The House on Ellis Avenue --- Chapter 24

     I looked around the canteen and wondered with dull amazement what I had become use to.  Already it seemed normal to be standing in a tent pitched over mud --- mud that had dried and hardened in the middle but was treacherously wet and slippery around the edges where the rain leaked in.  The canteen fire burned continuously in a field range in one corner.  The canteen marmite sat on the range.  It was filled with a dark fluid made of a lot of French water and whatever American cocoa I had on hand.  Canned milk and sugar were added as supply permitted.  It was not much, but it was hot.  It was something to give the lines of exhausted men that came flooding through the tent flap.

     The cups lay on a rough counter.  They were never washed.  I had no time for that and, anyway, it did not matter.  No one cared.  No one was even remotely clean themselves anymore, including me.

     I was the only worker in the canteen.  It was hard to believe that at one time I had belonged to a life where people sat at table being waited upon, gathered in the drawing room for tea, and had their lights turned off for them when they went to bed.  Kneeling before the field range on a small section of duckboard trying to make wet wood burn, I knew I did not look as though I had ever been in a drawing room.  But it did not make any difference to anyone that my hands were rough and bleeding, that my stomach knotted from too little food, poorly cooked, that my eyes were red rimmed from a fire that smoked and too little sleep, that my clothes were grey splatterings of mud and cocoa.  The important thing was that I was strong enough for the work, and that I could keep on doing it. 

     A very subdued Rosie was up and around, but Doctor Murphy was being careful of her.  He made her duty as light as possible under the circumstances.  She worked in the hospital serving the men and writing letters.  She did not have much to say anymore, but I knew that she was glad to be up rather than lying alone in the dim tent listening to the incessant thudding of guns and watching the wet misty rain drift past the doorway.

     We seldom met now that she no longer lay on the cot in our tent.  In fact, I seldom even saw the other two girls with whom we shared the tent.  Days and nights ran together in a grey stream.  There were no scheduled stops for food or for sleep.  I grabbed them when there was no possibility of doing anything else.  The weeks blurred by and became months.  It had been September when the guns of the AEF had begun to pound.  And then one day I heard someone say it was October.  Not that being October made any difference.  There was the same grey sky, the same rain and mud and cold, the same noise, the same unending stream of trucks going up with munitions and returning with men or what was left of them.

     In this sort of life some people went mad, but I found there was no need of that.  All I had to do was keep telling myself that this was just what I had expected.  I had to push the girl in the playroom in Chicago wielding her pins to the back of my mind and keep telling myself that this was what I had really expected.  This was war and in war there was noise, and people died, and there was blood, and there was horror in men’s faces.  I had not expected anything else, had I?  So, I went on as though I did not mind any of it – not even the abrupt and final ending of so much youth.

     “Ca manqué,” said the French.  “It is lacking.”  They were right.  I rarely had any soap for scrubbing.  I substituted sand.  Fuel was scarce.  I never had all the cocoa I needed or all the milk or sugar or, in fact, enough of anything.  One shrugged and said, “Ca manqué.  C’est la guerre,” and went on.

     There may have been shortages, but I remembered the early days at Issoudun and had brought with me the most essential tool of my calling---a dishrag.  All of my waking hours I worked with it or guarded it ---a folded damp square in my pocket.  When I went to the cold tent for whatever sleep I could get, the rag, like Matthew’s silver belt, went under the mattress.  I often thought of the cooks in the kitchen at home who had many dishrags, and always knew there were more.  Nowadays, I could not afford to waste –even a dishrag.

     Now.  Was it time that made the difference between things or was it place?  Issoudun had been a new world, and this was still another.  The people in it were the same, and yet a change had come over them.  They were dulled.  They no longer laughed.  They were not sullen, just serious.  They were attuned to things that had nothing to do with laughter.  Hunger and cold and weariness and the question, “How will it be to die before I have lived?”  Each face seemed to become more greedy for life as it turned towards the front. 

     Did one always have to be taken to the very tag end of life to begin to appreciate it?  Alone in this God-forsaken spot, in the middle of a cold bleak hell, I began to look at my life.  In the moments before sleep at night I would think about Papa and Mamma, Trixie and James and Matthew.

     Trixie’s death had rocked me to the core.  The nurse standing behind us, Nanny and me turning slowly around.  There had been silence and then Nanny had just stood up and said, “I will tell her parents.”  I was so torn I could not even cry.  I just went into the old playroom and sat in a chair hearing Trixie’s voice all around me.  It had all been my fault.  Matthew had been so right.  We were all human and I was the most human of all.  If I had stayed with her, guarded her, instead of trying to escape from her world.  If I had gone to the doctor with her instead of waiting at home.  If only I had not been so sheltered, so stupid.  Did she really know that it did not matter to me?  That I would have loved her no matter what?  My fault.  My fault.  I had loved Trixie and I had failed her.  I should have brushed aside doctors and nurses and gone to her side and made her live.  She might not have given up if I had been at her side fighting with her.

     What had happened to us all, that family that had sat around the dining room table the day of the fateful fire?   Mamma never again left her bed after Trixie died, growing fainter and fainter and more removed every day.  Papa stopped having his music friends in, and sequestered himself for hours in his study, emerging only to eat meals.  James had turned into a resentful, self-important man.  And I had not been able to leave my past behind me for long enough to embrace the love of someone who, for the first time in my life, saw me as I wanted to be seen.   

     I looked up.  A man stumbled in.  I went back to the counter to get him a cup of cocoa.  He was a tall man, limping slightly.  He did not see the puddle at the door and almost slipped, righting himself at the last moment.  He came forward and leaned on the counter, his head resting on his hands ---waiting.  I noticed that there was mud not only on his boots, but on his uniform.  He must have been down in it somewhere out there.  He must be cold.  I filled a cup and held it out to him.  He did not move.

     “Here’s your drink.”

     He raised his head.  “Thanks, Val.”  He lifted his cup as if in a toast to me, the steam of the cocoa mingling with his breath in a rising spiral. 

     Matthew. My heart began to pound, my face felt hot.  I had to struggle not to cry.  I tried to say something, but nothing came.  I stood staring at him as he tipped back his head and emptied the cup.  I searched his face and could find nothing to remind me of that night in August.  Yet, I could feel the ring around my neck. It seemed to grow heavier, until I almost felt as if I could not hold my head up.

     I took a deep breath.  “What---what are you doing here?  Matthew what happened to you?  Your leg?  Where is your squadron?”

     The eyes that had been merely neutral turned bitter.  “My squadron.  Hardy has it.  That’s who.  Hardy.  The man who couldn’t do the job I had to do for him.  So, they gave him my squadron as a reward for his lack of effort.  My squadron.”

     “Then what happened?”

