Chapter 10

Well, I dressed and we went out into the street. I tried to tell Tish that even if we got it we couldn’t take it home and hide it under the bed or in a bureau drawer, but she was engrossed in her own thoughts, and besides, the streets were entirely dark and not a taxicab anywhere. She had a city map, however, and a flashlight, and at last about two in the morning we reached the street where she said it was stored in a garage.

I was limping by that time, and there were cold chills running up and down my spine, but Tish was quite calm. And just then there was a terrific outburst of noise, whistles and sirens of all sorts, and a man walking near us suddenly began to run and dived into a doorway.

“Air raid,” said Tish calmly, and walked on. I clutched at her arm, but she shook me off.

“Tish!” I begged.

“Don’t be a craven, Lizzie,” she said. “Statistics show that the percentage of mortality from these things is considerably less than from mumps, and not to be compared with riding in an elevator or with the perils of maternity.”

All sorts of people were running madly by that time, and suddenly disappearing, and a man with a bird cage in his hand bumped flat into me and knocked me down. Tish, however, had moved on without noticing, and when I caught up to her she was standing beside a wide door which was open, staring in.

“This is the place,” she said. And just then half a dozen men poured out through the doorway and ran along the street. Tish drew a long breath.

“You see?” she said. “Providence watches over those whose motives are pure, even if compelled to certain methods——”

There was a terrible crash at that moment down the street, followed by glass falling all round us.

“——which are not entirely ethical,” Tish continued calmly. “We might as well go inside, Lizzie. They may drop another, and we shall never have such a chance again.”

“I can’t walk, Tish,” I said in a quavering voice. “My knees are bending backward.”

“Fiddlesticks!” she replied scornfully and stalked inside.

I have since reflected on Tish during that air raid, on the calm manner in which she filled the gasoline tank of her ambulance, on the way in which she flung out six empty ice-cream freezers, and the perfect aplomb with which she kicked the tires to see if they contained sufficient air. For such attributes I have nothing but admiration. But I am not so certain as to the mental processes which permitted her calmly to take three spare tires from other cars and to throw them into the ambulance.

Perhaps there is with all true greatness an element of ruthlessness. Or perhaps she subsequently sent conscience money to the Red Cross anonymously. There are certain matters on which I do not interrogate her.

I was still sitting on the running board of a limousine inhaling my smelling salts when she pronounced all ready and we got into the driving seat and started. Just as we moved out a man came in from the street and began to yell at us. When Tish paid no attention to him he took a flying leap and landed on the step beside us.

“Here, what the —— do you think you are doing?” he said in English. “Where’s your permit?”

Tish said nothing, but turned out into the street and threw on the gas. He was on my side and the jerk almost flung him off.

“Stop this car!” he yelled. “Hey, Grogan! Grogan!”

But whoever Grogan was he was still in some cellar probably, and by that time we were going very fast. Unluckily the glass in the street cut all four tires almost immediately, and we swung madly from one side to the other. And just then, too, we struck the hole the shell had made, and went into it with a terrible bump. The man disappeared immediately, but Tish was quite composed. She simply changed gears, and the car crawled out on the other side.

“This motor will go anywhere, Lizzie,” she said easily. “I feel that my judgment is entirely vindicated. Where’s that man?”

“Killed, probably,” I retorted with a certain acidity.

“I hope not,” she replied with kindly tolerance. “But if he is it will be supposed that a bomb did it.”

As a matter of fact the _Herald_ next morning reported the miraculous escape of an American found on the very edge of a shell hole, recovering, but showing one of the curious results of shell shock, being convinced that two women had stolen a car from his garage, and had run it into the hole in a deliberate attempt to kill him.

Aggie read this to us at breakfast, and Tish merely observed that it was very sad, and that she proposed studying shell shock at the Front. Not until months later did we tell Aggie the story of that night.

That morning Tish disappeared, and at noon she came back to say that she had at last secured the ambulance, and that we would start for the Front at once. Privately she told me that in a pocket of the car she had found permits to get us out of Paris, but that the car would be missed before long, and that we would better start at once.

