by Ruth Sawyer
Chapter VII
THE LAD WHO OUTSANG THE STARS
In the American Military Hospital No. 10 one could always count on Ward7-A beginning the day with a genuine fanfare of good spirits--that is tosay, ever since that ward had acquired a distinction and personality ofits own. On this particular morning the doors of the wards were open, fororderlies were scrubbing floors, and Sheila O'Leary in the operating-roomabove could catch the words of the third chorus that had rung through thehospital since the ban of silence had been raised.
"Gra-ma-cree ma-cruiskeen, Slainte-geal ma-vour-neen, Gra-ma-cree a-coolin bawn, bawn, bawn, Oh!"
As usual, Larry's crescendo boomed in the lead. How those lads could sing!
In the regular order of things it was time for dressings; but the regularorder of things was so often broken at No. 10 that it had nearly become amyth. The operating staff had been steadily at it since eleven the nightbefore. If nothing more came in, they might be through by eleven now andthe dressings come only two hours late. That would be rare good luck.Under the spell of the singing the tired backs of surgeons and nursesstraightened unconsciously; cramped muscles seemed to lose some of theirkinks; everybody smiled without knowing it--down to the last of the boyswho were waiting their turn in the corridor outside. The boys had not beenin the hospital long enough to know anything about Ward 7-A, but thechallenge to courage and good spirits in that chorus of voices was toodominant to be denied, even among the sorest wounded of them. One afteranother rallied to it like veterans.
"Gra-ma-cree ma-cruiskeen bawn," boomed Larry's voice to the finish.
The chief of the Surgical Staff looked at Sheila as she handed him thesutures he was reaching for. "They're the best we've had yet, eh? Not onewith half a fighting chance, and just listen to the ones who are pullingthrough."
"They're Irish." There was a tinge of pride in the nurse's voice.
The chief smiled. "It's like flipping a coin to find out whether you'remore Irish or American. Sometimes it's heads, sometimes it's tails. Whichis it, honestly?"
"Honestly, both!" Sheila laughed softly. Then the door opened to admit thelast of the stretchers, and she sobered for an instant until she saw thefaces of the boys. She knew why they were smiling, and her eyes shone inthe old luminous, Leerie fashion as she greeted them, each as if he hadbeen an old friend.
"There's a welcome for you. Those lads you hear have gone through what youare going through, only a lot worse. Listen, and think of that as you gounder. They'll be singing again in a moment." And as she slipped the ethercone over the face of the first, up from Ward 7-A in rollicking cadencescame another chorus:
"Wi' me bundle on me shoulder, sure, there's not a man that's bolder-- I am leavin' dear old Ireland without warnin'. For I've lately took the notion for to cross the briny ocean, An' I'm off for Philadelphia in the mornin'."
The smile on the face of the first boy spread to a grin under its coveringof gauze. "I'm off for Philadelphia, too," he mumbled, thickly, and theeyes that looked into Sheila's for a few last nebulous seconds showed allthe comfortable security of a child's.
They were hard at it for another hour, and while Sheila O'Leary's handsflew from sterilizer to ether cone, from handing instruments and holdingforceps to tying sutures and packing wounds, her mind was busy withsomething that lay far beyond. To this girl, who had come across to do herbit, life had become a jumble of paradoxes. She had come to give, out ofthe bounty of her skill and her womanhood; instead she had received farmore abundantly from the largess of universal brotherhood and sacrifice.She had come to minister, and she had been ministered unto by every pieceof human wreckage swept across the door-sill of the hospital. She hadthought to dispense life, and to her ever-increasing wonder she had beengiven a life so boundless that it reached beyond all previous dreams ofspace or time. She was learning what thousands had been learning since thewar began, those who had thrown their fortunes into its crucible, andthat is that if anything comes out at all, it comes out in the form ofspirit and not of flesh.
Back in the old days at the sanitarium she had felt herself bound only tothe problems and emergencies of war. It had never occurred to her thenthat in an incredibly short time she would be bothering about matters ofadjustment afterward. With peace already on the horizon, she was troubleda hundredfold more than she had been when indefinite war was the promisefor the future. From the beginning she had marveled at the buoyancy andoptimism of the men who were focusing their lives within the limits ofeach day. Many of them never thought in terms of more than twenty-fourhours; often it was less. They had learned the knack of intensive living.World-old truths were flashed into their minds like spot-lights; friendswere made and lost in a few hours; eternity was visioned and compassed ina minute. The last words Jerry Donoghue of Ward 7-A had said before hewent west came back to Sheila with a curious persistence.