     “I’m hungry.  That’s what happened.  Have you got anything to eat?”

     I quickly got a piece of bread from my basket and gave it to this man who seemed a stranger.  He was keeping me away, holding me off.  He seemed content to eat his bread in silence and I could think of nothing to say in the face of his bitterness.  I wanted to help him, but I could not bridge the wall that he had built around himself.  He finished his bread and cocoa and carefully put the cup down on the counter.

     “Can I give you some more?”

     “No.  I’ve had my one cup.  Let’s stick to the proper ration.  Let’s all do the right thing.  It pays ---for someone somewhere, I’m sure.”

     I made one final desperate try.  “Please, please tell me what happened.” 

    There was a long silence and then he said, “Why the hell not.” And then there was silence again.

     I said into the silence, “You were going to Toul.”

     “Toul.  Yes.  Headquarters.”  His eyes wandered resting finally on the steaming marmite in the corner.  The edge had left his voice and he fumbled with a button on his coat, twisting it viciously.  “Plans for the offensive were in the final stage.  They talked about a squadron.  I waited.  No orders.”

     The button would fall off pretty soon, and there would be no way to put it on again.

     “Orders came---for Hardy.  A squadron.”

     The button fell --- out of sight.  But I had no thread anyway.

     “Then orders came for me.”  His hand gripped the edge of the counter.  “I was to go back to another training center and straighten out another mess.”

    I felt his pain as if it had been my own.  I hurt for him and there was nothing I could do.  I tried to think of some words that would give him some comfort, but there were none.  I felt tears trickle down my cheeks and fought them back.

     “I offered to forfeit my rank if they would let me go as a pilot to fly over the front.  No.  But they would give me ten days leave and a promotion --- a lieutenant colonel who would be used only for looking after naughty little boys.  Now I said no.  I marched over to infantry headquarters and was at the front before anyone knew what I was doing. I may never fly another plane, but at least I’m being used.”

     Then a new expression came over his face.  “I found a place there in spite of wishing I was up in the sky.  I might have a major’s insignia on my uniform, but the farm boy is not buried very deep.  I understood those boys in the trenches in a way that many of the other officers didn’t.  And they recognized and trusted me.  We faced the mud and the rain and the booming guns and the German snipers together.  We were there to see each other through this hell.  These were not the spoiled children of Issoudun, but the backbone of the country who knew what it was like to work hard, and go without, and face whatever came their way with courage.”  There was suddenly a light in his eyes, dim but a light. 

    “Where are you going now?”

     His eyes focused on me once more.  “I was in a division that lost contact with the Germans.  We were heavily attacked, and two regiments were badly mauled.  I’m on my way back now to bring up reinforcements.  As soon as a truck arrives, I’ll catch a ride to the rear.”

    Just then the guns in the distance lulled for a moment and coming over the top of the canteen I could hear the sound of a plane.  Matthew heard it too.  He turned, an intent look on his face.  “That must be a Jenny.  God what a waste.  What a damnable waste.  I should be flying.”

     We stood there in the same room but each in our own worlds.  I was unbathed, my hands cracked and bleeding as were my lips in the never ending rain and cold.  My uniform was stained, and I had lost so much weight it hung on me in folds. I knew my eyes had dark circles under them, and deep lines of tiredness were etched on my face.  The naïve girl of the troop ship in her brand-new wool uniform was a million miles away.  As was the major sitting at a head table, assured of his role as a pilot. 

     But stripped bare as we were, we were each down to our essential elements.  I now understood what made the bond between men and women.  It was not social standing or wealth or the ability to navigate complex social occasions or the strictures of a rigid society.  It was when hearts met hearts that understood and accepted what each one was.  My heart was truly his, even if my actions had turned him away forever.  This had been my one true chance to find a real partner for life and I had not understood what that meant any more than Trixie had. She had tried to avoid the life her parents had and I had been afraid to giving up my autonomy for any man.  

     Quietly I reached under my uniform and took out the chain with his ring hanging from it.  “This has not left me for one minute since we parted.”  I stood there, still as a statue, while he slowly turned and looked at me.

     He stood there unmoving while I looked steadfastly at him.  There was no turning or shying away from what was between us.  He studied me for a moment before moving in close.  He put his hands on either side of my face, his hands shaking slightly, but his breathing steady and calm.  Outside the dull light of dawn was lifting the darkness.  I looked into his face, grey with fatigue, as dirty as mine.  I could really see now --- his eyes, the color of a summer sky, the lines of weariness about his mouth, and then the voice I remembered from a garden of struggling poppies.

     “Valerie ---Valerie my dearest.”

     Then we both heard the roar of a truck as it drove up to the canteen.  His hands left my face, and he was gone, the tent flap swinging for a moment aa he passed through it.  I slowly put the ring back under my uniform, but I was transformed. It had been enough. 

     Soon enough the empty canteen was full, long lines of men waiting for a drink and some bread. This was reality, these long lines, the fires, the cocoa, the guns, the rain, and the dishrag.  Sometimes I had a hard time believing that our brief encounter had not been a dream, but then I would finger the ring where it lay hidden on my chest and continue on with the never-ending routine.

     The days flowed by in a dull stream.  I steeled myself to face each one as it came.  One day I was brought word of a roadblock half a mile up the road.  Trucks loaded with wounded were unable to get to the hospital.  Trucks filled with men in pain, sitting in the cold and mud, not moving.  I stoked the fire, filled two pitchers with hot chocolate and a basket with cups.  I pulled my cape tightly around me and headed out of the canteen and up the road.

     The weight of the pitchers and cups pushed me into the mud, my feet making little sucking noises at each step.  After a while I heard voices and made out an overturned truck and another and perhaps a third.  I did not stop to count but went beyond the jumble of steel to the first in a line of vehicles.  As I approached a driver came from behind the truck.

     “I just looked in to check,” he said, “and one of ‘ems dead.  You’re a nurse aren’t you? He asked peering at my white coif.

     “No, but I have some hot cocoa for you and ---“

     “That’s great.  I’ve got only two left, but they’d appreciate it.”

     I set my pitcher on the running board.  With my free hand I took a cup from the basket and poured a drink. 

     “One of these boys is shrapnel, the other blind from gas.  Here, Buddy, cocoa coming up.”

     I walked through the night and the mud, stopping at each vehicle to pour drinks.  I knew as I went that once more, it was not the drink but the knowledge that I had made the effort to come to them.  The greater my effort, the more it was worth. 

     I drained the last pitcher and headed back.  I found the canteen empty, the fire almost out.  I stoked it quickly wondering if the division that had lost contact had recovered.  The guns were beating against the horizon as though they would burst through an out into space.