It is strange to look back and recall with what blitheness we prepared to leave. And it is interesting, too, to remember the conversation with Mr. Burton when he called that afternoon.

“Hello!” he said, glancing about. “This looks like moving on. Where to, oh, brave and radiant spirits?”

“We haven’t quite decided,” Tish said. She was cleaning her revolver at the time.

“You haven’t decided! Great Scott, haven’t you any orders? Or any permits?”

“All that are necessary,” Tish said, squinting into the barrel of her revolver. “Aggie, don’t forget your hay fever spray.”

“But look here,” he began, “you know this is France in wartime. I hate to throw a wrench into the machinery, but no one can travel a mile in this country without having about a million papers. You’ll be arrested; you’ll be——”

“Young man,” Tish said quietly, pouring oil on a rag, “I was arrested before you were born. Aggie, will you order some tea? And make mine very weak.”

“Weak tea!” he repeated with a sort of groan. “Weak tea! And yet you start for the Front, picking out any trench that takes your fancy, and—weak tea! And I am going to St.-Nazaire! I, a man, with a man’s stomach and a mad affection for a girl who thinks I prefer serving doughnuts to fighting! I do that, while you——”

“Why do you go to St.-Nazaire?” Tish inquired. “You can sit with Aggie inside the ambulance, and I’m sure you could be useful, changing tires, and so on. You could simply disappear, you know. That is what we intend to do.”

“I’ll have a cup of tea,” he said in a strange voice. “Very strong, please; I seem rather dazed.”

“I figure this way,” Tish went on, putting down her revolver and taking up her knitting: “I don’t believe an ambulance loaded with cigarettes and stick candy and chocolate, with perhaps lemons for lemonade, is going to be stopped anywhere as long as it’s headed for the Front. I understand they don’t stop ambulances anyhow. If they do you can stretch out and pretend to be wounded. This is one way in which you can be very useful—being wounded.”

He took all his tea at a gulp, and then looked round in an almost distracted manner.

“Certainly,” he said. “Of course. It’s all perfectly simple. You—you don’t mind, I suppose, if I take a moment to arrange my mind? It seems to be all mussed up. Apparently I think clearly, but somehow or other——”

“We are actuated by several motives,” Tish went on, beginning to turn the heel of the sock. “First of all, my nephew is at the Front. I want to be near him. I am a childless woman, and he is all I have. Second, I fancy the more cigarettes and so on our boys have the better for them, though I disapprove of cigarettes generally. And finally, I do not intend to let the biggest thing in my lifetime go by without having been a part of it, even in the most humble manner.”

“Entirely reasonable too,” he said.

But he still had a strange expression on his face, and soon after that he said he’d walk round a little in the air and then come back and tell us his decision.

At five o’clock he was back and he was very pale and wore what Aggie considered a haunted look. He stalked in and stood, his cap in his hand.

“I’ll go,” he said. “I’ll go, and I don’t give a—I don’t care whether I come back or not. That’s clear, isn’t it? I’ll go as far as you will, Miss Tish, and I take it that means moving right along. I’ll go there, and then I’ll keep on going.”

“You’ve seen Hilda!” Aggie exclaimed with the intuition of her own experience in matters of the heart.

“I’ve seen her,” he said grimly. “I wasn’t looking for her. I’ve given that up. She was with that—well, you know. If I had any sense I’d have stolen those photographs and mailed them to her, one at a time. Five days, one each day, I’d have——”

“You might save all that hate for the Germans,” Tish said. “I don’t care to promise anything, but I have an idea that you may have a chance to use it.”

And again, as always, our dear Tish was right.

We left Paris that evening. We made up quite comfortable beds in the ambulance, which had four new tires and which Tish with her customary forethought had filled as full as possible with cigarettes and candy. I have never inquired as to where Tish secured these articles, but I have learned that very early Tish adopted an army term called salvage, which seems to consist of taking whatever is necessary wherever it may be found. For instance, she has always referred to the night when she salvaged the ambulance and the extra tires; and the night later on, when we found the window of a warehouse open and secured seven cases of oranges for some of our boys who had no decent drinking water, she also referred to our actions at that time as salvage.

In fact, so common did the term become that I have heard her speaking of the time we salvaged the town of V——.