"When all's said and done, miss, it's been a grand life--Brave lads forcomrades--a lass who kept faith to the end--a good fight an' somethin'good to fight for--Near five years of it--wi' perdition grinnin' ye in theface an' the Holy Mother walkin' at your back--Sure, I might ha' livedfifty year in Letterkenny an' never tasted life half soplentiful--or--so--sweet."
That was the strange part of it; they had all found life "plentiful an'sweet"--nurses, surgeons, soldiers alike. They might be homesick, worn outwith the business of fighting and patching up afterward, eternally achingin body and heart with the long stretches of horror and work with littlesleep and less food, and yet not a handful out of every thousand of themwould have chosen to quit if they could.
But when the quitting-time came, when war was over, what was going tohappen then? Sheila wondered it about the boys who lay unconscious ontheir stretchers, packed in the room about her. She wondered it about theboys conscious in their cots below. Most of all she wondered it about Ward7-A. It was going to hurt so many to have to look beyond the immediateday into a procession of numberless days stretching into years and years.The sudden relaxing from big efforts to little ones, that would hurt, too,like the uncramping of over-strained muscles. And the being thrown back ononeself to think, to act, to feel for oneself again--what of that? It waslike dismembering a gigantic machine and scattering the infinitesimalparts of it broadcast over the earth to function alone. Only many of theparts would be imperfect, and all would have souls to reckon with.
But of the puzzle of it one fact stood out grippingly vital to Sheila. Nosoul must be thrown out of the melting-pot back into the old accustomedorder of life and be left to feel unfit or unnecessary. There must be abig, compelling place for every man who came home. Of all the tragedies ofwar, she could conceive no greater one than to have these men who had putno limit to the price they were willing to pay to make the world safe fordemocracy sent back useless, to mark time to eternity.
But who was going to keep this from happening? How were the thousands ofmutiles to be made free of the burden of dependence and toleration? Whowas going to guard them against atrophy of spirit? The nurse gathered upthe last of the instruments and threw them in the sterilizer. As she tookoff her apron and wiped the beads of sweat from her face, her chief eyedher suspiciously.
"Get your coffee before you touch those dressings in 7-A. Understand? Whendid you have your clothes off last?" He growled like a good-natured butspent old dog.
The girl gave her uniform a disgusted look. "Pretty bad, isn't it? I putit on four--no, five days ago, but I've had my shoes off twice." She laidan impulsive hand on the chief's arm. "Promise about the coffee if you'llpromise to do the dressings with me instead of Captain Griggs. He callsthem the 'down-and-outers.' I can't quite stand for that."
"Well, what would you call 'em?"
"The invincibles," she declared. "Wouldn't you?"
But for all her promise, Sheila O'Leary did not get past the door of 7-Awithout putting in her head and calling out a "good morning." Whereupontwelve Irish tongues, dripping almost as many brogues, flung it back ather with a vengeance.
&n
bsp; There were thirteen of them, all told, the remnants of a company of RoyalIrish that had crossed the Scheldt with Haig. As Larry Shea had put it onthe day of their arrival, they "made as grand leavin's as one could expectunder the circumstances." The ambulances that had brought them, along withthe additional seven who had gone west, had pivoted wrong at one of thecrossroads, so that the American Military Hospital No. 10 had fallen heirto them instead of the B. H. T. It is recorded that even the chief showedconsternation when he looked them over, and Larry, catching the look andbeing the only man conscious at the time, snorted indignantly:
"Well, sir, if ye think we're a mess, ye should have seen the Fritzies weleft behind. Furninst them we're an ordther of perfectly decent lads." AndLarry had crumpled up into a grinning unconsciousness.
It was Larry who led the singing; it was Larry now who, with an eye on theone silent figure in the ward and another on the nurse in the doorway,threw a wheedling remark to hold her with them a moment "by way ofheartenment to Jamie." "Wait a bit, miss. Patsy MacLean was just askin'were ye a good hand at layin' a ghost?"
Before Sheila could answer, Harrigan, an Irish-American orderly, steppedover the threshold and shook a fist at 7-A.
"Aw, cut it out. The way this bunch works Miss O'Leary makes me sick.Don't cher know she hasn't been off duty for twenty-four hours? Let hergo, can't cher?"
