It may be just as well that there are crises in human life when one acts without thinking. So it was now with Barbara Meade. She did not consider her own danger, nor perhaps the foolishness of her deed. All she saw was that Dick Thornton was lying defenseless upon the ground with a rain of shrapnel descending about him.
It may have been that he was dead and that nothing could further injure or aid him, but Barbara did not contemplate this. She did not cry for help nor even turn back for a moment toward the hospital. Quick as a flash, with the swift movement and decision characteristic of the girl, she darted from her own place of comparative safety out into the open field.
The ambulance had overturned slowly so that one-half of it had sunk down at[250] the side, but in any case the wounded men were safer within its covered walls than under the angry skies.
It required only a few moments for the girl to reach the prostrate figure of the American boy. He had not stirred after his fall, so that Barbara instantly dropped down on her knees beside him and with a nurse’s knowledge took hold of the limp hand that was lying in the dust, to count the beating of his pulse. It was so faint she could hardly be sure of it.
She must find out his injury, and yet first he must be gotten to a place of greater security.
Curious that Barbara, who had been so fearful of the horrors of war, should be so fearless now! But it did not occur to her that she was in equal peril there by the body of her wounded friend. The gun fire which might again strike him was equally apt to choose her for a victim.
Indeed, the girl’s body partly covered that of the boy as she leaned over him and seizing him firmly by the shoulders began dragging him backwards.
[251]
If they could get behind the partly overturned ambulance perhaps in a little while the firing might cease in their neighborhood long enough for the hospital staff to rescue them.
Barbara set her teeth. If she had been weary a short while before she had forgotten it now. But Dick was tall and heavy and she was so stupidly, ridiculously small. However, Barbara made no effort to be gentle. If Dick had been a log of wood that she had been forced to bring to a certain spot she would have hauled it in much the same way.
Yet once she believed she heard Dick groan and this was perhaps her one consciously glad moment, for at least he was alive; before she had not been altogether sure.
But once behind the wagon, Barbara sat down and drew Dick’s head into her lap. Gently she pushed the hair back from his face and then from a little canteen she always carried poured a few drops of water between his lips. He seemed to swallow them. She could see now that his right[252] shoulder had been struck and that his arm hung strangely at his side. There might be other worse injuries, of course, but this one she could discern.
Then Barbara wiped the grime from her companion’s face with the white linen cloths she had in her pocket. Only then did the tears start to her eyes, because the blood which had been stopped by the dirt encrusting it began to flow afresh. Dick also had a wound across his face. It did not appear serious, but Barbara had suddenly thought of Mrs. Thornton’s pride in Dick’s appearance and of what she would suffer should she see him like this. The girl had a sudden, unreasonable feeling of resentment against Dick himself. After all, what right had he to risk his life in this horrible war? He was an American and owed no duty to another country.
The next instant Barbara realized her own absurdity. Was she not in her way doing just what Dick had done, only of course far less nobly and well? And after all, were not men and women fighting for the right, brothers and sisters in the divinest sense?
[253]
When Dick Thornton finally opened his eyes Barbara was crying in earnest. It was ridiculous and utterly undignified of her. Here she had done the bravest kind of deed quickly and efficiently, but now that she should be showing all the calmness of a well-regulated trained nurse, she had taken to weeping.
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