_In re_ the matter of passports—_in re_ is also military, and means referring to, or concerning; I find a certain tendency myself to use military terms. _In re_ the matter of passports and permits, since the authenticity of our adventure has recently been challenged here at home, particularly in our church, though we have been lifelong members, it is a strange fact that we never required any. The sacred emblem on the ambulance and ourselves, including Mr. Burton, was amply sufficient. And though there were times when Mr. Burton found it expedient to lie in the back of the car and emit slow and tortured groans I have always contended that it was not really necessary in the two months which followed.

Over those two months I shall pass lightly. Our brave Tish was almost incessantly at the wheel, and we distributed uncounted numbers of cigarettes and so on. We had, naturally, no home other than the ambulance, but owing to Tish’s forethought we found, among other articles in the secret compartment under the floor, a full store of canned goods and a nest of cooking kettles.

With this outfit we were able to supplement when necessary such provisions as we purchased along the way, and even now and then to make such occasional delicacies as cup custard or to bake a few muffins or small sweet cakes. More than once, too, we have drawn up beside the road where troops were passing, and turned out some really excellent hot doughnuts for them.

Indeed I may say that we became quite well known among both officers and men, being called The Three Graces.

But when so many were doing similar work on a much larger scale our poor efforts are hardly worthy of record. Only one thing is significant! We moved slowly but inevitably toward the Front, and toward that portion of the Front where Charlie Sands was serving his country.

During all this time Mr. Burton never mentioned Hilda but once, and that was to state that he had learned Captain Weber was a widower.

“Not that it makes any difference to me,” he said. “She can marry him tomorrow as far as I’m concerned. I’ve forgotten her, practically. If I marry it will be one of these French girls. They can cook anyhow, and she can’t. Her idea of a meal is a plate of fudge.”

“He’s really breaking his heart for her,” Aggie confided to me later. “Do you notice how thin he is? And every time he looks at the moon he sighs.”

“So do I,” I said tartly; “and I’m not in love either. Ever since that moonlight night when that fool of a German flew over and dropped a bomb onto the best layer cake I’ve ever baked I’ve sighed at the moon too.”

But he was thinner; and, when the weather grew cold and wet and we suggested flannels to him as delicately as possible, he refused to consider them.

“I’d as soon have pneumonia as not,” he said. “It’s quick and easy, and—anyhow we need them to cover the engine on cold nights.”

It was, I believe, at the end of the seventh week that we drew in one night at a small village within sound of the guns. We limped in, indeed, for we had had one of our frequent blowouts, and had no spare tire.

Scattering as was our custom, we began a search for an extra tire, but without results. There was only one machine in the town, and that belonged to General Pershing. We knew it at once by the four stars. As we did not desire to be interrogated by the commander-in-chief we drew into a small alleyway behind a ruined house, and Aggie and I cooked a Spanish omelet and arranged some lettuce-and-mayonnaise sandwiches.

Tish had not returned, but Mr. Burton came back just as I was placing the meal on the folding table we carried for the purpose, and we saw at once that something was wrong. He wore a look he had not worn since we left Paris.

“Leg, probably,” I said in an undertone to Aggie. He was subject to attacks of pain in the milk leg.

But Aggie’s perceptions were more tender.

“Hilda, most likely,” she said.

However, we were distracted by the arrival of Tish, who came in with her customary poise and unrolled her dinner napkin with a thoughtful air. She commented kindly on the omelet, but was rather silent.

At the end of the meal, however, she said: “If you will walk up the road past the Y. M. C. A. hut, Mr. Burton, it is just possible you will find an extra tire lying there. I am not positive, but I think it likely. I should continue walking until you find it.”

“Must have seen a rubber plant up that way,” Mr. Burton said, rather disagreeably for him. He was most pleasant usually.

“I have simply indicated a possibility,” Tish said. “Aggie, I think I’ll have a small quantity of blackberry cordial.”

With Tish recourse to that remedy indicated either fatigue or a certain nervous strain. That it was the latter was shown by the fact that when Mr. Burton had gone she started the engine of the car and suggested that we be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. She then took a folding chair and placed herself in a dark corner of the ruined house.

