On the Edge of the War Zone. Mildred Aldrich

I wonder if that is not Nature's narcotic for all experiences outside those we are to expect from Life, which, in its normal course, has tragedies enough.

      Then again, sometimes, in the night, I have a sensation as if I were getting a special view of a really magnificent spectacle to which the rest of "my set" had not been invited—as if I were seeing it at a risk, but determined to see it through.

      I can imagine you, wrinkling your brows at me and telling me that that frame of mind comes of my theatre-going habit. Well, it is not worth while arguing it out. I can't. There is a kind of veil over it.

      Nor were the day's mental adventures over.

      I was just back from my promenade when my little French friend from the foot of the hill came to the door. I call her "my little friend," though she is taller than I am, because she is only half my age. She came with the proposition that I should harness Ninette and go with her out to the battlefield, where, she said, they were sadly in need of help.

      I asked her how she knew, and she replied that one of our old men had been across the river and brought back the news that the field ambulance at Neufmortier was short of nurses, and that it was thought that there were still many wounded men in the woods who had not yet been picked up.

      I asked her if any official call for help had come. She said "No," but she presented so strong a case in favor of volunteering that, at first, it seemed to me that there was nothing to do but go, and go quickly.

      But before she got outside the gate I rushed after her to tell her that it seemed impossible—that I knew they didn't want an old lady like me, however willing, an old lady very unsteady on her feet, absolutely ignorant of the simplest rules of "first aid to the wounded," that they needed skilled and tried people, that we not only could not lend efficient aid, but should be a nuisance, even if, which I doubted, we were allowed to cross the Marne.

      All the time I was explaining myself, with that diabolical dual consciousness which makes us spectator and listener to ourselves, in the back of my brain—or my soul—was running this query: "I wonder what a raw battlefield looks like? I have a chance to see if I want to—perhaps." I suppose that was an attack of involuntary, unpremeditated curiosity. I did not want to go.

      I wonder if that was not the sort of thing which, if told in the confessional in ancient times, got one convicted of being "possessed of the devil"?

      Of course Mlle. Henriette was terribly disappointed. Her mother would not let her go without me. I imagine the wise lady knew that I would not go. She tried to insist, but my mind was made up.

      She argued that we could "hunt for the dead," and "carry consolation to the dying." I shook my head. I even had to cut the argument short by going into the house. I felt an imperative need to get the door closed between us. The habit I have—you know it well, it is often enough disconcerting to me—of getting an ill-timed comic picture in my mind, made me afraid that I was going to laugh at the wrong moment. If I had, I should never have been able to explain to her, and hope to be understood.

      The truth was that I had a sudden, cinematographical vision of my chubby self—me, who cannot walk half a mile, nor bend over without getting palpitation—stumbling in my high-heeled shoes over the fields ploughed by cavalry and shell—breathlessly bent on carrying consolation to the dying. I knew that I should surely have to be picked up with the dead and dying, or, worse still, usurp a place in an ambulance, unless eternal justice—in spite of my age, my sex, and my white hairs—left me lying where I fell—and serve me good and right!

      I know now that if the need and opportunity had come to my gate—as it might—I should, instinctively, have known what to do, and have done it. But for me to drive deliberately nine miles—we should have had to make a wide detour to cross the Marne on the pontoons—behind a donkey who travels two miles an hour, to seek such an experience, and with several hours to think it over en route, and the conviction that I would be an unwelcome intruder—that was another matter.

      I am afraid Mlle. Henriette will never forgive me. She will soon be walking around in a hospital, looking so pretty in her nurse's dress and veil. But she will always think that she lost a great opportunity that day—and a picturesque one.

      By the way, I have a new inmate in my house—a kitten. He was evidently lost during the emigration. Amélie says he is three months old. He arrived at her door crying with hunger the other morning. Amélie loves beasties better than humans. She took him in and fed him. But as she has six cats already, she seemed to think that it was my duty to take this one. She cloaked that idea in the statement that it was "good for me" to have "something alive" moving about me in the silent little house. So she put him in my lap. He settled himself down, went to sleep, and showed no inclination to leave me.

      At the end of two hours he owned me—the very first cat I ever knew, except by sight.

      So you may dismiss that idea which torments you—I am no longer alone.

      I am going to send this letter at once to be dropped in the box in front of the post-office, where I am very much afraid it may find that of last week, for we have had no letters yet nor have I seen or heard anything of the promised automobile postale. However, once a stamped letter is out of my hand, I always feel at least as if it had started, though in all probability this may rest indefinitely in that box in the "deserted village."

II

       Table of Contents

      September 25, 1914

      IT is over a week since I wrote you. But I have really been very busy, and not had a moment.

      To begin with, the very day after I wrote to you, Amélie came down with one of her sick headaches, and she has the most complete sort I ever met.

      She crawled upstairs that morning to open my blinds. I gave one look at her, and ordered her back to bed. If there is anything that can make one look worse than a first-class bilious attack I have never met it. One can walk round and do things when one is suffering all sorts of pain, or when one is trembling in every nerve, or when one is dying of consumption, but I defy anyone to be useful when one has an active sick headache.

      Amélie protested, of course; "the work must be done." I did not see why it had to be. She argued that I was the mistress, "had a right to be attended to—had a right to expect it." I did not see that either. I told her that her logic was false. She clinched it, as she thought, by declaring that I looked as if I needed to be taken care of.

      I was indignant. I demanded the handglass, gave one look at myself, and I was inclined to let it slide off the bed to the floor, à la Camille, only Amélie would not have seen the joke. I did look old and seedy. But what of that? Of course Amélie does not know yet that I am like the "Deacon's One Hoss Shay"—I may look dilapidated, but so long as I do not absolutely drop apart, I can go.

      So I told Amélie that if I were the mistress, I had a right to be obeyed, and that there were times when there was no question of mistress and maid, that this was one of those times, that she had been a trump and a brick, and other nice things, and that the one thing I needed was to work with my own hands. She finally yielded, but not to my arguments—to Nature.

      Perhaps owing to the excitement of three weeks, perhaps to the fact that she had worked too hard in the sun, and also, it may be, owing to the long run she took, of which I wrote you in my letter of last week, it is the worst attack I ever saw. I can tell you I wished for a doctor, and she is even now only a little better.

      However, I have had what we used to call "a real nice time playing house." Having nothing else to do, I really enjoyed it. I have swept and dusted, and handled all my little treasures, touching everything with a queer sensation—it had all become so very precious. All the time my thoughts flew back to the past. That is the prettiest thing about housework—one can think of such nice things when one is working with one's hands, and is alone. I don't wonder Burns wrote verses as he followed the plough—if he really did.

      I