Part 11

We had just moved in time, for a second shell dropped where we had been a moment since, and tore the opposite side of the road away.

"Being between two lines of artillery is a little too much like battledore and shuttlecock," I remarked to Reggy, "with all the odds against the shuttlecock."

"Object to word 'battledore,'" Reggy retorted; "it's too frivolous and pun-like for the present dangerous occasion."

We were now making haste towards a small village a few miles ahead, and we were not sorry as we passed into the poor shelter its brick houses afforded. As long as we were on the open road it was quite impossible to rid oneself of the feeling that the car was in full view of the German gunners.

The streets of this dirty little village were filled with British Tommies, who, still covered with the mud from the trenches, were as care-free and happy as were those fifty miles from the front. They smoked and chatted together in little groups at the entrance or in the courtyards of the miserable hotels, one at least of which seemed to be on every block. As we drew up the colonel enquired of a sentry:

"Can you tell me where the 'Princess Patricias' are billeted?"

We had been informed that this famous battalion, which had reached France just six weeks after us, was somewhere in this neighbourhood. To discover their whereabouts was the real object of our journey. The sentry made reply:

"I believe, sir, there is a battalion of that naime 'ere somew'eres. Hi, Bill!" he called to another Tommy, who was leaning against a near-by door-post; "w'ere is them Canydians wot wos 'ere t'other day?"

"Bill" banked his cigarette by pressing it against the wall and came over on the double to the side of our car. He saluted with that peculiar Jumping-Jack motion so much a part of the real Tommy, and ejaculated:

"I 'eard they was at the next town, sir; it ayn't far from 'ere, but it's a funny naime--Runnin'-hell, er somethin' like."

"Would it be Reninghelst?" Jack enquired.

"Ay--that's it, sir; I knowed they was 'hell' in it somew'eres."

"Just since the 'Canydians' came, I'll wager?" Reggy interjected mischievously.

The Tommy grinned approval of this jest, and volunteered to show us the direction. He stood on the running board of the car and saw that we got started on the right road.

"Straight ahead now, sir," he said, as he saluted and sprang down.

The heavy shelling had died away, and for the next two miles the sun shone on a peaceful country. We had a chance to marvel at the well-ploughed fields, and wondered what venturesome farmers dared work in such a place. It was almost noon and we had begun to think that we had left the war behind us once more, when suddenly the rapid bark of German guns aroused us, and the sharp crack of shrapnel high above our heads caused us to look up. A new sight met our gaze.

Three of our own aeroplanes were hovering directly over the German trenches, and battery after battery of artillery were exhausting themselves in an angry effort to bring them down. The accuracy of the enemy gunners startled us. This time we were not the hunters, and our sympathies were with the aviators. As shell after shell burst, leaving their white clouds to right or left, we held our breath in suspense. Time and again, as the explosion occurred directly under one of our machines, the smoke hid it from view, and, in a tremor of anxiety, we feared to see it dive to earth. But when the smoke cleared away our three undaunted birdmen were still on high, swooping over the German batteries with a persistence and intrepidity which must have been maddening to the helpless _Bosches_.

It wasn't long before two enemy aviators rose to give battle, and as they approached our men the firing from below ceased. The five aeroplanes circled round and round, apparently sparring for position, and rose to such great height that we could hardly distinguish them. They were so close together that neither the British nor German artillery dared fire upon them. At last one of the enemy machines detached itself from the others and darted towards our lines with the speed of the wind.

Immediately our batteries opened up, and round after round of bursting shells followed its every movement; now to right, now to left; now above, now below, ever closer to their mark. Finally one well-directed shell burst immediately beneath the aviator. The machine was straight over our heads; we craned our necks to follow it. It swerved and fluttered like a wounded bird, slipped sideways, fell for a short distance, then seemed to stagger like a drunken man; righted itself at last and swiftly descended towards the German lines. That the aviator was wounded we did not doubt, but he had somehow escaped death. In the meantime we had lost sight of the other four machines, and when we looked for them again they had disappeared from view.

