Part 9

These hospitals for children, established in needy zones throughout all France as fast as may be, constitute one of the most effective and long-range pieces of work that the American Red Cross has undertaken, for they minister to the immediate want and at the same time strengthen permanently the general health tone of a nation. That the French appreciate our effort in this field is undoubted, and one of their statesmen has said that the impetus given by America to the conservation of child life in France is one of the most beneficial by-products of this great war.

A CANTEENER IN FRANCE

Hooray! _Vive la belle France!_ I’m going to France! I’m going to be a canteener! Maybe I shall go right up to the Front just behind the first-line trenches and be under shell fire and be bombed by boche avions and hear the _alerte_ and have to scurry to _abris_ and all that sort of thing. I don’t know any of the details yet--nobody over here does--but anyhow I’m going! That’s the chief thing.

I’m so excited and thrilled I scarcely know what I’m doing, but outwardly I try to keep poised and calm, for mamma has been disappearing at intervals into her handkerchief ever since she gave her consent; and as for papa, he doesn’t say much; in fact, the dear old sport is quieter than ever--but I catch him looking at me, when he thinks I don’t see, in a way that makes me realize I’m the only girl he’s got down here below and that he’d never send me if he had a son to give. Not having a son and being a true-blue American with generations of fighting blood inside of him--for the man who said “Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes!” was my father’s great-grandfather--he’s figured it out that the best he can do is to send his girl instead. That’s the ground of his consent. And mamma’s a Daughter of the American Revolution, so that lets her out.

It was pure accident--or fate--which made me run into Edith on the street a week ago to-day and thus start the wheels of destiny.

“Come in and have some tea,” she said after congratulating me on my engagement, which had just been announced, “and tell me all about it--and him. You deep little mouse--to pull this off right under everybody’s nose and keep as secret as the grave! Who is he, anyhow?”

“He’s Major B----, of the Fifty-blank Infantry. He’s just received his majority and he’s just twenty-nine.”

“Major, eh? That’s not so bad.”

“And, oh, Edith, he’s leaving for France sometime this month, and I--I don’t know what to do!”

“What would you like to do?” asked Edie, laughing a little at my blushes.

“I’d like to go over there, too,” I replied without hesitation, staring straight into her deep blue eyes. “It doesn’t seem as if I could stand it--the long, long separation. Irregular letters. And when they go into action, not knowing, not hearing, maybe never hearing. Never. Just the silence!”

“You’re in the same fix as a million other American women right now,” replied Edith grimly. “And you’ve got to stand it. That’s our job.”

“I know,” I said heavily. “But it doesn’t make your own toothache any better to know that there’s an epidemic of toothache raging over the whole civilized world.”

Edith sat looking at me with a smile deep down in her eyes. She has been married three years, the first of our class; and now she looks at the entire outside world with that same air of tender smiling abstraction.

“It’s all part of the game,” she said finally. “And we women must keep the flag flying. Jack”--Jack’s her husband--“is going over next month. He doesn’t have to, of course, being over the age limit. But he foresaw this two years ago, and went and prepared himself at Plattsburg. He wouldn’t volunteer then on account of me and baby. But now the call has come it finds him ready. He feels the whole situation deeply. I’m glad.”

“Oh, Edie, you--brick!” I breathed, squeezing her hand hard. I thought of her left alone with her child--and not any too much money either.

“Edie’s all right,” she murmured unsteadily, her blue eyes bright as diamonds. “Don’t you fuss about her! But now about you--I have an idea. What can you do? Practically, I mean.”

“I’ve had a six-months’ course in the hospital----”

“They don’t take anything but graduate nurses now.”

“----and I’ve had two years of domestic science and food values. Then last summer I operated a cafeteria in the suburbs for the Women’s League--did all the buying and accounts myself. It was fun. In college I was head of the basket-ball team and the tramping club, and I’ve never been sick a day in my life.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-four.”

“A bit young. However,” said Edith briskly, rising, “I’ll see what I can do. There’s just a bare chance--but I’m not going to tell you beforehand, for fear we burst the bubble. Run home now. Stick round the telephone. There may be a long-distance call. Put a few things into a bag while you’re waiting. Do you think you could go on to New York to-night?”

