Part 24

"If anything comes of this," she said simply, "it goes to Smith. I must insist on that."

"There is just one thing about it," replied the Commandant. "We cannot give our decorations around wholesale. The King wishes to keep them choice by keeping them rare. Now it really will not do to add two more decorations to your little group. Two of your women have already received them. This was a brave piece of work--one of the bravest I ever saw. It deserves a ribbon. It shall have a ribbon, if I can reach the King. But two ribbons, no. It cannot be."

"Ah, you don't need to tell me that," returned Hilda. "I know that. One decoration is quite enough. But that decoration, if granted, must go to Smith."

* * * * *

The highest honor in the gift of the King of the Belgians was being conferred: a Red Cross worker was about to be made Chevalier of the Order of Leopold. Doubtless one would rather be decorated by Albert than by any other person in the world. It was plain already that he was going down into history as one of the fabulous good rulers, with Alfred and Saint Louis, who had been as noble in their secret heart as in their pride of place. It was fitting that the brief ceremony should be held in Albert's wrecked village of Pervyse, with shell pits in the road, and black stumps of ruin for every glance of the eye. For he was no King of prosperity, fat with the pomp of power. He was a man of sorrows, the brother of his crucified people.

But the man who was about to be honored kept getting lost. The distinguished statesmen, officers, and visiting English, formed their group and chatted. But the object of their coming together was seldom in sight. He disappeared indoors to feed the wasted cat that had lived through three bombardments and sought her meat in wrecked homes. He was blotted out by the "Hilda" car, as he tinkered with its intimacies. No man ever looked less like a Chevalier, than Smith, when discovered and conducted to the King. Any of the little naval boy officers standing around with their gold braid on the purple cloth, looked gaudier than Smith. He looked more like a background, with his weather-worn khaki, and narrow, high-hitched shoulders, than like the center-piece in a public performance.

There came a brief and painful moment, when the King's favor was pinned upon him.

"The show is over, isn't it?" he asked.

Hilda smiled.

"I suppose you'll go and bury the medal in an old trunk in the attic," she said.

Smith walked across to the car, and opened the bonnet. The group of distinguished people had lost interest in him. Hilda followed him over.

"You're most as proud of that car as I am," she said; "it's sort of your car, too, isn't it?"

Smith was burrowing into the interior of things, and had already succeeded in smearing his fingers with grease within three minutes of becoming a Chevalier.

"Fact is, ma'am," he answered, "it is my car, in a way. You see, my mother's name is Hilda, same as yours. My mother, she gave half-a-crown for it."

WITH THE AMBULANCE

We were carrying a dead man among the living.

"Take him out and leave him," ordered our officer; "it is bad for the wounded men riding next to him and under him."

We lifted him down from his swinging perch in the car. He was heavy at the shoulders to shift. The dead seem heavier than the quick. We stretched him at full length in the sticky mud of the gutter at the side of the road. He lay there, white face and wide eyes in the night, as if frozen in his pain. Soldiers, stumbling to their supper, brushed against his stiff body and then swerved when they saw the thing which they had touched. A group of doctors and officers moved away. Mud from the sloughing tires of the transports spattered him, but not enough to cover him. No one had time to give him his resting-place. We were too busy with the fresher shambles, and their incompleted products, to pause for a piece of work so finished as that cold corpse.

But no indignity of the roadway can long withhold him from his portion of peace, and the land that awakened his courage will receive him at last. There is more companionship under the ground than above it for one who has been gallant against odds.

VII

THE AMERICAN

"Atrocities, rubbish!" said the man. "A few drunken soldiers, yes. Every war has had them. But that's nothing. They're all a bunch of crazy children, both sides, and pretty soon they'll quiet down. In the meantime," he added with a smile, "we take the profits--some of us, that is."

"Is that all the war means to you?" asked Hilda.

"Yes, and to any sensible person," replied he. "Why do you want to go and get yourself mixed up in it? An American belongs out of it. Go and work in a settlement at home and let the foreign countries stew in their own juice."

"Belgium doesn't seem like a foreign country to me," returned the girl. "You see, I know the people. I know young Lieutenant Robert de Broqueville and Commandant Gilson, with the wound on his face, and the boys that come into the Flandria Hospital with their fingers shot away. They are like members of my family. They did something for me."

"How do you make that out?"

The girl was silent for a moment, then she answered:

"They stood up for what was a matter of honor. They made a fight against odds. They could have sold out easy enough."