9.

to talk to her, simply and frankly, and she had found him (if praise and
the personal note were avoided) rather eager to communicate his impressions
of the war, and his sense of the catastrophic horror and waste of what was
going on so few miles away.

"You hear the guns pretty distinctly here," he broke off once to say.
"They must make the windows rattle when everything's quiet, don't they?"

"Yes, they do," she murmured, fixing her eyes on the orchid which the
canonnade had been displaced just before dinner.

117

# THE MEN WHO SAVED THE WORLD.

## I.

Milly Arden, without telling her hostess, had stolen into the dining-room of the château, on her way up to dress for dinner; and glancing at the cards on the plates, she had discovered with a tremor that her seat was next to that of Captain Sherman Wake.

Mrs. Upshall, in the days of her pre-war hospitality, had always protested against "labelling" her guests, as she called it: she had a poor opinion of the mental capacity of a hostess who could not remember in what order the people she invited were to sit.

But on this occasion there had been agitating problems of precedence, combined with the all-absorbing business of getting out flowers and delicacies from Paris in a motor ostensibly set apart (as the magic initials on its front glass declared) for the transporting of the wounded; therefore, to abridge and simplify, Mrs. Upshall had directed her secretary to write the cards.

The long table looked its grandest, for the occasion was an important one. Milly Arden remembered the big dining-room thus before the war, when the proximity of the Chateau to a famous race (course and to several fashionable hunts had made it the frequent scene of showy destivity

It started her, almost, to see the room again in its old array, with roses and violets garlanding the expanse of damask between fruit dishe and candelabra of gold plate, and the disused electric wall-lights bringing out the tender bluish greens and peachy pinks of the Fragonard tapestries. Since 1914 the château had undergone many vicissitudes, and been exposed to many dangers. The wing which had been transformed into a hospital in 1915 had twice since been evacuated before the German advance; and the owners, when they were in residence, camped in a corner of the great

2.

building, and offered their visitors picnic dinners in the beautiful tiled scullery next to the kitchen. For a moment Milly Arden was shocked to think of flowers and hot-house fruits and champagne spread out on the very table where (it was one of the legends of the place) on a sinister winter morning of 1914 a haggard army surgeon had amputated uninterruptedly from dawn to dark — and begun again the next day?

But times were changed, thank heaven. When the wind was in a certain quarter the boom of the guns could be heard distinctly in the park, and sometimes even shook the tall windows of the house; but they were the guns of the victorious advance, and (if one could forget that the offensive was costing as many lives as the unsuccessful attempts preceding it) the sound carried hope and exultation to patriotic hearts. Besides, the occasion was not an ordinary one. An English army general had asked himself to dine, and in his honour Mrs. Upshall had invited the Préfet of the department, an American Senator, a celebrated French aviator, a contingent of pretty women from Paris and severak of the old steeple-chasing and hunting set from the neighbouring châteaux; so that for once the gold candelabra and the fruit and flowers were permissible — especially with the glorious news coming in every morning.

To do Madge Upshall justice, she had valiantly modified her whole way of life since the month of August 1914 had brought the enemy to her doors. That her conception of life had changed also, her penetrating young friend was not prepared to say: Milly cruelly suspected the Upshalls of having adopted their war-habits — the beautifully-run hospital included— from the same instinct of conformity that had made them such models of fashion before the war.

At any rate, Mrs. Upshall would never have transgressed the rules that governed her conduct by having flowers and champagne — yes, and gilt-edged menus ! — at a dinner before "things took a turn". At the little picnies in the scullery, champagne was permitted only to cook the truffles in; and the truffles, of course, were a present from a friend in Perigord.

3.

Some one once remarked that at Mrs. Upshall's war-dinners even the foie-gras and lobster were disguised as substitutes; and she was very strict about champagne, and allowed only whiskey to replace it, though at the moment whiskey cost considerably more than champagne.

"It's a question of *feeling*, not of money," she loftily explained to an old friend who had undelicately argued for Pommery on this ground.

Milly Arden took a long look at the glittering table, and murmured: "I wonder —"

What she wondered was, what "they" would think of it; and "they" were not the Préfet, nor the Senator, nor the English general even, but merely a handful of young officers, English and American, who were to fill in the chinks between the leading characters.

Milly Arden had arrived from America in June to act as nurse in her friend's hospital. She had not been in Europe since 1914, when she had been swept home by the perturbed parents with whom she was blissfully motoring through the Tyrol. In Paris, that September and October, she had lived through the days of high tension and tragic isolation of which no sensitive memory can ever lose the mark; then she had gone to England, on the way home, and witnessed there the girding up of the whole race to the awful task that faced it. She had conceived, then, great thoughts of both countries, and had carried home an imagination full of the pity and terror of their fate.