     I thought about the men in the trucks, the men I had just seen.  The living lying beside the dead.  Soon they would be brought back here to Triage, to be sorted and often in the sorting the best went to death, the worst to life.  There was no reason for it.  Or perhaps, I had ceased to know how to reason.  It was better just to keep my mind on mechanical things.  I poured milk into the marmite and took the dishrag out of my pocket and gave the counter a wipe. 

     I was beyond surprise when I looked up and saw Basil Carter standing in front of me.

     “Hi, Val.”  His greeting was casual as if had just parted yesterday.  But there was a strained look in his eyes that had not been there before.  Even Basil Carter could not remain untouched by the death and destruction that surrounded us.

     He looked around the tent, a little of his old arrogance showing for a moment.  “Not the best working conditions, are they?”

     “Not for any of us.”  I stood there looking steadily waiting for what he might say next.  Not only was the girl in the playroom gone, but the girl in Issoudun as well.

     In spite of himself Bazz looked uncomfortable, tentative, stripped of his self-assurance.  “Look, I’m sorry about that mess the last time I saw you.  I was just so damn angry at everything, and I don’t know….”  He trailed off and I remained silent. 

     He finally said, “Well, I have had time to think and---“

     I broke in as I did not want to hear any more.  The past seemed lost in the rainy mists, the ever-present mud, and the pounding guns.  I did not want to hear Bazz’s version of anything. “Something like that does not seem very important here.”  I turned to stir whatever was in the marmite.

     “Heard anything from Major Brandt?”  Bazz’s voice was overly casual as he played with a cup on the counter.

     “He was though here.”

     “I heard he was on the ground.  Didn’t get a squadron.”

     I kept stirring, my back to him.  “No, he didn’t”

     “Too bad.  Old Branding Iron would have done a good job.”  I whipped around in surprise.  Bazz continued.  “I know.  I’ve done a little growing up in this war.  Guess it was long overdue.  Listen, Val.  I don’t ---I don’t know how to say this.  I found out about it a few days ago, and I have been moving heaven and earth to find you.  Luckily, I know someone at Red Cross Headquarters who was willing to tell me where you were.  Val, Major Brandt was killed.  He was leading an attack on a German position.  They think the machine guns got him.  He lay in no-man’s-land for a night before they could get him back to the hospital.  They got him there, but he did of his wounds a few days later.”

     Bazz’s words swirled around my head but had no meaning.  This was just one more thing I would have to stand.  Matthew was gone, and I would never again feel his callused hands on my face   We would never have the chance for our hearts to grow and prosper together.  But he had loved me, of that I was sure, and in all the lonely years to come, I would have that treasure, to keep.

     Bass leaned over the counter.  “Is there anything I can do?  I can’t stay long.  Have to get back to base, but I felt somehow, I should be the one to tell you.  I am not sure why, but I felt I owed both of you that.” 

     I shook my head.  “Don’t worry about me.  I’ll ---I’ll be all right.  I just need a little time.”

     A line was forming at the counter and the marmite was boiling.  Bazz walked around and picked up a pitcher and started filling the cups.  “I can stay around for a while.”

     We stood side by side for the next hour pouring chocolate and handing out bread.  We didn’t talk, but I found comfort in his presence.  At the end of the hour, he gave me a long searching look, squeezed my hand, and put his cap on his head with some of his old panache, and left pushing through the tent flap --- the same tent flap through which Matthew had left me for the last time. 

     It was midnight when I finally crawled into my army cot.  I lay on my back, rigid, looking up at the dim ceiling.  My body felt as though it would never relax again.  I wished I could bring back so much of my life, but it was all gone.  Arthur, Trixie, and now the best of them all --- Matthew.

     There was nothing I could do to bring any of it back or change any of the choices I had made.  But Matthew had given me his ring, his promise of a future and I had that to live up to.  I thought of the house on Ellis Avenue in the months that had followed Trixie’s death.  I would not ruin my memories of Matthew with the kind of grief that had subsumed that house.  It had been like a smothering pall over everything.  Each of us was alone with our sorrow as the cause of Trixie’s death could not be mentioned, nor could her name be brought up.  It was as if a candle had not only been extinguished, but that it had also been removed from the room. Papa spent his days between the library and the piano, not even seeing his musician friends.  Each evening after dinner, he made a pilgrimage to Mamma’s room, sat beside her bed for exactly half an hour, saying nothing.  They looked like ghosts or something that might have been.  There they sat both yearning for comfort, and yet unable to give or receive it.  And yet even now one or the other of them might have rallied, but by now neither one knew how. 

     There were no plans for that summer.  Mamma and Papa were incapable of making them.  Never-the-less, the summer came.  The servants, faithful to their training, took down the draperies, rolled up rugs, swathed furniture in white linen covers, kept dark shades drawn down against the sun.  I had never seen the house like this.  It became the servants’ house, and I was spending the summer with them.  Josie tiptoed apologetically over the bare floors.  Emma served the roasts cold and fretted that baking them might overhear the house. 

      When fall and winter came and went, Mamma, with the quietness of one day merging into another, ceased to breathe.  The doctor shook his head.  Her going was as unexplainable as the onward movement of time.  There was nothing wrong with her body, she was just tired of living.  I felt no surprise that it should happen.  Only a numbing grief for what might have been.  Papa withdrew still further into himself, and James absented himself from the house as much as he could.  The house became like a dead thing that had closed up on itself stifling everything inside. 

      But I would not give up like that because Matthew was gone.  That would not be a fitting way to remember what we had shared, and the potential that lay in the future we would never have.  I would never be free of the longing I had when I thought of him, but somehow, I would go out and meet life and see what it had to bring.  I had a life to live, not just for me but for the two of us.  

The House on Ellis Avenue --- Chapter 23

     It seemed like the hundredth time that the driver cursed and the camionette came to a rasping, shuddering halt.  For the ninety-ninth time the motor was dead, killed by hitting the breaks without using the clutch.  Even John, when he was learning to drive the new car was better than this, although he yearned for the horses the whole time.  We sat in the wet darkness, surrounded by rain and fog, fog that mercifully hid the soft shoulder and the ditch beyond it.  Both had been visible before night set in, but now were hidden as were the onrushing succession of trucks.  They came out of nowhere and disappeared into the night with only a momentary roar and barely discernible hulk to mark their passage. 

     I wiped the window with my coat sleeve, more out of habit than because I actually could see anything.  I peered out but was just as glad I couldn’t see how far over the ditch we hung or how deep it was.  Rosie sat between me and the cursing driver.  She had been very quiet, not complaining in her usual style. As afternoon had given way to evening, she had gotten quieter and quieter, and now I thought she looked rather pale. 

     “That was the closest call so far,” I said just to fill the silence.

     “You’re damn right,” the young soldier at the wheel said.  “And I’m fed up.  If this place we’re in were anywhere, instead of nowhere, I’d call the whole thing off and stay put.”