“If you see the lights of a car approaching,” she called, “just tell me, will you?”

However, I am happy to say that no car came near. Somewhat later Mr. Burton appeared rolling a tire ahead of him, and wearing the dazed look he still occasionally wore when confronted with new evidences of Tish’s efficiency.

“Well,” he said, dropping the tire and staring at Aggie and myself, “she dreamed true. Either that or——”

“Mr. Burton,” Tish called, “do you mind hiding that tire until morning? We found it and it is ours. But it’s unnecessary to excite suspicion at any time.”

I am not certain that Mr. Burton’s theory is right, but even if it is I contend that war is war and justifies certain practices hardly to be condoned in times of peace.

Briefly, he has always maintained that Tish being desperate and arguing that the C. in C.—which is military for commander-in-chief—was able to secure tires whenever necessary—that Tish had deliberately unfastened a spare tire from the rear of General Pershing’s automobile; not of course actually salvaging it, but leaving it in a position where on the car’s getting into motion it would fall off and could then be salvaged.

I do not know. I do know, however, that Tish retired very early to her bed in the ambulance. As Aggie was heating water for a bath, having found a sheltered horse trough behind a broken wall, I took Mr. Burton for a walk through the town in an endeavor to bring him to a more cheerful frame of mind. He was still very low-spirited, but he offered no confidences until we approached the only undestroyed building in sight. He stopped then and suggested turning back.

“It’s a Y hut,” he said. “We’ll be about as welcome there as a skunk at a garden party.”

I reprimanded him for this, as I had found no evidence of any jealousy between the two great welfare organizations. But when I persisted in advancing he said: “Well, you might as well know it. She’s there. I saw her through a window.”

“What has that got to do with my getting a bottle of vanilla extract there if they have one?”

“Oh, she’ll have one probably; she uses it for fudge! I’m not going there, and that’s flat.”

“I thought you had forgotten her.”

“I have!” he said savagely. “The way you forget the toothache. But I don’t go round boring a hole in a tooth to get it again. Look here, Miss Lizzie, do you know what she was doing when I saw her? She was dropping six lumps of sugar into a cup of something for that—that parent she’s gone bugs about.”

“That’s what she’s here for.”

“Oh, it is, is it?” he snarled. “Well, she wasn’t doing it for the fellow with a cauliflower ear who was standing beside him. There was a line of about twenty fellows there putting in their own sugar, all right.”

“I’ll tell you this, Mr. Burton,” I said in a serious tone, “sometimes I think things are just as well as they are. You haven’t a disposition for marriage. I don’t believe you’ll make her happy, even if you do get her.”

“Oh, I’ll not get her,” he retorted roughly. “As a matter of fact, I don’t want her. I’m cured. I’m as cured as a ham. She can feed sugar to the whole blamed Army, as far as I’m concerned. And after that she can go home and feed sugar to his five kids, and give ’em colic and sit up at night and——”

I left him still muttering and went into the Y hut. Hilda gave a little scream of joy when she saw me and ran round the counter, which was a plank on two barrels, and kissed me. I must say she was a nice little thing.

“Isn’t France small after all?” she demanded. “And do you know I’ve seen your nephew—or is it Miss Tish’s? He’s just too dear! We had a long talk here only a day or two ago, and I was telling about you three, and suddenly he said: ‘Wait a minute. You’ve mentioned no names, but I’ll bet my tin hat my Aunt Tish was one of them!’ Isn’t that amazing?”

Well, I thought it was, and I took a cup of her coffee. But it was poor stuff, and right then and there I made a kettleful and showed her how. But I noticed she grew rather quiet after a while.

At last she said: “You—I don’t suppose you’ve seen that Mr. Burton anywhere, have you?”

“We saw something of him in Paris,” I replied, and glanced out the window. He was standing across what had once been the street, and if ever I’ve seen hungry eyes in a human being he had them.

“He was so awfully touchy, Miss Lizzie,” she said. “And then I was never sure—— Why do you suppose he isn’t fighting? Not that it’s any affair of mine, but I used to wonder.”

“He’s got a milk leg,” I said, and set the coffee kettle off.