I suppose my eyes must have been as big round as saucers with excitement, for suddenly Edith bent right over and dropped a kiss on my cheek. “You darned little kid!” she whispered. “I know exactly how you feel. Now trot!”

I trotted--walking on air.

For the next two hours I hung round the landing where the telephone is, and finally settled down on the top stair.

“For goodness’ sake, child!” cried mamma, stumbling over me as she came out of the sitting-room, “what on earth are you doing here, all bunched up in the dark?”

“I--I’m----”

Just then the telephone rang. I sprang to the receiver.

“Oh, I see!” said mamma, laughing as she went downstairs.

But she didn’t.

Central got the long-distance line cleared and then over the wire there came a woman’s clear, crisp, businesslike voice: “I wish to speak to Miss Carlotta Murray.”

“This is she.”

“Miss Murray, could you sail for France a week from Saturday?”

My heart gave a sort of big thrilly jerk and I had a sudden shock as if my nerves had got short-circuited.

“Ye-yes!” I gulped faintly.

“What? Speak louder.”

“Yes!” I shouted into the mouthpiece, holding on to the wall for support. “Dee-lighted!”

“Very well. Be at our office at eleven to-morrow morning. You’d better come prepared to go straight on to Washington to arrange about your passes. Good-b----”

“Wait!” I cried excitedly. “Who is it speaking? I don’t know who you are.”

“Red Cross Headquarters. New York office. Good-by.”

She hung up and left me gasping in the darkness on the stair. Well, I was in deep over my head now; and so I found mamma and put it straight up to her: Would she give her consent if papa did? At first she refused up and down, but by six o’clock I had her coaxed round to the point where she was packing my suitcase and making up lists of things I’d need in France--woolen underwear and galoshes and sweaters and first-aid outfits and what nots. And all the time we didn’t either of us know what I was going to do when I got over there any more than the man in the moon. The call had tumbled right out of a clear sky. But once I’d got mamma to see the situation as it really was, outside her motherhood so to speak, she was as keen as mustard for it.

We had dinner upstairs in my room. Delia served it on a tray. And when she heard I was sailing for France she just said, “Oh, my Gawd! Submarines!” and dropped the tray and burst into tears. You’d have thought the submarines were right under my bed. At that mamma broke down altogether and Delia embraced her--Delia’s been with us ever since I was born--and there followed a hectic half hour. I was beginning to think Delia had spilled the beans for me with her “Oh, my Gawd!” when all of a sudden mamma glanced at the clock, pulled herself together and exclaimed sharply:

“Good gracious, child, get into your clothes--quick! Do you want to miss that train? Delia, run down and phone for a taxi.”

Delia went, still dribbling tears and tomato bisque. Then mamma rushed off a telegram to Uncle Jim to meet me in New York, rushed me into my things, rushed me down to the station, through the gate, onto the train, gave me a swift breathless hug and departed. That’s the way she is, all tears one second and a regular little whiz-bang field marshal the next. But it was some evening!

The next morning in New York Uncle Jim and I breakfasted at the Belmont, after which I walked over to Red Cross Headquarters, had an interview, and took the train to Washington. I had already wired papa, who was down there on business, to meet me, and told him to watch out for a life-size jolt. When I stepped off the train, there he was, leaning against a pillar and looking, as the novelists say, singularly handsome and debonair.

“Hello, Miss Murray!” he said, taking my bag away from the porter. “Now come on with your jolt.”

“_Vive la France!_” I said by way of commencement.

“Ha! So that’s the bill of fare? With all my heart. May she _vive_ forever. But what’s that got to do with the price of winter umbrellas?”

“The _Rochambeau_ sails a week from to-morrow.”

“Well,” said papa, still bluffing away, though I could see from the way he started that I had landed him one right over the heart, “I haven’t any stock in her. The submarines may go as far as they like.”

“They want me to sail on her--as a canteener.”

“As a whatter?” demanded papa.

“A canteener. A person that works in a canteen. You know--serves hot drinks and food and all to the soldiers.”

