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Title: The Red Cross Girls in the British Trenches

Author: Margaret Vandercook

Release Date: August 23, 2019 [EBook #60154]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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Transcriber’s Notes:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE RED CROSS GIRLS IN THE BRITISH TRENCHES

[Illustration: IT DID NOT OCCUR TO HER THAT SHE WAS IN EQUAL
PERIL--(_See page 250_)]

       *       *       *       *       *




The Red Cross Girls in the British Trenches


  By
  MARGARET VANDERCOOK

  Author of “The Ranch Girls Series,” “Stories
  about Camp Fire Girls Series,” etc.

  Illustrated

  The John C. Winston Company
  Philadelphia

       *       *       *       *       *

  Copyright, 1916, by
  THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                          PAGE

      I. A SOCIAL FAILURE             7

     II. DIFFERENT KINDS OF COURAGE  26

    III. FAREWELL                    41

     IV. MAKING ACQUAINTANCES        58

      V. “LADY DORIAN”               71

     VI. A TRIAL OF FIRE             85

    VII. THE LANDING                 97

   VIII. A MEETING                  109

     IX. “BUT YET A WOMAN”          124

      X. BEHIND THE FIRING LINES    138

     XI. OUT OF A CLEAR SKY         150

    XII. FIRST AID                  161

   XIII. THE SUMMONS                169

    XIV. COLONEL DALTON             179

     XV. NEWSPAPER LETTERS          190

    XVI. THE AMBULANCE CORPS        202

   XVII. DICK                       214

  XVIII. A REAPPEARANCE             226

    XIX. THE TEST                   235

     XX. A GIRL’S DEED              249

    XXI. AN UNEXPECTED SITUATION    258

   XXII. RECOGNITION                271

       *       *       *       *       *

THE RED CROSS GIRLS IN THE BRITISH TRENCHES




CHAPTER I _A Social Failure_


The dance was over and Mildred Thornton climbed disconsolately up the
long stairs. From her thin shoulders floated a delicate white scarf
and her dress was of white lace and tulle. Yet Mildred had no look of
a conquering Princess, nor yet of Cinderella, who must have carried
her head proudly even after the ball, remembering the devotion of her
Prince.

But for Mildred there was no Prince to remember, nor devotion from
anyone. She was in that mood of hopeless depression which comes from
having attended a dance at which one has been a hopeless failure. Her
head drooped and though her cheeks were hot, her hands were cold.

Downstairs in the library she could hear her brother having his
good-night talk with their mother. Of course he did not intend that
she should overhear what was being said, and yet distinctly his words
floated up to her.

“Well, dearest, I did what I could, I swear it. Do hand me another one
of those sandwiches; playing the devoted brother takes it out of me.
But poor old Mill is no go! The fellows were nice enough, of course;
they danced with her whenever I asked them, but the worst of it was
they would not repeat the offense. You know Mill dances something like
an animated telegraph pole, and though she is a brick and all that,
she hasn’t an ounce of frivolous conversation. Do you know, I actually
heard her talking about the war, and no one in our set ever speaks of
the war now; we are jolly tired of the subject.”

Whatever her mother’s reply, it was given in so low a tone as to be
inaudible. But again Dick’s voice was pitched louder.

“Oh, all right, I’ll keep up the struggle a while longer, as I
promised, but it’s no use. Have you ever thought of what will become of
your adored son’s popularity if he has to continue in New York society
with a ‘Mill’ stone hung about his neck?”

On the stairs the girl bit her lips, flinging back her head to keep the
tears away. For at once there had followed the sound of her brother’s
pleased laugh over his own wit, then her mother’s murmured protest.

So plainly could Mildred Thornton see the picture in the library that
it was not necessary for her to be present except in the spirit.
Indeed, it was in order that she might not intrude upon Dick’s
confession that she had insisted upon going at once to her own room as
soon as they arrived at home. Nevertheless, no one need tell her that
her brother had not the faintest intention of being unkind. He never
liked hurting people’s feelings; yet when one is handsome and charming,
sometimes it is difficult to understand how those who are neither must
feel.

In her own room a moment later, Mildred, touching the electric button,
flooded her apartment with a soft yellow light. Then deliberately
placing herself before a long mirror the girl began a study of her own
appearance. After all, was she so much less good looking than other
girls? Was that the reason why Dick had been compelled to report to
their mother her extraordinary lack of social success? And if this had
been the only occasion, once would not have mattered. But after three
months of the same story, with everything done to help her, beautiful
clothes, her own limousine, her father’s money and reputation,
her mother’s and brother’s efforts--why, no wonder her family was
discouraged. But if only her mother had not been so disappointed and so
chagrined, Mildred felt she would not have cared a great deal. There
were other things in life besides society.

Yet now, without fear or favor, Mildred Thornton undertook to form an
impartial judgment of herself.

In the mirror she saw reflected a girl taller than most girls, but even
in these days when slenderness is a mark of fashion, certainly one who
was too thin. However, there was comfort in the fact that her shoulders
were broad and flat and that she carried her head well.

“For one must find consolation in something,” Mildred murmured aloud.
Then because she did not consider that the consolations were as
numerous as they might have been, she frowned. It was unfortunate, of
course, that her hair, though long and heavy, was also straight and
flaxen and without the yellow-brown lights that were so attractive.
Then assuredly her chin was too square and her mouth too large.

Closer she peered into the mirror. Her nose was not so bad; it could
not be called piquant, nor yet pure Greek, but it was a straight,
American nose. And at any rate her eyes were fairly attractive; if one
wished to be flattering they might even be called handsome. They were
almost steel color, large and clear, with blue and gray lights in them.
Her eyebrows and lashes were much darker than her hair. If only their
expression had not always been so serious!

Turning her head first on one side and then on the other, attempting to
dart ardent, challenging glances at herself, suddenly Mildred made a
little grimace. Then throwing back her head she laughed. Instantly the
attraction she had been hoping for appeared in her face although the
girl herself was not aware of it.

“Mildred Thornton, what an utter goose you are! It is tragic enough to
be a stick and a wall flower. But when you attempt behaving like the
girls who are belles, you simply look mad.”

Moving aside from the mirror Mildred now let her party gown slip to the
floor.

She was standing in the center of a beautiful room whose walls were
gray and gold. The rug under her feet was also gray with a deep border
of yellow roses. Her bed was of mahogany and there was a mahogany
writing desk and table and low chairs of the same material. Through an
open door one could glimpse a private sitting room even more charming.
Indeed, as there was no possible luxury missing so there could be no
doubt that Mildred Thornton was a fortunately wealthy girl, which of
course meant that she had nothing to trouble her.

Nevertheless, at this moment Mildred was thinking, “Oh, if only I were
thirty instead of nineteen, I wonder if I might be allowed to be happy
in my own way.”

Then without remembering to throw a dressing gown across her shoulders,
tip-toeing across the floor without any apparent reason, the girl
unlocked a secret drawer in her desk. Opening it she drew out a large,
unusual looking envelope. She was staring at this while her eyes were
slowly filling with tears, when there came a sudden knock at her door.

At the same instant the envelope was thrust back into the drawer, and
not until then did Mildred answer or move toward her door.

A visit from her mother tonight was really one of the last things in
the world she desired. It was wicked to have so little sympathy with
one’s own mother and the fault was of course hers. But tonight she
was really too tired and depressed to explain why she had made no
more effort to be agreeable. Her mother would insist that she had only
herself to blame for her evening’s failure. It was hard, of course,
that so beautiful a woman could not have had a handsome daughter as
well as a handsome son.

But instead of her mother, there in the hall stood a tall, thin man,
whose light hair had turned gray. He had a strong, powerful face,
deeply lined, one that both men and women turned to look at the second
time.

“I heard you come upstairs alone, Mill dear,” Judge Thornton said,
smiling like a shamefaced schoolboy. “Don’t tell your mother or Dick,
will you, for we had better break it to them by degrees? But I sent a
check today for two thousand dollars to the Red Cross Fund to be used
in this war relief business, my dear. I had to do it, it was on my
conscience. I know your mother and brother won’t like it; they have
been scolding for a new motor car and I’ve said I couldn’t afford one.
Really four persons ought to be able to get on with two automobiles,
when a good many thousands are going without bread. We’ll stand
together, won’t we, even if my little girl has to give up one of her
debutante parties?”

Already Mildred’s arms were about her father’s neck so that he found it
difficult to talk, for that and other reasons.

“I am so glad, so glad,” she kept whispering. “You know how tiresome
Dick and mother feel I am because I don’t think we ought to keep on
playing and dancing and frivoling, when this horrible war is going
on and people are being wounded and killed every minute. If you only
guessed how I wanted to use the little knowledge and strength I have to
help.”

But the Judge now shook his head decisively and moved away.

“Nonsense, child, you are too young; such an idea is not to be thought
of. We ought never to have let you attend those hospital classes, or
at least I should not have allowed it. Goodness knows, your mother
fought the idea bitterly enough! But remember, you promised her that
you would give the same time to society that you have given to your
nursing, and that is three years. You can’t go back on your word, and
besides I won’t have you thinking so much about these horrors; you’ll
be making yourself ill. War isn’t a girl’s business.” Certainly Judge
Thornton was trying to be severe, but just beyond the door he turned
back.

“I sent the check in your name, Mill dear, so you can feel you are
doing a little something to help,” he added affectionately. “Good
night.”

Afterwards, although tired (and it was quite two o’clock when she was
finally in bed), Mildred Thornton found it almost impossible to sleep.
At first she kept seeing a vision of herself as she appeared at the
dance earlier in the evening. How stiff and solemn and out of place she
had seemed, and how impossible it had been to make conversation with
the young men her brother had brought forward and introduced to her!
In the first place, they had not seemed like men at all, but like the
fashionably dressed pictures in the magazine advertisements or the
faultless figures adorning the windows in men’s furnishing stores.

