Young Hilda At the Wars

Part 1

YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS

ARTHUR H. GLEASON

Author of "The Spirit of Christmas" "Love, Home and the Inner Life," Etc.

New York Frederick A. Stokes Company Publishers

Copyright, 1915, by Frederick A. Stokes Company

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages

September, 1915

TO CHEVALIER HELEN OF PERVYSE

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

EXPERIENCE (by way of Preface) 1

I. YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS 5 Good Will 37

II. THE RIBBONS THAT STUCK IN HIS COAT 39 The Belgian Refugee 59

III. ROLLO, THE APOLLO 63 The Brotherhood of Man 91

IV. THE PIANO OF PERVYSE 93 Lost 113

V. WAR 115 In Ramskappele Barnyard 141

VI. THE CHEVALIER 143 With the Ambulance 163

VII. THE AMERICAN 165 The Bonfire 189

VIII. THE WAR BABY 191

EXPERIENCE

(By way of Preface)

Of these sketches that tell of ruined Belgium, I must say that I saw what I have told of. They are not meditations in a library. Because of the great courtesy of the Prime Minister of Belgium, who is the war minister, and through the daily companionship of his son, our little group of helpers were permitted to go where no one else could go, to pass in under shell fire, to see action, to lift the wounded out of the muddy siding where they had fallen. Ten weeks of Red Cross work showed me those faces and torn bodies which I have described. The only details that have been altered for the purpose of story-telling are these: The Doctor who rescued the thirty aged at Dixmude is still alive; Smith did not receive the decoration, but Hilda did; it was a candlestick on the piano of Pervyse that vibrated to shell fire; the spy continues to signal without being caught; "Pervyse," the war-baby, was not adopted by an American financier; motor ambulances were given to the Corps, not to an individual. With these exceptions, the incidents are lifted over from the experience of two English women and my wife in Pervyse, and my own weeks as stretcher-bearer on an ambulance.

In that deadlock of slaughter where I worked, I saw no pageantry of war, no glitter and pomp, at all. Nothing remains to me of war pictures except the bleakness. When I think suddenly of Belgium, I see a town heavy with the coming horror:--almost all the houses sealed, the curtains drawn, the friendly door barred. And then I see a town after the invaders have shelled it and burned it, with the homeless dogs howling in the streets, and the pigeons circling in search of their cote, but not finding it. Or I look down a long, lonely road, gutted with shell holes, with dead cattle in the fields, and farm-houses in a heap of broken bricks and dust.

And when I do not see a landscape, dreary with its creeping ruin, I see men in pain. Sometimes I see the faces of dead boys--one boy outstretched at length on a doorstep with the smoke of his burning body rising through the mesh of his blue army clothing; and then a half mile beyond, in the yard of a farm-house, a young peasant spread out as he had fallen when the chance bullet found him.

That alone which seemed good in the horror was the courage of the modern man. He dies as simply and as bravely as the young of Thermopylæ. These men of the factory and office are crowding more meaning into their brief weeks by the Yser and under the shattering of Ypres than is contained in all the last half century of clerk routine.

YOUNG HILDA AT THE WARS

She was an American girl from that very energetic and prosperous state of Iowa, which if not as yet the mother of presidents, is at least the parent of many exuberant and useful persons. Will power is grown out yonder as one of the crops. She had a will of her own and her eye showed a blue cerulean. Her hair was a bright yellow, lighting up a gloomy room. It had three shades in it, and you never knew ahead of time which shade was going to enrich the day, so that an encounter with her always carried a surprise. For when she arranged that abundance in soft nun-like drooping folds along the side of the head, the quieter tones were in command. And when it was piled coil on coil on the crown, it added inches to the prairie stature, and it was mellow like ripe corn in the sun. But the prettiest of all was at the seashore or on the hills, when she unbuckled it from its moorings and let it fall in its plenty to the waist. Then its changing lights came out in a rippling play of color, and the winds had their way with it. It was then youth's battleflag unfurled, and strong men were ready to follow. It was such a vivid possession that strangers were always suspicious of it, till they knew the girl, or saw it in its unshackled freedom. She had that wayward quality of charm, which visits at random a frail creature like Maude Adams, and a burly personality, such as that of Mr. Roosevelt. It is a pleasant endowment, for it leaves nothing for the possessor to do in life except to bring it along, in order to obtain what he is asking for. When it is harnessed to will power, the pair of them enjoy a career.

So when Hilda arrived in large London in September of the great war, there was nothing for it but that somehow she must go to war. She did not wish to shoot anybody, neither a German grocer nor a Flemish peasant, for she liked people. She had always found them willing to make a place for her in whatever was going her way. But she did want to see what war was like. Her experience had always been of the gentler order. Canoeing and country walks, and a flexible wrist in playing had given her only a meagre training for the stresses of the modern battlefield. Once she had fainted when a favorite aunt had fallen from a trolley car. And she had left the room when a valued friend had attacked a stiff loaf of bread with a crust that turned the edge of the knife into his hand. She had not then made her peace with bloodshed and suffering.

Part 2

On the Strand, London, there was a group of alert professional women, housed in a theatre building, and known as the Women's Crisis League. To their office she took her way, determined to enlist for Belgium. Mrs. Bracher was in charge of the office--a woman with a stern chin, and an explosive energy, that welcomed initiative in newcomers.

"It's a poor time to get pupils," said the fair-haired Hilda, "I don't want to go back to the Studio Club in New York, as long as there's more doing over here. I'm out of funds, but I want to work."

"Are you a trained nurse?" asked Mrs. Bracher, who was that, as well as a motor cyclist and a woman of property, a certificated midwife, and a veterinarian.

"Not even a little bit," replied Hilda, "but I'm ready to do dirty work. There must be lots to do for an untrained person, who is strong and used to roughing it. I'll catch hold all right, if you'll give me the chance."

"Right, oh," answered Mrs. Bracher. "Dr. Neil McDonnell is shortly leaving for Belgium with a motor-ambulance Corps," she said, "but he has hundreds of applications, and his list is probably completed."

"Thank you," said Hilda, "that will do nicely."

"I don't mind telling you," continued Mrs. Bracher, "that I shall probably go with him to the front. I hope he will accept you, but there are many ahead of you in applying, and he has already promised more than he can take."

Hilda took a taxi from St. Mary Le Strand to Harley Street. Dr. Neil McDonnell was a dapper mystical little specialist, who was renowned for his applications of psychotherapy to raging militants and weary society leaders. He was a Scottish Highlander, with a rare gift of intuitive insight. He, too, had the agreeable quality of personal charm. Like all to whom the gods have been good, he looked with a favoring eye on the spectacle of youth.

"You come from a country which will one day produce the choicest race in history," he began, "you have a blend of nationalities. We have a little corner in Scotland where several strains were merged, and the men were finer and the women fairer than the average. But as for going to Belgium, I must tell you that we have many more desiring to go than we can possibly find room for."

"That is why I came to you," responded Hilda. "That means competition, and then you will have to choose the youngest and strongest."

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