CHAPTER VIII
HAPPINESS FOR HELEN
Again Helen laughed.
“All right,” said Zaidos. “Have it all your own way, but I know I am right about this affair. A fellow with a face like that, engaged to a girl like you, would have acknowledged that letter just in common politeness if nothing else. Just to say, ‘Thank you, but I don’t care to play with you any more!’ Oh, yes, he would have answered it!”
“Whether he would or not,” said Helen, “the breach is too wide to cross now. It is all over. I deserved to lose him and I feel no bitterness about it. My fate is what I deserve.”
Zaidos hated to hear her self-reproaches. “I don’t know about that,” he defended awkwardly. “Probably he ought to have come half way. It looks so to me.”
“It is growing light in the east,” said Helen. “We have talked all night about my poor little affairs. Let us think of something else now, let us—”
She was interrupted by a shattering boom of artillery. It seemed to crack the very air. They sprang upright and stood for a moment listening.
“The beginning!” said Helen solemnly.
“Well, good-bye,” said Zaidos. “I must see where they want me to go. Where’s that doctor?”
The doctor and his assistants as well were there. They hurried into the dug-out, calm, collected, business-like.
“Set out the antiseptics, nurse,” said the doctor. “You were on night duty, but I can’t let you go until someone comes to relieve you. This is very apt to be a big day. You, Zaidos, get out in the first line trench, and don’t lose your head. That cousin of yours is hunting for you. I sent him forward too. Nurse, the new troops are here; every trench and shelter is full of men. A big day, children, a big day!”
He rubbed his muscular, sensitive hands together. Another roar shook the ground and balls of dirt rolled down the walls of the First Aid Station. They heard the muffled beat-beat of feet running through the trenches toward the front.
Zaidos, shivering, his teeth chattering with excitement, buckled on his aid kit and bolted out with a last wave of the hand. He hurried over through the short trench into the cook house, and then made his way along the trench toward the front. A return fire was beginning now, and high in the sky was seen the first Zeppelin. Like a great bird of prey it circled high in air above the lines. Then from somewhere in the rear an English airship skimmed to meet it. The bull-nosed Zeppelin soared and the lighter machine followed, light as a swallow. Zaidos stared, fascinated. He could see spurts of smoke from one and then the other. Another delicate craft passed overhead and joined the first English ship in pursuit. Zaidos stumbled on, still trying to watch the chase. He was suddenly thrown violently to the ground, and covered with earth. Screams of agony came from the trench ahead. He scrambled to his feet and ran forward. A dozen men, tumbled together in horrible confusion, lay tossing and shrieking. Zaidos turned faint for a moment. They were the awful flat, senseless cries of hurt animals. “A-a-a-a-a-a-a!” they shrilled and some of them tore at their wounds. Zaidos ran for the nearest man and knelt beside him. He tried to turn what was left of his body, and could not. He glanced around for help. Sneaking past toward the rear he saw a familiar figure. It was Velo Kupenol. Zaidos called him sharply, and the stern note of authority made Velo turn.
“Come here quickly!” commanded Zaidos.
“I can’t!” panted Velo. “Zaidos, it makes me sick! I’m going to the rear for a little while.”
Zaidos looked up at the face, white with cowardice.
“Come here!” said Zaidos. Still kneeling he pointed a small but business looking revolver at his cousin’s heart. “Come here!” he ordered.
Velo obeyed, the look on his face changing from white terror to black hate.
Zaidos saw the look, and read it with unconcern.
“Come here, Velo!” He held Velo’s shifty eyes. “You get to work here. If you don’t, I shall shoot you, just as I would shoot a dog. There is no time to talk. Get to work! You hear what I tell you. Turn this man!”
Velo shudderingly put himself to the horrid task of lifting the bleeding and torn body. Zaidos talked as he worked in a deep, earnest tone that carried to Velo’s ears even in the noise of battle.
“I’m going to be after you every minute, Velo Kupenol! You won’t disgrace me if I can help it. Go get your stretcher. If you drop it I will kill you!”
He spoke so fiercely, and with such meaning, that Velo felt that for once his easy-going cousin had the upper hand.