Besides, they had only wished to talk of the latest steps in the new
dances or the last musical comedy. And what a strange expression that
young fellow’s face had worn, when she had asked him if he had ever
thought of going over to help in the war! No wonder Dick had been so
ashamed of her.

Then, having fallen asleep, Mildred began dreaming. Her father had
been right, she must have been thinking more than she should about the
war. Because in her dream she kept seeing regiment after regiment of
soldiers marching across broad, green fields, with bands playing, flags
flying and their faces shining in the sun. Finally they disappeared
in a cloud of black smoke, and when this took place she had awakened
unexpectedly.

Sitting up in bed with her long flaxen braids hanging over either
shoulder, Mildred wondered what had aroused her at this strange hour?
Then she remembered that it was the loud, clear ringing of their front
door bell. Moreover, she had since become conscious of other noises in
the house. Her brother had rushed out of his room and was calling to
the man servant who had turned on the lights down in the front hall.

“I say, Brown, be careful about opening that front door, will you? Wait
half a moment until I get hold of my pistol and I’ll join you. I don’t
like this business of our being aroused at a time like this. It must be
just before daylight and New York is full of burglars and cutthroats.”

Dick then retired into his room and the next sound Mildred heard was
his voice expostulating with his mother.

“Oh, go on back to bed, dearest, and for heaven’s sake keep father out
of this. Certainly there is no danger; besides, if there were I am
not such a mollycoddle that I’m going to have Brown bear the brunt.
Somebody’s got to open the door or that bell will never stop ringing.”

Then Dick’s feet in his bedroom slippers could be heard running down
the uncarpeted stairs. A moment later Mildred got into her wrapper and
stood with her arm about her mother’s waist, shivering and staring down
into the hall.

If anything should happen to Dick it would be too tragic! Her mother
adored him.

The butler was now unfastening the storm doors, while directly behind
him Dick waited with his pistol at a convenient level.

Then both men stepped backward with astonished exclamations, allowing
a queer, small figure to enter the hall without a word of protest. The
next moment Mildred was straining her ears to hear one of the most
bewitching voices she had ever imagined. Later an equally bewitching
figure unfolded itself from a heavy coat.

“It’s sorry I am to have disturbed you at such an hour,” the girl
began. “But how was I to know that the train from Chicago would arrive
at three o’clock in the morning instead of three in the afternoon?
I was hoping some one would be at the station to meet me, though of
course I didn’t expect it, so I just took a cab and found the way here
myself.”

Then the newcomer smiled with a kind of embarrassed wistfulness.

For the first time beholding Dick’s pistol, which was now hanging in a
dangerously limp fashion in his hand, she started.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, “I suppose you think that in Nebraska we go about
with pistols in our hands instead of pocket handkerchiefs; but, really,
we don’t welcome guests with them.”

Having dropped her coat on the floor, the girl under the light looked
so tiny that she seemed like a child. She had short, curly dark hair
which her tight-fitting traveling cap had pressed close against her
face. Her eyes were big and blue, and perhaps because she was pale from
fatigue her lips were extremely red.

Indeed, Dick Thornton decided, and never afterwards changed his
opinion, that she was one of the best looking girls he had ever seen in
his life. But who could she be, where had she come from, and what was
she doing in their house at such an extraordinary hour?

Clearing his throat, Dick made a tremendous effort to appear
impressive. Yet he was frightfully conscious of his own absurdity. He
knew that his hair must be standing on end, that his dressing gown had
been donned in a hurry and that he had on slippers with a space between
his feet and dressing gown devoid of covering. Moreover, what was he to
do with his absurd pistol?

“I am afraid you have made a mistake,” Dick began lamely. “If you are
a stranger in New York and have just arrived to visit friends, perhaps
we can tell you where to find them. Or, or, if you--” Dick did not feel
that it was exactly his place to invite a strange young woman to spend
the rest of the night at their home; yet as her cab had gone one could
hardly turn her out into the street. Why did not his mother or Mildred
come on down and help him out. Usually he knew the right thing to say
and do, but this situation was too much for him. Besides, the girl
looked as if she might be going to cry.

But she was a plucky little thing, because instead of crying she tried
to laugh.

“I have made a mistake, of course,” she faltered. “I was looking for
Judge Richard Thornton’s home on Seventy-fourth Street, the number was
28 I thought. Has the cabman brought me to the wrong place?”

Slowly Mrs. Thornton was now approaching them with Mildred hovering in
the background. But Dick did not altogether like the expression of his
mother’s face. It showed little welcome for the present intruder. Now
what could he say to make her happier before any one else had a chance
to speak.

“Why, that _is_ my father’s name and our address all right, and I
expect we are delighted to see you. I wonder if you would mind telling
us your name and where you have come from? You see, we were not exactly
looking for a visitor, but we are just as glad to see you.”

The girl had turned at once toward Mrs. Thornton and it was astonishing
how much dignity she possessed in spite of her childish appearance.

“I regret this situation more than I can express. I am sure I owe you
an explanation, although I do not know exactly what it can be,” she
began. “My name is Barbara Meade. Several weeks ago my father wrote to
his old school friend, Judge Richard Thornton, saying that I was to be
in New York for a short time on my way to England. He asked if it would
be convenient to have me stay with you. He received an answer saying
that it _would_ be perfectly convenient and that I might come any
day. Then before I left, father telegraphed.” Barbara’s lips were now
trembling, although she still kept back the tears. “If you will call a
cab for me, please, I shall be grateful to you. I would have gone to a
hotel tonight, only I did not know whether a hotel would receive me at
this hour.”

“My dear child, you will do no such thing. There has been some mistake,
of course, since I have never heard of your visit. But certainly we
are not going to turn you out in the night,” Mrs. Thornton interrupted
kindly.

Ordinarily she was supposed to be a cold woman. Now her manner was so
charming that her son and daughter desired to embrace her at the same
moment. But there was no time for further discussion or demonstration,
because at this instant a new figure joined the little group. Actually
Judge Thornton looked more like a criminal than one of the most famous
criminal lawyers in New York state.

Nevertheless, immediately he put his arm about Barbara Meade’s
shoulders.

“My dear little girl, you need never forgive me; I shall not forgive
myself nor expect any one else to do so. Certainly I received that
letter from your father. Daniel Meade is one of my dearest friends
besides being one of the finest men in the United States. Moreover, I
wrote him that we should be most happy to have his daughter stay with
us as long as she liked, but the fact of the matter is--” several times
the tall man cleared his throat. “Well, my family will tell you that I
am the most absent-minded man on earth. I simply forgot to mention the
matter to my wife or any one else. So now you have to stay on with us
forever until you learn to forgive me.”

Then Dick found himself envying his father as he patted their visitor’s
shoulder while continuing to beg her forgiveness.

But the next moment his mother and sister had led their little guest
away upstairs. Then when she was safely out of sight Dick again became
conscious of his own costume--or lack of it.




CHAPTER II _Different Kinds of Courage_


Moving along Riverside Drive with sufficient slowness to grasp details
had given the little western visitor an opportunity to enjoy the great
sweep of the Hudson River and the beauty of the New Jersey palisades.

On the front seat of the motor car Barbara sat with Dick Thornton,
who had offered to take the chauffeur’s place for the afternoon. Back
of them were Mrs. Thornton and Mildred. It was a cold April day and
there were not many other cars along the Drive. Finally Mrs. Thornton,
leaning over, touched her son on the shoulder.

“I think it might be wiser, Dick, to go back home now. Barbara has seen
the view of the river and the wind has become so disagreeable. Suppose
we turn off into Broadway,” she suggested.

Acquiescing, a few moments later Dick swung his car up a steep
incline. He was going at a moderate pace, and yet just before reaching
Broadway he sounded his horn, not once, but half a dozen times. The
crossing appeared free from danger. Then when they had arrived at about
the middle of the street, suddenly (and it seemed as if the car must
have leaped out of space) a yellow automobile came racing down Broadway
at incredible speed.

It chanced that Barbara observed the car first, although immediately
after she heard queer muffled cries coming from Mildred and her mother.
She herself felt no inclination to scream. For one thing, there did
not seem to be time. Nevertheless, impulse drew her eyes toward Dick
Thornton to see how he was affected.

Of course he must have become aware of their danger when the rest of
them had. He must know that all their lives were in deadly peril. Yet
there was nothing in the expression of his face to suggest it, nor
had his head moved the fraction of an inch. Strange to see him half
smiling, his color vivid, his dark eyes unafraid, almost as if he had
no realization of what must inevitably happen.

Closing her own eyes, Barbara felt her body stiffen; the first shock
would be over in a second, and afterwards----

Nevertheless no horrible crash followed, but instead the girl felt
that she must be flying along through the air instead of being driven
along the earth. For they had made a single gigantic leap forward. Then
Barbara became aware that Mildred was speaking in a voice that shook
with nervousness in spite of her effort at self-control.

“You have saved all our lives, Dick. How ever did you manage to get out
of that predicament?” Afterwards she endeavored to quiet her mother,
who was becoming hysterical now that they were entirely safe.

So they were safe! It scarcely seemed credible. Yet when Barbara Meade
looked up the racing car was still speeding on its desperate way down
Broadway, followed by two policemen on motorcycles, while their own
automobile was moving quietly on. The girl had a moment of feeling
limp and ill. Then she discovered that Dick Thornton was talking to her
and that she must answer him.

He was still smiling and his brown eyes were untroubled, but now that
the danger had passed every bit of the color had left his face. Yet
undoubtedly he was good looking.

Barbara had to check an inclination to laugh. This was a tiresome
trait of hers, to see the amusing side of things at the time when they
should not appear amusing. Now, for instance, it was ridiculous to find
herself admiring Dick Thornton’s nose at the instant he had saved her
life.

His face was almost perfectly modeled, his forehead broad and high with
dark hair waving back from it like the pictures of young Greek boys.
His brown eyes were deeply set beneath level brows, his olive skin and
his mouth as attractive as a girl’s.