“Who wants you to go?” he growled in his crossest cross-examining-witness manner.

“President Wilson. God. American Red Cross. Mamma. Delia. Me.”

“Pretty good references,” observed papa dryly. “Especially Delia. But not worth a single red cent in the present instance--unless indorsed by me. Now let’s get down to brass tacks. What is this all about?”

That’s the way papa always talks with me, straight from the shoulder, just as if I were his law partner and we were threshing out a case. And so I told him. I told him how the high commissioner for Europe of the American Red Cross had cabled to Washington for women to be sent immediately to France to work in canteens; how Washington had telegraphed to New York to collect a group of workers without delay; how New York had telegraphed to Boston for names of suitable persons with training along that line; how Edith, the president of her Red Cross chapter, had been called into council--and how that led to me.

“It’s the finger of destiny, papa,” I wound up; “and it’s pointed straight at me--like the man in the ad. There’s just one hitch.”

“Only one?” observed papa with his grim little half smile.

“The cable says women over thirty.”

“Well,” chuckled papa, “I guess that lets you out--for about six years anyhow. And by that time the war will be over. Though Bairnsfeather says that the first seven years will be the worst, and after that every fourteenth year.”

“I’m within the draft limit,” I protested. “And if they take infants of twenty-one to be soldiers I don’t see why a college graduate of twenty-four, captain of the basket-ball team and with a record in Greek, hasn’t enough gumption to stand behind a counter and deal out sandwiches and coffee. It makes me sick!”

“Well, all that’s a minor matter,” said papa. “It’s fitness, not age or lack of it, that counts. But let’s waive that for the moment and get down to the kernel of this proposition. Why are you interested in this thing? Why do you want to go--or think that you want to go? Now don’t hand out any cheap sentimentality. Don’t insult the cause by any tawdry emotionalism. Come clean. What are your reasons?”

Followed a conference--or moral examination, rather--which lasted for over four hours, straight through dinner, up to eleven o’clock; and still we sat on at table, papa smoking one cigar after another, until the big hotel dining-room was deserted and the lights went out. There was no question from the first of a downright refusal. He simply talked to me, eye to eye and man to man. He spoke as if I were his son, a soldier, going off to war, and he charted the cardinal points of conduct. He saw the thing big from the start, and I loved him for it. Then we talked about life and love and marriage, the rights of men and nations, and how this war was going to temper and fuse America like steel that’s been through fire; we talked about personal responsibility, the Red Cross, and he showed how any human institution rested straight back on the individual, so that if I fell down on my job the whole organization would feel the shock. He didn’t give me a whole decalogue of “Don’ts” to guide me over there, but he did give me three big “Do’s.” Here they are:

Number One: Get round your own job and leave it to the other fellow to get round his.

Number Two: Keep alive and lovable. Women, he said, are a little more apt than men to go to seed.

Number Three: Keep your sense of humor.

Altogether, it was the best talk I’ve ever had on earth, and when it was done he kissed me; and then we sailed out arm in arm for some ice-cream soda at the corner drug store, and I treated him and he treated me--our immemorial custom.

It was all settled the next morning that I was to go to war. They didn’t even query my age!

That morning, after breakfast, papa said, “Guess I’ll just walk over with you to that shebang of yours, in case you need identification.”

“No, you don’t!” I said. “I’m going to get this on my own credentials--my cafeteria credentials!--and not because I’m the daughter of Judge Murray, alias Old Silver Tongue. ‘Get round your own job and leave it to the other fellow to get round his.’ Axiom One.”

Papa grinned. “Strike one--right over the plate. All right. Let me hear what the jury decides.” And we went our separate ways.

At the office in the Women’s Bureau it took less than ten minutes to get through the red tape and settle my future, as follows: I’m to be a canteen worker. I pay all my own expenses. And I literally do pay them, with my cafeteria money and a check I received for writing a movie. I’ve signed on for six months, during which time I can’t marry an American army officer--without losing my job and getting sent home to America. Wow! For further orders report to Number Four, Place de la Concorde, Paris, France, seat of a world war for civilization. Think of it, oh, my soul! Well, sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, the Murray family gives its heart and its hand to this vote!