As the doctor had said, they were suffering for lack of help, so Zaidos could not afford to let the coward run away. He had to have assistance if he was to save some of the lives which he felt were in a measure entrusted to him. So Velo had to be used. He stopped the gush of blood from a dozen wounds and, lifting on one end of the stretcher, ordered Velo, with a nod of his head, to lead on toward the First Aid Station.
Almost immediately they had the wounded man on the table, and again were off. The guns roared. Shrapnel dropped and exploded, or exploded in air. Overhead Zaidos was conscious that the duel in the clouds still went warily on, but he could not give it a glance. He lost all track of time. He saw others with the Red Cross badge, working, working with the same feverish haste with which he kept at his task. A sort of dreadful haze came over him. He labored with desperate haste, with strong certainty and sureness of touch, but he seemed to feel nothing of human anguish or human sympathy. He was a machine set in motion by the pressing needs of battle, and he went on and on in a haze. Men died in his arms or were transported to the First Aid where the doctors and Nurse Helen worked with incredible swiftness and skill.
He did not speak to Helen, nor did she notice him. Velo, still pale, kept doggedly at his task, only an occasional gleam of hatred lighting his eyes when he had to look at his fearless cousin. He was more than ever like a treacherous dog, watching, always watching for its chance for a throat-hold.
And somehow, without a spoken word, the thing became clear to Zaidos. All at once he knew how deeply and utterly his cousin hated him. He knew as well as if Velo had shouted it aloud that he meant to be the instrument of his death in some way or other, sooner or later. And Zaidos, filled with the frenzy of the battle, did not care. He was not afraid of Velo. He put him aside as though he was something that might be attended to later.
A sort of mental illumination came to Zaidos. He cared for wounded men with a quick skill that he had never known that he possessed. He grew so weary that he staggered under his part of the stretcher’s load. His leg pained him so that it was like a whip, keeping him awake and at work when all his body cried to drop down and sleep.
Once when he waited in the opening of the First Aid shelter, he was conscious that someone asked, “Have they broken our lines?”
“Not quite, but they are through the barbed wire. Our troops are massing along the first trench.”
“If we can hold out until dark we are all right,” said the first speaker, a captain with one leg gone at the knee, awaiting his turn with the doctor without the quiver of a muscle.
“The chaps over there beyond are pretty well tired out. I can tell by the way they are fighting. They are trying to save men.”
Zaidos hurried out and lost the rest. It seemed to him that the whole world was in conflict just ahead there. The bomb-proof shelter was crammed with reserves. On and on and on went the fighting; for years and years and years it seemed to Zaidos. He did not know that the day waned and night was near. All he knew was that at last, while he and Velo waited in the First Aid for the stretcher to be emptied, silence fell, a silence punctuated with scattering explosions. The darkness had ended the fighting, and the enemy had only reached the first line of trenches.
“It is over!” said the doctor, glancing up.
Velo sank down on a plank and covered his face with his hands. Zaidos, standing, closed his eyes.
“Let those boys rest for five minutes,” ordered the doctor.
Nurse Helen gently pushed Zaidos down on a bench. He toppled over and she put a folded cloak under his head. Then for thirty happy minutes he lost consciousness of everything. When an aide shook Zaidos awake, he came to himself with as much physical pain as though his body had actually felt the shock of wounds. He groaned involuntarily. Velo was sobbing dryly from fatigue and pain.
“Come, come, boys!” said the doctor. “Finish your good work! Here, take this.” He mixed something in a glass, and gave it to Zaidos, and then repeated the dose for Velo. It braced them at once, and after they had visited the cook house and had taken some hot soup, they prepared to go out on the field again and look for wounded.
The night seemed very dark as they stumbled along. The dead lay piled everywhere in hideous confusion. There seemed to be no wounded. Man after man they scanned with their flashlights. The unsteady lights often gave the dead the effect of motion. As they sent the ray here and there they thought they saw eyes open or close, arms move, legs stretch out, or mangled and tortured bodies twist in agony. But under their exploring hands the dead lay cold.
They reached the first line trench and passed beyond it. Here lay ranks of the enemy, mowed down under the pitiless English fire.
“There is someone living over here,” said Velo. “I heard a groan.”
They turned and found a group of men; three dead, and across their bodies two who surely moved.