     Rosie leaned over close to me.  “Make him go on.  Make him Val.  We’ve got to get somewhere.  I’m -----I’m not feeling too well.”

     “What’s the matter?”  I tried to sound sympathetic, but this was the last thing we needed. I found suddenly that I preferred the outspoken Rosie to this pale, quiet edition.

     “I just feel as if I’ve got to lie down and be quiet.”  She gasped as at what seemed a sudden pain. 

     What was wrong with me?  I felt a sudden wave of compassion for Rosie.  She would not be here except for my impetuous actions at Issoudun. “Just lean on me,” I whispered smoothing her hair as she leaned in.  I kept my voice low and hoped that the driver would not hear us talking.  Then I leaned over Rosie and spoke to our angry driver.  “Let’s just keep going.  The trucks can hit us standing still as well as moving.  If we are going to be killed at least let’s be killed going somewhere.”

     His answering growl contained words that Papa probably had never even heard.  He started the motor, and to the accompaniment of a mighty roar, the tires clutched the mud, and we shot out onto the road. 

     “Shouldn’t we almost be there ---- to Souilly?”  Rosie asked.  Her face looking even more pinched and she was biting her lip.

     “Us Yanks call it Swilly,” the driver said.  “And Swilly it is to me.  If I ever get to it, I’ll stay the rest of the night and come down in daylight with these blasted trucks instead of against them.”

     I would have liked to have seen the trucks in daylight.  At night they looked like huge pre-historic monsters as they loomed out of the dark and continued on their way, sweeping us to the side.  This dark road in the middle of the night seemed very far from Issoudun.  In fact, Issoudun was beginning to seem like another life.  Rosie and I had been taken out of that life with a swiftness that only Miss Farleigh could have managed.

     After my midnight trip to Matthew’s quarters, Miss Farleigh felt it best that I be sent to a new assignment.  “There can be no chance of unsavory gossip being spread about the Red Cross girls, Miss Ward, and you have certainly provided fuel for that gossip in spite of Major Brandt’s efforts.” Then with an enigmatic look I could not decipher, she added in a lower voice. “And it may be just as well for Miss Bennet to go as well.” I did not want to remember the disappointment on her face as she decided our fate. And yet part of me felt that old rebellion rise up. Was the only way to behave a way that someone else thought perfect?  I was a good worker and the midnight visit had been covered up very well.  I felt that rather than face anything unpleasant, Miss Farleigh was pushing any possible problems off to the front. Literally.  Her estimation of me may have called for that look of disappointment, but I found my estimation of Miss Farleigh had suffered a drop as well.  

     So, Rosie, my partner for the duration, had been swept off with me towards that front.  Far from minding, she had seemed relieved. For a moment the old Rosie had been back.  “I’ll be glad to get away from that old dragon. And it turns out Miss Perfect is not as perfect as she thought.”  And then she had shut down again.   

     It was Rosie’s old refrain, but what bothered me the most about it this time, was that she now included me in her comments.  I fought the idea that my midnight trip to Matthew’s room made me the same as Rosie in her red dress sitting in the boiler room in the early hours of the morning.  I had not thrown myself at any man, but just one.  So, did that make me any different?  But then I felt the ring which was on a chain around my neck hidden by my uniform, a gesture I made a hundred times a day. 

     I had not seen Matthew after I left his office.  I had listened for the sound of his plane taking off but had heard nothing.

     Miss Farleigh had come out to see us off.  She shook hands with Rosie as she climbed into the truck.  Then she gave me a long look and took my hand in both of hers, her stern expression softening for a moment.

     “Valerie…”  She seemed to search for words and then just said, “Now hurry along.  You will miss your train.”

     I climbed into the truck, and as we drove off her small, upright figure was lost through a blur of tears even I could not explain.  I kept my face turned from Rosie.  She would never have understood any more than I did. 

     We had been sent to Toul where our carefully scheduled life run by Miss Farleigh of eating, sleeping and working at the Third AIC had faded into unreality.  At Toul there could be no schedule.  The pressure of constant emergency made it impossible.  We had gotten what we could of sleep and food.  Baths ceased to be regarded as regular necessities.  There was no difference between night and day, except the source of light by which we worked.  It came through small windows, struggling in dreary and gray from rainy skies or, with windows shrouded, it shone feebly down from a single doused electric bulb. 

     In the station canteen where Rosie and I were put to work, the door never closed.  In and out the soldiers filed in battle gear, disciplined, quiet.  They did not know where they were going, but they knew they moved into a finality they could not escape.  They smiled and made little jokes, but it was an effort.  Each one would try and prolong his brief moment at the counter as if we were his last touch with a world he might not see again.  The crowded room, dull by day, shadowy by night, smelling of steam and coffee and unwashed bodies, brimming with dread and regret and thousands of unspoken emotions, became the jumping off point to the unknown.

     And while Rosie and I could guess we could not really know what they were facing in the trenches that lay ahead.  But we knew all too well what the results were.  Each time when the booming and staccato of the guns stopped, the line of men would start moving towards the rear, some carrying those who would be loaded on ambulances for a pot-holed filled trip to a medical center, and those who hobbled on their own steam or with help from a friend, faces contorted by pain or even worse staring uncomprehendingly at the world around them.  All of them went by us in a steady stream, into the meat grinder and then out again, torn, bleeding and wounded and all we could offer was something warm and a cheerful demeanor, no matter what the circumstance.

     For the last ten days we had known that something new and big was going to happen.  The First Army was definitely going somewhere.  The rumor was that General Pershing’s sector would begin an offensive of their own.

      Then emergency orders had come for us, and we had left Toul at noon with only an hour’s notice and no lunch.  We were told to proceed immediately to a railhead in the Argonne.  I looked down at the orders.  “Report to the Chief Nurse at Evacuation Hospital X.”  How wonderful it would be to report, get a hot supper, and go to bed in a dry barracks.  Then in the morning it would be light, and we could see where we were and what needed doing.

     “Buildings,” the driver yelled suddenly.  “I can see ‘em.”  He jammed on the brakes.

     Stiff from the cold and my cramped position, I climbed awkwardly from the car.

     “Wait here.  I’ll find out where we are.”  I groped my way towards the barely discernible shapes, my feet sinking into the soft mud.  I stumbled.  It was the edge of a duckboard walk.  I followed it to a door, which I pushed open without knocking.

     “Shut that damned door, son of a --------“

     I was inside before the man at the desk looked up at me stopping in mid-sentence.

     “My God,” he said half rising from this seat.  “A girl.”  He stood staring, a young man wearing lieutenant’s bars and the insignia of the Medical Corps.  “I’m sorry……”

      “Is this Evacuation Hospital X?”

     “It sure is.  You’re the Red Cross I see.”