Yes, her new acquaintance was handsome, Barbara concluded gravely, and
yet his face lacked strength. Personally she preferred the bronzed and
rugged type of young men to whom she was accustomed in the west.

But what was it that her companion had been saying?

“I do trust, Miss Meade, that you are not ill from fright. Mildred,
will you please lend us mother’s smelling salts for a little while, or
had we best stop by a drug store?”

Shaking her head Barbara smiled. She was wearing the same little
close-fitting brown velvet hat of the night of her arrival. But today
her short curls had fluttered out from under it and her eyes were wide
open and bluer than ever with the wonderful vision of the first great
city she had ever seen.

“Oh, dear me, no, there is nothing in the world the matter with me,”
Barbara expostulated. “Why if I can’t go through a little bit of
excitement like that, how do you suppose I am going to manage to be a
Red Cross nurse in Europe in war times?”

“You a war nurse?” Dick Thornton’s voice expressed surprise, amusement,
and disbelief. He turned his head sideways to glance at his companion.
“Forgive me,” he said, “but you look a good deal more like a bisque
doll. I believe they do have dolls dressed as Red Cross nurses, set up
in the windows of the toy shops. Shall I try to get a place in a window
for you?”

Barbara was blushing furiously, although she intended not to allow
herself to grow angry. Certainly she must not continue so sensitive
about her youthful appearance. There would be many more trials of this
same kind ahead of her.

“I am sorry you think I look like a doll,” she returned with an effort
at carelessness; “it is rather absurd in a grown-up woman to show so
little character. My hair is short because I had typhoid fever a year
ago. You know, I’m really over eighteen; I got through school pretty
early and as I have always known what I wanted to do, I took some
special courses in nursing at school, so I was able to graduate two
years afterwards.”

“Oh, I see,” Dick murmured, appearing thoughtful. “Eighteen is older
than any doll I ever heard of unless she happened to be a doll that had
been put away in an old cedar chest years ago. Then she usually had the
paint licked off, the saw-dust coming out and her hair uncurled.” Again
Dick glanced around, grave as the proverbial judge. “You know, it does
not look to me as if any of those alarming things had _yet_ happened to
you, else I might try to turn doctor myself.”

Good-naturedly Barbara laughed. If her new acquaintance insisted upon
taking her as a joke, at least she had enough sporting blood not to
grow angry, or at least if she were angry not to reveal it.

“Well, what _are_ you going to be, Mr. Thornton?” Barbara queried,
shrugging her shoulders the slightest bit. “As long as you need not
develop into a physician on _my_ account, are you to be a lawyer like
your father?”

Dick suppressed a groan. To look at her would you ever have imagined
that this little prairie flower of a girl would develop into a
serious-minded young woman demanding to hear about “your career”? Any
such idea must be nipped in the bud at once.

“Oh, no, I am certainly _not_ going to study law, and if you don’t mind
my mentioning it, I get pretty bored with that suggestion. Everybody
I meet thinks because my father is one of the biggest lawyers in the
country that I must become his shadow. It is all right being known as
my ‘father’s son’ up to a certain point, but I’m not anxious to have
comparisons made between us as lawyers.”

Barbara felt uncomfortable. She had not intended opening a subject that
seemed to be such an unfortunate one. So she only murmured, “I beg your
pardon.”

And though Dick laughed and answered, “Don’t mention it,” there was
little more conversation between them for the rest of the drive home.

But once at home in the big, sunny library, stretched out in an arm
chair, smoking while the girls were drinking tea, the young man became
more amiable.

He had changed his outdoor clothes for a velvet smoking jacket and his
shoes for a pair of luxurious pumps.

“I say, Mildred, old girl, would you mind ringing the bell and having
Brown bring me some matches?” he asked. Finding his own gone, he had
simply turned his head and smiled upon his sister. It happened that the
bell was within only a few feet of him and she had to cross the room to
accomplish his desire.

Although Mildred was tired from a strenuous half hour devoted to
comforting her mother since their return from the ride, without
protesting or even appearing surprised, she did as she was asked.

But Barbara Meade felt her own cheeks flushing. One need not stay
in the Thornton household for four entire days, as she had, before
becoming aware that it was the son of the family to whom every knee
must bow. His mother, sister, the servants appeared to adore him.
It was true that Judge Thornton attempted to show a little more
consideration for his daughter, but he was so seldom at home and when
there his attention was usually upon some problem of his own.

More than once Barbara had felt sorry for Mildred. Of course, her
position looked like an enviable one as the only daughter of a wealthy
and distinguished man, with a beautiful mother and a charming brother.
Nevertheless, however little one liked to criticize their hostess even
in one’s own mind, Barbara could not but see that Mildred Thornton’s
life with her mother was a difficult one.

In the first place, Mrs. Thornton was a fashionable society woman. In
spite of what might seem to most people riches, she was constantly
talking about how extremely poor they were and how she hoped that
Dick and Mildred would make matches that would bring money into the
family. She had the same dark eyes and olive coloring that her son
had inherited, and as her hair was a beautiful silver-white, it made
her face appear younger. She seemed to treat her daughter Mildred’s
plainness as a personal insult to herself and behaved as though Mildred
could have no feeling in the matter. Several times the visitor had
heard her refer to her daughter’s lack of beauty before strangers.

But that Dick Thornton should dare treat his sister with the same lack
of consideration was insufferable! Barbara had a short, straight little
nose with the delicate nostrils that belong to most sensitive persons.
Now she could not help their arching with disdain, although she hoped
no one would notice her.

Yet Dick was perfectly aware of her indignation and amused by it. He
was accustomed to having girls angry with him; it was one of the ways
in which they showed their interest.

“I wonder if I would like to know what Miss Barbara Meade is at this
moment thinking of me?” he demanded lazily, smiling from under his
half-closed brown eyes and blowing a wreath of soft gray smoke into a
halo about his own head.

The girl’s blue eyes had the trick of darkening suddenly. It was in
this way she betrayed her emotions before she could speak.

“I was thinking,” she answered in a clear, cold little voice, “that I
have always been sorry before I never had a brother. But now I am not
so sure.”

An abominably rude speech! The girl could not decide whether or not she
regretted having made it. Certainly there was an uncomfortable silence
in the big room until Mildred broke it.

She had been gazing thoughtfully into the fire, which the April day
made agreeable, and talking very little. Now she shook her head in
protest.

“Oh, brothers aren’t altogether bad,” she smiled.

Barbara stammered.

“No, of course not; I didn’t mean that. You must both forgive me. You
see, I have only a married sister who is years older than I am, and
my father. I suppose I have gotten too used to saying whatever pops
into my head. Perhaps the men in the west are more polite to girls
than eastern men. I don’t know exactly why, but they are bigger,
stronger men; they live outdoors and because their lives are sometimes
rough they try to have their manners gentle. Oh, goodness, I have
said something else impolite, haven’t I?” Barbara ended in such
consternation that her host and hostess both laughed.

“Oh, don’t mind me; please go right ahead if it relieves your
feelings,” Dick remarked so humorously that Barbara felt it might be
difficult to dislike him intensely, however you might disapprove of him.

“Only,” he added, “don’t start shooting verbal fireworks at the poor
wounded soldiers whom you are going to attempt to nurse. If a fellow
is down and out they might prove fatal. I say, Mill, did you ever hear
anything more absurd? Miss Meade has an idea that she is going over
to nurse the British Tommies. She looks more like she needed a nurse
herself--with a perambulator.”

“Yes, I know, Barbara has talked it all over with me,” Mildred replied.
“We went together to the Red Cross headquarters today to see about
arrangements, when she could cross and what luggage she should take
with her. Four American girls are to go in a party and after they
arrive in England they will be sent where they are most needed. You
see, Barbara’s mother was an Irish woman, so she feels she is partly
British; and then her father was a West Point man. She meant to make
her living as a nurse anyhow, so why shouldn’t she be allowed to help
in the war? I understand exactly how Barbara feels.”

Still gazing into the fire, Mildred’s face had grown paler and more
determined. “You see, I am going with her. I offered my own services
and was accepted this morning. We sail in ten days,” she concluded.

“You, Mildred? What utter tommy-rot!” Dick exclaimed inelegantly. “The
mater is apt to lock you up in your room on a bread-and-water diet for
ten days for even suggesting such a thing.” Then he ceased talking
abruptly and pretended to be stifling a yawn. For, glancing up, he had
discovered that his mother was unexpectedly standing in the doorway.
She was dressed for dinner and looked very beautiful in a lavender
satin gown, but the expression on her face was not cheering.

Evidently she had overheard Mildred’s confession and his sister was
in for at least a bad quarter of an hour. Personally Dick hoped his
own words had not betrayed her. For although he was a fairly useless,
good-for-nothing character, he wasn’t a cad, and for some reason or
other he particularly did not wish their visitor to consider him one.




CHAPTER III _Farewell_


In the same sitting room and in the same chair, half an hour later, sat
Barbara Meade, but in a changed mood. She was alone.

More ridiculously childish than ever she looked, with her small face
white and tears forcing their way into her eyes and down her cheeks.

Yet from the music room adjoining the library came such exquisite
strains of a world-old and world-lovely melody sung in a charming tenor
voice, that the girl was compelled to listen.

  “Drink to me only with thine eyes
   And I will pledge with mine.”

Straight through the song went on to the end. But when it was finally
finished there was a moment’s silence. Then Dick Thornton appeared,
standing between the portieres dividing the two rooms.

“Say, I am awfully sorry there was such a confounded row,” he began.
“But there is no use taking the matter so seriously, it is poor Mill’s
funeral, not yours. You seem to be the kind of independent young female
who goes ahead and does whatever reckless thing she likes without
asking anybody’s advice. But I do wish you would give the scheme up
too. Mildred will never be allowed to go with you. I don’t approve of
it any more than mother does. Just you stay on in New York and I’ll
show you the time of your life.”

Dick looked so friendly and agreeable, enough to have softened almost
any heart. But Barbara was still thinking of the past half hour.

