Page:Wounded Souls.djvu/322

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week, and is doing good work. Looks after the supplies, and puts his heart into the job."

As he spoke the door opened and Brand strode into the room, with rain dripping from his waterproof coat which he took off and flung into a corner before he turned to the table.

"Lord! a cup of tea is what I want!"

"And what you shall have, my dear," said Eileen. "But don't you know a friend when you see him?"

"By Jove!"

He held my hand in a hard grip and patted me on the shoulder. Our friendship was beyond the need of words.

So there we three who had seen many strange and tragic things in those years of history were together again, in the city of Vienna, the city of death, where the innocent were paying for the guilty but where also, as Daddy Small said, there was going out a call to charity which was being heard by the heart of the world above the old war-cries of cruelty.

I stayed with them only a week. I had been long away from England and had other work to do. But in that time I saw how these three friends, and others in their service, were devoting themselves to the rescue of human life. Partly, I think, for their own sake, though without conscious selfishness, and with a passionate pity for those who suffered. By this service they were healing their own souls, sorely wounded in the war. That was so, certainly, with Wickham Brand, and a little, I think, with Eileen O'Connor.

Brand was rescued in the nick of time by the doctor's call to him. Elsa's death had struck him a heavy blow when his nerves were already in rags and tatters. Now by active service in this work of humanity and healing he was getting back to normality, getting serene, and steady. I saw the change in him, revealed by the light