     I drew a long breath of relief and leaned against the door.  The end of the trail at last and suddenly I knew the end of my energy as well.

     “The others are out in the truck ---another Red Cross girl and the driver.”

     “You’re the two we’ve been expecting ---for days.  Tell the man to drive the car off the road and come in.”

     I stumbled back through the mud.  “This is it, Rosie.  This is the place.”

     I leaned in the door and looked at her.  She said nothing and her silence was ominous.  She looked even whiter than before and was in obvious pain.

     She rolled her head slowly towards me and said, “Val, you’ve got to help.  I don’t think I can even get out of the truck.”

     I turned to the driver.  “The lieutenant said to pull this truck over to the side.  Do it and then help me get her inside.”

     The driver grunted a reply, and I had just enough time to get out of the way before he gunned the motor and pulled the truck over.  Spattered with mud, I was instantly at Rosie’s door again. 

     “Just slide across the seat and then you can lean on me.  We are almost there.  Hang on.”

     With halting steps, we finally make it to the barracks door.  The driver opened it, and I got Rosie inside as quickly as possible.  In the light I caught one glance of her twisted face before she crumpled and fell at my feet.

     “What the ---“ The lieutenant sprang forward, dropping to his knees beside Rosie.  “You under fire?”

     “No, no.  Nothing like that.  She’s just tired.  We’ve come from Toul and ---“

     “She’s more than tired.  She looks really ill.  Better take her to the chief nurse’s room.”  He put his arms under Rosie’s shoulders and gestured to the two of us.  I grabbed her feet, and after a few seconds the driver grabbed her waist.  We carried her down a hall and into a cubicle and put her on a cot. 

     The doctor then turned to me.  “At midnight---that will be in about two hours from now ---you can get some chow in the mess.  You” he turned to the driver ---“stay in my office until you’ve eaten and then you’ll have to bunk in your truck.  We haven’t one extra bed.  You’re going back in the morning aren’t you?”

     “I sure as hell am.  As soon as it’s light.”

     ‘You --- Miss---“

   “Ward.”

     “Miss Ward, you’d better get into your working clothes.”

     “Now?”

     “Right now.  You’re on the night shift, and night began quite a while ago.”

     “I’m supposed to report to the chief nurse,” I said hoping for a reprieve.

     “You can do that when she had time.  Miss Morehead is damned busy just now.  She’ll have to find a place for ---“He nodded toward Rosie on the cot and then looked up.  “Here you are, Miss Morehead.  Got a problem for you.”

     A tall angular woman stood in the doorway looking from the cot to me and then back.  Her face darkened.  “The Red Cross girls, and one a casualty already?’

     “I’m afraid so,” said the doctor.  “But the other one is ready to go on duty as soon as you show her where to hang her hat.”

     “Come with me,” said Miss Morehead.

     “Wait a minute nurse.”  The doctor bent over the cot.  “I need you here.  Got to make an examination.  Miss Ward can find her way.”

     “Down that hall, out the door at the end, and follow the duckboard to the tent.  The first two cots,” said Miss Morehead as she turned her back, and joined the doctor bending over Rosie.

     I returned to the camionette, got my duffel and Rosie’s and dragged them into the barracks, down the hall, and out again at the back.  A duckboard walk led to a large tent.

     Inside the tent, a single light, doused with the usual blue paint, presided over its emptiness and chill.  This was to be my home and by comparison, the barracks at the Third AIC was a palace.  The duckboard had ended at the door.  Under my feet the bare earth gave off a damp cold that seemed to soak through my clothing.  I heaved our duffels onto the two cots nearest the door.  We had beds even if they didn’t let us use them.  It took determination to change out of my wool uniform into my thin working smock, but I did it with set teeth.  Our first impression had certainly not been a good one.  I would have to work hard to offset it.  I put a sweater underneath in case I was to work in a room as cold as this.

     I was pinning on my coif, when Miss Morehead lifted the tent flap and came in.  It was plain even in the dim light, that she was very angry.

     “Did you know that girl’s condition?”

    “Rosie’s?  No---I didn’t.  What is the matter with her?” 

     “How long have you been with her?”

     “Ever since we came to France.  About ten months.”

     “And you don’t know what she’s done?”

     “No---no I don’t.  She was all right at Toul.  She got sick on the way ---“

     “Sick?  She’s not sick” The head nurse spit out the words. “Are you going to tell me you didn’t know she was pregnant?”

     “No---no.”  I backed away from the angry woman.  This could just not happen again.  Trixie’s white face rose before my eyes.  “Will she die?”

     “What’s the matter with you?  She won’t die, she just had a miscarriage.  The doctor is taking time away from more deserving patients to fix her up.  A fine job for him with the wounded pouring in.  I’m going to put her in here in her own bed, the only one we have for her.  She’ll just have to make out the best she can.  We’ve got better things to do here that to take care of a---“

     I broke in just to stop the flow of angry words.  “I’ll do her work, Miss Morehead.  Just tell me what to do and I will do it.  I am ready.”

    Miss Morehead shrugged and then studied me.  “We want you for the canteen as soon as you can be spared but---“

     “Spared from what?”

     “The war.  The AEF opened up its own front today.  It’s driving north and east up there where you hear the guns, and we’re taking care of what comes back from the fighting.  The dead and wounded.”

     “What can I do?” 

     “Go back to Dr. Murphy’s office, and he will put you to work.”

     Doctor Murphy.  That would be the lieutenant.  I was glad to leave the bleak tent, the angry head nurse, and eager to fill my mind with anything other than the ugliness and confusion that filled it now.  I hurried back to the office.

     On a chair in the corner the driver dozed, his head doubled against his chest.  The doctor greeted me with a smile.

     “Good.  You were quick.  Let’s go.”

     He led me back along the hall, out by a door on the side away from our sleeping quarters, over another duckboard walk to a tent with a wide-open door.  Above the door, a doused light pointed mistily to a sign, large black letters on a white background.  TRIAGE.  French.  It meant sorting.  What sorting?  I followed the doctor inside and behind us came two men carrying a stretcher.

     “This is the receiving ward.  Everyone goes through here and is distributed according to his condition.  The sergeant checks the identification, the doctor’s check the rest.”

     I could see several men moving about in the dim recesses of the tent, stooping, bending over stretchers, examining, making notes.  The stretchers were being carried out at the rear.  The doctor continued.

     “The dead we get out of sight as fast as possible.  Morale factor.  We haven’t much space in the covered wards, and what we have is reserved for cases needing emergency operations.  The others go to tent wards.  Since we haven’t enough personnel to go around, I’m putting you in a tent ward with a basket of bread and a pitcher of water.  Keep checking the patients.  Give them food or water if they want it and do anything else you can for them.”

