Miss Mink's Soldier

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Title:     Miss Mink's Soldier
Author: Alice Hegan Rice [More Titles by Rice]

Miss Mink sat in church with lips compressed and hands tightly clasped in her black alpaca lap, and stubbornly refused to comply with the request that was being made from the pulpit. She was a small desiccated person, with a sharp chin and a sharper nose, and narrow faded eyes that through the making of innumerable buttonholes had come to resemble them.

For over forty years she had sat in that same pew facing that same minister, regarding him second only to his Maker, and striving in thought and deed to follow his precepts. But the time had come when Miss Mink's blind allegiance wavered.

Ever since the establishment of the big Cantonment near the city, Dr. Morris, in order to encourage church attendance, had been insistent in his request that every member of his congregation should take a soldier home to Sunday dinner.

Now it was no lack of patriotism that made Miss Mink refuse to do her part. Every ripple in the small flag that fluttered over her humble dwelling sent a corresponding ripple along her spinal column. When she essayed to sing "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," in her high, quavering soprano, she invariably broke down from sheer excess of emotion. But the American army fighting for right and freedom in France, and the Army individually tracking mud into her spotless cottage, were two very different things. Miss Mink had always regarded a man in her house much as she regarded a gnat in her eye. There was but one course to pursue in either case--elimination!

But her firm stand in the matter had not been maintained without much misgiving. Every Sunday when Dr. Morris made his earnest appeal, something within urged her to comply. She was like an automobile that gets cranked up and then refuses to go. Church-going instead of being her greatest joy came to be a nightmare. She no longer lingered in the vestibule, for those highly cherished exchanges of inoffensive gossip that constituted her social life. Nobody seemed to have time for her. Every one was busy with a soldier. Within the sanctuary it was no better. Each khaki-clad figure that dotted the congregation claimed her attention as a possible candidate for hospitality. And each one that presented himself to her vision was indignantly repudiated. One was too old, another too young, one too stylish, another had forgotten to wash his ears. She found a dozen excuses for withholding her invitation.

But this morning as she sat upright and uncompromising in her short pew, she was suddenly thrown into a state of agitation by the appearance in the aisle of an un-ushered soldier who, after hesitating beside one or two pews, slipped into the seat beside her. It seemed almost as if Providence had taken a hand and since she had refused to select a soldier, had prompted a soldier to select her.

During the service she sat gazing straight at the minister without comprehending a word that he said. Never once did her glance stray to that khaki-clad figure beside her, but her thoughts played around him like lightning. What if she should get up her courage and ask him to dinner, how would she ever be able to walk out the street with him! And once she had got him to her cottage, what on earth would she talk to him about? Her hands grew cold as she thought about it. Yet something warned her it was now or never, and that it was only by taking the hated step and getting it over with, that she could regain the peace of mind that had of late deserted her.

The Doxology found her weakening, but the Benediction stiffened her resolve, and when the final Amen sounded, she turned blindly to the man beside her, and said, hardly above her breath:

"If you ain't got any place to go to dinner, you can come home with me."

The tall figure turned toward her, and a pair of melancholy brown eyes looked down into hers:

"You will excuse if I do not quite comprehend your meaning," he said politely, with a strong foreign accent.

Miss Mink was plunged into instant panic; suppose he was a German? Suppose she should be convicted for entertaining a spy! Then she remembered his uniform and was slightly reassured.

"I said would you come home to dinner with me?" she repeated weakly, with a fervent prayer that he would decline.

But the soldier had no such intention. He bowed gravely, and picked up his hat and overcoat.

Miss Mink, looking like a small tug towing a big steamer, shamefacedly made her way to the nearest exit, and got him out through the Sunday-school room. She would take him home through a side street, feed him and send him away as soon as possible. It was a horrible ordeal, but Miss Mink was not one to turn back once she had faced a difficult situation. As they passed down the broad steps into the brilliant October sunshine, she noticed with relief that his shoes were not muddy. Then, before she could make other observations, her mind was entirely preoccupied with a large, firm hand that grasped her elbow, and seemed to half lift her slight weight from step to step. Miss Mink's elbow was not used to such treatment and it indignantly freed itself before the pavement was reached. The first square was traveled in embarrassed silence, then Miss Mink made a heroic effort to break the ice:

"My name is Mink," she said, "Miss Libby Mink. I do dress-making over on Sixth Street."

