CHAPTER XVIII THE PEACE BABE

Peace had come again.

And in her shining bassinet Peace Europa breathed softly through a mouth like a damp red rose, waved a tiny arm feebly, uncurled the new-born hand, with its pearly nails, as if she would catch and hold to her baby breast--forever and a day--the new-born happiness that had come to earth with her.

Beside her in the wee hospital crib, sharing the soft blanket in which the welcoming nurse had wrapped her, slumbered another, her Heavenly Twin--the Babe of Peace.

So it seemed to nurses and doctors who stole near to look at her, lying all oiled and shiny!

“If ever a baby was born at the hour of fate, she was!” breathed the intern, the house-doctor, beaming through his glasses upon her. “And, by George! the mite seems to know it, too. Did you ever before see such a placid smile upon a new-born thing?”

“I never did,” replied the feminine superintendent of the Hospital. “I’m afraid I’ll have to keep out of the ‘baby-room,’--else I’ll break every rule--take her up now and again, to cuddle her, just for the sake of this won-der-ful hour in which she first saw--the--light.”

“Yes! and spoil her for her mother to take care of, afterwards--make her as nervous as a witch. I guess even my young sister--fifteen-year-old sister who’s a Camp Fire Girl and has taken a course in Baby Craft--would have more self-control than that,” rebuked the intern, but leniently, joy oozing through his glasses; for his dearest chum was at the front, that devastated front, in far-away France--and now there was a chance of seeing him again.

“I feel that way, too, doctor,” said the superintendent, interpreting the look, not the rebuke. “My twin brother is over there. He’s been wounded over and over again. Oh! how I dreaded his taking part in the next big drive. No need for it now! Will you listen to the whistles and horns--that hooting klaxon. Why! the world’s gone mad. And to think that this baby--a soldier’s child, too--should be born just at the moment, or a few minutes before it, that the word went out to cease firing!” The superintendent wiped her eyes.

“Was ever such a heavenly herald?” breathed the doctor.

“Her mother feels so. She says the child is born for greatness. She has named her already, Peace Europa--Peace Europa Bush.”

“Gosh! Some name! A big contract to fasten upon six pounds and three-quarters of soft pink flesh and gristly bone,” mocked Dr. Lemuel Kemp. “Well! I suppose the heavenly infant will hold an unconscious reception, all day long, of those who are privileged to be admitted--in this Hades of a room.” He sniffed at the hothouse atmosphere of the baby-room--extremely hothouse--in which humanity’s latest buds--seventeen of them, with Europa as the center--were unfolding. “I’ll have to tip that young sister of mine the word to come round and see her. I suppose she’s somewhere out at the heart of the clamor now--in the crowded streets, with the rest of the family--the rest of the world--gone mad over the Armistice being signed. But, oh! she’ll have a fringe of enthusiasm left for the Peace baby,” smilingly. “She has been taking care of a neighbor’s child, two months old, for an hour a day lately; she showed me a pretty flame-colored honor-bead she had received for it.”

“A neat way of gilding the pill of service!” smiled the superintendent.

“Say, rather, of transforming it into a sugar pellet,” was the man’s reply, as the two left the tropical atmosphere of the hospital nursery.

Yes, War was over. Simultaneously with the birth of little Peace the word had gone forth to a hacked and harrowed and weary world to cease firing!

No wonder that the young Day, born with her, had gone mad--outside the hospital--a brimming-over child that could not contain its own happiness; that from shore to shore bells rang, sirens sang, klaxons hooted themselves hoarse--men and women, too--while underneath the wild riot--vociferous glee--tears baptized the dawn in many a home; radiant joy-tears on behalf of those who would come back, through which, like a reflection of the morning-star in ocean, shone the gold star of memory for those who would not!

But the star of service had not set. The wings which had come through the game, undrooping, must be spread anew for tried, if tamer, lights.

And so, as Europa still lay, oiled and shining, teasing the air with her first pin-prick cries--ere yet she was four hours old--there arrived two visitors to see her!

One was blinking like the sleepiest Owlet ever caught abroad at daylight; she had been awake since three, abroad since thirty minutes past; she was the doctor’s sister, Lilla Kemp, Little Owl, of the Morning-Glory Group of Camp Fire Girls--a Glory Unit now, as it paraded the streets in a body, radiating ecstasy and anticipatory reunion--longed-for reunion with the brothers over there.

