So they mourned as they went their way of tender service, the words dropping unconsciously from their quivering old lips. A few there were who stood apart, the envied mothers with hope. Sheila learned who they were almost from the beginning. Each had a son somewhere not reported. Old Madame d'Arcy whispered about it as she bathed the face of the boy who looked so much like her own.
"Of course, ma'm'selle, my Lucien may be--I have not heard from him in many months. It is not for me to hope too much. But I think--yes, I think, ma'm'selle, he will come home to me when the war is over."
And Madame Simone, who brought fresh black coffee and little cakes for those who could eat them, trembled with the gladness of ministering to the boys who were fighting with hers for France. "I had almost ceased to pray when the Americans came, but now--ah, ma'm'selle, now there is hope again in this withered breast. I even dream now of mon p'tit--the youngest of them all. I feel the good God is sparing him for me."
And old Isabelle, who came to scrub the floor and clean, muttered, as she bent her willing back to the labor: "Moi, that is what I say, too. The Lord will send my Jacques home to comfort my old age."
As Sheila listened, it epitomized for her the tragedy of the mothers of France, this antiphonal chorus of the mothers who had lost all and those who had yet one son left. To the girl's mind there came in almost cruel contrast that chorus of Maeterlinck's mothers raised in rapturous expectancy to the unborn; she knew she was hearing now the agonized antithesis of it. Throughout the first day it rang incessantly, until she could have hummed the haunting melody of it. Then night came. The patches of reds and greens and blues that had sifted through the stained-glass window in the chancel and played all day in grotesque patches on the white cheeks of the wounded faded alike to gray, and the nurse lit the tall wax candles on the altar that the work might go on without stopping.
The next day--and the next--passed much the same. There was no end to the wounded. Griggs fainted twice the second day, and the chief and Sheila carried the work alone for a few hours. Each of them was acutely conscious of the strain on the other and did what he and she could to ease the tension. For the girl her greatest comfort was in the scrap of paper crumpled over her breast. It told her Peter was near, coming to her soon. It seemed to transmit some of his strength and optimism. There were moments when, but for his reassurance, the girl would have doubted every normal, happy phase of life and acknowledged only the unending torture and renunciation. Sometimes the horror seemed to wrap them in like an impenetrable fog. As for the chief, it took every ounce of will and sanity to keep him going, and he wondered how the girl beside him could brave it through without a whimper.