THE CHEVALIER

Hildas friends in England had prepared a surprise for her. It was engineered by a wise and energetic old lady in London, who had been charmed with the daring of the American girl at the front. So, without Hildas knowledge, she published the following advertisement:

“’Hilda’ -- Will every Hilda, big and little, in Great Britain and Ireland, send contributions for a ‘Hilda’ motor ambulance, costing L500, to be sent for service in Pervyse, to save wounded Belgian soldiers from suffering? It will be run by a nurse named Hilda. ‘Lady Hildas’ subscribe a guinea, ‘Hildas’ over sixteen, half-guinea, ’Little Hildas’, and ‘Hildas’ in straightened circumstances, two-shillings-and-sixpence.”

That was the “Personal” on the front page of the London Times, which had gone out over the land.

Hilda’s life at the front had appealed to the imagination of some thousands of the Belgian soldiers, and to many officers. The fame of her and of her two companions had grown with each week of the wearing, perilous service, hard by the Belgian trenches. Gradually there had drifted out of the marsh-land hints and broken bits of the life-saving work of these Pervyse girls, all the way back to England. The Hildas of the realm had rallied, and funds flowed into the London office, till a swift commodious car was purchased, and shipped out to the young nurse.

And now Hilda’s car had actually come to her, there at the dressing-station in Pervyse. The brand new motor ambulance was standing in the roadway, waiting her need. Its brown canopy was shiny in the sun. A huge Red Cross adorned either side with a crimson splash that ought to be visible on a dark night. The thirty horse-power engine purred and obeyed with the sympathy of a high-strung horse. Seats and stretchers inside were clean and fresh for stricken men. From Hilda’s own home town of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, had come a friendship’s garland of one hundred dollars. She liked to fancy that this particular sum of money had passed into the front wheels, where the speed was generated.

“My car, my very own,” she murmured. She dreamed about it, and carried it in her thoughts by day. She had fine rushes of feeling about it, too. It must do worthy work, she said to herself. There could be no retreating from bad pockets with that car. There must be no leaving the wounded, when the firing cuts close, no joy-riding.

She could not help feeling proud of her position. There was no other woman out of all America who had won through to the front. And on all the Western battle-line of four hundred miles, there were no other women, save her and her two friends, who were doing just this sort of dangerous touch-and-go work. With her own eyes she had read the letters of more than two hundred persons, begging permission to join the Corps. There were women of title, professional men of standing. What had she done to deserve such lucky eminence? Why was she chosen to serve at the furthest outpost where risk and opportunity went hand in hand?

Dr. Neil McDonnell, leader of the Ambulance Corps, had brought a party of her friends from Furnes, to celebrate the coming of the car. Dr. McDonnell was delighted with every success achieved by his “children.” When the three women went to Pervyse, and the fame of them spread through the Belgian Army, the Doctor was as happy as if a grandchild had won the Derby. He was glad when Mrs. Bracher and “Scotch” received the purple ribbon and the starry silver medal for faithful service in a parlous place. He was now very happy that Hilda’s fame had sprung to England, taken root, and bloomed in so choice a way. He had a curiously sweet nature, the Doctor, a nature without animosities, absent-minded, filmed with dreams, and those dreams large, bold and kindly.

“Your car is better than a medal,” he said; “a medal can’t save life, but this car will. This is as good as an endowed hospital bed. It’s like the King’s touch; it heals everyone who comes near. May its shadow never grow less.”

“I hope they won’t shoot away its bonnet,” said Hilda; “there’s nothing so dead-looking as a wrecked ambulance. I saw one the other day on the Oestkirke road. It looked like a summer-resort place in winter.”

“No danger,” replied the Doctor, who was of a buoyant cast; “you are born lucky. You’re one of the Fortunate Seven. You know there are Seven Fortunate born in each generation. All the good things come to them without striving. You are one of the Fortunate Seven.”

“We shall see,” responded Hilda.

The Doctor was just starting back to Furnes, when he remembered what he had come for.

“By the way,” he called to Hilda, “what driver do you want?”

“Smith, of course,” she answered. “Whom could I want but Smith? He is quite the bravest man I have met in the twenty weeks out here.”

“He’s only a chauffeur,” remarked one of the Corps.

“Only a chauffeur,” echoed Hilda; “only the man who runs the car and picks up the wounded, and straps in the stretchers. Give me Smith, every time ” she ended.

“He looks like a hero, doesn’t he?” said the same member of the Corps.

“No, he doesn’t,” laughed Hilda, “and that’s the joke.”

Smith reported for duty early next morning.

“We must christen the car in some real way,” she said. “How shall it be, Smith?”

“Dixmude,” he answered. He generally dealt in replies of one word. He was a city lad, slight in frame, of pale, tired face.

“Yes, there is always work at Dixmude,” Hilda agreed.

They started on the six-mile run.

“What do you think of using black troops against white, miss?” asked Smith, after they had bowled along for a few minutes.

“I’m not a warlike person,” replied Hilda, “so I don’t know what’s the proper thing. But, just the same, I don’t like to see them using black men. They don’t know what they’re fighting about. Anyway, I’d rather help them, than shoot them.”

“It isn’t their fault, is it, miss?” said Smith.

