On the way to the field and back I heard a great piece of news. R. M. B.’s regiment had been sent back into rest billets, about a fortnight before, and a group of entertainers had come through the little town one evening and put on a show for them. It was some show, and the bright particular star was—oh, you never could guess if you hadn’t a clue, any more than I could. Well, it was Fanny Fitch! Yes, sir—over here with a bunch of vaudeville people, going around the leave areas and cheering up the boys before the next bout. You should have heard the chaplain describing the song and dance; I never should have thought it! Fanny can’t sing a whole lot—just enough to get by, I judge; but dance she can, and jolly she does, and the boys fall for it like rows of tenpins. The best of it, according to R. M. B., is that she’s happy as a summer cloud doing her bit. Why, she’s just plain got into the game, Sis, as I told her to do, and I don’t know what more you can ask of anybody. You’re nursing, and the chaplain’s preaching—and burying—and if he isn’t fighting before he gets through I’ll be surprised, knowing how pugilistic he can be. And I’m skirmishing on the edge of things with my fountain pen, and Fanny Fitch is making eyes at the boys and warming the cockles of their tired hearts—bless her heart! And why isn’t her job as good as any of ours, since it helps the morale as it’s bound to do? All I know is I’m going to tear things loose and get to see her as soon as I can make it, lest some nervy shave-tail lieutenant get a line on her while my back is turned.
Time’s up. The third meet-up? You’d say it couldn’t happen, but it did. It was a week earlier than this that I stood on the side of the road and watched a couple of battalions march by on their way to the training trenches in a quiet sector. And behold there was a first lieutenant as was a first lieutenant, and his name back in the States was Tommy Lockhart! Talk about making a man of a man—you ought to see our Tom!
Luck to you and love to you——
Always your same old
Cary.
He finished it in a hurry, for the Colonel’s messenger could not be kept waiting. After that he did some manipulating and manœuvring, which in the end resulted, a few days later, in his getting the chance he wanted. What Cary could not bring about in one way he could in another, and more than one officer and man in authority, if he had owned up honestly, would have had to admit that a certain war-correspondent had a way of asking favours which it was somehow difficult to refuse. Cary’s face was his fortune, for it was the face of a modest but high-spirited non-combatant who was afraid of nothing so that he should fulfil his commission. Usually he was asking to be sent to the most active front, and pressing his case; so now when he wanted to make a dash to the rear, without explaining why, those who could further his request were glad to do so. It therefore presently came about that young Ray made his trip in an official car, in the company of several officers, with a number of hours to spare before the return in which to hunt up a certain group of entertainers, which he meant to locate or perish in the attempt. The more he thought about that “shave-tail lieutenant” and others of his ilk, the more eager he was to remind Fanny Fitch of his presence in this new world of hers.
The hunt took so much time that it began to look as if Cary’s usual luck had deserted him, when he came rather suddenly upon his quarry. It was the edge of the evening, and the edge of a French town in which was quartered a division on its way to the Front. A big audience of men was seated on the grass watching a performance taking place on an improvised platform, lighted with flaring torches. At the moment of Cary’s arrival a young violinist was playing softly a series of haunting Scottish airs, and a hush had fallen over the listeners which spoke of dangerous susceptibility at a time when men must not be permitted to grow soft with dreams. But before this state of mind had had a chance to make serious inroads, the fiddler changed his tune. He dashed without warning into a popular marching song, a lad with a concertina leaped upon the stage, and a girl in a scarlet skirt, a black velvet coat, and cap with a long, scarlet feather, ran out from a sheltering screen. In her arms she carried a great flaming bunch of poppies, and over them she laughed down at her audience. Standing on the step below the stage she began to sing.
It was just such a song as Cary Ray—and most of the boys before him—had heard a thousand times. The singer, as he had written Jane, had no real voice for singing, only a few clear tones which, the moment the notes of the song took her above or below the middle register, became forced and breathy; but somehow that didn’t much matter. She had a clear enunciation, she had youth and a delightfully saucy smile, and she had—well—what is it which makes all the difference between one such performer and another—that elusive quality which none can define, but which all can recognize? Spirit, dash, beauty—they were all there—and something else—something new—something irresistible. What was it? Trying to discover what it was, Cary gradually made his way forward, slipping from one position to another through the seated ranks without ever lifting his body high enough to attract attention. Nearer and nearer he came to the front, and clearer and clearer grew his view of Fanny’s laughing face. He didn’t want her to recognize him so he kept his own face well in shadow, though he knew that in the torchlight her audience must be to her mostly a blur of watching eyes and smiling lips, and masses of olive-drab. He came to a halt at length well sheltered behind a young giant of a corporal, around whose shoulder he could peer in safety. And then he looked for all he was worth at the girl who was holding these boys in the grip of her attraction, and doing with it what she would.
And what was she doing with it? What could Fanny have been expected to do? It was undoubtedly her chance to capture more masculine admiration in the lump than had ever been her privilege before. There were a goodly number of officers in her audience, mostly lounging in the rear of the ranks upon the grass, but none the less for that foemen worthy of her steel. She had every opportunity to use her fascinations with one end, and only one, in view. In satisfying her own love of excitement, she could easily, under the guise of entertainment, do these boys in uniform more harm than good. To tell the honest truth it was with this fear in mind that Cary now watched her. Great as had been her attraction for him in the past, so great did he expect it to be for these others now—and it had not been possible in that past for him to fail to recognize the subtle nature of that attraction.
He studied her from the shelter of the broad shoulder in front of him with the eyes of a hawk. Let Fanny give these young Americans one look which was not what Cary Ray wanted it to be, and he would steal away again as quietly as he had come and never let her know. He wasn’t sure that “R. M. B.” would have recognized what he himself would, in the situation; and the fact that Black had spoken with such hearty praise of Fanny’s performance hadn’t wholly served to reassure him. She had known from the beginning that the chaplain was present in her audience—that would make a difference, of course. She didn’t know now who was here; Cary would see her exactly as she was. It was no chaplain who was watching her now, it was an accredited war-correspondent with every faculty of observation at the alert, his memory trained to keep each impression vivid as he had received it.
It was a long time that Fanny was upon the rough stage, for her audience couldn’t seem to have enough of her. Again and again they recalled her, having hardly let her pass from sight. It was difficult to analyze the absorbing interest of her “turn,” made up as it was, like patchwork, of all sorts of unexpected bits. Song and story, parade and dance—one never knew what was coming next, and when it did come it might be the very slightest of sketches. It was very evidently her personality which gave the whole thing its attraction; in less clever hands it might have fallen flat. Yet through it all seemed to run one thread, that of genuine desire to bring good cheer without resort to means unworthy.