The Sculptress V.S. Alexander (ebooks that read to you .txt) 📖

education with her new mentor, the surgeon Sir Jonathan Harvey. The AEF officer had been at first uninterested, particularly because she was a woman standing in a line of men offering to serve. As Emma explained her situation, the recruiter’s attention shifted from benign to rapt.

“You can help the wounded in that way?” he asked. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“The technique is performed in England,” Emma said. “I plan to open a studio in Paris to serve the wounded French and our own troops. All this work is based on the efforts of Sir Harold Gillies and his success in plastic surgery.”

The officer pursed his lips and studied her from head to toe, as if he were about to enlist her. “Let me take your information. I know a colonel who knows the commander of the Port of Embarkation . . . you realize there will be paperwork, letters to write, documents to obtain.”

Emma gave the recruiter her name, address, and telephone number and thanked him. A few days later she received a call from the colonel asking her to explain her plan in detail. After their conversation, the officer seemed pleased and instructed her to send a letter to him summarizing their talk. If Emma was approved, travel accommodations would be made, the trip dangerous, and the government absolved of any responsibility for her safety. After an agonizing two weeks, during which she lived much like a hermit, avoiding Linton, Louisa, and other friends, she received a telegram giving her clearance to travel to France aboard a troop ship.

Emma accepted the conditions and a flurry of activity began: calls to her mother, who had sold many of the horses and dispensed with Matilda’s services, although Charis still lived at the farm; conversations with Tom’s parents; arrangements with Anne for running the household and caring for Lazarus; settling last-minute financial matters; distilling her possessions into one large suitcase and a purse. She sent several telegrams to Tom telling him as much as she could—without giving details that would be censored. In the midst of all this, she received her commission check for Diana. Alex would only reveal it was purchased by a buyer who wished to remain anonymous.

Emma purposely kept her good-byes to a minimum. She wanted no parties—no forced farewells with Louisa and the rest of Boston society, no tearful scenes with Linton. The night before her departure she dined with Anne in the courtyard. Lazarus lay in the sitting room, his nose poking over the threshold of the French doors. The evening was tranquil and warm and Anne shed a few tears as she cleared the last of the dishes and said farewell to Emma.

On deck, the wind lashed her body, but instead of a stinging force she felt exhilarated, hardly believing she was on a troop ship in the North Atlantic less than three days from France. Her farewell in Boston, the bumpy train ride to New York, the ferry trip from Manhattan to Hoboken, the silent men in spectral columns filing onto the ships, the departure from New Jersey—all seemed a distant memory. But as time passed and the convoy crossed the sea, Emma knew she and the ships would enter even more dangerous waters—those occupied by German submarines.

* * *

Several of the men, polite and respectful, questioned Emma about her presence aboard the Catamount. One of them, from Kansas, was especially interested in her story.

“Are you a doctor?” he asked, offering her a cigarette. It was evening, before sunset, and the suffocating canopy of clouds had broken temporarily. Threads of yellow light fell like buttery necklaces on the waves. He was a few years younger, with thin light-brown hair streaming back from a high hairline, wire-rimmed spectacles arching across an aquiline nose, and a wide, infectious smile. He was, in his own charming way, handsome.

She refused his offer of a smoke. “No, I’m not a doctor. I’m a sculptress.”

“Do you have a beau?” he asked somewhat wistfully after asking her name. She looked down at her naked left hand. She had left her wedding ring in Boston as Tom had done when he departed, the risk of losing them too great. Tom had told her that leaving the ring was “one more reason to come home.”

“I’m married. My husband is a doctor with the Red Cross in France.”

The soldier’s cheeks flushed. “I’m a bachelor. I suppose it’s better that way . . . in case something should happen.”

Emma shifted uneasily and repositioned the wind-whipped stray curls of hair on her forehead. “Don’t be morbid. No good can come from tempting fate.”

“Did you see the men as they came aboard? I’m an officer, as most of us are, and I know what my comrades are thinking. Death is behind every man, one hand on the shoulder, guiding us to France. Boarding was like a funeral march rather than a celebration. What are the odds I’ll be alive next year? I guess I’m lucky not to have a girl, and certainly better off without a wife and children. My parents will be saddened by my death, but they have my sister to give them grandchildren.”

“You sound as if your death is a certainty.”

“My father always told me to be prepared ‘to meet your Maker.’”

Emma was touched by the officer’s frankness; however, the sincerity of his argument troubled her. The war had been far removed from Boston. Even so, many men and women were easily caught up in its fervor. She had avoided the destructive thoughts of what might happen to Tom, or, for that matter, what might happen to the world, much like someone diagnosed with a deadly disease who would throw themselves into life rather than obsessing about the malady. Now, under the conspicuous gaze of the officer, she felt the possibility of death. The AEF recruiter in Boston had informed her of the risks, so had the government, but here were men who were fighting for various reasons—freedom, Democracy, a hatred of Germans