The streets of Reninghelst were crowded with soldiers when we reached that town, and among them we recognised, to our joy, some stalwart lads from the "Princess Pats." On the corner was a group of young officers, and in the crowd we espied the familiar features of Captain Stewart who had spent his last night in Canada with us. At the same moment he recognised us and hurried over to the car to greet us.

"Well, well," he cried delightedly, as he shook hands with us two at a time, "welcome to our city! Where the devil did you chaps spring from?"

We assured him that his question was quite _a propos_, as we had just passed through the infernal regions. He laughed as he replied:

"Interesting bit of road, that stretch between Ypres and here--been in the front line trenches ourselves for a week out there--caught blazes, too!"

His uniform still showed the effects of the trench mud. He was a tall, thin chap, prematurely grey. Like many others of the Princess Pats, he was a veteran of the South African War, a crack-shot, and all-round dare-devil. He spoke in short, quick snatches, starting his sentences with unexpected jerks, and could keep a regiment in shrieks of laughter.

"How is the trench life out here?" the colonel enquired, with a jerk of the head towards the battle line.

"Plain hell--with a capital H. Excuse the repetition of the word--nothing else describes it--a quagmire two feet deep, full of mud and filth."

"Couldn't you dig it deeper?" Reggy enquired with some concern.

"No chance--everywhere you dig--turn up rotting carcases--farther down you go the more water you have to stand in."

"The snipers are bad too, are they not?" I asked him.

He laughed again. "_Were_ bad, you mean," he cried; "not many left around our trench. Poor Fritzie found us a nasty lot--played dirty tricks on him--organised a 'snipe-the-sniper' squad--put 'em out of business."

"How did you manage it?" I asked curiously.

"Stalked 'em--like red Indians--dug a tunnel out to a hill too--came up through the centre of it--hollowed it out inside--and put 'em to sleep one by one. Fritzie doesn't love us any more, but, by Gad, he respects us!"

After we had listened to a few more details of this wild and remarkable life, the colonel enquired:

"Where are your headquarters? We want to see your O.C. and the rest of the chaps."

"I'll climb in and show you the way. It's in another village a few miles from here."

Under his guidance we soon found ourselves in the town, and we stopped at the entrance of a small house which still claimed a patch of garden in front. The room we entered contained a barrack table strewn with field maps and papers, and on the tile floor were the sleeping bags of the four officers who made this their temporary home. Major Gault, a tall, handsome officer, with the bearing of the true soldier, rose to welcome us.

"It seems good to see some one from home again," he exclaimed, as we shook hands. "I thought we were the only Canucks in Belgium."

"You were the first Canadians in Belgium, but we beat you to France by some weeks," the colonel replied, "and we have come up here to tell you where we live, and to let you know that there is a Canadian hospital waiting with open arms to receive you when you call."

"That's splendid," cried the major; "when the boys get hurt be sure you'll hear from us."

It is just as well we cannot look into the future. We walk blindfolded, clinging to the hand of Hope, and trust to her for kindly guidance. None of us at that moment guessed how soon we were to "hear" from those brave men.

Later, when we were about to start for home, they all came out to the car to say _au revoir_.

"It's a good expression--'_au revoir,_'" Captain Stewart cried, as we were parting; "much better than 'Good-bye.'"

"Take care of yourselves," we cried, "but don't forget if you need us, we are waiting!"

"We'll remember," Stewart returned, "for I have a premonition I'll not be _killed_ in this war."

He waved his hand as we left, and when we looked back the little group, whom we were never to see together again, waved their hands in a last farewell.

After about an hour's run we saw in the distance, set like a jewel of the Tyrolese Alps, the pretty town of Cassel, near which our own Canadian boys were shortly to be quartered. It was about twenty miles in a direct line from the trenches, and soon after our visit the long-range German guns dropped their tremendous shells on its outskirts.