Zaidos propped his light on the breast of one of the dead soldiers and lifted the head of a young officer whose shattered leg held him helpless. He was quite conscious, and spoke to Zaidos in a weak whisper.
“I’m gone!” he said. “See what you can do for the man lying on my leg. I would have bled to death long ago if it hadn’t been for his weight.”
Zaidos looked in his kit anxiously. It was almost empty and the bandage was all gone.
“Velo, get back to the station and bring me a fresh kit,” he ordered. “I’m going to hold this artery until you get back, and see if I can’t keep a little blood in here.” He sat down and pressed a finger on the fast emptying vein. With his free hand he held a flask to the lips of the almost dying man. Velo disappeared in the dark.
“Really, my dear chap,” said the wounded officer, “it’s a waste of time for you to do that. I wish you would jolly well leave me for some other chap. I’m done; and I don’t care in the least, so you need not trouble your conscience about me.”
Hurt to death as he was, the officer smiled; and Zaidos was all at once filled with the conviction that he was someone whom he had met. But where?
“That’s nonsense!” said Zaidos. “We will fix you up if you will make up your mind to hang on to yourself.”
“I’ve been hanging on for a good while,” said the officer pleasantly. “I’ve been here for a year or two, I think. I only came down from London for the night, you see. Not very long, eh, old chap?” He nodded his head.
“You what?” said Zaidos stupidly.
“London, you know,” said the officer. “I came down right away. I couldn’t be sure it was true. Seemed sort of unofficial, don’t you know?” He smiled again. Zaidos understood. He was delirious. He went on muttering disjointed sentences which Zaidos paid no attention to; but every time the man smiled his gay, light-hearted, unconscious smile, Zaidos felt the strange sense of acquaintance. He could see that the man was almost gone. He had lost almost all the blood in his body, and Zaidos did not dare to move him, nor even shift the weight of the unconscious but living man who laid across the shattered leg. Zaidos felt sure that he would die before Velo returned. And he was still more convinced that the man was at his end when after a few moments of stupor, he opened his eyes quite sanely and looked at Zaidos.
“That was a pretty bad blow for me, wasn’t it, old chap?” he said quietly. “I think I won’t make out to stop much longer. I’ve been here since eleven this morning. Pretty long for a man hurt like this. I am glad you ran across me. There’s a lot of papers in my blouse. Would you mind sending them to the address on the outside envelope? And I wish you would write to my father. Tell him it’s all right. Tell him not to let Frank enlist if he can help it. He’s too young. And if you can mark the place they put me, it would be a mighty kind thing. Mother would be so glad if she could have me safe in the church at home, some day. Will you do this?”
“Of course I will,” said Zaidos. “But I think you have got a chance.”
“I don’t want it,” said the wounded man. “I could not fight again, and there are reasons—I really don’t care a hang about living. Just send those letters for me. And one thing more,” he tried to lift his hand to his throat, but was too weak. “Will you kindly take off the chain under my blouse,” he said, “before anyone else gets here?”
Zaidos felt for the chain with his free hand, still pressing the artery with the other. As he found the chain, a large locket was released from the man’s blouse and, swinging against his buttons, sprung open. Unconsciously Zaidos looked at it.
“Send that with the rest,” said the officer. He closed his eyes.
“Here, you!” cried Zaidos. “Quit that! Don’t you dare go and die! Do you hear me! Don’t you do it! Do you hear? I want to talk! I don’t need to send this anywhere. If you just hang on, you will see her! Helen is here! Don’t die now! You want to see her, don’t you? I know who you are! You are Tony Hazelden!”
“Helen here?” gasped the man.
“Yes,” said Zaidos. “She is a nurse over there, a few yards away.”
“Helen here?” said the man again.
“Yes, I tell you!” cried Zaidos. “Hang on to yourself! You want to tell her why you did not answer that letter she wrote you; don’t you?”
“I never received a letter,” said Hazelden, for it was he.
“That’s what I told her,” said Zaidos. “Now you just hang on to yourself. Don’t you let go! Do whatever you like afterwards, but don’t make me go back there and tell her you have gone and died before I could get you in hospital. I’d like to know where that Velo is with my kit! Here, take another drink of this!”