Perhaps because she was so young, and her soul so tender, the imprint burnt itself into her, and kept her, for the ensuing two years, in an agony of dread lest her own country should not rise to the same height. At last it rose, and Milly's day came. In awe and pride she watched the young men of her race go forth: watched them, not with the lightness of heart that, to some young eyes, turned the sight into a mere brave spectacle, like the setting out for some suber-olympian game, but gravely, reverently, fearfully, as one who had breathed the breath of the Furnace, who knew the price to be paid — and knew there was no other way of paying it...

4.

That day, she remembered, there had come back to her with peculiar uten
the vision of the long dining-table in the château, with the haggard army
surgeon amputating, amputating...

For a long time she had not even tried to come to Europe and take
a part in the business. It seemed too grave and great; she felt there was
work at home better proportioned to her capacity. And as every one else
wanted to go, it was easy enough to find a gap to fill. So she stayed.

But she had prepared herself early in the war for hospital work,
and when, one day Madge Upshall cabled that American nurses were badly
needed, she set out as soon as she could get her papers. She arrived in
July, just after the Upshall hospital had been reopened after its last
evacuation. It was full of French soldiers, and for a few weeks she had
been hard at work. Then, in obedience to another mysterious shifting of
the surgical organisation, the wards were emptied, and the "formation" left
idle. Soon after, her chance came to be taken into an American unit on the
Vosges front, and in two days she was to start.

So far she had even nothing of her own soldiers byt the rapid vision
of their brown ranks marching through beflagged Paris on the Fourth of
July: a picture balancing the vision of the departing regiments that her
eyes had yearned after from a New York window two years earlier.

Even on the Fourth — only a few weeks ago — as she looked down
the Champs Elysées at the long rhythmic line of soldiers, she and they
were staring into an unknown future. The men were still untried, unproved:
she could only send out all her faith to them. But now — now the whole
world knew them!

It was that fact that made her heart give such a child's leap when
she saw the name of Sherman Wake next to hers. Everybody knew Sherman Wake
of the —th field artillery: his feats at Château Thierry were already
famous.

Milly-s interest was increased by the fact that she had heard of
him through a cousin who had been trained in the same western camp: heard

5.

of him as a slow lanky banker's clerk in a small Indiana town, suddenly
developing into a zealous and accomplished officer; not the boy-with-his-
first-rifle kind, but the thoughtful type of citizen-soldier which the
@reat War has found out and developed in out comfortable business communit

That kind of serious and thought-out heroism was the quality most
moving to the girl's fancy, and she felt a sudden embarrassment at the
idea that her first meeting with this young man, who had come to typify
for her the high crusading impulse of her country, should take place at a
dinner-party — and an Upshall dinner-party at that!

"What about dancing — don't you think we might?"

It was Mrs. Upshall's own voice at her elbow, profaning her dream.
She turned her astonished gaze on her hostess's small imperious face.

"Dancing —?"

"Why not? If it's arranged so that it seems just to happen? Why
do you stare at me like that? Haven't you seen today's communiqué? The
British have made another magnificent advance —"

"Yes: but it's costing such a lot — more than ever before. And
our men too — they're fighting terribly hard on our front."

Mrs. Upshall looked gently puzzled, as she did when people were
tactless. It pained her, and was so easy to avoid.

"How else should our men fight, darling? Of course they're
splendid! — Anyhow," she continued with anxious brows, "I know it's being
done every where: dancing, I mean. At Laure de Beaune's and Lady Elkridge's,
and heaps of other Paris houses."

She paused and bent over the table to tweak into place an orchid
disturbed by the last gun.

"We mustn't be selfish, Milly dear — we mustn't think only of
ourselves," she added brightly; and Milly murmured: "No" — and went
upstairs.

11.

6.

## II.

Was she disposed to judge her fellows more harshly instead of more indulgently than of old? If that was the effect she war had had on her, it really seemed as if Madge were right, and she had indeed been thinking only of herself — unconsciously situating her own scruples, sensibilities and prejudices in all those young hearts under the brown tunics as to whose secret mechanism she knew so little after all.

At any rate, she had undoubtedly formed the habit of viewing the world from what she supposed to be their angle of vision, of rushing ahead of them in eager deprecatory dashes, to explain, extenuate or condemn. Yes, decidedly, the habit was formed; and she had never felt herself more under its dominion than as she stood that evening in the long bright drawing-room and watched the Upshall's guests arrive.