“Thank you,” she returned coldly. “I haven’t the faintest idea of
giving up my purpose, even to ‘have the time of my life.’ And I do
think you were hateful not to have stood by your sister. Besides,
you might at least have said that you did not believe I had tried to
influence Mildred, when your mother accused me. She was extremely
unkind.”

Entering the library Dick now took a chair not far from their
visitor’s, so that he could plainly observe the expressions on her face.

“Of course, I didn’t stand up for Mill; I wouldn’t let her go into all
that sorrow and danger, even if mother consented,” he protested. “Your
coming here and all the talk you two girls have had about the poor,
brave, wounded soldiers and such stuff, of course has influenced Mill.
It has even influenced me--a little. But the fact is the war in Europe
isn’t our job.”

“No, perhaps not,” the girl answered slowly, perhaps that she might add
the greater effect; “but would you mind telling me just what is your
job? You have already told me so many things that were not. Is it doing
one-steps and fox trots and singing fairly well? I presume I don’t
understand New York society, for out west our young men, no matter how
rich their fathers happen to be, try to amount to something themselves;
they do _some_ kind of work.”

Under his nonchalant manner Dick had become angry. But no one knew
better than he the value of appearing cool in a disagreement with a
girl. So he only shrugged his shoulders in a dandified fashion.

“I wonder why you think I am not at present engaged in a frantic
search for a job on which to expend my magnificent energy?” Here
Dick purposely yawned, extending his long legs into a more reposeful
position. “The fact is, I believe I must have been waiting for an
uncommonly frank young person from the west to give me the benefit
of her advice. What would you suggest as a career for me? Remember,
I saved your life this afternoon, so you may devote it to the
unfortunate. Now what would you think of my turning chauffeur? I’m not
a bad one; you ask our man. Who knows, perhaps driving an automobile is
my real gift!”

Of course, her companion’s good humor again put her in the wrong,
although Barbara knew that she was wrong in any case. For what possible
right had she, after having known Dick Thornton less than a week, to
undertake to tell him what he should or should not do? It was curious
what a fighting instinct he had immediately aroused in her! She felt
that she would almost like to hit him in order to make him wake up and
realize that there was something in life besides being handsome and
good-natured and smiling lazily upon the world.

However, Barbara now clasped her hands together, church fashion,
inclining her curly head.

“Beg pardon again. After all, what should a Prince Charming be
except a Prince Charming?” she murmured. “You are a kind of liberal
education. I’ve lived such a work-a-day life, I can’t understand why
it seems so dreadful to you and your family to do the work one loves
in the place where it seems to be most needed. We nurses will be under
orders from people older and wiser than we are. If we come close to
suffering--well, one can’t live very long without doing that. But I
don’t want to bore you; you will be rid of me for life in a little
while, and I’ll leave now if your mother and father feel my plans are
affecting Mildred.”

“You will do no such thing.” Dick’s voice was curt and less polite than
usual, but it was certainly decisive and so ended the discussion.

A few minutes later, apparently in a happier frame of mind, Barbara
Meade was about to go upstairs when at the door she turned toward her
companion.

“Please don’t think I fail to understand, Mr. Thornton, your not
wishing Mildred to go through the discomforts and even the dangers of
nursing the wounded soldiers. I suppose every nice brother naturally
wishes to protect and look after his sister. I told you I had never had
a brother, but you must not think for that reason I cannot appreciate
what you must feel.”

Then with a quick movement characteristic of her smallness and grace,
Barbara was gone.

Nevertheless Dick remained in the library alone until almost dinner
time.

Barbara was right in believing that he hated the thought of his sister
Mildred’s being away from the care and affection of her own family.
Mildred might not be so handsome as he wished her and wasn’t much of
a talker, still there was no doubt that she was a trump in lots of
ways. Besides, after all, she was one’s own and only sister. Yet Dick
was honest with himself. It was not Mildred alone whom he desired to
protect from hardships. Absurd, of course, when the girl was almost a
stranger to him, yet Barbara Meade appeared more unfitted for the task
that she insisted upon undertaking than his sister. In the first place,
Barbara was younger, and certainly a hundred times prettier. Then in
spite of her ridiculous temper she was so tiny and looked so like a
child that one could only laugh at her. Moreover--oh, well, the worst
of it was, Dick felt convinced that she was just the kind of a girl he
could have a delightful time with, if he had a proper chance. She had
confessed to loving to dance in spite of her sarcasm. So she should
have at least a few dances with him before fate swept her out of his
way forever.

       *       *       *       *       *

Ten days later, as early as nine o’clock in the morning, Mrs.
Thornton’s limousine was to be seen threading its way in and out among
the trucks and wagons along lower Broadway on its way to the American
Line steamship pier, No. 62.

Inside the car were seated Mrs. Thornton and Mildred, Judge Thornton,
Dick and Barbara Meade. Behind them a taxicab piled with luggage was
following. The “Philadelphia” was sailing at eleven o’clock that
morning and included among her passenger list four American Red Cross
nurses on their way to a mission of relief and love.

In the Thornton automobile not alone was Barbara Meade arrayed for an
ocean crossing, but Mildred Thornton also appeared to be wearing a
traveling outfit. More extraordinary, the greater part of the luggage
on the taxicab behind them bore the initials “M. F. T.” Besides,
Mildred was sitting close to her father with her cheek pressed against
his shoulder and holding tight to his hand, while the Judge looked
entirely and completely miserable.

Should anything happen to Mildred, he, who loved her best, would be
responsible. For he had finally yielded to her persuasions, upholding
her in her desire, against the repeated objections of his wife and son.
Just why he had come round to Mildred’s wish, for the life of him the
Judge could not now decide. What was happening to this world anyhow
when girls, even a gentle, sweet-tempered one like Mildred, insisted
on “making something of their own lives,” “doing something useful,”
“following their own consciences and not some one’s else?” Really the
Judge could not at present recall with what arguments and pleadings his
daughter had finally influenced him. But he did wonder why at present
he should feel so utterly dejected at the thought of Mildred’s leaving,
when her mother appeared positively triumphant.

Yet the fact is that within the last few days Mrs. Thornton had
entirely changed her original point of view. She had discovered that
instead of Mildred’s engaging in an enterprise both unwomanly and
unbecoming, actually she was doing the most fashionable thing of the
hour. Never before had Mildred received so much notice and praise.
Positively her mother glowed remembering what their friends had been
saying of Mildred’s nobility of character. How fine it was that she
had a nature that could not be satisfied with nothing save social
frivolities!

Letters of introduction to a number of the best people in England had
been pouring in upon them. One from Mrs. Whitehall to her sister, the
Countess of Sussex, was particularly worth while. Mrs. Thornton had
never before known that she dared include the writer among her friends.
Moreover, Mildred had lately been receiving unexpected attentions from
the young men who had never before paid her the slightest notice. Half
a dozen of them within the past few days had called to say good-by
and express their admiration of her pluck. Two or three had declared
themselves openly envious of her. For if there were great things going
on in the world, no matter how tragic and dreadful, one would feel
tremendously worth while to be right on the spot and able to judge for
oneself.

Then Dick had reported that Mildred had been more than a halfway belle
at a dance that he had insisted upon his sister and their visitor
attending before they shut themselves off from all amusements. Such a
lot of fellows wanted to talk to Mill about her plans that they seemed
not to care that she could not dance any better.

Although there were only between fifty and sixty passengers booked for
sailing on the “Philadelphia’s” list, the big dock was crowded with
freight of every kind.

On an adjoining dock there was a tremendous stamping of horses. Not far
off one of the Atlantic Transport boats was being rapidly transformed
into a gigantic stable. Its broad passenger decks were being divided
into hundreds of box stalls. Into the hold immensely heavy boxes were
being hoisted with derricks and cranes. The whole atmosphere of the
New York Harbor front appeared to have changed. Where once there used
to be people about to sail for Europe now there appeared to be things
taking their place. No longer were pleasure-loving Americans crossing
the ocean, but the product of their lands and their hands.

However, Mildred and Barbara gave only a cursory attention to these
impersonal matters, and Mildred’s family very little more. They were
deeply interested in a meeting which was soon to take place.

Their little party was to consist of four American nurses sent out to
assist the British Red Cross wherever their services were most needed.

So far Mildred and Barbara had not even seen the other two girls.
However, Judge and Mrs. Thornton had been assured that one was an older
woman, who had already had some years’ experience in nursing and could
also act as chaperon. About the fourth girl nothing of any kind had
been told them.

Therefore, within five minutes after their arrival at the wharf, Miss
Moore, one of the Red Cross workers in the New York headquarters from
whom the girls had received instructions, joined them. With her was
a girl, or a young woman (for she might be any age between twenty
or thirty) for whom Mildred and Barbara both conceived an immediate
prejudice. They were not willing to call the sensation dislike,
because travelers upon a humanitarian crusade must dislike no one, and
especially not one of their fellow laborers.

Eugenia Peabody was the stranger’s name. She had come from a small
town in Massachusetts. Her clothes were severely plain, a rusty brown
walking suit that must have seen long service, as well as a shabby
brown coat. Then she had on an absurd hat that looked like a man’s, and
her hair was parted in the middle and drawn back on either side. She
had handsome dark eyes, so that one could not call her exactly ugly.
Only she seemed terribly cold and superior and unsympathetic.

But the fourth girl, Miss Moore explained, by some accident had
failed to arrive in time for the steamer. She was to have come from
Charleston, South Carolina, having made her application and sent her
credentials from there. It was foolish of her to have waited until the
last hour before arriving in New York. Now her train had been delayed,
and as her passage had been engaged, the money would simply have to be
wasted. Had the Red Cross Society known beforehand, another nurse could
have taken her place.

The next hour and a half was one of painful confusion. Surely so few
passengers never before had so many friends to see them off. Farewells
these days meant more than partings under ordinary circumstances. No
matter what pretense might be made to the contrary, in every mind,
deep in every heart was the possibility that a passenger steamer might
strike a floating mine.

Of course, Barbara had been forced to say her hardest farewells before
leaving her home in Nebraska. Nevertheless, she could not now help
sharing Mildred’s emotions and those of her family. Besides, the
Thorntons had been so kind to her in the past two weeks. Mrs. Thornton
had apologized for blaming her for Mildred’s decision, but after all
it was easy to understand her feeling in the matter. Judge Thornton
was one of the biggest-hearted, dearest men in the world. Then there
was Dick! Of course, he was a good-for-nothing fellow who would never
amount to much except to be a spoiled darling all his days! Yet
certainly he was attractive and had been wonderfully sweet-tempered and
courteous to her.

Even this morning he had never allowed her to feel lonely for an
instant. Always he saw that she was among the groups of their friends
who were showering attentions upon Mildred--books and flowers and
sweets, besides various extraordinary things which she was recommended
to use in her work.

Dick’s farewell present Barbara thought a little curious. It was an
extremely costly electric lamp mounted in silver to carry about in her
pocket.

“It is to help you see your way, if you should ever get lost or have to
go out at night while you are doing that plagued nursing,” he whispered
just as the final whistles blew and the friends of the passengers were
being put ashore.

As Dick ran down the gang-plank, both Mildred and Barbara were watching
him with their eyes full of tears. Suddenly he had to step aside in
order not to run over a girl hurrying up the plank from the shore. She
was dressed in deep mourning; her hair was of the purest gold and her
eyes brown. She had two boys with her, each one of them carrying an
extraordinary looking old-fashioned carpet bag of a pattern of fifty
years ago.

“I regret it if I have kept you waiting,” she said in a soft, drawling
voice to one of the stewards who happened to be nearest the gang-plank.
“I’ve come all the way from Charleston, South Carolina, and my train
was four hours late.”

The tears driven away by curiosity, Mildred and Barbara now stared at
each other. Was this the fourth girl who was to accompany them as a Red
Cross nurse? She looked less like a nurse than any one of them. Why,
she was as fragile as possible herself, and evidently had never been
away from home before in her life. Now she was under the impression
that the steamer had been kept waiting for her. Certainly she was
apologizing to the steward for delaying them.

Yet a glance at their older companion and both girls felt a warm
companionship for the newcomer. For if Miss Peabody had been
discouraged on being introduced to them, it was nothing to the disfavor
she now allowed herself to show at the appearance of the fourth member
of their little Red Cross band.

A little later, with deep blasts from her whistle, the “Philadelphia”
began to move out. Amid much waving of handkerchiefs, both on deck and
on shore, the voyage had begun.




CHAPTER IV _Making Acquaintances_


“In my opinion no one of you girls will remain in Europe three months,
at least not as a nurse. You are going over because of an emotion or an
enthusiasm--same thing! You are too young and have not had sufficient
experience for the regular Red Cross nursing. Besides, you haven’t the
faintest idea of what may lie ahead of you,” Eugenia Peabody announced.

It was a sunshiny day, although not a calm one, yet the “Philadelphia”
was making straight ahead. She was a narrow boat that pitched rather
than rolled. Nevertheless, a poor sailor could scarcely be expected
to enjoy the plunging she was now engaging in. It was as if one were
riding a horse who rose first on his forefeet and then on his hind
feet, tossing his rider relentlessly back and forth.

So, although the four Red Cross girls were seated on the upper deck
in their steamer chairs and at no great distance apart, no forcible
protest followed the oldest one’s statement.

However, from under the shelter of her close-fitting squirrel-fur cap
Barbara’s blue eyes looked belligerent. She was wearing a coat of the
same kind. The next moment she protested:

“Of course, we have not had the experience required for salaried
nurses, and of course we are a great deal younger than you” (as Barbara
was not enamored of Eugenia she made this remark with intentional
emphasis). “But I don’t consider it fair for you to decide for that
reason we are going to be useless. The Red Cross was willing that
we should help in some way, even though we can’t be enrolled nurses
until we have had two years’ hospital work. Mildred and I have both
graduated, and Nona Davis has had one year’s work. Besides, soldiers,
often when they are quite young boys, go forth to battle and do
wonderful things. Who knows what we may accomplish? Sometimes success
comes just from pluck and the ability to hold on. Right this minute you
can’t guess, Miss Peabody, which one of us is brave and which one may
be a coward; there is no telling till the test comes.”

Then after her long tirade Barbara again subsided into the depth of
her chair. What a spitfire she was! Really, she must learn to control
her temper, for if the four of them were to work together, they must
be friends. Dick Thornton had been right. Perhaps the wounded soldiers
might have a hard time with a crosspatch for a nurse. But this Miss
Peabody was so painfully superior, so “Bostonese”! Even if she _had_
come only from a small Massachusetts town, it had been situated close
to the sacred city, and Eugenia had been educated there. Small wonder
that she had little use for a girl from far-off Nebraska!

Nevertheless, Eugenia’s cheeks had crimsoned at Barbara’s speech and
her expression ruffled, although her hair remained as smooth as if the
wind had not been blowing at the rate of sixty miles an hour.

“That is one way of looking at things,” she retorted. “I suppose almost
anybody willing to make sacrifices can be useful at the front these
days,” she conceded. “But, really, I do not consider that I am so very
much older than the rest of you, even if I am acting as your chaperon.
I have always looked older than I am. I was only twenty-five my last
birthday and one can’t be an enrolled Red Cross nurse any younger than
that--at least, not in America.”

“Oh, I beg pardon,” Barbara replied. At the same time she was thinking
that twenty-five was considerably older than eighteen and nineteen, and
that before seven years had passed she expected a good many interesting
things to have happened to her.

But a soft drawl interrupted Barbara’s train of thought. Issuing from
the depth of a steamer blanket it had a kind of smothered sound.

“I am older than the rest of you think. I am twenty-one,” the voice
announced. “I only seem younger because I am stupid and have never
been away from home before. My father was quite old when I was born,
so I have nearly always taken care of him. He was a general in the
Confederate army. I’ve heard nothing but war-talk my whole life and the
great things the southern women sacrificed for the soldiers. My mother
I don’t know a great deal about.”

For a moment Nona seemed to be hesitating. “My father died a year ago.
There was nobody to care a great deal what became of me except some
old friends. So when this war broke out, I felt I must help if only
the least little bit. I sold everything I had for my expenses, except
my father’s old army pistol and the ragged half of a Confederate flag;
these I brought along with me. But please forgive my talking so much
about myself. It seemed to me if we were to be together that we ought
to know a little about one another. I haven’t told you everything. My
father’s family, even though we were poor----”

Nona paused, and Barbara smiled. Even Eugenia melted slightly, while
Mildred took hold of the hand that lay outside the steamer blanket.

“Don’t trouble to tell us anything you would rather not, Miss Davis,”
she returned. “We have only to see and talk to you to have faith in
you. Of course, we don’t have to tell family _secrets_; that would be
expecting rather too much.”

With a sigh suggesting relief Nona Davis glanced away from her
companions toward the water. The girl was like a white and yellow lily,
with her pale skin, pure gold hair and brown eyes with golden centers.
In her life she had never had an intimate girl friend. Now with all her
heart she was hoping that her new acquaintances might learn to care for
her. And yet if they knew what had kept her shut away from other girls,
perhaps they too might feel the old prejudice!

But suddenly happier and stronger than since their sailing, Nona
straightened up. Then she arranged her small black felt hat more
becomingly.

“I don’t want to talk _all_ the time, only really I am stronger than I
look. As I know French pretty well, perhaps I may at least be useful
in that way.”

The girl’s expression suddenly altered. A reserve that was almost
haughtiness swept over it. For she had been the first to notice a
fellow passenger walking up and down the deck in front of them. She had
now stopped at a place where she could overhear what they were saying.
The girls had agreed not to discuss their plans on shipboard. It seemed
wisest not to let their fellow passengers know that they were going
abroad to help with Red Cross nursing. For in consequence there might
be a great deal of talk, questions would be asked, unnecessary advice
given. Besides, the girls did not yet know what duties were to be
assigned them. They were ordered to go to a British Red Cross, deliver
their credentials and await results.

So everything that might have betrayed their mission had been carefully
packed away in their trunks and bags. Moreover, in the hold of the
steamer there were great wooden packing cases of gauze bandaging,
medicines and antiseptics which Judge Thornton had given Mildred and
Barbara as his farewell offering. These were to be presented to the
hospital where the girls would be stationed.

Now, although Nona Davis had become aware of the curiosity of the
traveler who had taken up a position near them, Eugenia Peabody had
not. So before the younger girl could warn her she exclaimed:

“Hope you won’t think I meant to be disagreeable. Of course, you may
turn out better nurses than I; perhaps experience _isn’t_ everything.”

There was no doubt this time that Eugenia intended being agreeable, yet
her manner was still curt. She seemed one of the unfortunate persons
without charm, who manage to antagonize just when they wish to be
agreeable.

At this moment the stranger made no further effort at keeping in the
background. Instead she walked directly toward the four girls.

“I chanced to overhear you saying something about Red Cross nursing,”
she began. “Can it be that you are going over to help care for the
poor soldiers? How splendid of you! I do hope you don’t mind my being
interested?”

Of course the girls did mind. However, there was nothing to do under
the circumstances. Barbara alone made a faint effort at denial. Eugenia
simply looked annoyed because she had been the one who had betrayed
them. Mildred showed surprise. But Nona Davis answered in a well-bred
voice that seemed to put undesirable persons at a tremendous distance
away:

“As long as you did overhear what we were saying, would you mind our
not discussing the question with you. We have an idea that we prefer
keeping our plans a secret among ourselves.”

Yet neither Nona’s words nor her manner had the desired effect. The
stranger sat down on the edge of a chair that happened to be near.

“That is all right, my dear, if you prefer I shall not mention it. Only
there is no reason why _I_ should not know. I am a much older woman
than any of you, and I too am going abroad because of this horrible
war, though not to do the beautiful work you expect to do.”

At this moment the newcomer smiled in a kind yet anxious fashion,
so that three of the girls were propitiated. After all, she was
a middle-aged woman of about fifty, quietly and inexpensively
dressed, and she had a timid, confidential manner. Somehow one felt
unaccountably sorry for her.

“I am traveling with my son,” she explained. “You may have noticed the
young man in dark glasses. My son is a newspaper correspondent and
is now going to try to get into the British lines. He was ill when
the war broke out or we should have crossed over sooner. There may
be difficulties about our arrangements. After his illness I was not
willing that he should go into danger unless I was near him. Then his
eyes still trouble him so greatly that I sometimes help with his work.”

She leaned over and whispered more confidentially than ever:

“I am Mrs. John Curtis, my son is Brooks Curtis, you may be familiar
with his name. I only wanted to say that if at any time I can be
useful, either on shipboard or if we should run across each other in
Europe, please don’t hesitate to call upon me. I had a daughter of my
own once and had she lived I have no doubt she would now be following
your example.”

Actually the older woman’s eyes were filling with tears, and although
the girls felt embarrassed by her confidences they were touched and
grateful, all except Nona Davis, who seemed in a singularly difficult
humor.

“You are awfully kind, Mrs. Curtis, I am sure,” Mildred was murmuring,
when Nona asked unexpectedly:

“Mrs. Curtis, if your son has trouble with his eyes, I wonder why I
have so often seen him with his glasses off gazing out to sea through a
pair of immense telescope glasses? I should think the strain would be
bad for him.”

Half a moment the older woman hesitated, then leaning over toward the
little group, she whispered:

“You must not be frightened by anything I tell you. Sailing under the
American flag we of course ought to feel perfectly safe, but you girls
must know the possibilities we face these days. I think perhaps because
I am with him my son may be a little too anxious. However, I shall
certainly tell him he is not to take off his glasses again during the
voyage. You are right; it may do him harm.”

A few moments later Mrs. Curtis strolled away. But by this time Nona
Davis was sitting bolt upright with more color in her face than she had
shown since the hour of her arrival.

“I do hope we may not have to see a great deal of Mrs. Curtis,” she
volunteered.

“Why not?” Mildred asked. “I thought her very nice. I feel that my
mother would like us to be friends with an older woman; she might be
able to give us good advice. Please tell us why you object to her?”

The other girl shook her head.

“I am sure I don’t know. I don’t suppose I have any _real_ reason. You
see, I don’t often have reasons for things; at least, not the kind I
know how to explain to other people. But my old colored mammy used to
say I was a ‘second sighter.’”




CHAPTER V “_Lady Dorian_”


Very carefully the young man in the dark glasses must have considered
which one of the four American girls traveling together he might expect
to find most worth while. Then he chose Mildred Thornton.

And this was odd, for to a casual observer Mildred was the least
good looking and the least gay of the four. Even Eugenia, in spite
of her severe manner, had a certain handsomeness and under softening
influences might improve both in appearance and disposition.

Nevertheless, it was with Mildred that Nona Davis, coming out of her
stateroom half an hour before dinner, discovered the young man talking.

It happened that Nona and Mildred shared the same stateroom while the
two other girls were just across the narrow passageway. As the decks
were apt to be freer from other passengers at this hour preceding
dinner, they had arranged for a quiet walk. But now, although seeing
her plainly enough, Nona soon realized that Mildred had no idea of
keeping her engagement. She was far too deeply engrossed in her new
companion. It was annoying, this eternal feminine habit of choosing any
kind of masculine society in preference to the most agreeable feminine!
However, Nona made no sign or protest. She merely betook herself to the
opposite side of the boat and started a solitary stroll.

There was no one to interfere and she was virtually alone, as this
happened to be the windy, disagreeable portion of the deck. Of their
meeting with Mrs. Curtis the day before no one had spoken since, but
now Nona could not help recalling her own impression. She was sorry for
her sudden prejudice and more so for her open expression of it.

“I must try and not distrust people,” she thought remorsefully.
“Suspicion made my father’s life bitter and shut me away from other
girls. So, should circumstances compel us to meet this Mrs. Curtis and
her son (and one never knows when chance may throw strangers together),
why I shall never, never say a word against them.”

Nona was looking out toward a curious purple and smoke-colored sunset
at the edge of the western sky as she made this resolution. Perhaps
because the vision before her had somehow suggested the smoke of battle
and the strange, dreadful world toward which they were voyaging.
Eugenia was right. No one of them could dream of what lay ahead.

For a moment she had paused and was standing with one hand resting
on the ship’s railing when to her surprise Mildred Thornton’s voice
sounded close beside her.

“Nona, I want to introduce Mr. Curtis,” she began. “We have been trying
to find you. Oh, I confess I did see you a few moments ago, only I
pretended I had not. Mr. Curtis was telling me something so interesting
I did not wish to interrupt him for fear he might not repeat it.”

Mildred’s eyes had darkened with excitement and she was speaking in a
hushed voice, although no one appeared to be near.

Nona Davis extended her hand to the young man. “My name is Davis,” she
began. “Miss Thornton forgot to mention it, for although we have known
each other but a few days we are already using our first names.”

Then she struggled with a sense of distaste. The hand that received
hers was large and bony and curiously limp and unresponsive. Afterwards
Nona studied the young fellow’s face. It was difficult to get a vital
impression of him when his eyes were so hidden from view, but of one
thing she became assured--he was not particularly young.

He was tall and had a fringe of light brown hair around a circular
space where the hair was plainly growing thinner. His face was smooth,
his mouth irregular and he had a large inquiring nose. Indeed, Nona
decided that the young man suggested a human question mark, although
his eyes--and eyes can ask more questions than the tongue--were partly
concealed.

“Mr. Curtis has been a war correspondent before,” Mildred went on,
showing an enthusiasm that was unusual with her. “He has just returned
from the war in Mexico and has been telling me of the horrors down
there.”

“But I thought,” Nona Davis replied and then hesitated. What she was
thinking was, that Mrs. Curtis had mentioned her son’s long illness.
This may have followed his return; he was not particularly healthy
looking. Not knowing exactly how to conclude her sentence, she was glad
to have Mildred whisper:

“Mr. Curtis says he has secret information that our ship is carrying
supplies for the Allies. Oh, of course we are on an American passenger
boat and it sounds incredible, but then nothing is past belief these
days.”

Nevertheless, the other girl shook her head doubtingly. She was a
little annoyed at the expression of entire faith with which Mildred
gazed upon their latest acquaintance. She wondered if Mildred were
the type of girl who believed anything because a _man_ told her it
was true. Odd that she did not feel that way herself, when all her
life she had been taught to depend wholly upon masculine judgment.
But there were odd stirrings of revolt in the little southern girl of
which she was not yet aware. She appeared flowerlike and gentle in
her old-fashioned black costume. One would have thought she had no
independence of body or mind, but like a flower could be swayed by any
wind.

“Oh, I don’t expect we are carrying anything except hospital supplies
of the same kind your father is sending, Mildred,” she answered. Then
turning apologetically toward the young newspaper man: “I beg your
pardon, I didn’t mean to doubt your word, only your information.”

However, Brooks Curtis was not paying any attention to her. Instead he
was gazing reproachfully at Mildred and at the same time attempting to
smile.

“Is that the way you keep a secret, Miss Thornton?” he demanded. “Of
course, your friend is right. I have no absolute information. Who has
in these war times? I only wanted you to realize that in case trouble
arises you are to count on my mother and me.”

He appeared to make the last remark idly and without emphasis,
notwithstanding Mildred flushed uneasily.

“You don’t mean that there may be an explosion on shipboard or a danger
of that kind,” she expostulated. “It sounds absurd, I know, but I am
nervous about the water. I have crossed several times before, but
always with my father and brother.”

While she was speaking Nona Davis had slipped her arm reassuringly
inside her new friend’s. “Nonsense,” she said quietly. “Mr. Curtis
is trying to tease us.” Then deliberately she drew Mildred away and
commenced their postponed walk. It was just as well, because at this
instant Mrs. Curtis had come on deck to join her son.

A little farther along and Nona pressed her delicate cheek against her
taller companion’s sleeve. “For heaven’s sake don’t let Miss Peabody
know you are afraid of an accident at sea when you are going into the
midst of a world tragedy,” she whispered. “Eugenia believes we are
hopeless enough as it is. But whenever you are frightened, Mildred--and
of course we must all be now and then--won’t you confide in me?” Nona’s
tones and the expression of her golden brown eyes were wistful and
appealing.

“You see, it is queer, but I don’t fear what other people do. I have
certain foolish terrors of my own that I may tell you of some day. For
one thing, I am afraid of ghosts. I don’t exactly believe in them, but
I was brought up by an old colored mammy who instilled many of her
superstitions into me.”

Their conversation ended at this because Barbara and Eugenia Peabody
were now walking toward them, both looking distinctly unamiable. It was
unfortunate that the two girls should be rooming together. They were
most uncongenial, and so far spent few hours in each other’s society
without an altercation of some kind.

Nona smiled at their approach. “And east is east and west is west, and
never the twain shall meet,” she quoted mischievously. Then she became
sober again because she too had a wholesome awe of the eldest member of
their party, and Eugenia’s eyes held fire.

Some powerful current of electricity must have been at work in that
portion of the universe through which the “Philadelphia” was ploughing
her way that evening.

For as soon as they entered the ship’s dining room the four girls
became aware of a tense atmosphere which had never been there before.
They chanced to be a few moments late, so that the other voyagers were
already seated.

Mildred Thornton, by special courtesy, was on the Captain’s right hand
and Barbara Meade on his left (this attention was a tribute to Judge
Thornton’s position in New York); Nona was next Mildred and Eugenia
next Barbara.

Then on Nona Davis’ other side sat a beautiful woman of perhaps thirty
in whom the four girls were deeply interested. But not because she had
been in the least friendly with them, or with any one else aboard
ship, not even with Captain Miller, who was a splendid big Irishman,
one of the most popular officers in the service, and to whom the Red
Cross girls were already deeply attached.

Four days had passed since the “Philadelphia” sailed and the voyage was
now more than half over. But except that she appeared on the passenger
list as “Lady Dorian,” no one knew anything of the young woman’s
identity. Her name was English, and yet she did not look English and
spoke, when conversation was forced upon her, with a slightly foreign
accent, which might be Russian, or possibly German. However, she never
talked to anyone and only came to the table at dinner time, rarely
appearing upon deck and never without her maid.

But tonight as the girls took their places at the dinner table it was
evident that Lady Dorian had been speaking and that her conversation
had been upon a subject which Captain Miller had requested no one
mention during the course of the voyage--the war!

Every one of the sixteen persons at the Captain’s table looked flushed
and excited, Mrs. Curtis at the farther end was in tears, and an
English banker, Sir George Paxton, who had lately been in Washington on
public business, appeared in danger of apoplexy.

“What is the trouble, Captain?” Barbara whispered, as soon as she had
half a chance. She was a special favorite of Captain Miller’s and they
had claimed cousinship at once on account of their Irish ancestry.

“Bombs!” the Captain murmured, “not real ones; worse kind,
conversational bombs. That Curtis fellow started the question of
whether the United States had the right to furnish ammunition to the
Allies. Then Lady Dorian began some kind of peace talk, to which the
Englishman objected. Can’t tell you exactly what it was all about, as I
had to try to quiet things down. They may start to blowing up my ship
next; this war talk makes sane people turn suddenly crazy.”

A movement made Barbara glance across the table. Although dinner was
only beginning, Lady Dorian had risen and was leaving.

No wonder the girls admired her appearance. Barbara swallowed a little
sigh of envy. Never, no never, could she hope to go trailing down a
long room with all eyes turned upon her, looking so beautiful and cold
and distinguished. This was one of the many trials of being small and
darting about so quickly and having short hair and big blue eyes like
a baby’s. One’s hair could grow, but, alas, not one’s self, after a
certain age!

Lady Dorian was probably about five feet seven, which is presumably the
ideal height for a woman, since it is the height of the Venus de Milo.
She had gray eyes with black brows and lashes and dark hair that was
turning gray. This was perfectly arranged, parted at the side and in a
low coil. Tonight she had on a gown of black satin and chiffon. Though
she wore no jewels there was no other woman present with such an air of
wealth and distinction.

The instant she had disappeared, however, Mrs. Curtis turned to her
son, speaking in a voice sufficiently loud to be heard by every one at
the Captain’s table.

“I don’t believe for a moment that woman’s name is ‘Lady Dorian.’ She
is most certainly not an English woman. Even if she is married to an
Englishman she is undoubtedly pro-German in her sentiments. I shouldn’t
be surprised if she is--well, most anything.”

Brooks Curtis flushed, vainly attempting to silence his mother.
Evidently she was one of the irrepressible people who would not be
silenced. The Red Cross girls need not have been flattered or annoyed
by her attentions. She appeared one of the light-minded women who go
about talking to everybody, apparently confiding their own secrets
and desiring other confidences in exchange. She seemed to be harmless
though trying.

But the Captain’s great voice boomed down the length of the table.

“No personalities, please. Who is going to tell me the best story
before I go back on duty? Perhaps Miss Davis will tell us some negro
stories!”

Nona blushed uncomfortably. She was shy at being suddenly made the
center of observation, yet she appreciated the Captain’s intention.

Nevertheless, and in spite of her best efforts, the disagreeable
atmosphere in the dining room remained. Mrs. Curtis was not alone in
her suspicion of the vanished woman. There was not another person at
the table who did not in a greater or less degree share it. Lady Dorian
was strangely reserved about her history in these troublous war times.
Then she had been trying to keep her point of view concealed. However,
to the Red Cross girls, or at least to the three younger ones, she was
a romantic, fascinating figure. One could easily conceive of her in a
tragic role. Secretly both Barbara and Nona decided to try to know her
better if this were possible without intrusion.

An hour after dinner and the Red Cross girls were in bed. There was
nothing to do to amuse oneself, as the lights must be extinguished
by half-past eight o’clock. The Captain meant to take no risks of
over-zealous German cruisers or submarines.




CHAPTER VI _A Trial of Fire_


At dawn Barbara awakened perfectly refreshed. She felt that she had
been asleep for an indefinite length of time, and although she made a
slight effort, further sleep was impossible. How long before the hour
for her bath, and how stuffy their little stateroom had become!

Barbara occupied the upper berth. Swinging herself a little over the
side she saw that Eugenia was breathing deeply. Asleep Barbara conceded
that Eugenia might almost be called handsome. Her features were well
cut, her dark hair smooth and abundant, and her expression peaceful.
However, even with consciousness somewhere on the other side of things
Eugenia still looked like an old maid. Barbara wondered if she had
ever had an admirer in her life. Although wishing to give Eugenia the
benefit of the doubt, she scarcely thought so. It would have made her
less difficult surely!

Twice Barbara turned over and burrowed her curly brown head in her
pillow. She dared not even move very strenuously for fear of waking
her companion and arousing her ire. Of course, it was irritating to be
awakened at daylight, but then how was she to endure the stupidity and
stuffiness of their room without some entertainment? If only she could
read or study her French, but there was not yet sufficient daylight,
and turning on the electric light was too perilous.

Staring up at the ceiling only a few feet above her head where the life
belts protruded above the white planking, Barbara had a sudden vision
of what the dawn must be like at this hour upon the sea. How she longed
for the rose and silver spectacle. Had she not been wishing to see the
sunrise every morning since coming aboard ship? And here at last was
her opportunity. Should Eugenia be disagreeable enough to awaken she
must simply face the music.

Noiselessly Barbara’s bare toes were extended over the side of the
berth and then she reached the floor with almost no perceptible sound.
She was so tiny and light she could do things more quietly than other
people. A few moments later she had on her shoes and stockings, her
underclothing and her heavy coat, with the little squirrel cap over her
hair. It would be cold up on deck. But one need not be particularly
careful of one’s costume, since there would probably be no one about
except a weary officer changing his watch. It was too early for the
sailors to have begun washing the decks, else she must have heard the
noise before this. Their stateroom was below the promenade deck.

As Barbara closed the outside door of their room she heard Eugenia
stirring. But she slipped away without her conscience being in
the least troublesome. If Eugenia was at last aroused, she would
not be there to be reproached. The thought rather added zest to
her enterprise. Besides, it was wrong for a trained nurse to be
a sleepy-head; one ought to be awake and ready at all times for
emergencies. Had Barbara needed spurs to her own ideals of helpfulness
in her nursing, she had found them in Eugenia’s and in Dick Thornton’s
openly expressed doubts of her. Whatever came, she must make good or
perish.

The deck was not inspiring. Barbara had anticipated the sunrise. Over
toward the eastern line of the horizon the darkness had lifted, but
as yet there was no color. The sky and water were curiously the same,
a translucent gray. One felt but could not see the light beneath. The
ship was making steady progress because there was now no wind and the
surface of the sea appeared perfectly smooth.

For a few moments the girl walked up and down to keep warm and to wait
for the dawn. Then she found her steamer chair, pulled it into such
a position that it commanded an unbroken view of the horizon, and
covering herself with steamer blankets, stared straight ahead.

A little later at some distance away she saw something black thrust
itself above the surface of the water and then disappear. It looked
like a gigantic nose.

Barbara’s breath began to come more quickly and grasping hold of the
arms of her chair she half arose. But now the black object had appeared
again and was coming closer to the ship. Of course, she had been
thinking of a submarine. However, she could now see that the creature
was being followed by a perfectly irrepressible family connection of
porpoises, dipping their heads under the waves, flirting their tails in
a picturesque fashion and dancing a kind of sea tango.

Then the porpoises disappeared. Calmer than she had ever imagined grew
the entire face of the water, stiller the atmosphere. This was the
strange moment of silence that follows the breaking of each new day.
Perchance it may be nature’s time for silent prayer.

Anyhow Barbara was familiar enough with this moment on land. It is the
moment in nursing the sick when one must be most watchful and strong.
Then life struggles to get away from the exhausted body on strange new
quests of its own. But Barbara had never faced a dawn upon the sea.

She wished now that she had called Mildred and Nona; perhaps they
too would have cared for the oncoming spectacle. Then Barbara forgot
herself and her soul filled with wonder. The sun had risen. It threw
great streams of light across the sky like giant banners, of such
colors as no army of the world has ever fought under, and these showed
a second time upon the mirror of the sea. A few moments they stayed
like this, and then melted together into red and violet and rose, until
after a while the day’s serener blue conquered and held the sky.

Weary from the beauty and her own emotion, Barbara closed her eyes,
meaning to go downstairs as soon as the sailors came on deck. However,
she must have fallen asleep for a few moments. Reopening her eyes she
had a distinct conviction that she must be dreaming. Undoubtedly she
was seeing an impossible thing. A few feet away from her chair, forcing
its way between the planks of the floor, was a small spiral column of
smoke.

It could not be smoke, of course, one felt convinced of that; yet it
was odd that it should look and behave so much like smoke.

Barbara got herself disentangled from her steamer rugs and jumped to
her feet. This was a reliable method of waking oneself up. She took
a single step forward and then turned and ran along the deck to the
stairway more swiftly than she had ever run in her life. She was not
mistaken, it _was_ smoke issuing from underneath the deck. Possibly
this meant nothing serious, no one in the world could know less of a
ship than she did. Then there was a possibility that their steamer
might be on fire, when the crew must be alarmed at once. Barbara had
not studied to become a trained nurse without learning coolness. Under
no circumstances must she cry fire and so create a panic. She had no
other conscious thought except that she must find one of the ship’s
officers or sailors and give the alarm.

But before she was more than half along the companion way the girl
heard a noise like the explosion of a muffled gun. Straightway she
pitched face forward down the steps. Nevertheless she was not hurt.
The next instant she was up and running along the hall, reached the
door of her own stateroom just as Eugenia flung the door open. At the
same time Nona’s and Mildred’s white faces stared forth.