     “But I am not a nurse.”

     “How I know it.  And we wouldn’t use you if we could help it.  As soon as we get control of this thing, we’ll put you to running the canteen so there’ll be hot chocolate instead of water for these poor guys.”

     We proceeded through Triage and passed two tents.  At the entrance to the third, the doctor stopped.  He pointed to a basket and a tall pitcher on the ground just inside the door.  “There’s the bread and water.  Do what you can.  I’ve got some new patients to check on since I was here last.”  He took a notebook from his pocket and went to the far end of the tent.

     I stood where I was, watching the doctor walk between the rows of cots.  I wished I were somewhere else.  I felt so inadequate.  Almost anywhere would have been better than this floorless tent so full of wounded men, next to a triage where they sorted the living from the dead.  Who were these men, lying so still?  I felt weak and cold, and yet my face was hot.

     I had thought I had experienced war at Issoudon with the pilots and their downed planes.  But that had only been a soft introduction to the reality that faced me now.  This was not one funeral per day, but hundreds and I was in the middle of it.    

     A low moan came to my ears.  Just one little sound of pain from among so many.  Yet they were all hurt.  They had come from up there where the guns were pounding at them, not just making a distant noise.  Noise and darkness and cold and hunger and the sight of death did not really hurt.  Not as these men had been hurt.  Suddenly, the pounding in my ears ceased.  The blood that seemed congealed around my heart flowed again, warming my hands.  I picked up the basket in one hand, the pitcher in the other, and walked resolutely to the first bed. 

     “Can I help you?”  I asked of a man whose eyes were staring at me out of a tanned, unshaven face.

     “My left leg. The bandage hurts like you know what.”

     Lifting the blanket, I dropped to my knees beside the cot.  The leg, fat with bandages, was wound in a spiral puttee.  The puttee was hard with caked blood.  Very carefully I unwound it, slipping it through his belt for safe keeping.  I unlaced his boot all the way, easing it off gently, and massaged the foot that protruded below the bandages. 

     “That’s better.  Yeah, that’s better.”  His eyes closed.

     I left him sleeping and went to the next cot.  All the men wanted water.  For most of them I could perform small services that seemed ---slight though they were --- to make an enormous difference to them.  It was not so much what I did as the fact that I was there to do it.  They were being looked after.  Their suffering was acknowledged and appreciated.  I was glad, glad to be in this floorless tent in the American Sector on this opening night of the offensive.

     Clutching the basket and pitcher, I moved along the line of cots.

     “Fraulein! Fraulein!”  The cry came from a cavernous face in a round, closely shaven bullet head, a middle-aged face.  “Brot, Fraulein.  Bitte, brot.”

     I handed the prisoner a piece of bread.  He wolfed it with greedy haste.  I remembered then that those eyes had been following me since I entered the tent.  Enemies lying together.  An hour ago they stalked each other.  Now they cried out under the roof in their pain.

     Doctor Murphy passed, checking each cot with sharp eyes as he went.  He patted my shoulder.  “That’s how it is,” he said.  “You’re doing find.  Keep going.”  He bent to another cot.

     It was a week before the nurses finally showed up ---a week of casualties pouring into triage and then into my tent.  Gray faces, gray tent, gray rain.  A world gray with pain and suffering.  I slept as little and I could, and wolfed down my food when I got a chance to eat, for whenever I was away from the tent the knowledge of the silent suffering going on in that dim interior drove me back to offer what little help I could.

     And when I was busy carrying water and easing pain my mind was too full to think of Rosie lying back in our tent silent and grim faced on her bed.  Rosie collapsing --- Trixie--- My mind circled around and around.  Trixie, laughing, sparkling, embracing a boy in a dim lilac filled garden.  Rosie in the finery, sitting in the boiler room.  Matthew and poppies.  And I would leap out of bed, dress and seek the tent once more and a few hours of forgetfulness in the pain of others.

     But in the midst of it all, I tried to help and comfort Rosie, bringing what food there was from the mess tent, an extra blanket from the store room, a battered pillow from an empty bed..  She lay on her cot, unresponsive to my advances.  But it did not matter.  At times I would see Trixie’s face turned to me from the cot, and I would redouble my efforts to get Rosie back on her feet, back into life even though it was the one we were now in. 

     But there were always the moments before sleep, when I could not master my thoughts and I would think of that trip to Europe and all that followed.  For me the year in Europe had been wonderful.  I was deeply satisfied with what it had given me.  We had gone directly to Switzerland and settled down in an exclusive pension.  We studied during the week with weekend excursions to Lausanne and the mountains.  I had loved the green and white mountains, the trim hedges, the hilly, narrow cobblestone streets of the old town, Strauss waltzes at the skating rink, brioches and plum cake at the English tea shop.  But best of all was the studying.  To feel the mastery of two languages coming to me like keys to a new world.  It gave me a sense of power.

     Trixie studied too, but only after a fashion.  Her teachers sighed and shook their heads at her lack of interest, her listless gazing into space over an open book.  On weekends she would be like a different person, provocative, laughing.  On weekends, there were always conquests.  A Spanish boy, s Swiss ski champion, an American on his grand tour after college.  As each man would bid her a fervent goodbye, Nanny would shake her head and say, “Gorry, whatever will become of her.”

     Between weekends she was an enigma, giving out nothing, taking in nothing.  The gulf between us steadily widened without my really realizing what was happening.  Trixie was pursuing one path, and I another.  There were no more shared conversations between beds when the lights were out.  In fact, Trixie was often not there, and I was just so grateful not to be made to be a part of the social life she treasured, that I did not stop to wonder or ask what she was doing.  She was equally uninterested in my studies saying only once disdainfully, “That is not how you get a husband.”  And I had assumed she was on the same quest that Mamma had been on in Paris in her day.  I did not understand what Trixie was reaching for any more than she understood me.  The year between us was now one of indifference, and it could not be fixed by a brisk walk in the park. 

     When, at the end of the year, Mr. Carusi put us on the boat home in the luxurious cabins he had reserved, she was even more remote, saying little and seeming neither happy nor sad.  As Europe faded, New York loomed.  Papa would meet us, kissing each one of us on the cheek, shaking hands with Nanny and saying how nice it was to have us back again.  How nice to have the old routine restored.  The old routine.  And next year the routine would be still older and the year after that and one and on ---indefinitely. 

     I slipped into our cabin where Trixie already lay asleep.  A shaft of moonlight, coming through the porthole fell across her bed but did not reach her face.  In was unusual to have Trixie in bed before me, but she had been subdued on this trip home.  Probably with the same apprehension and dread I was feeling.  On tiptoe, I went to my side of the cabin and started to undress.

     “Val.”

     Surprised, I turned to find her sitting up in bed.  My eyes were now adjusted to the moonlight, and I could make out her face in the shadowy frame of her hair.