When we reached the hospital a cablegram was waiting for the colonel. He tore it open hastily, fearing bad news from home. As he read its contents his mouth expanded in a broad grin, and he passed it silently to us. We read, and Reggy, looking over Jack's shoulder, had the grace to blush as he too saw his mother's message:

"Greatly worried about my son. No word from him for weeks. He was troubled with insomnia at home. Does he sleep better now? Cable my expense."

And the colonel sat down and forthwith wrote this soothing reply:

"Reggy splendid. Awake only at meal hours. Don't worry!"

Late one night, about a week after our visit to the firing line, we were at the railway yard assisting in the unloading of a train of wounded. About three hundred and fifty had arrived, and we were transporting them rapidly to the hospital. The Medical Officer commanding the train approached me and said:

"I have one car filled with wounded officers, and nearly all are stretcher cases. Will you come and see them?"

We walked down the line of cars and, mounting the steps, entered the officers' coach. We passed between the cots, and chatted with each officer in turn; they seemed quite cheery and bright. But one, who had pulled the blankets high about his neck, and whose face was partly covered with a sleeping-cap, looked very ill indeed. Unlike the others, he didn't smile as we approached, but looked up without interest. His face was white and he took no notice of his surroundings. I asked him how he felt. He answered slowly and in a weak voice:

"I'm all in, I guess--don't trouble about me."

Something in the voice and the jerky manner of speech seemed familiar. I looked at him more keenly.

"Stewart!" I exclaimed with involuntary dismay. "Good Lord, it's Charley Stewart!"

"Oh, is that you, Major?" he said, with a faint show of interest. "I've come to call, you see, sooner than I expected. It'll be a short visit," he continued grimly. "Short trip and a dull one."

"Surely it's not as bad as that," I said, as encouragingly as I could, but feeling very sick at heart as I looked down at his pale face.

"Hole through the stomach," he replied weakly. "Bad enough for a start."

"We'll take you up to the hospital--I'm sure we can fix you up all right," I said, with as much assurance as I could assume.

"Take me wherever you like," he replied dully; "it won't be for long."

I assisted in getting him into an ambulance, and cautioned the driver to go carefully, and after seeing the others safely transferred, sprang into a motor and followed. Imagine my surprise and chagrin when I reached the hospital to find that he had not arrived, and after due enquiry discovered that he had been taken, through some misunderstanding on the part of the ambulance driver, to Lady Danby's hospital. We concluded it would be unsafe to move him again that night, and after 'phoning the commanding officer to give him his very best attention, proceeded with the urgent work of caring for the hundreds of others who had already arrived.

In the meantime Captain Stewart was carried through the imposing portal of his new abode. As the stretcher was deposited with a slight jar upon the floor in the centre of a great hall, he opened his eyes and stared in wonder, first at the vaulted roof, then at the magnificent paintings on the walls, the stage at the far end of the hall, and last, but by no means least, at Lady Danby's beautiful face as she leaned over him to assist him. Her golden hair, her big blue eyes and flushed cheeks, and her graceful figure were too much even for a man half dead. He gave one more helpless glance at the stage, then his gaze returned to this vision, and, closing his eyes in a sort of drowsy ecstasy, murmured:

"Where's George Cohan and the chorus?"

"What does he say?" asked Lady Danby in surprise.

"He takes this for a theatre, and is asking where the chorus girls are," a sprightly nurse volunteered, with keen appreciation, and not a little amused at the shocked expression on Lady Danby's face.

"Dear me," she exclaimed, "it must be one of those dreadful Canadians!"

"I'm afraid he's not quite himself at present, your ladyship," the nurse protested, scarcely able to repress a smile.

Stewart opened his eyes once more and remarked coolly as Lady Danby hastened to another patient: "No--not quite all there--part shot away, excuse me." He then closed his eyes again and lay still until the orderlies removed him to his bed.

The Medical Officer came to examine him, and the nurse cut away the dressings from his side. He inspected the wound very carefully and finally said:

"Rifle bullet wound through the lower lobe of left lung. It might have been worse."

"How long do you think I have to live?" Stewart enquired, with some anxiety.

"To live?" cried the surgeon, with a laugh. "About thirty or forty years, with luck."