"I am Bowinski," volunteered her tall companion, "first name Alexis. I am a machinist before I enlist in the army."

"I knew you were some sort of a Dago," said Miss Mink.

"But no, Madame, I am Russian. My home is in Kiev in Ukrania."

"Why on earth didn't you stay there?" Miss Mink asked from the depths of her heart.

The soldier looked at her earnestly. "Because of the persecution," he said. "My father he was in exile. His family was suspect. I come alone to America when I am but fifteen."

"Well I guess you're sorry enough now that you came," Miss Mink said, "Now that you've got drafted."

They had reached her gate by this time, but Bowinski paused before entering: "Madame mistakes!" he said with dignity. "I was not drafted. The day America enter the war, that day I give up my job I have held for five years, and enlist. America is my country, she take me in when I have nowhere to go. It is my proud moment when I fight for her!"

Then it was that Miss Mink took her first real look at him, and if it was a longer look than she had ever before bestowed upon man, we must put it down to the fact that he was well worth looking at, with his tall square figure, and his serious dark face lit up at the present with a somewhat indignant enthusiasm.

Miss Mink pushed open the gate and led the way into her narrow yard. She usually entered the house by way of the side door which opened into the dining room, which was also her bedroom by night, and her sewing room by day. But this morning, after a moment's hesitation, she turned a key in the rusty lock of the front door, and let a flood of sunshine dispel the gloom of the room. The parlor had been furnished by Miss Mink's parents some sixty years ago, and nothing had been changed. A customer had once suggested that if the sofa was taken away from the window, and the table put in its place, the room would be lighter. Miss Mink had regarded the proposition as preposterous. One might as well have asked her to move her nose around to the back of her head, or to exchange the positions of her eyes and ears!

You have seen a drop of water caught in a crystal? Well, that was what Miss Mink was like. She moved in the tiniest possible groove with her home at one end and her church at the other. Is it any wonder that when she beheld a strange young foreigner sitting stiffly on her parlor sofa, and realized that she must entertain him for at least an hour, that panic seized her?

"I better be seeing to dinner," she said hastily. "You can look at the album till I get things dished up."

Private Bowinski, surnamed Alexis, sat with knees awkwardly hunched and obediently turned the leaves of the large album, politely scanning the placid countenances of departed Minks for several generations.

Miss Mink, moving about in the inner room, glanced in at him from time to time. After the first glance she went to the small store room and got out a jar of sweet pickle, and after the second she produced a glass of crab apple jelly. Serving a soldier guest who had voluntarily adopted her country, was after all not so distasteful, if only she did not have to talk to him. But already the coming ordeal was casting its baleful shadow.

When they were seated opposite one another at the small table, her worst fears were realized. They could neither of them think of anything to say. If she made a move to pass the bread to him he insisted upon passing it to her. When she rose to serve him, he rose to serve her. She had never realized before how oppressive excessive politeness could be.

The one point of consolation for her lay in the fact that he was enjoying his dinner. He ate with a relish that would have flattered any hostess. Sometimes when he put his knife in his mouth she winced with apprehension, but aside from a few such lapses in etiquette he conducted himself with solemn and punctilious propriety.

When he had finished his second slice of pie, and pushed back his chair, Miss Mink waited hopefully for him to say good-bye. He was evidently getting out his car fare now, searching with thumb and forefinger in his vest pocket.

"If it is not to trouble you more, may I ask a match?" he said.

"A match? What on earth do you want with a match?" demanded Miss Mink. Then a look of apprehension swept over her face. Was this young man actually proposing to profane the virgin air of her domicile with the fumes of tobacco?

"Perhaps you do not like that I should smoke?" Bowinski said instantly. "I beg you excuse, I--"

"Oh! that's all right," said Miss Mink in a tone that she did not recognize as her own, "the matches are in that little bisque figure on the parlor mantel. I'll get you to leave the front door open, if you don't mind. It's kinder hot in here."

Five o'clock that afternoon found Miss Mink and Alexis Bowinski still sitting facing each other in the front parlor. They were mutually exhausted, and conversation after having suffered innumerable relapses, seemed about to succumb.

"If there's any place else you want to go, you mustn't feel that you've got to stay here," Miss Mink had urged some time after dinner. But Alexis had answered:

"I know only two place. The Camp and the railway depot. I go on last Sunday to the railway depot. The Chaplain at the Camp advise me I go to church this morning. Perhaps I make a friend."

