THE RIBBONS THAT STUCK IN HIS COAT

The little group was gathered in the cellar of Pervyse. An occasional sh.e.l.l was heard in the middle distance, as artillery beyond the Yser threw a lazy feeler over to the railway station. The three women were entertaining a distinguished guest at the evening meal of tinned rabbit and dates. Their visitor was none other than F. Ainslie-Barkleigh, the famous English war-correspondent. He was dressed for the part. He wore high top-boots, whose red leather shone richly even in the dim yellow of the lantern that lit them to their feast. About his neck was swung a heavy black strap from which hung a pair of very elegant field-gla.s.ses, ready for service at a moment's call. He could sweep a battle-field with them, or expose a hidden battery, or rake a road. From the belt that made his jacket shapely about his person, there depended a map of the district, with heavy inked red lines for the position of friend or foe. He was a tall man, with an immense head, on which were stuck, like afterthoughts, very tiny features--a nose easily overlooked, a thin slit of a mouth, and small inset eyes. All the upper part of him was overhanging and alarming, till you chanced on those diminutive features.

It was as if his growth had been terminated before it reached the expressive parts. He had an elaborate manner--a reticence, a drawl, and a chronic irony. Across half of his chest there streaked a rainbow of color; gay little ribbons of decoration, orange and crimson and purple and white.

Mrs. Bracher, st.u.r.dy, iron-jawed, and Scotch, her pretty young a.s.sistant, sat opposite him at table. Hilda did the honors by sitting next him, and pa.s.sing him tins of provender, as required.

"What pretty ribbons you wear," said Hilda. "Where did you get them?"

"Oh, different wars," returned Barkleigh carelessly.

"That's modest, but it's vague," urged Hilda. "If I had such pretty ribbons, I should have the case letter and the exhibit number printed on each. Now this one, for instance. What happened to set this fluttering?"

"Oh, that one," he said, nearly twisting his eyes out of their sockets to see which one her fingers had lighted on. "That's one the j.a.ps gave me."

"Thank you for not calling them the little brown people," returned Hilda; "that alone would merit decoration at their hands. And this gay thing, what princ.i.p.ality gave you this?"

"That came from somewhere in the Balkans. I always did get those states muddled up."

"Incredible haziness," responded Hilda. "You probably know the exact hour when the King and his Chief of Staff called you out on the Town-hall steps. You must either be a very brave man or else write very nice articles about the ruling powers."

"The latter, of course," returned he, a little nettled.

"Vain as a peac.o.c.k," whispered Scotch to the ever-watchful Mrs. Bracher.

"I don't understand you women," said Ainslie-Barkleigh, clearing his throat for action. But Hilda was too quick for him.

"I know you don't," she cut in, "and that is no fault in you. But what you really mean is that you don't like us, and that, I submit, is your own fault."

"But let me explain," urged he.

"Go ahead," said Hilda.

"Well, what I mean is this," he explained. "Here I find you three women out at the very edge of the battle-front. Here you are in a cellar, sleeping in bags on the straw, living on bully-beef and canned stuff.

Now, you could just as well be twenty miles back, nursing in a hospital."

"Is there any shortage of nurses for the hospitals?" interposed Hilda.

"When I went to the Red Cross at Pall Mall in London, they had over three thousand nurses on the waiting list."

"That's true enough," a.s.sented Barkleigh. "But what I mean is, this is reckless; you are in danger, without really knowing it."

"So are the men in danger," returned Hilda. "The soldiers come in here, hungry, and we have hot soup for them. They come from the trenches, with a gunshot wound in the hand, or a piece of sh.e.l.l in a leg, and we fix them up. That's better than travelling seven or eight miles before getting attention. Why it was only a week ago that Mrs. Bracher here--"

"Now none of that," broke in the nurse sternly.

"Hush," said Hilda, "it isn't polite to interrupt when a gentleman is asking for information."

She turned back to the correspondent.

"Last week," she took up her story, "a young Belgian private came in here with his lower lip swollen out to twice its proper size. It had got gangrene in it. A silly old military doctor had clapped a treatment over it, when the wound was fresh and dirty, without first cleaning it out.