"What!" shouted Stewart, as he half sat up in bed with a quick jerk. "Do you mean to tell me I have the ghost of a chance?"

"You'll have a splendid chance if you keep quiet and don't shout like that. You'd better lie down again," the surgeon commanded, not unkindly.

"But, good Lord," Stewart protested animatedly, "here I've been trying to die for three days,--every one encouraged me to do it; and after passing through four surgeons' hands, you're the first to tell me I have a chance. It's wonderful. Now I _will_ live--I've made up my mind."

"Who said you would die?"

"First the Chaplain at the Field Ambulance where they carried me in--more dead than alive. He came and shook his head over me. He was a good chap and meant well, I'm sure--he looked very dismal. I asked him if I would die, and he answered pityingly: 'A man shot through the stomach can't live, my poor fellow. Shall I pray for you?' I told him to go as far as he liked--he got on his knees and prayed like the deuce."

"But you said you were wounded three days ago," the surgeon remarked. "What kept you so long from reaching here?"

"I lay one whole day in front of the trench where I was wounded. The stretcher-bearers, against my wishes, came out to bring me in--just as the man at my head stooped down they shot him through the brain. I heard the bullet go 'chuck,'--he fell stone dead across me. I ordered the others back at once--that they must leave me until night. They refused to go at first, but I commanded them again to get back--at last when they saw I was determined, they went. Poor chaps! I know they felt worse at leaving me than as if they had been shot down."

During this conversation the surgeon had dressed the wound, and now, admonishing his patient that he must not talk any more, left him for the night. In the morning Lady Danby came to his cot and marvelled at his bright face and cheery smile.

"You're feeling better this morning, I see," she remarked brightly.

"Much the better for seeing you, madam," Stewart returned, with his customary chivalry; "and one does recover rapidly with such excellent nursing and care."

"I'm afraid we're going to lose you to-day," she replied, with a tinge of regret in her tone. "The Canadians insist on claiming you as their own, and I suppose we must let you go."

"I must admit," he returned, "that I am sorry to leave such congenial company--come and see me sometimes, won't you, please?"

Lady Danby smiled. "When I first saw you last night, I thought I shouldn't care to see you again--but you aren't really quite as dreadful as I thought. Some day soon I'll run in to see how you are getting on."

A few hours later, when Stewart was safely ensconced in our hospital, he observed reminiscently: "I'm awfully glad to be among old friends once more--but those English hospitals are not without their attractions!"

*CHAPTER XVI*

He was a mere boy, scarce nineteen years of age, a sub-lieutenant in the Territorials, and a medallist in philosophy from Oxford.

Who would have guessed that this frail, delicate-looking Welsh youth with the fair hair and grey eyes was gifted with an intellect of which all England might be proud? He might have passed unnoticed had one not spoken to him, and, having spoken, had seen the handsome face light up with fascinating vivacity as he replied.

One cannot attempt to recollect or depict the mystic workings of his marvellous mind; for, once aroused, gems of thought, clear cut and bright as scintillations from a star, dropped from his lips and left his hearers steeped in wonder.

It was then, you may well believe, no ordinary youth who walked into the hospital, with mud-covered clothes and his kit still strapped to his back. He dropped the kit upon the floor of his room, and, sinking wearily into a chair, brushed back with his hand the unruly hair which sought to droop over his high forehead.

His commanding officer, who had accompanied him to the hospital, had taken me aside, before I entered the room, and had told me privately his views about the boy.

"You look tired," I remarked, as I noted the weary droop of the head.

He smiled quickly as he looked up and said: "Done up, I think. Those six months in Malta were a bit too much for me."

"But you have been home before coming to France, have you not?" I asked him.

"Home!" he cried in surprise. "No such luck! We had expected a week or two in England after our return, but it's off. There were four thousand of us in Malta, but we're all here now, at Etaples, and liable to be sent to the trenches any moment. When I stood on the cliffs at Wimereux yesterday and saw the dear old shores across the Channel--" He stopped suddenly, overpowered by some strong emotion. "I'd be a better soldier farther off. Between homesickness and the pain in my chest, I'm about all in."