The last week has been one mad, wild, excited scramble--with canteen uniforms, French lessons, gum boots, telephones, typhoid and paratyphoid injections, girls dropping in to say good-by, mamma dismal as a corbie crow weeping off in odd corners, and papa humming mournfully: “‘I didn’t raise my kidlet to be a soldierette.’”

On Tuesday night I said good-by to Robert. We dined together downtown and then Bob said, “Let’s go round to Lucille’s and dance.”

And so we did. But I just couldn’t seem to put any spirit into it.

“Do you realize, Bob,” I said, “that this is our last dance together?”

I suppose my voice sounded rather wabbly, for Robert gave me a sharp look and said, “Not on your life! Where did you get hold of that notion? Are you going to throw up the sponge?”

And then I remembered that my case was exactly that of a million other women scattered all over the land, who were still keeping the flag flying, as Edith had said; and so I bucked up and we finished up with a very good time.

ON SHIPBOARD, November 12th.

I begged papa and mamma not to come down to New York to see me off, but of course they would. However, it turned out all right. Papa blew us to a two-course dinner without wine downstairs in a famous grill frequented by successful actors and artists and writers, after which he packed us off to a musical comedy and kept up a light artillery of jokes all through the evening, and we both laughed so hard that mamma finally lost patience and declared we were a perfect scandal. There was just one awful moment at the last. That was on the boat when papa gave me a big still hug and then held his cheek close to mine the way he’s done ever since I was a baby.

“Papa,” I whispered fiercely into his ear, “if you make me cry now I’ll kill you!”

“Shucks, honey!” he murmured back. “If Miss Rankin can cry in Congress I guess a green little soldierette can shed a few tears when bidding a fond farewell to native land and mother, without grave dishonor. Still, I don’t want to cramp your style. Cable us when you land. Be a good girl--but not goody. And now, so long, dear. God bless us all together!”

And still smiling and steady he shook hands with me just as if I were his son, and then marched mamma, sobbing audibly, gently off by the arm. I went downstairs to my cabin.

No danger of my being sick. My bunk mate is! I hardly know how to describe my feelings after we had really started and there was time to look about--it all seemed so sort of natural and matter-of-fact, and France still merely a small pink dab on the map. It wasn’t a bit startling to be out of sight of land and hear people discussing submarines and lifeboats, but it was a horrible sensation to have the boat plunge down and leave your stomach in midair. A gorgeous sunset to-night, but it’s rough and going to be rougher, I fear. I walked about some, and then decided discretion was the better part of valor and retired to my deck chair.

November 15th.

Three awful days in my cabin, too sick to stir. But to-day it’s smooth and the air is marvelous. After a fine salt bath I came up and pranced about the deck; and there were lots of nice people to prance with--naval officers, Belgian generals, French _permissionnaires_, and any number of Y.M.C.A.-ers and Red Cross men. Played shuffleboard; tried the dining-room for ten minutes, and then decided to have all my meals on deck in order to watch for the submarines.

November 24th.

Land is in sight--a long low ribbon of mist away on the starboard. That’s France! It still doesn’t seem reasonable. The trip has been nothing at all. Evenings we would sit out on deck. It was weird with never a light, even cigarettes forbidden; inky blackness on deck, and stumbling and pitching into someone at every step. It was awesome from the stern to see two big black funnels silhouetted against the starry sky, the phosphorescence of the water rivaling the splendor of the heavens; and to realize that all the time this huge mechanical monster beneath our feet was plowing steadily, silently forward, carrying seven hundred human lives across three thousand miles of water.

PARIS, November 26th.

Paris at last, beautiful, soft, gray, in a blur of rain. I reported at Number Four, Place de la Concorde, heard a speech by the commissioner, and was assigned right away. It’s just exactly what I wanted and didn’t dare to dream I’d get! I’m to work in a canteen in one of the biggest aviation camps in France. With our own American men! We’ll live in barracks, get up at reveille, five-thirty a.m., and---- But I’m somewhat hazy as to our duties. Time will reveal. After the conference I met Lucile B----, a Bryn Mawr girl, and found she’s to canteen with me at the same barracks. We embraced and nearly fell downstairs in our excitement. Lucile has moved her things over to my hotel so we can chum together.