“A milk leg! A milk—— Oh, how ridiculous! How—— Why, Miss Lizzie, how can he?”

“Don’t ask me. They get ’em sometimes too. They’re very painful. My cousin, Nancy Lee McMasters, had one after her third child and——”

I am sorry to say that here she began to laugh. She laughed all over the hut, really, and when she had stood up and held to the plank and laughed she sat down on a box of condensed milk and laughed again. I am a truthful woman, and I had thought it was time she knew the facts, but I saw at once that I had make a mistake. And when I looked out the window Mr. Burton had gone.

I remained there with her for some time, but as any mention of Mr. Burton only started her off again we discussed other matters.

She said Charlie Sands was in the Intelligence Department at the Front, and that when he left he was about to, as she termed it, pull off a raid.

“He’s gone to bring me a German as a souvenir; and that Captain Weber—you remember him—he is going to bring me another,” she cried. “He gave me my choice and I took an officer, with a nice upcurled mustache and——”

“And five children?”

“Five children? Whatever do you mean, Miss Lizzie?”

“I understand that Captain Weber has five. I didn’t know but that you had a special preference for them that way.”

“Why, Miss Lizzie!” she said in a strained voice. “I don’t believe it. He’s never said——”

I was washing out her dish towels by that time, for she wasn’t much of a housekeeper, I’ll say that, though as pretty as a picture, and I never looked up. She walked round the hut, humming to herself to show how calm she was, but I noticed that when her broom fell over she kicked at it.

Finally she said: “I don’t know why you think I was interested in Captain Weber. He was amusing, that’s all; and I like fighting men—the bravest are the tenderest, you know. I—if you ever happen on Mr. Burton you might tell him I’m here. It’s interesting, but I get lonely sometimes. I don’t see a soul I really care to talk to.”

Well, I promised I would, and as Mr. Burton had gone I went back alone. Tish was asleep with a hot stone under her cheek, from which I judged she’d had neuralgia, and Aggie was nowhere in sight. But round the corner an ammunition train of trucks had come in and I suddenly remembered Aggie and her horse trough. Unfortunately I had not asked her where it was.

I roused Tish but her neuralgia had ruffled her usual placid temper, and she said that if Aggie was caught in a horse trough let her sit in it. If she could take a bath in a pint of water Aggie could, instead of hunting up luxuries. She then went to sleep again, leaving me in an anxious frame of mind.

Mr. Burton was not round, and at last I started out alone with a flashlight, but as we were short of batteries I was too sparing of it and stepped down accidentally into a six-foot cellar, jarring my spine badly. When I got out at last it was very late, and though there were soldiers all round I did not like to ask them to assist me in my search, as I had every reason to believe that our dear Aggie had sought cleanliness in her nightgown.

It was, I believe, fully 2 A. M. when I finally discovered her behind a wall, where a number of our boys were playing a game with a lantern and dice—a game which consisted apparently of coaxing the inanimate objects with all sorts of endearing terms. They got up when they saw me, but I observed that I was merely taking a walk, and wandered as nonchalantly as I was able into the inclosure.

At first all was dark and silent. Then I heard the trickle of running water, and a moment later a sneeze. The lost was found!

“Aggie!” I said sternly.

“Hush, for Heaven’s sake! They’ll hear you.”

“Where are you?”

“B-b-behind the trough,” she said, her teeth chattering. “Run and get my bathrobe, Lizzie. Those d-d-dratted boys have been there for an hour.”

Well, I had brought it with me, and she had her slippers; and we started back. I must say that Aggie was a strange figure, however, and one of the boys said after we had passed: “Well, fellows, war’s hell, all right.”

“If you saw it too I feel better,” said another. “I thought maybe this frog liquor was doing things to me.”

Aggie, however, was sneezing and did not hear.

I come now to that part of my narrative which relates to Charlie Sands’ raid and the results which followed it. I felt a certain anxiety about telling Tish of the dangerous work in which he was engaged, and waited until her morning tea had fortified her. She was, I remember, sitting on a rock directing Mr. Burton, who was changing a tire.

“A raid?” she said. “What sort of a raid?”

“To capture Germans, Tish.”