people on the boat.”

”Sometimes,” she answered, as she turned to her work.

That night we slept like logs until after midnight; then the moon rose, and the hospital began to come to life. The stir and murmur of the place wakened us. And we realized what a moonlight night means in a hospital near the front line. It means terror. No one slept after moonrise. It was a new experience for Henry and me.

So we rose and met it. And we realized that in scores of hospitals all over the war zone, on the side of the allies, similar scenes were enacting. The Germans were literally tearing the nerves out of hundreds of nurses by their raiding campaign--nurses whom the raiders did not visit, but who were threatened by every moonlight night!

It must have been after two in the morning, when we saw the Eager Soul and the Gilded Youth walking around the court as they used to pace the deck together. Once or twice they pa.s.sed our window, and we heard their voices. They were having some sort of a tall talk on philosophical matters, which annoyed Henry. The ocean and onion soup and philosophical theorizing never seemed reasonable, normal expressions of anything properly in the cosmos to Henry; he professed to believe that persons who tolerated these things would sooner or later be caught using the words ”group” and ”reaction” and ”hypothesis,” and he would have none of them. But for all that she used the word group and once confessed that she was a subscriber to the New Republic, Henry did like the Eager Soul; so he waked me up from a doze to say: ”Bill, she's putting him through the eye of the needle all right. And he's sliding through slick as goose-grease. I heard him telling her a minute ago that the war isn't for boundaries and geography; but for a restatement of human creeds. Then she said that steam and electricity have over-capitalized the world; that we are paying too highly for superintendence and that the price of superintendence must come down, and wages must come up. Then he said that he and his cla.s.s will go in the fires burning out there--melted like wax. And she told him that they both had a lot of stolen goods on them--bodies and minds, and hearts cultivated at the expense of their fellow creatures whose lives had been narrowed that theirs might be broadened. And you should have heard her talk about the Young Doctor--a self-made man, who had earned his way through college and medical school, and made his own place professionally.

She said he was the Herald of the New Day. Bill,” sighed Henry, ”what would you give if you could talk like that--again?” But from me, drowsily, came this: ”Henry--do you suppose she will get around to that slapping tonight she promised him on the boat? That would be worth staying up to see!”

”She'll never slap him. He'll never need it. She's talked him clear out of the mood!”

”Yes, she has--yes, she has,” came from me. And Henry insisted: