The Comrade in White | Page 5

have only helped to make
our young men susceptible to spiritual influences of the highest quality.
In fine, they have been following in the footsteps of Him who is The
Great Sacrifice, and even amid the bursting shells have caught a
glimpse of wounds that transform and consecrate their own."
--The Great Sacrifices, JOHN ADAMS.

III
MAIMED OR PERFECTED?
My heart grew bitter in me when the news came of Harry's operation. I
had been half relieved when I heard that he was wounded, and that the
wound was not dangerous. For the grim alternative was seldom out of
my thoughts, and at least his dear life was safe. Now I was crushed by
the brave, pathetic letter in which he told me that his right leg had been
amputated, and that he was lucky to get off so easily. That made me
rebellious and very, very bitter. And it was against God that I felt
worst--God who had allowed this unthinkable thing to be.
Harry a cripple! Harry of all people! I could not imagine it, nor accept
it, nor even face the truth of it. And away at the bottom of my heart
lurked the thought that it had been better for himself that he had died in
the strength and beauty of his manhood. Why should his spirit be
doomed to live on in a ruined home?
Harry is my only brother, and he has been my hero always. Manliness,
strength, courage, unselfishness--I know what these things mean; they
mean Harry. And of course I was proud when he got his double blue at
Cambridge. Cricket and football were more than pastimes to him. He
put his heart and soul into them, and when he made 106 not out against
Oxford he was as happy as if he had found a new continent. And now
the great athlete, the pride of his College, the big clean-limbed giant
was a cripple. I could not weep for it, because I could not believe it. I
took the thought and flung it from me. And then I picked it up again,
and gazed at it with hard, unseeing eyes. It was at that time I stopped
praying. What was prayer but a mockery, if Harry was maimed?
Harry was at Cairo, and I could not go to him. And though that made
me feel helpless, and almost mad with inaction, yet in my heart I
dreaded meeting him, seeing him, taking in the bitterness of it through
the eyes. I was a coward, you see, and my love for him a poor thing at
the best. But there are some who will understand how I felt, and will
forgive me.

His letters were all right, not a word of complaint, for Harry never
grumbled, and many a good story of the hospital and its patients and its
staff. But there was something else, a kind of gentle seriousness as if
life were different now. And I read my own misery into that, and
pictured him a man devoured by a secret despair, while he smiled his
brave undefeated smile in the face of all the world.
The weeks passed, and I braced myself for the coming ordeal. Then
everything came with a rush at the last, and there I was at the docks
giving my brave soldier his welcome home. It was not any easier than I
expected. I tried my hardest, as you may guess, to be all joy and
brightness, but when we were alone in the motor together my eyes were
full of tears, and I broke down utterly. Poor Harry, poor Harry, why are
physical calamities so awful and so irrevocable?
He let me cry, and then he said suddenly, "Come, Mary, look at the real
'me,' don't bother about that old leg, but look into my face, and tell me
what you see. There is something good for you to see if you will look
for it."
He said it so strangely that I was myself in a moment, and doing what
he told me just as in the good old days before the war. And then I saw
that Harry was a new Harry altogether, and that he was radiantly happy.
His face was pale and thin, but his eyes were ablaze with something
mysterious and wonderful. "Don't ask me anything now," he said; "wait
till we are in my old den, and then I will tell you everything." And by
this time I was so comforted that I was content to lie back and watch
that dear, happy face of his.
I shall never forget the talk we had afterwards. "Mary," he said, in his
straight, direct way, "I've come back a better man. I have been all my
life a healthy, happy pagan. We