It ended by the schoolmaster giving security—a half-crown with a bullet hole through it. Sheila was appointed custodian, and the boots were placed beside the color-sergeant’s cot “against the comin’ night.”
As the chief and Sheila passed on from cot to cot, the spirits of Ward 7-A never wavered. Johnnie, who had piped the lads into battle and out for four years, and who daily rejoiced over the fact that Fritzie had shown the good sense to take a foot instead of a hand, told them that he was in rare luck now, for there would be time to make wee Johnnie at home the grandest piper in all of Ireland—an honor he could never have promised himself before.
There was “Bertha” Milliken, named for the big gun he had put out of commission and the gun crew he had captured. He had been given the V. C. for that. His pet joke was telling how the Fritzies grudged him its possession by shooting it away on the Scheldt along with a good bit that was under it. The nurse and surgeon handled “Bertha” very carefully; there was no knowing just what was going to happen to him. Casey Ryan had lost the odd of ’most everything the Lord had started him with, as he put it. An eye, an ear, a lung, and a leg were gone, and he was beating all the others at getting well. Mat O’Shaughnessy had it in the “vital.” He was continuously boasting that it was the handiest place of all, and if it didn’t get him he’d be the only perfect specimen invalided home.
“Parley-voo,” the only one of them who essayed French, had wounds many but inconspicuous. He was given to counting a hypothetical fortune that might be his if the Empire would give him a shilling for every time he had been hit. Joseph Daly and “Gospel” Smith, the one Methodist, carried head wounds, while “Granny” Sullivan, the oldest, wisest, and most comforting of the company, had one smashed hip and a hole through the other, “the devil of a combination.” Never had the atmosphere of 7-A been keener or spicier. Jamie alone sat still and silent.
Jamie was the last to be dressed, and because there was little to do the chief slipped away and left him to Sheila. As the nurse passed from Mat’s cot to the wheel-chair, eleven pairs of eyes and an odd one followed her. A hush fell suddenly on the ward. The lads never intended this should happen, but somehow, at the same time everyday, the silence gripped them, and they seemed powerless to stay it. It was “Granny” Sullivan who first threw it off.
“’Tis a grand day outside, Jamie. Maybe ye’re feeling the sun, now, comin’ through the window?”
The nurse had lifted the bandage from the eyes. There was nothing there but empty sockets, almost healed. One could hear the quick intake of breath from the watching twelve, while every face registered an agony it had scorned to show for its own disablement. But for Jamie, “the singing lad from Derry” as they lovingly called him, it was different. They could face their own conditions with amazing jocularity, but they writhed daily under the torment of Jamie’s. They could brave it no better than could he. For to put eternal darkness on the lad who loved the light, who would sit spellbound before the play of colors in the east at dawn or the flash of moonlight across troubled water, who could make a song out of the smile of a child or the rhythm of flying birds in the sky, that was damnable. An arch-fiend might have conceived it, but where was God to let it happen? A crippled Jamie without an arm or a leg was endurable—that cried out for no blasphemy—but a Jamie without eyes—God in heaven, how could it be!
The face of the singing lad was the face of a dreamer, as exquisite as a piece of marble that might have been fashioned by Praxiteles for a sun god. Since the battle on the Scheldt it had become a white mask, shorn of all dreams. Almost it might have been a death-mask for the soul of Jamie O’Hara. It showed no response now when “Granny” spoke; only the lad’s hands fluttered a moment toward the window, then dropped heavily back into his lap.
“Aye, maybe I feel it.” The voice was colorless and tired. “I can’t be remembering clear sunlight any more. The last days of the fighting, smoke was too thick in the sky, or the rains fell.”
Eleven pairs of eyes and one odd one cast about for some inspiration. “Sure, think o’ somethin’ pleasanter nor cannon smoke an’ rain. Think o’—” “Granny” floundered for a moment, then gave up in despair.