He took a turn about the house, completely circling it, telling himself that now he was here he might as well see that all was as it should be from front to rear. Returning to the front, he heard a distant clock in the centre of the town booming out the slow strokes of the hour—eleven. Four o’clock it was then on that Western front, three thousand miles away. Was Black there—or anywhere near there? Wherever he was it might be that—well—was there any reason why Red shouldn’t be able to get him out of his mind? And was there any reason why Red shouldn’t do what he was now suddenly impelled to do? According to Black’s own code there was every reason why he should do it—and none conceivable against it. Sentimental superstition?—or great spiritual forces at work of which he could know nothing, except to feel their power?
He went over to the vestry door—a narrow door of classic outline and black oak austerity, appearing in the deep shadow like the entrance to the unknown. He leaned his uplifted arm against it, and rested his bared head against his arm. Somehow he felt nearer to his absent friend in this spot than he had ever felt before.
“O God,” he implored, under his breath, “wherever he is—take care of him. He’s worth a lot of taking care of—and he won’t do it himself—somehow I know that. Just do it for him—will You?”
On this same night, at a Field Hospital, ten miles back from the firing line on a certain sector of the French Front, Jane Ray went about her duties. It was a comparatively quiet night; no fresh casualties had come in for several hours, and none was expected before morning.
Beginning as nurses’ helper Jane had worked and studied at all hours, had faced several examinations, and was now, by virtue of the pressing demand and the changed requirements which in war time hasten such matters, an accredited nurse with a diploma. She had thought many times gratefully of a certain red-headed surgeon back in the States, who had put her through many grilling tests of his own since he had learned what she had in view. Not once but often she had watched him operate; hours on end had she listened to informal lectures from his lips, delivered at the back of her shop when custom was slack. It had all helped immensely in her work of preparation, and in her dogged purpose to make herself fit for service in the least possible time. And now she was at the very goal of her desires, having for the last month been serving as near the active Front as a nurse may get, the Field Hospital to which the wounded are sent from the First-Aid Station.
It had become to her an almost passionate joy to give these poor fellows their first sense of real comfort. Though the resources at hand were often far less than adequate to the demand, when cases poured in till the hurriedly arranged accommodations were full to overflowing and there was no such thing as supplying every need, this was the time when Jane most exulted in her work. Physically strong, though she was often weary to exhaustion, a few hours of sleep would put her on her feet again, and she would go back to her task with a sense of being at last where she was born to be. She managed somehow to give to her patients the impression that no matter how busy or hurried she might be she had something to spare for each one of them, and this perhaps was one of the greatest services she rendered. Skilful though her hands and brain had become at ministering to the wants of the wounded bodies, her heart had grown still wiser in its knowledge of the larger needs of the tried spirits of those who lay before her. Tender yet bracing was the atmosphere which she carried everywhere with her. It is the aura which to a greater or less degree surrounds every true nurse, and Jane, in acquiring it, had but learned the rudiments of her profession. Yet perhaps she had rather more than the ordinary capacity for divination of the peculiar and individual necessities of the men under her care, for certain it was that most of them preferred her to any of the others, accomplished and devoted though they all were. It is quite possible that the fact that she was, as the boys put it among themselves, so “easy to look at,” may have accounted for a portion of her popularity, but surely not for all.
They did not stay long with her; it was a matter of but a few days in most cases, before they were moved back to the Evacuation Hospital, many miles in the rear. She had not time to get to know any of them well; yet somehow in even that brief interval of experience she and they usually arrived at a feeling of acquaintance which often became a memory not to be forgotten.
On this June night Jane found herself returning more than once to a certain patient who had been brought in early in the evening suffering from rather severe injuries. The surgeons had decided against immediate operation; he was to be retained here only long enough to recover from shock, and to be got into shape for the journey back to the Base. He was only a boy, or looked so, in spite of the lines which pain had brought into his face. He was not able to sleep, and for certain definite reasons he had been given nothing to make him sleep. Each time Jane came by she found him lying with eyes wide open; restless of body his injuries did not permit him to be, for he was strapped and bandaged into a well-nigh immovable position. Clearly his mind was doing double duty, and being restless for both.
As she stopped beside his cot again, he looked up at her and spoke, for the first time. His eyes had followed her all night, whenever she came in range, but she was used to that. Eyes wakeful at night always follow a nurse; she is a grateful vision to men long removed from the sight of women; the very lines of the uniform are restful to look at. The face beneath the veil-like head-dress need not be a beautiful one to be attractive; it needs only to be friendly and compassionate; if it can show a capacity for humour, so much the better. In Jane’s case, actual loveliness of feature drew the gaze of those tired young eyes, many of which had seen only ugliness and horror for a long, long time. The casualty cases thus far had been confined almost entirely to the French and British, with an occasional American enlisted in a foreign division. It was only within the last few days that the men from Jane’s own country had begun to come under her care, showing that at last, as they had so longed to be, they were “in.”