Part 9 (1/2)
”Money? What for? Because the kid sc.r.a.ped an aileron? Forget it. I ain't puttin' up any holler. He's fetched an' carried for me all summer. I'm owin' him, if it comes down to that.”
”But Richard had no right to damage your machine-”
”Well, he never meant to. That squally gust put him off tack, else he'd 'a' brought her down smooth's a whistle. For, take it from me, he's a flier born. Hand, eye, balance, feel, he's got 'em all. And he's patient and speedy and cautious and reckless all at once. And he knows more about engines than I do, this minute. There's not a motor made that can faze him. Say, he's one whale of a kid, all right. If his folks would let me, I'd take him on as flyin' partner. Fifty-fifty at that.”
I stiffened a trifle.
”You are very kind. But such a position would hardly be fitting-”
”For a swell kid like him?” Under his helmet those keen eyes narrowed to twin points of light. ”Likely not. You rich hill folks can't be expected to know your own kids. You'll send him to Harvard, then chain him up in a solid-mahogany office, with a gang of solid-mahogany clerks to kowtow to him, and teach him to make money. When he might be flyin' with me.
Flyin'-with me!” His voice shook on a hoa.r.s.e, exultant note. He threw back his head; from under the leathern casque his eyes flamed out over the world of sea and sky, his conquered province. ”When he might be a flier, the biggest flier the world has ever seen. Say, can you beat it?
_Can_ you beat it?”
His rudeness was past excuse. Yet I stood before him in the oddest guilty silence. Finally-
”But please let me pay you. That broken strut-”
”Nothing doing, sister. Forget it.” He bent to his work. ”Pay me? No matter if my plane did get a knock, it was worth it. Just to see that fat guy in white pants hot-foot it for deep water! Yes, I'm paid.
Good-by.”
Then, to that day of shards and ashes, add one more recollection-Buster's face when Aunt Charlotte laid it upon him that he should never again enter that hangar door.
”Aunt Charlotte! For Pete's sake, have a heart! I've got that plane eatin' out of my hand. If that plaguy cat's-paw hadn't sprung up-”
”You will not go to East Gloucester again, Richard. That ends it.” Aunt Charlotte swept from the room.
”Gee!” Buster's wide eyes filled. He slumped into the nearest chair.
”Say, Cousin Edie! Ain't I got one friend left on earth?”
”Now, Richard-”
”Can't you see what I'm tryin' to put over? I don't expect Aunt Charlotte to see. She's a pippin, all right, but that solid-ivory dome of hers-”
”_Richard!_”
”But you're different. You aren't so awful old. You ought to understand that a fellow just has to know about things-cars, s.h.i.+ps, aeroplanes, motors, everything!”
”But-”
”Now, Cousin Edith, I'm not stringin' you. I'm dead in earnest. I'm not tryin' to bother anybody; I'm just tryin' to learn what I've got to learn.” He leaped up, gripped my arm; his pa.s.sionate boy voice shrilled; he was droll and pitiful and insolent all in a breath. ”No, sirree, I ain't bluffin', not for a cent. Believe me, Cousin Edith, us fellows have got to learn how everything works, and learn it quick. I tell you, we've _got_ to know!”
Well.... All this was the summer of 1914. Three years ago. Three years and eight months ago, to be exact. Nowadays, I don't wear tea-rose crepe frocks nor slim French slippers. Our government's daily Hints for Paris run more to coa.r.s.e blue denim and dour woollen hose and clumping rubber boots. My once-lily hands clasp a scrubbing-brush far oftener than a hand at bridge. And I rise at five-thirty and gulp my scalding coffee in the hot, tight galley of Field Hospital 64, then set to work. For long before the dawn they come, that endless string of ambulances, with their terrible and precious freight. Then it's baths and food and swift, tense minutes in the tiny ”theatre,” and swifter, tenser seconds when we and the orderlies hurry through dressings and bandagings, while the senior nurse toils like a Turk alongside and bosses us meanwhile like a slave-driver. Every day my heart is torn open in my breast for the pain of my children, my poor, big, helpless, broken children. Every night, when I slip by to take a last peep at their sleepy, contented faces, my heart is healed for me again. Then I stumble off to our half-part.i.tioned slit and throw myself on my bunk, tired to my last bone, happy to the core of my soul. But day by day the work heaps up. Every cot is full, every tent overflowing. We're short of everything, beds, carbolic, dressings, food. And yesterday, at dusk, when we were all f.a.gged to exhaustion, there streamed down a very flood of wounded, eight ambulance-loads, harvest of a bombed munitions depot.
”We haven't an inch of room.”
”We've got to make room.” Doctor Lake, sweating, dog-tired, swaying on his feet from nine unbroken hours at the operating-table, took command.
”Take my hut; it'll hold four at a pinch. You nurses will give up your cubby-hole? Thought so. Plenty hot water, Octave? Bring 'em along.”
They brought them along. Every stretcher, every bunk, every crack was crowded now. Then came the whir of a racing motor. One more ambulance plunged up the sodden road.