Mrs. Bracher treated it every two hours for six days. The boy used to come right in here from the trenches. And would you believe it, that lip is looking almost right. If it hadn't been for her, he would have been disfigured for life."

"Very good," admitted the correspondent, "but it doesn't quite satisfy me. Wait till you get some real hot sh.e.l.l fire out here, then you'll make for your happy home."

"Why," began Scotch, rising slowly but powerfully to utterance.

"It's all right, Scotch," interposed Hilda, at a gallop, "save the surprise. It will keep."

Scotch subsided into a rich silence. She somehow never quite got into the conversation, though she was always in the action. She was one of those silent, comfortable persons, without whom no group is complete.

Into her ample placidity fell the high-pitched clamor of noisier people, like pebbles into a mountain lake.

"Now, what do you women think you are doing?" persisted the correspondent. "Why are you here?"

"You really want to know?" queried Hilda.

"I really want to know," he repeated.

"I'll answer you to-morrow," said Hilda. "Come out here to-morrow afternoon and we'll go to Nieuport. We promised to go over and visit the dressing-station there, and on the way I'll tell you why we are here."

Next day was grey and chilly. A low rumble came out of the north. The women had a busy morning, for the night had been full of snipers perched on trees. The faithful three spread aseptics and bandaged and sewed, and generally cheered the stream of callers from the Ninth and Twelfth Regiments, Army of the King of the Belgians. In the early afternoon, the buzz of motors penetrated to the stuffy cellar, and it needed no yelping horn, squeezed by the firm hand of Smith, to bring Hilda to the surface, alert for the expedition. Two motor ambulances were puffing their lungs out, in the roadway. Pale-faced Smith sat in one at the steering-gear--Smith, the slight London boy who would drive a car anywhere. Beside him sat F. Ainslie-Barkleigh, bent over upon his war map, studying the afternoon's campaign. In the second ambulance were Tom, the c.o.c.kney driver, and the leader of the Ambulance Corps, Dr. Neil McDonnell.

"Jump in," called he, "we're off for Nieuport."

She jumped into the first ambulance, and they turned to the north and took the straight road that leads all the way from Dixmude to the sea.

Barkleigh was much too busy with his gla.s.ses and his map to give her any of his attention for the first quarter hour. They speeded by sentinel after sentinel, who smiled and murmured, "Les Anglais." Corporals, captains, commandants, gazed in amazement and awe at the ma.s.sive figure of the war-correspondent, as he challenged the horizon with his binoculars and then dipped to his map for consultation. Only once did the party have to yield up the pa.s.s-word, which for that afternoon was "Charleroi." Finally Barkleigh turned to the girl.

"We had a discussion last evening," he began, "and you promised to answer my question. Why are you out here? Why isn't a hospital good enough for you, back in Furnes or Dunkirk?"

"I remember," returned Hilda. "I'll tell you. I could answer you by saying that we're out to help, and that would be true, too. But it wouldn't be quite the whole truth, for there's a tang of adventure in Pervyse, where we can see the outposts of the other fellows, that there isn't in the Carnegie Library in Pittsburg, let us say. Yes, we're out to help. But we're out for another reason, too. For generations now, you men have had a monopoly of physical courage. You have faced storms at sea, and charged up hills, and pulled out drowning children, and footed it up fire-ladders, till you think that bravery is a male characteristic. You've always handed out the pa.s.sive suffering act to us. We had any amount of compliments as long as we stuck to silent suffering. But now we want to see what sh.e.l.ls look like. As long as sons and brothers have to stand up to them, why, we're going to be there, too."

"But you haven't been in the thick of it," objected Barkleigh. "When the danger is so close you can see it, a woman's nerve isn't as good as a man's. It can't be. She isn't built that way."

"That's the very point," retorted Hilda, "we're going to show you."

"d.a.m.n quick," muttered Smith.

In the pleasant heat of their discussion, they hadn't been noticing the roadway. It was full of soldiers, trudging south. The rumble had become a series of reports. The look of the peaceful day was changing.

Barkleigh turned from his concentration on the girl, and glanced up the road.

"These troops are all turning," he said.

"You are right," Hilda admitted.

"Can't you see," he urged, "they're all marching back. That means they've given the place up."

"Oh, hardly that," corrected Hilda; "it simply means that Nieuport is hot for the present moment."