The other, being by name and nature of the order of the flame, looked as if she could never “drowse” again, as if she had caught the very heart of the sunlight joy upon the tips of her shading eyelashes and held it there in twinkling points of gold.

“I’ve made the duckiest--dearest--dandiest--little set of baby-clothes for her--for Peace Europa--her mother told me, long ago, that if she happened to be born on Peace Day, she would name her that,” said Sesooā, the Flame. “You should see them, Lil, the sweetest little dress--I put every teeny, tiny, microscopic stitch in it myself,”--there was a drop of water on the gold lashes now--“the daintiest fine linen gertrude and tiny shirtie. You see, I knew she was a soldier’s child--and due to arrive about this time.”

“And you’ll exhibit them, won’t you, at our next ceremonial meeting--a Peace Ceremonial, the Guardian said it would be, if the Armistice went through; she’s planning for it already. They’ll mean a new honor for hand craft, a pretty green honor-bead--those dear little baby-clothes.”

“Oh! I can hardly think about that now, or of anything, except--except that they’re a thanksgiving set--offering,”--the tears brimmed over at this golden point, two of them dropped upon Peace Europa’s blanket, saluting the invisible peace twin, new-born Peace Angel, sleeping beside her--“a thanksgiving offering because Iver’s coming back.... Oh! I can’t be s-sure yet, of course! He’s been wounded so often, burned with mustard gas, lost--lost all his beautiful wig, as he jokingly said--his hair, you know, burned off.
“But when you come back,
As you will come back!”

The sister’s tear-breathed chant--each word a whirling joy-center--was crooned into Europa’s hooding blanket. “Isn’t she the darlingest baby you ever saw--little Peace Angel?” added Sara Davenport very softly. “I’m going to adopt her in a way; take care of her for an hour a day later on, if her mother will allow me, as you have been doing with that neighbor’s baby--Lilla.”

“Why don’t we adopt her forthwith, as a Group, directly she’s out of the hospital, make her clothes for her, bring her toys, and when she’s a year old, or so, take her to camp with us in the summer? Fancy her building sand-castles--little Peace Europa--among the cranberries on that white beach from which you put off in your radio-smeared dory, to signal the Coast Guards! Fancy that--our Peace Europa!”

Lilla’s eyes spilled over with humid light upon the blanketed mite.

“Too lovely for anything--if her mother will allow it!”

“Bless you! She’ll make no objection. They live in rather a stuffy little street; when she was well she took a boarder or two to help out while her husband was fighting over there--and she has three more children, the oldest twins, a boy and girl, between four and five, and a tot of two.”

“How--how about leaving Europa to sleep with her heavenly twin, the Peace Babe, and our taking those other twins out to see the big parade this afternoon--they’re soldier’s children,” suggested Sesooā, with sudden inspiration.

“Good idea! Only, of course, representatives from our group, from every Camp Fire in the city, are supposed to march with the Red Cross for which we have been knitting, sewing, making surgical dressings, working in a war-canteen, and so forth, right along--to parade on this won-der-ful Peace Day!” Little Owl’s lip quivered; she, too, wore a blue-starred service-pin for a young uncle, who had been to her childhood a pal and a protector--prisoner now on enemy soil--would the Armistice bring him back?

“Oh! we’ll let Blue Heron--Olive--hold our Morning-Glory end up in the parade, with the Rainbow, Arline, to support her. They’ll attract attention enough. Olive is doing that now, I believe, since she made her début in society two months ago, at her stepmother’s wish, but very quietly, the War not being over then and every one of us ready to stand on our heads, as now, for joy.... For you will come back!... Ah, well!” the Flame’s lip quivered. “Ah--well!”

The latter sigh introduced the least dark shade of panic into the day’s rainbowed panegyrics, lest he who was to return--Iver--Lieutenant O Pips of the alert eye, the observation post astuteness--might fall short of gaining his heart’s desire when he did return, might not get all he longed to ask from the Torch-Bearer whom he had seen in ceremonial dress, or kneeling by a gassed soldier, many and many a time, over there, when he missed the things that make life hum.

“Ah, well! no use in anticipating. At all events, I’ve got over being raspy on the score--the war-time score--of Olive’s cousins!” A little flaming shrug of shoulders now, as the two, with a last yearning look at Peace Europa--beneficent babe--a last almost reverent touch upon the tiny, pearly hand which had come to earth, as it seemed, bearing the boon mankind desired--turned to leave the tropical baby-room, the quiet hospital.

“Well! it’s to be the twins now, is it, Europa’s brother and sister?” said Lilla, as they emerged into the open, where, on all sides, the day, young yet, had gone mad, was running over with tomfoolery and innocent riot--a madcap child that could not contain its own gladness.

But the twins were no “peace handful,” as the two girls found. In the absence of their mother they were martyring a grandmother. They had baptized the joy of the day in mud-puddles and hung it out to dry from spikey fences--the boy of four and a half, especially--until not a clean, whole shred of clothing remained to him.

“Never mind! I’ll find something for him to wear,” proclaimed the grandmama hopefully. “Will I allow them to go an’ see the big parade with you!” eyeing the visitors with almost tearful gratitude. “Oh! you’d better believe I will. Now! to see how I can rig him up. There are these rompers of Elsie’s, fresh from the tub--I’ve just ironed them!”

“But I can’t wear them. Oh! I c-can’t wear--them!” The boy eyed the tiny gingham garment as if Peace Day had, in aviator’s slang, become a pancake wreck, its joy all flattened. “They’re girl’s!”

He leveled a mud-caked forefinger at an utterly ignominious half-inch of embroidery decorating those romper-leglets of his twin sister.

“Daddy-man w-wouldn’t want me to wear them! Daddy-man’s a soldier--my Bob-daddy is! He’s over in France--now!”

Bob-sonny of four and a half looked sidelong out of a rolling eye-corner at the two spick and span Camp Fire Girls, in costume of red, white, and blue.

In this contest, however, those victorious colors, so triumphant over there, were coolly neutral.

He attacked the grandmother with pleadings--the two freshly laundered rings of embroidery weaving chains about the manikin soul within him, as he rebelliously eyed them.

“Come! Come! No more nonsense now!” Grandmama suddenly set her foot down. “I wonder you aren’t ashamed! You’ll have to wear ’em--or stay at home!”

She departed, on an errand, to the near-by kitchen.

Once more Bobbie’s insulted eye implored the Minute-Girls, still neutral.

Then he retreated into an adjoining bedroom, whose door was wide open, and knelt upon a low chair--desperately, as soldiers kneel in the trenches.

“O God,” he pleaded, with full bursting heart of faith. “O God, please don’t let Her make me wear dem--dis day--dey’re--girl’s!”

Neutrality was at an end.

It was America’s hour and her spirit flamed in her Minute-Girl daughters, siding, all in an illumined flash, a tearful flash, with Bob-sonny against any camouflaging of his sex on this day when Columbia’s sons, his father among them, decorated and re-decorated, over there, were being hailed--and kissed (oft to their disgust) with delirious cries that “America--America had saved France!”

“You shan’t! You shan’t!” cried Sesooā, seizing upon the manikin who, not so many months ago, had seen them march away, his baby soul on fire. “You shan’t, Bobby! I’ll save you! See--see if I don’t!”

She was in the strange kitchen in an instant.

“Oh! Gran’ma,” she wheedled, “I’m just so used to the wash-tub. I’ve done the whole family washing before now and won a flame-colored honor-bead for that little performance,” laughingly--tenderly. “As we’re going to take these heavenly twins off your hands for the rest of the day--I promise not to bring them home until they’re so tired an’ sleepy that they wouldn’t see a puddle if ’twas spattering them--won’t you--won’t you let me have one pair of Bob-sonny’s little knickerbockers, that cunning little blouse, too. Dear me! I’ll launder them for him in no time! When he sees the big parade go by he can hold up his head as ‘all boy,’--what there is of him--a fiery little son of big, fiery Bob-daddy, over in France, who has helped to bring the War to an end, ... and who doesn’t know yet that his little Peace Europa is waiting--waiting--for him on this side of the water, when he gets back--as he will get back!”