He pressed the flask once more to Hazelden’s white lips. The man seemed sinking into a stupor. Zaidos watched him with secret terror. After the miracle of finding Hazelden here, when he was supposed by Helen to be far off in France, and after the brief joy of thinking that he might be the one to reunite the parted lovers, it was too hard to face the loss of his man. Zaidos kept calling him by name. Finally—it seemed a long, long time—Hazelden opened his eyes again.
“I can’t see just how it is,” he said. “Are you sure Helen is here?”
“Yes, she is here, I promise you,” said Zaidos. “And you want to brace up for her sake. For her sake, do you understand? Her heart is about broken. Don’t you go and die now after all the trouble you have made.”
Hazelden gave Zaidos a straight look.
“What are you thinking of?” he said in his weak whisper. “You don’t suppose I could die now, do you?”
“Here’s my kit,” said Zaidos, as Velo came hurrying up.
He fastened the artery rudely but well, and lifting off the unconscious soldier, they carefully placed Hazelden on the stretcher. Many, many times that day Zaidos had been thankful for his steel muscles and man’s stature, and now he was more thankful than ever. With all the care possible they carried their burden over the rough, uneven ground back to the First Aid Station.
Zaidos’ heart sang within him. The impossible had happened. He was bringing Tony Hazelden back to the girl who loved him, and Hazelden loved her. Zaidos knew that, not only because of the picture Tony carried, but because no one could have seen Hazelden’s face when he spoke Helen’s name and not know that his heart was breaking for her. Zaidos knew that Hazelden’s life hung on the merest thread, but he stoutly believed that his love for Helen would keep him alive until he reached her, at least, and after that Zaidos was willing to trust Helen to do the rest. Zaidos watched his helpless burden with anxiety as they approached the shelter. When they arrived he gave the word to Velo and they gently lowered the stretcher to the ground.
“Stay here a minute,” he ordered Velo, and slid down into the underground room. There was a lull in the dug-out as all the men had for the minute been cared for and sent back to the rear, which always is done as much as possible in the darkness.
The doctor and his aids, resting on the hard planks that served as seats, sat upright against the dirt wall, sound asleep. Nurse Helen stood at the white table cleaning the instruments. Zaidos scarcely recognized her. She was haggard and worn as a woman old in years. Color, energy, life itself seemed to have been drained out of her in the terrible ordeal of the past day. Zaidos hesitated. He was filled with fears all at once. It seemed so like planning the meeting of a couple of ghosts. Hazelden, unconscious and at the point of death, and Helen fagged out, worn, and looking like an old woman.
He went to her, tenderly laying a stained hand on hers.
“Helen,” he said, speaking rapidly, “I’ve no time to break the news to you. The most impossible sort of a thing has happened. You have got to hear it all at once, because there is a man almost dying out there and I’ve got to hurry. You know the reserves that came in to-day? Now hang on, Helen! Captain Hazelden was with them. Oh, Helen,” as she wavered and almost fell, “if you go to pieces you will always regret it!”
“Dead?” she murmured.
“No, but he’s outside awfully shot, and he has been keeping himself alive just to see you. You will have to help, Helen, if you can.”
He left her standing beside the table. She could not call the doctor. She could not speak. They came in with the stretcher, and as she saw its ghastly burden and gave a quick professional glance at his maimed body, the tender woman and the trained nurse struggled for the mastery. The nurse won. Swiftly she prepared the table, called the doctor and helped to lift him from the stretcher.
Zaidos and Velo left to rescue the man whose weight had kept the captain from bleeding to death. His scalp wound was serious but not dangerous, Zaidos decided, and they returned to the First Aid with lighter hearts.
The room was empty. Hazelden was not there. Zaidos’ heart dropped. Had he died?
Helen answered the question in his face. She came to meet Zaidos. Her eyes shone, her cheeks were the loveliest pink. Her step was light.
“Well?” said Zaidos.
“More than well!” said Helen. “Oh, John, it is wonderful! Wonderful! And you brought me my happiness! I am to be transferred to the field hospital tomorrow, where I can nurse him myself. He will live; he must live! We could not talk, but he knew me. And I know everything is all right!”