     “This is our last night,” Trixie said in a small voice, “our last night before---“

     For a moment the old connection between the two of us came pouring back.  We were two sisters sharing a bedroom and talking in the dark.  “I know.  I’ve been thinking of it all evening.  Would you have liked to stay in Europe?”

     She surprised me by an emphatic “No.  Would you?”

     “Well, no and yes ---some of both I guess.”  The familiarity of home beckoned, while the freedom of Europe pulled.

     I slipped into bed and pulled up the covers.

     “We’ve shared a lot things, Val.  You always were my best friend, even though they tried to make you into my watch dog. But I don’t think you can have the kind of life you want.  It is not possible for a girl, and I am beginning to think I cannot have what I want either.”

     “What do you want?”  My voice was almost a cry.  I had never understood what Trixie was so frantic to have.

     “Oh, I want all those parties and dances and the things that you hate.  But I want to share them with someone who likes them with me.  Someone I can talk to and be happy with.  In whose arms I can circle a dance floor and know that I am the center of his world.”  And then with bitterness,  “Not someone locked up in a room following his own wishes to the exclusion of everyone else.”

     I felt the pain in her voice and yearned to erase it. “Maybe we can work out something together.  Maybe we can be that twosome that Nanny always talked about, with only the year between us.”

     “I think it is too late for that,” said Trixie and then fell silent.  Our brief rapport was over.  As I dozed off, I could see her still sitting up, beautiful in the moonlight. 

     The next morning in a bustle of rushing stewards and thorough customs officers, Papa met us kissing us and shaking hands with Nanny just as I had known he would.  Emma and Josie had taken very good care of him and James, and he would be very glad to have things as usual again.  James was doing well in his job at the steel plant, settling down sensibly.  John had gotten better about driving the car, and no longer regretted having to give up the horses.  Life, now that we were back, would go along smoothly.

     Then we were home, greeted enthusiastically by the servants and unenthusiastically by James, who muttered to me that now it would be “worse and more of it.”

     By dinner time, it seemed as though we had never been away.  The table looked just as it always looked.  The food was cooked as Emma had always cooked it and served by Josie in her usual way.  Everything was the same, even the silence that hung over the five of us supposedly enjoying our evening meal.  We had been separated for a year, and yet there seemed be no will among us to exchange our experiences and thoughts.

     After dinner I went into the library to find a book and sat down by the fire for a while.  Soon I began to feel sleepy and went up to our room.  The room was dark.  Trixie was already in bed but sitting up.  I was surprised to think that she was waiting for me.

     “Can’t you sleep?” I asked, puzzled by her demeanor.

     “No, I’ve got to tell you something ---now.”

     There was urgency in her voice, an urgency I had never heard before.  She sounded older and yet somehow very young at the same time.  I went over to her and sat on the edge of her bed.  With the shades still up and the starbright sky shining through the window, I could see her staring at me with a fevered look.

     “What is it Trixie?”  I was suddenly very afraid.

     “I was going to tell you on the boat the other night, but I wasn’t sure.  Now, in these last two days I am.”

     “You’re sure --- of what?”

     “I’m going to have a baby.”

     “A baby?”  I slipped to the floor next to her bed.  A baby.  How could that be?  Babies belonged to married women, not young beautiful sisters in a pink and green room.  I tried to understand. Out of my ignorance all I could think to say was,  “You---you married someone --- in Europe?”

     “No.  Of course not.”

     “But how ---- Trixie, how could it be?”

     “It just is.  I’m not married, and I’m going to have a baby.”

     “But people don’t ---people like us ---“  I could form no coherent thoughts.  I knew something went on between men and women, and it happened after marriage.  According to Mamma it was not something that women enjoyed, just men.  I had assumed that women put up with it just so that they could have a family.  Since it was so unpleasant, and no one thought I would get married in any case, I had just put it out of my mind.  Trixie was in deep waters that I did not begin to understand.

     “Val, don’t look like that.  Men in Europe don’t think the way we do here.  He said that Americans were prim and stuffy and got no joy out of life.”

     I felt a stab of rage.  “Who said that.”  I yearned to hurt someone.

     “That is something no one will ever know.  Not even you Val.  Besides now it doesn’t make any difference.”

     “But why did you do it?  It’s so awful.”

     “Oh, Val.  How can you do all that reading and studying and be so ignorant.  It’s not awful, they just want you to think that it is.  It seemed so right when I was with him.  It was exciting and liberating.  He’d meet me in a certain place and we’d talk.  He made me feel so special as if the earth were part of me and all the feelings I had were right.  The grass was soft and the moonlight was gentle and I felt so free and light and ---“

     “But it was wrong.  It was wrong that night in the garden when you kissed…”

     “It wasn’t wrong that night.  Only they think it’s wrong.  I’ve kissed lots of boys and there was nothing to it.  This was different.  He said kissing wasn’t enough and he made it seem all right. I never thought about babies, just about the closeness and joy of it.  I thought if I shared this one thing with him, I would understand everything.  This was how I would know if he were the right man or not.  This was the secret that Mamma and Nanny did not want me to know.  Then after a few wonderful weeks he was just gone.  He left to go to Italy and continue his grand tour and I knew I had made a big mistake.  But it was too late, and we were coming home.”

    I pressed my face against the mattress trying not to cry.  I was not even sure what Trixie had done, and how this baby was conceived.  I was swimming in a sea of ignorance, and had no idea how to help my beautiful, younger sister.

     Trixie’s voice cracked across my tears.  “Crying won’t help.  You know I feel about a million years older than you right now, Val.  But one thing is going to come out of this.  I am going to tell you everything they don’t want you to know.”

     “No, stop.  I have an idea.  We’ll run away, you and I, to a place where they can’t find us.  I’ll get a job and support you and when --- when it’s over we’ll think what next.”

     “Oh, Val.  This is not the island at the lake.  This is real.  We couldn’t get away.  They’d find us and then they would know.  Besides neither of us has every worked and we have no money of our own.”

     “Can we tell Nanny?”

      “Heavens no, Val.  She would not understand at all, and she wouldn’t be able to help anyway.”

     “Well, I don’t understand either, but I will do anything I can to help.  Do you have any ideas?’

     “Do you remember Mabel Burch at school?”

     I did.  She was one of the hanger’s on at Trixie’s table at lunch.  Never quite a part of the group but trying to be.  I did not want anything to do with Mabel Burch, who had shifty eyes and a knowing expression.

     “Mabel told me lots of things. She was awfully grown-up.  She said you can go to a doctor—"

     Relief flooded me.  A doctor, of course.  “Let’s tell Dr. Kent.  He saved your life once.  Remember?”