Johnnie O'Neil, from the far end of the room, smiled the smile of acherub. "An' don't ye know, laddie, that it's always the saints in heaventhat has the worst sinners on their hands? 'Tis jealous ye are, not beingwicked enough to get a bit more of her attention yerself."
Sheila smiled impartially at them both, and with a parting promise ofdressings to come she hurried off. Ward 7-A settled itself to wait for theworst and the best that the day had to offer. The room was a very smallone, and the thirteen cots barely crowded into it, with space at the footfor Jamie O'Hara's wheel-chair to go the length and turn. They had beenkept together by Sheila's urgent plea that they should be given a ward tothemselves instead of scattering them through the larger wards, and it isdoubtful if in all the war a more quietly merciful act had been executed.Not one of the thirteen but would have scorned to show any sign ofdependence on the others, yet intuitively the girl had guessed what theywould be able to give one another in the matter of spiritual succor. Theway they continually hectored and teased, matched wits and good humor, asthey had matched strength and daring in the old fighting-days before thehospital, was meat and drink to the souls struggling for dominance overmutilated bodies. United, they were men; separated--Sheila had oftenshuddered to think what pitiful, pain-tortured beings they might havebeen.
When she returned to the ward the chief was with her, and their combinedarrival brought forth a prolonged, fortissimoed wail shammed forth in goodGaelic fashion. Larry's great hairy arm shot out, and a vindictiveforefinger was wagged in the direction of the third cot.
"Ye'd best begin with Patsy MacLean this day. He hasn't been laid outfirst in a fortnight."
The others, taking the words from Larry's tongue, chorused, "Aye, beginwi' Patsy, the devil take him!"
"Why the devil? Wouldn't Fritzie do as well?" The chief smiled indulgentlyupon them all.
"'Tis a case for the devil, this time. Tell the colonel what you wereputting over us last night," Michael Kenney, lance-corporal, growledthrough an undercurrent of chuckle.
Patrick MacLean, the color-sergeant, grinned as he reached out a welcominghand to both surgeon and nurse. He was a prime favorite with them, as withhis own lads. When pain wrestled for the upper hand, when things wentwrong, moods turned black, or nights stretched interminably long andunendurable, Patsy could always turn the trick and produce something soabsorbingly interesting or ridiculous that the pain and the long nightswere forgotten. How well Sheila remembered that first time they haddressed his wounds! The muscles had stood out on his arms like whipcords;sweat poured down his face. He fainted twice, each time coming round todrawl out his story in that unforgetable Irish way:
"We were dthrivin' them afore us like sheep, all so tame an' sociable Iwas forgettin' where I was. Somehow the notion took me I was back on themoorlan' drivin' the flocks for my father, when a Fritzie overhead drops abomb on our captain.... It spatters the mud in my eyes somethin' terrible,an' when I rubs them clean again the machine-guns were cacklin' all roundus like a parcel o' hens layin' eggs; we'd stumbled on a nest of them.Holy Pether, I was mad! I was for stickin' the colors in the muzzle o' oneo' their bloody guns, an' I sings out as I rush 'em, 'Erin go bragh!' Thendown I goes. Culmullen, there, comes staggerin' up. 'Take the colors,'says I. 'I've got no legs to carry 'em on.' 'I can't,' says he; 'I've gotno arms to shoulder 'em.'... A bit aftherwards I sees Jamie--he's secondin command--come runnin' up wild, but his arms an' legs is still in pairs,so I shouts afore things go black, 'The colors, Jamie, ye take thecolors.' 'Wish to God, Patsy, I could,' says he, 'but I can't see.'...Faith, weren't we a healthy lot, miss? An' we the Royal Irish!" He hadgrinned then as he was grinning now.
Culmullen in the next cot, a schoolmaster from Ballygowan, raised hishead. "Miss O'Leary, Patsy's the worst liar in Ulster. Ye might keep thatin mind whenever he has anything to tell. If I had had the schooling ofye, I'd have thrashed the thruth into ye, ye rascal! Will ye kindly leanover and brush the hair out of my eyes, and if ye tickle my nose thistime, I'll have Larry thrash ye for me the instant he's up."
The color-sergeant pulled himself over and gently brushed back thestraggling hair. "Such a purty lad!" he murmured, sarcastically. "What'san arm or two so long's the Fritzies didn't ruin one o' them handsomefeatures--nor shorten the length o' your tongue."
