But the impression she left upon me was not the impression of one who deftly, tenderly cares for the sick and the injured. When my eyes fell upon her, and as they followed her, and when I turned away from the great hospital, I thought of my own mother. Now, although I am writing of her, the face that rises before me is not her face; it is my mother's face.
She stopped presently by a bed that held a fearfully broken lad from London's great East Side. In half a dozen places the shrapnel had sought his vitals, and quite as many times the kindly cruel scalpel of the surgeon had searched out the creeping poison. The foot of the bed was raised so that the bandaged head was inches below the level of the tired feet. When she touched the boy, he smiled. He could not see her,—his eyes were covered,—and he could not move his head. Even the smile must have cost him pain. But I never knew before that a man's mouth could be so beautiful. It was as if the lips had responded to something electric in that white-gowned woman's touch; it was as if her fingers had healing in them, as if her hands bore the same divine ministries that the hands of the Galilean carried to the halt and lame and blind nineteen hundred years before. I found myself whispering, "And the child was cured from that very hour."
I saw her next in France and not far behind the lines, and I saw, in the eyes of the men she ministered to there, what I had seen in England. I never learned her story. Somehow I never cared to know it; I never inquired. Once when a chaplain started to tell me, I stopped him. I knew that it would be brave and beautiful; but the war has many stories, and we must save our dreams. I prefer to remember her in the spirit of the words of one her hands were laid upon: "I wonder what she did before she went to war—for she has gone to war as truly as any soldier. I am sure in the peaceful years she must have loved and been greatly loved. Perhaps he was killed out there. Now she is ivory-white with over-service, and spends all her days in loving. She will not spare herself. Her eyes,—ah! her eyes,—they have the old frank, comprehending look of her yesterdays; but they are ringed with being weary. Only her lips hold a touch of the old color. Over dying men she stoops, and is to them the incarnation of their mother or of the woman, had they lived, they would have loved."
I saw her first in England and then in France. I shall not see her again. In the air a winged monster paused and let loose his fury. She is not dead, but gone to her coronation. She lives to-day in the hearts of ten times ten thousand women and thousands more, this greatest mother in the world.
I came one bitter night in February into the crowded, dirty station at Toul. One of my travelling companions was a lieutenant of the "Rainbow Division," who hailed from Marion, O., and who talked a lot about his wife and baby. His head was clean-shaven, "because," he said, "kerosene was expensive and hard to procure!"
On the same train with us were a dozen Red Cross nurses transferring to a new base hospital. They were wonderful girls. Until morning brought the cars that were to carry them on to their destination nearer the line they sat on their blanket-rolls. While they waited, they sang "Keep the Home Fires Burning," "Over There"; and they sang the old songs, "Kentucky Home," "Swanee River," "Tenting To-night on the Old Camp-Ground"; and they sang some of the hymns that have body and distinction and that last, "Rock of Ages," "Nearer, My God, to Thee," "Lead, Kindly Light"; the "Marseillaise" was sung again and again, while we all stood, and "The Star-Spangled Banner." The night rang with their voices.
During the informal concert a French troop-train pulled in, and the poilus tumbled out. They heard the singing; and, although they could not understand the words of the songs, they caught the spirit of the singers. Like statues they stood leaning upon their long guns and listening to those women of a far land brought near by the ministry of a common pain. About us were the high-piled sand-bags that re-enforced the abris (shelters) conveniently placed for a quick retreat in case of an air raid. Only a few very faint lights were shown. But the faces of those French soldiers seemed to build a warming fire on the station platform, and the choir lighted a candle that did not burn out. It was a night never to be forgotten.
Wonderful is woman, this woman of war!