He did look tired and faint, and even the pink rays of the setting sun failed to tint the pallor of his cheeks. I told him I would send the orderly to help him undress and that he must get into bed at once.

When I returned shortly and examined his chest, I found that he was suffering from a touch of pleurisy; there were, too, traces of more serious trouble in the lungs.

"What do you think of me, Major?" he enquired with a quizzical smile, when I had completed the examination. "Anything interesting inside?"

"Interesting enough to call for a long rest," I replied. "We'll have to keep you here a while and later send you home to England."

"My O.C., who by the way is my uncle too, and a medical man, insisted on my coming here," he remarked. "He says I'm not strong enough for trench life. But the old boy--bless his heart!--loves me like a son, and I'm morally certain he wants to pack me off for fear I'll get killed. I simply can't go home, you know, until I've done my bit. It would be jolly weak of me, wouldn't it?"

"You might go for a time," I replied guardedly, "and return later on when you get stronger."

He started to laugh, but a quick stabbing pain in the chest caught him halfway, and he stopped short with a twisted smile as he exclaimed:

"I believe the old chap has been talking to you too! You're all in league to get me out of France."

This was so close to the truth that I could not contradict him, but shook my head in partial negative. His uncle felt, as I too came to feel later, that the loss to the world of such a brilliant mind and one with such potentialities would not be compensated for by the little good its master could accomplish physically in the trenches.

"After all," he argued, "how much poorer would Wales be if I were gone? The hole would soon be filled."

"I can't agree with you," I answered slowly; "your life is more important to others than you think, and you would risk it in a field for which you are not physically fitted. You have overdrawn your brain account at the Bank of Nature, and flesh is paying up. You must go home until the note is settled."

"Sounds rational but horribly mathematical--and I always hated mathematics. Hope I'll be able," he continued mischievously, "to repay the 'interest' you and uncle are taking in me."

"We want you to consider the matter philosophically," I said, "not mathematically."

"That's better," he replied, with his usual bright smile; "philosophy comes more natural to me. True, it savours of Euclid, but I can forgive it that offence; it has so many virtues."

He remained silent a few moments, thinking, and then asked me suddenly: "If I go home, how soon can I get back to France?"

"I hope you won't return here," I replied gravely; "it would be suicidal, and, flattery aside, your life is too valuable to be sacrificed over here."

"Perhaps you are right," he murmured pensively, as though we were discussing a third party whose life interested him only in an impersonal manner, and without exhibiting the slightest self-consciousness or vanity. "It might be better if I stayed at home. I admit," he continued more brightly, "I have a selfish desire to live. I am so young and have seen so little of this great big interesting world and I want so much to know what it all means. Still I would far sooner die than feel myself a slacker or a 'skrimshanker.'"

"No one will mistake you for either," I returned warmly. "Your lungs are not strong, and I fear if you remain here in the cold and wet you will not recover."

"There's so much in life to live for," he cried animatedly; "besides, I'm a little dubious of the _after_ world. For a little longer I should like to learn what tangible pleasures this world offers, rather than tempt the unsubstantiated promises of a future state."

"But surely you believe in an after life?" I enquired, in some surprise.

"It's difficult to believe what one cannot prove," he returned evasively.

"But," I ventured argumentatively, "I can imagine that if the total _matter_ in the universe is indestructible and cannot be added to or taken from, the _soul_ too is indestructible--it may be changed, but cannot be destroyed."

"Ah!" he exclaimed quickly, "you are assuming the reality of the abstract. Suppose I do not agree with your hypothesis, and deny the existence of the soul! You cannot prove me wrong. Sometimes I fear," he continued more softly, "the soul, or what we conceive to be the soul, is merely the reflection of poor Humanity beating its anxious wings against the horror of extinction."

"Or the shadow of a poor physician scuttling away from the terrors of your philosophy," I laughed. "You iconoclasts would pull our castles-in-the-air about our ears and leave us standing in the ruins."