"What is it this time, Sergeant?" Sheila spoke coaxingly as she bent tothe dressings.
"Well, ye know I've said from the beginnin' 'twas no ways natural havin'them legs o' mine twistin' an' achin' same as if they were still hangin'onto me. I leave it to both of yez. If they'd been anyways decent legs an'considerate o' the kindness I've always shown them, wouldn't they havequit pestherin' me when they took Dutch leave?"
"Stop moralizin'," shouted Johnnie O'Neil, the piper from Antrim. "Getdown to the p'int o' your tale."
"It hasn't any point: it's flat," growled the lance-corporal.
Unembarrassed, Patsy MacLean went on: "I was a-thinkin' this all overagain last night, a-listenin' to the ambulances comin' in, when a breatho' wind pushes the door open a bit, an' in walks, as natural as life, theghost o' them two legs. 'Tis the gospel truth I'm tellin' ye. They walkeda bit bowlegged, same as they always did, straight through the door an'down the ward. An' the queer thing is they never stopped by Larry's cot orCasey Ryan's--the heathen!--but came right on to me."
"Faith, they wouldn't have had the nerve to stop. The leg Casey lost wasas straight as a hazel wand, same as mine." Larry snorted contemptuously.
"The two of yez are jealous." Patsy lowered his voice to a mock whisperand confided to the chief and Sheila, "They know they'll have to be buyin'a good pair o' shoes an' throwin' the odd away, while I'll be sayin'enough from the shoes I'll never have to be buyin' to keep mysel' incigars for the rest o' my life."
"But Patsy's wondtherin' can ye lay the ghost, miss?" Timothy Brennan, whohad lost the "cream of his face," repeated the question Larry had asked ahalf-hour before. The rest of the ward tittered expectantly.
"Let me see--" The Irish blood in her steadied the nurse's hands, whileshe drew her lips into quizzical solemnity and winked at Culmullen overher shoulder. "I always thought it was restlessness that sent ghostswalking. Maybe these have come back, looking for their boots."
The titter broke into a roar of delight. "Thrue for ye!" shoutedParley-voo Flynn, pounding the arm of Jamie's chair with his one fist."All ye've got to do, Patsy, is to be puttin' your boots beside your chaironct more, an' them legs will scrooch comfortably into them an' neverhaunt ye again. The lass is right, isn't she, Jamie?"
Eleven pairs of eyes and an odd one shifted apprehensively from the ladwho was being dressed t
o the lad in the wheel-chair, and the eyes allshowed varying degrees of trouble, uncertainty, and sorrow. They had a wayof searching Jamie out in this fashion many times a day, while he sat verystill, with eyes bandaged and lips that never flinched but never broke toa smile.
Larry shook a hairy fist at Parley-voo and answered the question himself:
"Of course she's right! Isn't she always? An' who but a heathen would bedoubtin' the manners of a ghost?"
"Aye, but where will I be gettin' the boots?" Patsy made a sour grimace."Me own purty ones had Christian burial somewhere back in that tremendousmud-puddle. Would any gentleman, now, still havin' two good legs, give methe loan of his boots for one night? Size eleven, if I don't disremember."
"That's Teig's number. Lend him yours, Teig, like a good lad, or we'llnever be rid o' them ghosts." Mat O'Shaughnessy, at the other end of theline, fairly shook with the depth of his wail.
Teig Magee chuckled. He had lost an inch or so of back and was waiting theglad day when they could mend it with an inch or so of shin-bone; in themean time he was paralyzed. "Say, Docthor, would ye mind reachin' undthermy pillow an' fetchin' them out for me? The lads have a way of forgettin'my hands are temporarily engaged. Thank ye. Ye can have them, Patsy, butye'll have to go bail your ghosts won't up an' thramp off wi' thementirely."
It ended by the schoolmaster giving security--a half-crown with a bullethole through it. Sheila was appointed custodian, and the boots were placedbeside 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-Anever wavered. Johnnie, who had piped the lads into battle and out forfour years, and who daily rejoiced over the fact that Fritzie had shownthe good sense to take a foot instead of a hand, told them that he was inrare luck now, for there would be time to make wee Johnnie at home thegrandest piper in all of Ireland--an honor he could never have promisedhimself before.