It was actually her first contact with Society since she had landed in France, and she was startled and bewildered to see old faces and new clothes, where she had expected exactly the opposite impression. It was astonishing, how usual all the women looked (Mrs. Upshall had summoned a dozen of her youngest and prettiest friends — since it was a question of not being selfish); and the men too, unless they were in uniform. Perhaps it was the low-necked dressed, and the pearls (it had been decreed in Madge's set that pearls were always appropriate) that gave such an obsolete pre-war look to the scene. The great people, as they grouped themselves about the fire and under the soft lights, in the old easy drawing room attitudes, how they seemed to the girl's bewildered eyes like historic war works resuscitating a vanished world! As she watched them, falling so unconsciously into the old intonations and grimaces, she wondered — so much they seemed of a past — whether an archaeologist wouldn't have tried to pick out anachronisms in their make-up? And what would they seem to those others, the only real people, who had been summoned by Madge to fill

7.

up the interstices between her ghosts?

Out there, only a few miles beyond the softly curtained wondows,
there was hard fighting indeed: as hard as the war had seen. Out there,
at that very hour, men were falling by thousands to make the world safe —
for **this!** And some of the young officers at whose delay their host was
beginning to chafe were coming straight in from those scenes.

The "real people", as she called them, were late in arriving,
having been heard of and summoned at the last moment; but still, as Fred
Upshall said, his eye flitting from his wife to the Préfet — still, there
were limits, after all; wouldn't it perhaps be better to ring for dinner?

At that moment they came: half a dozen young men, two British
and four American, all embarrassed by the evident embarrassment they had
caused, in spite of everybody's loud and genial protests to the contrary.

Milly, from her corner, watched them enter, and instantly picked
out her man: the tallest, thinnest, saddes-looking, the one with red hair
and large gands, and a tunic that irrepressibly epressibly between his thin
shoulders.

"We don't give arms in the army zone — do we, General? We only
present them!" guffawed Upshall, as his wife, led the way to the dining-
room with the powdered Préféte. The other ladies followed, then the English
General, the French notables, the American Senator, the scarlet-tabled
divinities of the British Staff; the plain khaki which had kept them wait-
ing slipped in last, and the tall young man with large hands was hanging
helplessly in the doorway when Milly wentured: "I think you sit next to
me — Captain Wake?"

III.

"Oh — don't the men smoke in the dining-room?"

It broke from Captain Wake despairingly, as they rose at last
from the protracted feast; and though the question sent a pang through his
neighbour she understood.

8.

"No; it's not the French custom. I'm sorry; you're supposed to talk to the ladies all the evening. Mrs. Upshall will introduce you to all the others."

He did not look as disconcerted as she had expected: on the whole the prospect seemed to interest him. "It's exceedingly kind — I shall be most happy," he murmured.

She fell back, and communicated his case to Madge, who, with her quick social dexterity, instantly whirled him over to the **Préfète**, and then on from group to group, introducing with little laudatory phrases which caused the blood to rise to his brown temples. ("I should have left **that** out," Milly reflected critically.)

The circuit over, he had seated himself beside Mrs. Lorry Belmer — who certainly, if one looked at her with one's lids half-shut, presented an appearance of romping youth not out of harmony with her endearing nursery ways.

"It's natural he should choose her," Milly decided with impartiality. "She looks much less frightening than the others. He probably thinks she's a nice American school-girl. If only she had the sense to — !"

To what? Was Milly actually envying little Mrs. Belmer this chance of getting away for once from the atmosphere of stale gossip and forced flippancy in which she and her kind whizzed and hummed through an eternity of —

"She's probably never seen any one like him: staff officers are **he** nearest approach to the war," the young woman said to herself.

No petty feminine jealousy woke these criticisms in Miss Arden's bosom. Her two hours at Captain Wake's side had interested her profoundly: he was certainly, as her cousin had told her, the type of the grave and sensitive young American bound on the new Crusade. At first he had seemed startled even disturbed at finding himself surrounded by the Flower-Maiden she had caught him eyeing the bare shoulders and the "appropriate" pearls with something less like awe than disapproval. But presently he had begun

9.

"You hear the guns pretty distinctly here," he broke off once to say
"They must make the windows rattle when everything's quiet, don't they?"

"Yes, they do," she murmured, fixing her eyes on the orchid which th
canonnade had been displaced just before dinner.