"But what do the other soldiers do on Sunday?" Miss Mink asked desperately.

"They promenade. Always promenade. Except they go to photo-plays, and dance hall. It is the hard part of war, the waiting part."

Miss Mink agreed with him perfectly as she helped him wait. She had never spent such a long day in her life. At a quarter past five he rose to go. A skillful word on her part would have expedited matters, but Miss Mink was not versed in the social trick of speeding a departing guest. Fifteen minutes dragged their weary length even after he was on his feet. Then Miss Mink received a shock from which it took her an even longer time to recover. Alexis Bowinski, having at last arrived at the moment of departure, took her hand in his and, bowing awkwardly, raised it to his lips and kissed it! Then he backed out of the cottage, stalked into the twilight and was soon lost to sight beyond the hedge.

Miss Mink sank limply on the sofa by the window, and regarded her small wrinkled hand with stern surprise. It was a hand that had never been kissed before and it was tingling in the strangest and most unaccountable manner.

The following week was lived in the afterglow of that eventful Sunday. She described the soldier's visit in detail to the few customers who came in. She went early to prayer-meeting in order to tell about it. And in the telling she subordinated everything to the dramatic climax:

"I never was so took back in my life!" she said. "After setting there for four mortal hours with nothing to say, just boring each other to death, for him to get up like that and make a regular play-actor bow, and kiss my hand! Well, I never was so took back!"

And judging from the number of times Miss Mink told the story, and the conscious smile with which she concluded it, it was evident that she was not averse to being "took back."

By the time Sunday arrived she had worked herself up to quite a state of excitement. Would Bowinski he at church? Would he sit on her side of the congregation? Would he wait after the service to speak to her? She put on her best bonnet, which was usually reserved for funerals, and pinned a bit of thread lace over the shabby collar of her coat.

The moment she entered church all doubts were dispelled. There in her pew, quite as if he belonged there, sat the tall young Russian. He even stepped into the aisle for her to pass in, helped her off with her coat, and found the place for her in the hymn-book. Miss Mink realized with a glow of satisfaction, that many curious heads were craning in her direction. For the first time since she had gone forward forty years ago to confess her faith, she was an object of interest to the congregation!

When the benediction was pronounced several women came forward ostensibly to speak to her, but in reality to ask Bowinski to go home to dinner with them. She waived them all aside.

"No, he's going with me!" she announced firmly, and Bowinski obediently picked up his hat and accompanied her.

For the following month this scene was enacted each Sunday, with little change to outward appearances but with great change to Miss Mink herself. In the mothering of Bowinski she had found the great adventure of her life. She mended his clothes, and made fancy dishes for him, she knit him everything that could be knitted, including an aviator's helmet for which he had no possible use. She talked about "my soldier" to any one who would listen.

Bowinski accepted her attention with grave politeness. He wore the things she made for him, he ate the things she cooked for him, he answered all her questions and kissed her hand at parting. Miss Mink considered his behavior perfect.

One snowy Sunday in late November Miss Mink was thrown into a panic by his failure to appear on Sunday morning. She confided to Sister Bacon in the adjoining pew that she was afraid he had been sent to France. Sister Bacon promptly whispered to her husband that he had been sent to France, and the rumor spread until after church quite a little group gathered around Miss Mink to hear about it.

"What was his company?" some one asked.

"Company C, 47th Infantry," Miss Mink repeated importantly.

"Why, that's my boy's company," said Mrs. Bacon. "They haven't gone to France."

The thought of her soldier being in the trenches even, was more tolerable to Miss Mink than the thought of his being in town and failing to come to her for Sunday dinner.

"I bet he's sick," she announced. "I wish I could find out."

Mrs. Bacon volunteered to ask her Jim about him, and three days later stopped by Miss Mink's cottage to tell her that Bowinski had broken his leg over a week before and was in the Base Hospital.

"Can anybody go out there that wants to?" demanded Miss Mink.

"Yes, on Sundays and Wednesdays. But you can't count on the cars running to-day. Jim says everything's snowed under two feet deep."

Miss Mink held her own counsel but she knew what she was going to do. Her soldier was in trouble, he had no family or friends. She was going to him.

With trembling fingers she packed a small basket with some apples, a jar of jelly and a slice of cake. There was no time for her own lunch, so she hurriedly put on her coat and twisting a faded scarf about her neck trudged out into the blustery afternoon.