There was "Bertha" Milliken, named for the big gun he had put out ofcommission 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 itspossession by shooting it away on the Scheldt along with a good bit thatwas under it. The nurse and surgeon handled "Bertha" very carefully; therewas no knowing just what was going to happen to him. Casey Ryan had lostthe 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 theothers at getting well. Mat O'Shaughnessy had it in the "vital." He wascontinuously boasting that it was the handiest place of all, and if itdidn'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 butinconspicuous. He was given to counting a hypothetical fortune that mightbe his if the Empire would give him a shilling for every time he had beenhit. Joseph Daly and "Gospel" Smith, the one Methodist, carried headwounds, while "Granny" Sullivan, the oldest, wisest, and most comfortingof the company, had one smashed hip and a hole through the other, "thedevil of a combination." Never had the atmosphere of 7-A been keener orspicier. Jamie alone sat still and silent.
Jamie was the last to be dressed, and because there was little to do thechief slipped away and left him to Sheila. As the nurse passed from Mat'scot 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 shouldhappen, but somehow, at the same time everyday, the silence gripped them,and they seemed powerless to stay it. It was "Granny" Sullivan who firstthrew 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 therebut empty sockets, almost healed. One could hear the quick intake ofbreath from the watching twelve, while every face registered an agony ithad scorned to show for its own disablement. But for Jamie, "the singinglad from Derry" as they lovingly called him, it was different. They couldface their own conditions with amazing jocularity, but they writhed dailyunder the torment of Jamie's. They could brave it no better than couldhe. For to put eternal darkness on the lad who loved the light, who wouldsit spellbound before the play of colors in the east at dawn or the flashof moonlight across troubled water, who could make a song out of the smileof a child or the rhythm of flying birds in the sky, that was damnable. Anarch-fiend might have conceived it, but where was God to let it happen? Acrippled Jamie without an arm or a leg was endurable--that cried out forno 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 apiece of marble that might have been fashioned by Praxiteles for a sungod. Since the battle on the Scheldt it had become a white mask, shorn ofall dreams. Almost it might have been a death-mask for the soul of JamieO'Hara. It showed no response now when "Granny" spoke; only the lad'shands fluttered a moment toward the window, then dropped heavily back intohis lap.
"Aye, maybe I feel it." The voice was colorless and tired. "I can't beremembering clear sunlight any more. The last days of the fighting, smokewas 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. Thinko'--" "Granny" floundered for a moment, then gave up in despair.
"That's all I see when I look up. When I look down, it's worse--aneverlasting earth, covered with mud and dying men!" Jamie shivered.
Larry struggled out of his torment. "I say, Jamie, don't ye mind the songye were makin' for us the day we fell back from Cambrai? 'Twas an Irishone, full o' the sun an' the singin' birds of Donegal. Wi' the Fritziesrisin' like a murdtherous tide behind us, 'twas all that kept the heart inus that day. Ye say it for Miss O'Leary. Sure, ye've never said a song forher yet."
Jamie shook his head. "I'm sorry, lad; I've lost it. I was making so manysongs those days--ye couldn't be expecting a body to carry them all aboutin his head. Now could ye?" The lips tried bravely to smile, and failedagain.
But Larry grinned triumphantly. "Sure 'Granny' has it wrote down. Heshowed it to me once. Fetch it, 'Granny,' an' let Jamie be re--" He brokeoff, aghast; the lads about him were staring in absolute horror. Only thesinging lad showed nothing. He might not have heard, or, hearing, thewords were meaningless.
So Sheila took matters into her own hands. She covered the eyes with freshgauze, wrapped Jamie up, and bundled him out in his chair to Harrigan withthe remark that the day was too fine to miss and there was more of itoutside the hospital than in. She watched until she had seen Harrigan takehim to a sunny, wind-sheltered corner of the gardens, and then she cameback to 7-A. She was thinking of Peter Brooks, her man at the front, andshe was trying to fathom with all her heart what manner of healing shewould give had Peter come back to her as Jamie O'Hara had come. She closedthe door of the ward behind her and faced the twelve.
"Lads, what are we going to do for Jamie?"
Larry groaned out loud. It was the first luxury of expression he hadindulged in since Jamie had been wheeled out. "Aye, what are we goin' todo? That's what every man of us has been askin' himself since--since heknew."