     “Yes.  And that’s why I can’t --- he would tell Mamma and Papa right away.  I couldn’t trust him to keep it a secret.  Anyway, he might not want to help.  What I need to do is… well, it’s just not something Dr. Kent will want to do.  But Mabel knew a doctor and a girl that went to him.”

     “Can you go to this doctor right away and ask him what to do?”

     “Yes, only I’ll need some money, and I don’t think I have enough.”

     This was something concrete I could offer.  “I’ve got some.  I left some behind when we went to Europe.  It is in that iron bank over there.  I remember putting some bills in there.”

     “Do you think there is fifty dollars?  That is what I need.”

     We crouched over the bank, urging the coins and bills out of the slit at the top. 

     I watched Trixie leave the next day after lunch.  I asked to go with her, but she insisted on going alone. I did not fight very hard.  And never once did I ask what this doctor was going to do to help her.  I could bear no more revelations after Trixie had spent the previous evening enlightening me about what went on between men and women.  She was determined I should not remain in ignorance, although at the moment ignorance seemed like it would be bliss.  I went to the library and literally threw myself at a book trying to erase it all from my mind.  Trixie would be fixed, and then we would go on from there. We could pretend this had never happened, and life would go on as it always had.  But try as I might to drown my thoughts in a book, my mind kept swirling around to what I had learned in the past few hours. Now I finally understood why Nanny and Mamma had been afraid for Trixie and set me to guard her.  But how fair was it to the guard if she did not know what the danger was?   I had believed the romantic fantasy to be the truth. I had known I was outside the magic ring of dances, and moonlight, and beautiful gowns, and glowing jewels, but I thought Mamma and Trixie were part of it.  But there was no such fantasy.  Not when a man could do what had been done to Trixie, and leave her to bear the whole burden alone. And I was at least knowledgeable enough to know that Trixie would bear the entire blame for it all, and the man would get off scot free.  She must, must, must get help from this magical doctor.

     I finally put the book down as I could not remember one thing that I had read.  I then began pacing up and down the library waiting anxiously for Trixie’s return.  One hour slipped into two and then evening began to approach.  It was Josie who found her lying in the vestibule unconscious when she went to get the Evening Post.  John carried her to an upstairs bedroom where she now lay attended by a doctor and nurse that Papa had called.  I had followed John as he carried her limp body up the stairs but had been banned from the room where she lay. 

     I had returned to the library and my pacing when Josie found me and told me the Papa wanted to see me in his bedroom.  It was with lagging steps that I went upstairs, not knowing what I would be facing.  When I entered the room, it was deathly still.  The windows were closed, blotted out by dark shades.  The night lamp on the table beside the bed was turned to make a path of light across the carpet, leaving the rest in shadow.  Mama lay on the bed against a pile of pillows.  I walked a little way down the pathway of light.  Papa was in the corner slumped down, his face buried in his hands.  Behind me the door opened and closed.  James had joined us.

     We were all together in that one room, but I felt as if we were four separate islands divided by an unfriendly sea.  They knew.  They must.  I felt a sickening lurch in my stomach.  What had Trixie done and what was happening to her now?

     Papa raised his head and then asked me in a dull voice, “Where did your sister go today?”

     “To get help.”

     “Help from whom?’

     “A doctor.”

     “Do you know which one?”

     “No, she ---she wanted to go alone.”  Why, why, why had I not had the courage to go with her no matter what she had said to me?  Maybe it would have made a difference.

     Papa kept looking at me.  “Do you know why she went?” he insisted. 

     Why was Papa making me say this?  I could tell he already knew.  Why did I have to say it out loud?  Why did I have to say the words that would condemn Trixie forever in everyone’s eyes?  I would not. 

     “Valerie, do you know why she went?”  Papa was almost vibrating with the question. 

     “Yes.”  That one word was all I was going to give him.  He could not command me.

     “So you knew about the baby.”  There was a gasp behind me from James, and a moan from Mamma on the bed. 

     I stood up straighter and looked him in the eye.  There was only one thing that mattered.   “Is she all right now?  Is she going to be all right?

     “Her condition is critical, the doctor is operating right now.  Everything is being done.”

     “Not everything.  We should be there with her.  She shouldn’t be alone with strangers.”  I turned towards the door.

     Papa’s voice cracked through the room.  “Stay where you are.  What do you think your sister has to live for?”

     “Everything, if we stand behind her.  She is young and beautiful and the kind of person everyone loves.  She’s got to get ---“

     “To be buried under public scorn?”

     “But nobody need to know about --- what happened – in Europe.”

     James’ voice came from behind me.  “Oh, they will know.  This kind of rumor always gets out.  And who do you think would marry her now?”

     “But it wasn’t her fault.  What about the man?  She did not do this alone.”

    “Valerie.  Do not speak in such a manner.  It is not seemly.”

     “What is not seemly is that we were raised in complete ignorance of life, and sent out into the world unarmed and unknowing.  It isn’t fair.” My voice broke on the edge of tears.

    James said with scorn, “What isn’t fair is the way she behaved.  What if my friends find out about it?”

     “No one will find out about this,” said Papa.  “The shame of this family will stay within these four walls.  No matter what happens nobody must know.”

     “I don’t care about that,” I said.  “Trixie’s got to get well.”  I could feel the hysteria rising within me.  “We’ll leave here.  We’ll go out to the Rockies and live somewhere by ourselves and be old maids.  Nobody wants to be married anyway.  It’s not a nice thing.  I hate men ---all of them”

     I looked from Papa, his face closed to all compassion, to James standing defiantly by the door.  I was alone in a world of men.  No, there was Mamma, another woman to stand with me against them.  I turned to the limp figure on the bed.  Leaning over I said, “The doctors will make Trixie live.  You want them to, don’t you Mamma?”

     In answer the pillowed head moved slowly from side to side.  “There’s nothing left for her,” Mamma whispered. 

     I rushed from the room, pushing James to one side.  Papa called to me, but I did not stop.  I ran up the stairs to the room in which Trixie lay.  I did not have to keep watch for Death this time.  I knew he was already in the room with my sister.  I quietly opened the door.  Trixie was lying on the bed and the doctor and nurse were bending over her.  The nurse moved quickly to the door blocking my view and gently pushed me into the hall.

     “No one may come in right now.  Perhaps in a little while.”  She disappeared into the room once more.

     I sat on the top step, leaned against the railing and wept as I had not for years.  Once more Trixie was ill, but this time the family was not fighting for her.  James, Mamma, Papa – I hated them all.  Then I heard a quiet step behind me, and Nanny seated herself beside me, her arms around me. 

     We sat that way until the dark hours before dawn when the nurse came and told us.  Trixie was gone without a last word to anyone. But I would carry her in my heart forever.  Nothing could ever come again to harm the year between us.