November 27th.

Slept--off and on--and had a breakfast in bed, after the luxurious Continental fashion,--wouldn’t Delia sniff?--and then I read Baedeker’s Paris aloud while Lucile unpacked. We lunched and did accounts and then walked over to Red Cross Headquarters. After reporting there we got our provisional cards of identity and went down to a shop on the boulevard and ordered bracelets of identity. Had my hair washed by a poilu on permission and tried out my Boston French on him. He understood me better than I did him! Later Lucile and I taxied over to Napoleon’s tomb, saw the German airplanes in the court of the Invalides, and then went on to Notre Dame. It is wonderful inside, so high and spacious and old and gray, with a scented misty twilight air as though dimmed by many prayers. I made two prayers myself--one personal, and the other impersonal for our army, and I only hope they come true.

November 28th.

While waiting to be sent to camp I delved into the subject of canteens in general. And I found that the old canteen idea is as different from the new canteen idea as day is from night. A canteen before this war meant simply a place where a soldier could buy a drink and perhaps procure notions, buttons and needles and thread. But that old idea has expanded and developed until now it really comprises a whole welfare center, a regular community plant for dispensing food and comfort and good cheer. There are restaurants, writing rooms, infirmaries, sleeping quarters, pianos, phonographs, entertainments--everything you can possibly think of to keep a collection of men far from home happy and sane and sound. Of course not all these canteens are alike, for each one caters to some particular need and thus develops along a particular line. Its location determines its special bent.

There are, I was told at headquarters, several types of canteen.

Number One: These are the metropolitan canteens of Paris, situated at the big railway stations--the Gare du Nord, the Gare de l’Est and the Gare Saint Lazare--which catch all the troops coming into or leaving the city.

Number Two: These are the canteens of the _Grande Ceinture_, at little stations on the environs of Paris, where innumerable troop trains pass through daily, carrying thousands of soldiers from England, Italy, America, Saloniki, Portugal, Africa. These troops never even enter Paris, but are shifted on the outskirts of the city.

Number Three: Canteens in the French war zone behind the actual fighting lines in the big transportation centers.

Number Four: Canteens right on the French Front, in dugouts and _abris_. In these canteens there are no women helpers.

Number Five: Canteens in the American training camps, behind the war zone. That’s the kind I’m assigned to. It’s the biggest American aviation center in France.

Number Six: Canteens for American soldiers dotted along the lines of communication from the coast ports to the final training centers. All these canteens are under the control of the American Red Cross.

December 1st.

In barracks! Yesterday was my first day. I got up in the dark at bugle call, five-thirty A.M., and dressed in the cold--our stoves are not up yet and I don’t know who’s going to start the fires when they are!--had some hot coffee and went over to serve behind the counter, serving coffee, chocolate and sandwiches. A long queue of soldiers stood in line straight through the morning, and, work as hard as I could, the line constantly augmented. Some wanted to linger and chat. It was good, they said, to see a real live American girl who could talk God’s language, and not that scrambled-egg affair the Frenchies handed out. One confided he’d not seen a genuine honest-to-goodness girl for four months; since he’d left home, and added that he liked ’em on the American plan better than on the European plan. I couldn’t do much more than smile in answer, for the orders flew thick and fast.

By noon the place was so crowded you couldn’t see for the forest of campaign hats. A babel of voices; a rattle of dishes; the phonograph going; the piano banging; a bunch of enlisted men trying out Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory; canteeners running back and forth with meals for the officers, whose tables were in behind the counter; rain trickling down my neck from an overhead leak; sleet and windy rain shaking the windowpanes; sneezes and coughs mingling with shouts of laughter; and always the far door opening to let in the storm and still more and more men, till they were packed like sardines in rows--these are my impressions of that first noon hour.

Suddenly: “_Otto, Sie haben etwas vergessen!_” I heard a low guttural voice speaking close behind my ear.

“_Ja, ich weiss_,” replied another.