"We act like a crowd o' half-wits, a-thryin' to boost his spirits a bit,an' all the time he grows whiter an' quieter." Patsy turned his head away;his lips were twitching.
"Aye, that's God's truth." "Bertha's" hoarse croak was heavy with despair."Ye can see for yourself, miss, it's noways nat'ral for Jamie--that's theworst of it. It's been Jamie, just, that always put heart back in us whenthings went blackest. Wasn't it him that made it easy goin' for them thatwent west? Can one of us mind the time he wasn't ready with a song tofetch us over the top, or through the mud--or straight to death, if themwas the orders? No matter how loud the guns screeched, we could alwayshear Jamie above them."
"We could hear him when we couldn't have heard another sound," Culmullenmumbled.
"Gospel" Smith raised a bandaged head and leveled piercing eyes a
t Sheila."You know what the Gospel says about the stars singing in the morning--alltogether like? Well, Jamie was the lad who could outsing them. You knowhow it feels at that gray, creepy hour o' dawn, when a man's heart jumpsto his throat and sticks there, and his hands shake like a girl's? Often'sthe time we'd be waiting orders to attack just like that. The stars mighthave shouted themselves clear o' the sky, for all the good they'd havedone us; but Jamie was different. He'd make us a couplet or a verse tosing low under our breath, something you could put your teeth into. Andwhen the orders came our hearts were always back where the Lord had putthem."
"Granny" Sullivan plucked nervously at his blanket. "An' now, when we wantto hearten him, we're hurtin' instead. Seems as if the devil took hold ofour tongues an' spilled the wrong words off."
"Shall I tell you what I would try to do, if I were one of you Irish ladswho had fought with him?" Sheila's face was as drawn as any of the twelve.
"In God's name tell us!" Johnnie, the piper, spoke as reverently as if hewere at mass.
"You heard what he said just now about seeing nothing but mud and dyingmen? Well, that's the trouble. He can't see any longer things he loves,the things he has always carried in his heart. All the beautiful memorieshave been lost, and all he has left are the horrors of those last days.He's got nothing left to make into songs any more. Don't you see? You'vegot to bring that back to him, that power to see--here." The girl's handpressed her heart.
"Aye, but how?" Patsy asked it breathlessly.
"Bring him back his memories--memories of Ireland, of the things he lovedbest to sing about. You have eyes; make him see."
A hush fell on Ward 7-A. Then Timothy Brennan muttered as a man alone:"'Tis the words of a woman. God's blessin' on her!"
All through the day there rang through Sheila's ears the last words Jamiehad said to her that morning. He had turned his face back, as Harrigan hadwheeled him away, to answer her "All right, Jamie?" with "As right as everI'll be. Do ye know, the O'Haras are famous for their long living? Mygrandfather lived to be ninety-eight, and his father to be over a hundred.That leaves me seventy-five years, maybe. Seventy-five years! And alreadyI'm fearin' the length of a day." She was still hearing them when she cameback to the ward at day's end to find Jamie in his old accustomed place bythe window. His face was as masklike as ever, and Larry was talking:
"Sure, I mind often an' often how the neighbors used to tell me if I'd lieasleep with my ear to a fairy rath I'd be hearin' their music an' seein'their dancin'. But I never did. But I saw a sight as grand, the flight o'the skylark at ring-o'-day. Many's the time I've seen them leave the marshan' go liltin' into the blue."
"And the lilting!" Culmullen closed his eyes the better to recall it. "Imind the last time I heard one. The sky was turned orange, and the loughturned gold. The marsh was glistening with mist, and out of the reedswhere her nest was she flew. It was like a feathered bundle of song thrownskyward."
"Aye, what a song!" Johnnie, the piper, spoke with ecstasy. "Hark! I canmake it." He puckered his lips, and through them came the sweet, liltingnotes of the lark's matin song.
"Make it again." Jamie was leaning forward in his chair, his handsgripping the arms.
Again the piper whistled it through, and then again and again. A smilebrushed Jamie's lips, and the others, watching, breathless, saw.
"What is it?" asked "Granny," softly.
"Naught. Only for the moment I was thinking I could be smelling the dew onthe bogs, yonder. Can ye pipe for the blackbirds, Johnnie?"
And Johnnie piped.