“By no means,” returned Hilda; “they deserve all the more help because they are ignorant.”

“That’s right enough, too,” agreed Smith and relapsed into his constitutional silence. He had a quiet way with him, which was particularly agreeable when the outer air was tense.

They rode on into Dixmude. The little city had been torn into shreds, as a sail is torn by a hurricane. But the ruined place was still treated from time to time with shell fire, lest any troops should make the charred wreckage a cover for advancing toward the enemy trenches. They rode on to where they caught a flash of soldiers’ uniform.

In a blackened butt of an inn, a group of Senegalese were hiding. They were great six-foot fellows, with straight bodies, and shoulders for carrying weights the face a black mask, expressionless, save for the rolling whites of the eyes, and the sudden startling grin of perfect white teeth, when trouble fell out of the sky. They had been left there to hold the furthest outpost. A dozen of them were hale and cheery. Two of them sat patiently in the straw, nursing each a damaged arm. Out in the gutter, fifty feet away, one sat picking at his left leg. Smith turned the car, half around, then backed it toward the ditch, then forward again, and so around, till at last he had it headed back along the road they had come. Then he brought it to a standstill, leaving the power on, so that the frame of the car shook, as the body of a hunting dog shakes before it is let loose from the leash.

There was a wail in the air overhead, a wail and then a roar, as a shell cut close over the hood of the ambulance and exploded in the low wall of the house opposite. Three more came more quickly than one could count aloud.

“Four; a battery of four,” said Hilda.

The enemy artillery had sighted their ambulance, and believing it to contain reinforcements or ammunition, were leveling their destruction at it. The high car with its brown canvas covering was a fair mark in the clear morning light. Hilda motioned the two wounded men in the inn to come to the car. They slowly rose to their feet, and patiently trudged out into the road. Smith gave them a hand, and they climbed upon the footboard of the ambulance, and over into the interior. One of the black men called harshly to the man in the ditch down the road. He turned from his sitting posture, fell over on his face, and then came crawling on his hands and knees.

“Why doesn’t he walk?” asked Hilda.

“Foot shot away,” replied Smith.

She saw the raw, red flesh of the lower leg, as if the work of his maker had been left incompleted. Again in the air there was the moan of travelling metal, then the heavy thud of its impact, the roar as it released its explosive, and the shower of brick dust, iron and pebbles. Again, the following three, sharp and close, one on the track of the other.

“They’ve got our range all right,” said Smith.

The black man, trailing his left leg, seemed slow in coming, as he scratched along over the ground. This is surely death, Hilda said to herself, and she felt it would be good to die just so. She had not been a very sinful person, but she well knew there had been much in her way of doing things to be sorry for. She had spoken harshly, and acted cruelly. She had brought suffering to other lives with her charm. And, suddenly in this flash of clear seeing, she knew that by this single act of standing there, waiting, she had wiped out the wrong-doing, and found forgiveness. She knew she could face the dark as blithely as if she were going to her bridal. Strange how the images of an old-fashioned and outgrown religion came back upon her in this instant. Strange that she should feel this act was bringing her an atonement and that she could meet death without a tremor. The gods beyond this gloom were going to be good to her, she knew it. They would salute Smith and herself, as comrades unafraid.

She was glad, too, that her last sight of things would be the look at the homely face of Smith, as he stood there at his full height, which was always a little bent, very much untroubled by the passing menace. She did not know that there was anyone with whom she would rather go down than with the ignorant boy, who was holding his life cheap for a crippled black man. Somehow, being with him in this hour, connected her with the past of her own life, for, after her fashion, she had tried to be true to her idea of equality. She had always felt that such as he were worthy of the highest things in life. And there he stood, proving it. That there was nobody beside herself to see him, struck her as just a part of the general injustice. If he had been a great captain, doing this thing, he would go down a memory to many. Being an unknown lad of the lower class, he would be as little recognized in his death as in life. It was strange what racing and comprehensive work her brain compassed in a little moment. It painted by flashes and crowded its canvas with the figures of a life-time. Only those who have not lived such a moment, doubt this.

Then came two more shells, this time just in front of the car and low. And now the negro, creeping along, had reached the car. Smith and Hilda lifted him in, and waved good-bye to the black men flattened against the wall of the inn. Smith put on power, and they raced to the turn of the road.

There at the cross-roads, on horseback, was Hilda’s faithful and gallant friend, Commandant Jost, friend of the King’s. He was using his field-glasses on the road down which they had sped.

“C’est chaud,” called Hilda to her old friend, “it was lively.”

“Yes,” he answered soberly. “I just came up in time to see you. I didn’t know it was you. I have been watching your car with my glasses. They nearly hit you. I counted ten reports into the street where you were.”

“Yes,” returned Hilda, “but all’s well that ends well.”

“How many men did you rescue?” asked the Commandant.

“Three,” answered the girl; “the last fellow came slowly. His foot was bad.”

The Commandant dismounted and came round to the back of the car. He threw up the hood.

“You did this for black men?” he said slowly.

“Why not?” asked Hilda in surprise. “If they’re good enough to fight for us, they’re good enough to save.”

“The King shall know of this,” he said; “it means a decoration. I will see to it.”

Hilda’s face lighted up for an instant. Then the glow died down; she became grave.

“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.”