The blizzard of the day before had almost suspended traffic, and when she finally succeeded in getting a car, it was only to find that it ran no farther than the city limits.

"How much farther is it to the Camp?" Miss Mink asked desperately.

"About a mile," said the conductor. "I wouldn't try it if I was you, the walking's fierce."

But Miss Mink was not to be turned back. Gathering her skirts as high as her sense of propriety would permit, and grasping her basket she set bravely forth. The trip alone to the Camp, under the most auspicious circumstances, would have been a trying ordeal for her, but under the existing conditions it required nothing less than heroism. The snow had drifted in places as high as her knees, and again and again she stumbled and almost lost her footing as she staggered forward against the force of the icy wind.

Before she had gone half a mile she was ready to collapse with nervousness and exhaustion.

"Looks like I just can't make it," she whimpered, "and yet I'm going to!"

The honk of an automobile sent her shying into a snowdrift, and when she caught her breath and turned around she saw that the machine had stopped and a hand was beckoning to her from the window.

"May I give you a lift?" asked a girl's high sweet voice and, looking up, she saw a sparkling face smiling down at her over an upturned fur collar.

Without waiting to be urged she climbed into the machine, stumbled over the rug, and sank exhausted on the cushions.

"Give me your basket," commanded the young lady. "Now put your feet on the heater. Sure you have room?"

Miss Mink, still breathless, nodded emphatically.

"It's a shame to ask anyone to ride when I'm so cluttered up," continued the girl gaily. "I'm taking these things out to my sick soldier boys."

Miss Mink, looking down, saw that the floor of the machine was covered with boxes and baskets.

"I'm going to the Hospital, too," she said.

"That's good!" exclaimed the girl. "I can take you all the way. Perhaps you have a son or a grandson out there?"

Miss Mink winced. "No, he ain't any kin to me," she said, "but I been sort of looking after him."

"How sweet of you!" said the pouting red lips with embarrassing ardor. "Just think of your walking out here this awful day at your age. Quite sure you are getting warm?"

Yes, Miss Mink was warm, but she felt suddenly old, old and shrivelled beside this radiant young thing.

"I perfectly adore going to the hospital," said the girl, her blue eyes dancing. "Father's one of the medical directors, Major Chalmers, I expect you've heard of him. I'm Lois Chalmers."

But Miss Mink was scarcely listening. She was comparing the big luscious looking oranges in the crate, with the hard little apples in her own basket.

"Here we are!" cried Lois, as the car plowed through the snow and mud and stopped in front of a long shed-like building. Two orderlies sprang forward with smiling alacrity and began unloading the boxes.

"Aren't you the nicest ever?" cried Lois with a skillful smile that embraced them both. "Those to the medical, those to the surgical, and these to my little fat-faced Mumpsies."

Miss Mink got herself and her basket out unassisted, then stood in doubt as to what she should do next. She wanted to thank Miss Chalmers for her courtesy, but two dapper young officers had joined the group around her making a circle of masculine admirers.

Miss Mink slipped away unnoticed and presented herself at the door marked "Administration Building."

"Can you tell me where the broken-legged soldiers are?" she asked timidly of a man at a desk.

"Who do you want to see?"

"Alexis Bowinski. He come from Russia. He's got curly hair and big sort of sad eyes, and--"

"Bowinski," the man repeated, running his finger down a ledger, "A. Bowinski, Surgical Ward 5-C. Through that door, two corridors to the right midway down the second corridor."

Miss Mink started boldly forth to follow directions, but it was not until she had been ejected from the X-ray Room, the Mess Hall, and the Officers' Quarters, that she succeeded in reaching her destination. By that time her courage was at its lowest ebb. On either side of the long wards were cots, on which lay men in various stages of undress. Now Miss Mink had seen pajamas in shop windows, she had even made a pair once of silk for an ambitious groom, but this was the first time she had ever seen them, as it were, occupied.

So acute was her embarrassment that she might have turned back at the last moment, had her eyes not fallen on the cot nearest the door. There, lying asleep, with his injured leg suspended from a pulley from which depended two heavy weights, lay Bowinski.

Miss Mink slipped into the chair between his cot and the wall. After the first glance at his pale unshaven face and the pain-lined brow, she forgot all about herself. She felt only overwhelming pity for him, and indignation at the treatment to which he was being subjected.