So a new order of things was established in Ward 7-A, and as heretoforethe lads had vied in witty derision of their calamities they vied now withone another in telling tales of Ireland. Each marshaled forth his dearest,greenest memory, clothed in its best, to fill the ears and heart of JamieO'Hara. Sometimes he smiled, and then there was a great, silent rejoicingamong the twelve; sometimes he asked for more, and then tongues trippedover one another in mad effort to furnish forth a memory more wonderfulthan all that had gone before. But more often he sat still and white, asif he heard nothing. And in the midst of it all, as the lads drew eachday nearer to health, Sheila noted a new uneasiness among them. It wasLarry who spoke the trouble while the nurse was doing his dressings. Hewhispered it, so the others should not hear.
"By rights we don't belong here. Well, they'll be movin' us soon as we'remended, won't they?"
The nurse nodded.
"Invalided home. Ye know what that means?"
Again the nurse nodded.
"Mind ye, there's been never a word dropped atween us, but we're allfearin' it like--" Larry rubbed his sleeve over his mouth twice before hewent on. "While we've got Jamie to think about, we can manage, but whenhe's packed off somewheres--to learn readin' an' writin' for theblind--an' we're scattered to the four winds o' Ireland, we'll berealizin' for the first time what we are, just. Then what are we goin' todo? I ask ye it honest, miss."
And honestly Sheila answered, "I don't know."
A day later "Granny" whispered over his dressings: "Faith there's a shadowcreeping over the sill. Can't ye be feeling it?" And the color-sergeant'sspirits failed to rise that day at all.
Yet for all their fears the inevitable day came upon them unawares andcaught them, as you might say, red-handed. Sheila had stolen a half-hourfrom rest and was sitting with them, listening to Casey Ryan, the Galwaylad, tell of the fishing in Kilkieran Bay.
Larry took the words out of his mouth. "'Twill be the proud day for us allwhen we cast our eyes on Irish wather again, whether 'tis in Dublin Bay oroff the Skerries."
"Aye, and smelling the thorn bloom and hearing the throstles sing!""Granny's" rejoicing followed on the heels of Larry's, while he shook hisfist at him in warning.
Larry threw a helpless look at Jamie and sank back on his pillow, whilePatsy roared his ultimatum: "I'd a deal sight rather hear a throstle singthan see all the bloody wather in the world. Larry's fair mad about watherever since he went dirty for a fortnight at Vimy."
"Sure, the thing I'm most wantin'," croaked "Bertha," "is to hear the windin the heather again, deep o' the night. There isn't a sweeter sound thanthat, so soft an' croony-like."
"Yes, an' I'll be wantin' to hear the old cracked voice o' Biddy Donoghuecallin' cockles at the Antrim fair. Faith, she's worth thravelin' far tobe hearin'. An' think o' gettin' your tooth on a live cockle!" Johnniemoistened his lips in anticipation as he broke forth in a falsetto:
"Cockles--good cockles--here's some for your dad, An' some for your lassie--an' more for your lad."
Amid the appreciative chuckle of the listeners, the door of Ward 7-Aopened and the chief stood on the threshold. He smiled as a man may whenhe has a hurting thing to do and grudges the doing of it. He saluted theremnants of Company--of the Royal Irish:
"Orders, lads. You'll be leaving to-morrow for--Blighty."
There was nothing but silence, a silence of agony and apprehension, untilPatsy whispered, "Leavin' _together_, sir?"
"I--hope so."
"Thravelin'--the same?" It was Timothy Brennan this time.
"I don't know."
"Will we be afther makin' the same hospital yondther--do ye think?" Ittook all Larry's fighting soul to keep his voice steady.
"I--It isn't likely."
"Thank ye, sir."
That was all. The chief left, and Sheila sat on in the stillness of Ward7-A, wondering wherein lay the value of theories when in the face of thefirst crucial need one sat stunned and helpless. The mask of good spiritshad dropped from the lads like a camouflaged screen; behind it showed thenaked, bleeding souls of twelve terror-stricken men. For Jamie's mask wasstill upon him. If the orders had brought any added misery to him, no onecould have told.
As Sheila looked into their faces and saw all that was written there, shegripped her hands behind her and tried to tell them what she had thoughtout so clearly in the operating-room days and days before. But the messageshe had thought was hers to give had someho
w become meaningless. Whatguarantee had she to make that their lives would go on being vital,necessary to the big scheme of humanity? How could she promise that outof their share in the war and the price they had paid would be wroughtsomething so fine, so strong and eternal, that the years ahead must needshold plenty for their hearts and souls? She could not get beyond therealization that it was all only theory, the theory of one glowinglyhealthy mind in a sound body. If such a promise could be given at all, itmust not come from such as she; if it was to bear faith, it must be spokenby one who had gone through the crucible as they had gone through--andcome out even as they had come.
She looked at Jamie. If Jamie had only had eyes to catch the meaning ofthe thing she was trying to say! If he who had sung courage into theirhearts in the old days could sing it once again! A message from Jamiewould bring it home.
But there was nothing in that blank, white face Sheila could reach. Heseemed as he had seemed from the beginning, a soul apart, so wrapped inits own despair that no human cry of need could shake it free. Indesperation she looked at Larry. His eyes were closed; his face had gonealmost as white as Jamie's. Patsy was gazing at the ceiling; the veins onhis arms stood out as they had on that first day when he had fainted twicefrom the pain of his dressing. Down the line of cots the nurse's eyestraveled, and back again. Every lad was past speaking for another; eachlay transfixed with his own personal fear.
The minutes seemed intolerable. The silence grew heavy with so muchmuffling of despair. Sheila found herself praying that the men wouldgroan, cry out, curse, anything to break the ghastly hush. Then suddenly"Bertha" propped himself as best he could on an elbow and croaked: "Forthe love of Mary, miss, can't ye cram us with morphine the night? 'Twouldsave the British Empire a few shillin's' expense and them at home a dealo' misery."
And the color-sergeant choked out, "Aye, in God's mercy send us west,along wi' them lucky seven that has gone already!"
Without knowing why she did it, Sheila reached over and gripped one ofJamie's hands. "Help, can't you?" she whispered. The late afternoon sunwas shining through the window back of him. The glory of it was full onhis face, so that every lad in the ward saw plainly the smile that creptinto the lips, a tender, whimsical smile that belonged to the Jamie ofold. And the deep, vibrating voice was the voice of the Jamie of fightingdays.
"Patsy, ye rascal! I'm thinking it was like yourself to come breaking intothe first song I've had on my lips in a month. You've nearly ruined it forme, lad."
Amazement, incredulity, thanksgiving swept over the faces like puffs ofwind over young wheat. Unnoticed, Sheila turned to the window and wept ascattering of tears that could no longer be held back. Jamie pulledhimself out of the wheel-chair and found his way down the space at thefoot of the cots to the door. He was very straight, and his head was high.
"Just a minute, lads." He dug his hands deep into his pockets. "Before Igive ye the song I've made for ye, there's something I have to be sayingfirst. Miss O'Leary was right when she said a man has more than one pairof eyes to see with. He can see grand with his heart--if he's shown theway. That's what I have to thank ye for this day, the wiping of my memoryclean of those last days, and the showing me how to see anew. Ye've givenIreland back to me with her lark songs, her blue, dancing water, herwind-brushed heather like a purple sea. Ye've made the world beautiful forme again, and ye've given me the heart to sing."
He stopped a minute and smiled again. "I was thinking all this when thechief came in, and after that I was so busy with the song that sprang intomy mind that I came near forgetting the lot o' ye. If that rascal Patsyhadn't interrupted me, faith, I might have made the song longer."
Sheila turned back from the window. There was a grin on the face of everylad, and on the face of Jamie was the look of a man who had found hisdreams again. The song being new to his tongue, he gave it slowly:
"They say the earth's a bit shot up--well, we can say the same, But, praise to every lad that's fought, the scars they show no shame. And for those who have prayed for us--why, here's an end to tears. Sure, God can do much healing in the next handful of years.
"So, Johnnie, set your chanter and blow your pipes full strong, And, Larry, raise your voice again and lead our marching song. Let Mac unfurl the colors--till they sweep yon crimson west, For we're still the Royal Irish, a-fighting with the best."
And that is precisely the way they went when they left the AmericanMilitary Hospital No. 10 the next morning. The color-sergeant led. Jamiewalked beside the stretcher to give a hand with the staff. Johnnie satbolt upright, bolstered with many pillows, to enable him to get a firmgrip on the pipes, and he skirled the "Shule Aroon" as he had neverskirled before. Larry's voice again boomed in the lead, and every man inthe hospital that had breath to spare cheered them as they passed. And forevery one who saw or heard the going of the Royal Irish, that day, wasleft behind a memory green enough to last till the end of time.