By and by he stirred and opened his eyes.

"Oh you came!" he said, "I mean you not to know I be in hospital. You must have the kindness not to trouble about me."

"Trouble nothing," said Miss Mink, husky with emotion, "I never knew a thing about it until to-day. What have they got you harnessed up like this for?"

Then Alexis with difficulty found the English words to tell her how his leg had not set straight, had been re-broken and was now being forced into proper position.

"It is like hell, Madame," he concluded with a trembling lip, then he drew a sharp breath, "But no, I forget, I am in the army. I beg you excuse my complain."

Miss Mink laid herself out to entertain him. She unpacked her basket, and spread her meagre offerings before him. She described in detail all the surgical operations she had ever had any experience with, following some to their direst consequences. Alexis listened apathetically. Now and then a spasm of pain contracted his face, but he uttered no word of complaint.

Only once during the afternoon did his eyes brighten. Miss Mink caught the sudden change in his expression and, following his glance, saw Lois Chalmers coming through the ward. She had thrown aside her heavy fur coat, and her slim graceful little figure as alert as a bird's darted from cart to cot as she tossed packages of cigarettes to right and left.

"Here you are, Mr. Whiskers!" she was calling out gaily to one. "This is for you, Colonel Collar Bone. Where's Cadet Limpy? Discharged? Good for him! Hello, Mr. Strong Man!" For a moment she poised at the foot of Bowinski's cot, then recognizing Miss Mink she nodded:

"So you found your soldier? I'm going back to town in ten minutes, I'll take you along if you like."

She flitted out of the ward as quickly as she had come, leaving two long rows of smiling faces in her wake. She had brought no pity, nor tenderness, nor understanding, but she had brought her fresh young beauty, and her little gift of gayety, and made men forget, at least for a moment, their pain-racked bodies and their weary brains.

Miss Mink reached her cottage that night weary and depressed. She had had nothing to eat since breakfast, and yet was too tired to prepare supper. She made her a cup of tea which she drank standing, and then crept into bed only to lie staring into the darkness tortured by the thought of those heavy weights on Bowinski's injured leg.

The result of her weariness and exposure was a sharp attack of tonsilitis that kept her in bed several weeks. The first time she was able to be up, she began to count the hours until the next visiting day at the Camp. Her basket was packed the evening before, and placed beside the box of carnations in which she had extravagantly indulged. It is doubtful whether Miss Mink was ever so happy in her life as during that hour of pleased expectancy.

As she moved feebly about putting the house in order, so that she could make an early start in the morning, she discovered a letter that the Postman had thrust under the side door earlier in the day. Across the left hand corner was pictured an American flag, and across the right was a red triangle in a circle. She hastily tore off the envelop and read:

Dear Miss Mink:

I am out the Hospital, getting along fine. Hope you are in the same circumstances. I am sending you a book which I got from a Dear Young Lady, in the Hospital. I really do not know what to call her because I do not know her name, but I know she deserve a nice, nice name for all good She dose to all soldiers. I think she deserve more especially from me than to call her a Sweet Dear Lady, because that I have the discouragement, and she make me to laugh and take heart. I would ask your kind favor to please pass the book back to the Young Lady, and pleas pass my thankful word to her, and if you might be able to send me her name before that I go to France, which I learn is very soon. Excuse all errors if you pleas will. This is goodby from

Your soldier friend,
A. BOWINSKI.

Miss Mink read the letter through, then she sat down limply in a kitchen chair and stared at the stove. Twice she half rose to get the pen and ink on the shelf above the coal box, but each time she changed her mind, folded her arms indignantly, and went back to her stern contemplation of the stove. Presently a tear rolled down her cheek, then another, and another until she dropped her tired old face in her tired old hands, and gave a long silent sob that shook her slight body from head to foot. Then she rose resolutely and sweeping the back of her hand across her eyes, took down her writing materials. On one side of a post card she wrote the address of Alexis Bowinski, and on the other she penned in her cramped neat writing, one line:

"Her name is Lois Chalmers. Hotel LeRoy."

This done she unpacked her basket, put her half dozen carnations in a tumbler of water and carried them into the dark parlor, pulled her chair up to the kitchen table, drew the lamp closer and patiently went back to her buttonholes.

[The end]
Alice Hegan Rice's short story: Miss Mink's Soldier

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