“Put on some clothes quickly. There has been an accident, I don’t know
how serious,” Barbara commanded. But the information was scarcely
necessary. Already the ship seemed alive with running feet. Commands
were being shouted, while as by magic stewards were urging the
passengers to be calm, insisting there was no danger. The trouble was
probably not serious, yet they must be prepared.

Barbara entered her stateroom. Her pocketbook and a few valuables she
must try to save in case they had to take to the life-boats.

In the middle of the room she found Eugenia Peabody in her nightgown,
shaking with terror and making not the least effort to get dressed.

Barbara forgot the respect due to their chaperon. Deliberately she
seized her by the shoulders and began shaking her severely. It was
absurd, or would have been under other circumstances. Eugenia was so
much taller and larger and older than her companion that it looked as
if a governess were being disciplined by a small pupil.

However, the younger girl was terribly in earnest. “Don’t lose your
senses,” she protested angrily. Then darting about the tiny room in an
incredible time she secured the other girl’s clothes and got her into
them in a haphazard fashion.

Finally Eugenia fled to the closed door, only to be dragged back by her
companion.

“Your shoes and stockings, please, Miss Peabody,” Barbara argued
determinedly. “There is no immediate danger or we would be warned.
Now let us find the other girls. Remember we are Red Cross nurses and
not young society women.” If the ship had been sinking Barbara Meade
felt that she must have fired this sarcasm. But really Eugenia was so
frightened she was beginning to like her better. It was human to be
frightened; she was terrified herself. But it would do no good to go
to pieces.

Nona and Mildred were both ready. So the four girls went together into
the big saloon where all the other ship’s passengers were gathering.

The fire was not supposed to be dangerous. The men were fighting it,
but they must wait to find out if it could be controlled. No, no one
had an idea of what had caused the explosion.

Of course, a number of the women were crying and some of the men were
white as ghosts, others were laughing foolishly.

Mrs. Curtis was distinguishing herself by having an attack of hysteria
in the arms of her son. Very quietly Mildred Thornton went up and took
hold of the older woman’s hand.

“Let us find a seat somewhere and talk,” she said soothingly. But Mrs.
Curtis did not wait to be seated.

“You see,” she sobbed, clutching Mildred’s arm, “the explosion occurred
right in our corridor. I was asleep when suddenly there was a dreadful
noise and my room filled with smoke. Brooks managed to get to me
the next instant. No one could have felt the shock as much as I did,
except Lady Dorian. Her room is across from mine and I believe she was
slightly injured. Has anyone seen her?”

At this moment the second officer entered the saloon. His face was
white, but his lips wore a steady, automatic smile.

“Captain Miller wishes me to inform you that there is no further
danger,” he shouted. “The ‘Philadelphia’ will continue her journey to
Liverpool. We have discovered the cause of the fire and the men have
smothered it. The passengers will kindly return to their staterooms and
breakfast will be served at as early an hour as possible.”

At this moment Barbara Meade felt a light touch on her arm. Mildred was
over in a corner with Brooks Curtis and his mother; Eugenia was talking
to a number of equally excited strangers. So it was Nona Davis who said:

“Don’t you think, Barbara, we might go and offer our services to Lady
Dorian? If she really is hurt, as Mrs. Curtis said, perhaps we may be
able to do something for her. In any case I feel we ought to show our
interest. She is not popular on board ship, and even if she resents our
coming I think we shall have done the kindest thing.”

Barbara nodded her agreement, glancing admiringly at Nona Davis. Nona
was such an embodiment of refinement in manner and appearance that it
would be difficult to treat her ungraciously.




CHAPTER VII _The Landing_


“It is too horrible and too absurd!” said Barbara, a little brokenly.

The “Philadelphia” was now not far from Liverpool, proceeding with
infinite caution through the submarine and mine-haunted waters. In
great letters her name was painted on either side and never did the
Stars and Stripes float more conspicuously overhead.

Dressed for the arrival in England, Barbara and Nona were standing side
by side at a little distance from their fellow passengers. Mildred was
seated with the newspaper correspondent and his mother, and Eugenia was
talking with a good deal of interest to the English banker.

Nona did not answer the other girl’s speech immediately. She had
frowned, started to say something and then evidently changed her mind.
Both she and Barbara looked absurdly young and girlish for the work
ahead of them. Moreover, in their different ways they were typically
American, although their types were not the familiar ones known to most
Europeans.

Barbara had the vivacity, the alertness and the “goaheadiveness” of the
western girl. And in spite of being only a miniature physical edition
of these traits of character she was not miniature in any other sense.
Nona was more difficult to explain. She appeared so exactly what she
had been brought up to be and yet she might surprise one by unexpected
characteristics. She was almost too refined in her manner and aspect;
it gave her a look of delicacy and diffidence. And in some ways Nona
was shy. Nevertheless, there was a possibility that she might have the
strength and mettle which one is supposed to find in a thoroughbred
horse.

Finally she returned in her quiet drawl, which did not make her remark
less emphatic:

“Don’t worry, Barbara dear, at least not more than you can help. It
has been dreadful to have Lady Dorian a prisoner for these last few
days, yet Captain Miller has been as polite as he could be under
the circumstances. You see, as soon as the men discovered that
the explosion on the ship had been intentional, there had to be a
scapegoat. And you know Lady Dorian _is_ mysterious. She won’t say what
her real name is and she won’t surrender the odd iron box of papers
that she is carrying with her. Besides, the accident did start either
inside or near her stateroom. The small safe which must have contained
the explosive was found not far away.”

Nona paused. Though Barbara had listened politely enough she now
shrugged her shoulders, saying reproachfully, “Why, Nona, how odd you
are! Actually you talk as if you believed Lady Dorian guilty! Always
before you have been her staunchest champion. Besides, she seems to
have taken a great fancy to you. Now if Mildred had been speaking I
should have understood. She has been so influenced by Mrs. Curtis, or
by her son; but----”

A peculiar expression crossed her companion’s face which at the
instant silenced Barbara.

“Oh, no, I don’t think Lady Dorian guilty; the idea is ridiculous,”
Nona whispered. “So far as we have been able to judge, she is one of
the gentlest people in the world. The box of papers may prove that she
is sacrificing herself for her country in some strange way. She won’t
be able to keep them hidden once she lands. Captain Miller says that
they will have to be given up to the proper authorities. He did not
insist upon her relinquishing them upon his ship, because he had as
much as he could do to get us ashore in safety. Besides, Lady Dorian
is a woman. Captain Miller says an Irishman had best leave such a
situation alone. I am not sure he really suspects her.”

At this moment, hearing footsteps near, Nona Davis turned from looking
out toward the sea.

Approaching the place where they stood was the woman about whom they
had just been talking. She was dressed in dark-blue cloth with a small
hat of the same shade trimmed in a single darker feather. Behind her
came her maid carrying a long coat, and on either side of her were two
of the ship’s officers. They were entirely respectful, although never
getting any distance away. However, they need not have been fearful,
because the woman’s hands were locked together with a small steel chain.

She seemed pale and ill and yet, oddly enough, neither frightened nor
ashamed.

But the sight of her handcuffs had set Barbara’s cheeks flaming
indignantly. Yet they aroused an odd point of view. Could Nona be
right in her suggestion that people commit strange crimes in the name
of country in times of war, crimes from which their souls would have
shrunk in horror during peace? No, guilt of any kind was impossible to
imagine in connection with their new friend. In a sense Lady Dorian had
become their friend, since she and Nona had been helping to care for
her. Lady Dorian had been ill ever since the night of the explosion and
the accusation following upon it.

However, while she had been thinking, Nona, who was usually slower in
her movements, had crossed over and slipped her arm inside the older
woman’s.

They made a queer, effective picture standing together. Barbara was
conscious of it before joining them.

They were both women of refinement, who looked as if they should be
sheltered from every adversity. Nona was dressed in shabby black,
since all the money she had was being devoted to her expenses. Lady
Dorian’s costume suggested wealth. Nona was delicately pretty, with
promise of beauty to come, while the older woman was at the zenith of
her loveliness. Nevertheless, something they had in common. Barbara’s
western common sense asserted itself. “Perhaps it is because they both
belong to ‘first families,’” she thought wickedly, and wondered if this
were a good or evil fortune. Certainly until she reached them, Nona and
Lady Dorian were as completely alone as if the ship’s deck had been a
desert island.

Five minutes before several dozen persons had been loitering in the
neighborhood, impatiently watching and praying to be landed as soon as
possible. But as Lady Dorian advanced they had retreated. Perhaps they
had meant it kindly, for it is a painful shock to see a fellow being
a prisoner. Lady Dorian had been mistrusted, but she had not yet been
condemned. Suspicion is not evidence.

However, the little group did not remain alone for long, for soon after
both girls beheld Eugenia Peabody walking resolutely toward them. She
happened to have been born a determined character, and her nursing had
developed rather than diminished her determination.

Instantly Barbara and Nona became aware of Eugenia’s intention and
longed to frustrate it. But they both felt powerless, because Eugenia
did not speak or even look at them. Her dark eyes were leveled straight
at Lady Dorian. She appeared righteous and severe, but at the same time
impressive.

Moreover, as soon as she began talking the older woman flushed and for
the first time the tears came into her eyes.

“I don’t wish to be rude or unkind, Lady Dorian,” Eugenia remarked
stiffly, “but I do ask you to cease any suggestion of intimacy with
Miss Meade or Miss Davis. They have told you, of course, that we are
now on our way to nurse the wounded British soldiers. Well, I am
not for an instant accusing you of being a spy or having anything
to do with the accident aboard our steamer; nevertheless, you are
strongly suspected. Certainly you can see for yourself how young and
inexperienced Barbara Meade and Nona Davis both are. They are in my
charge and must not start their work of nursing under any cloud. By and
by if you are cleared and we should happen to meet again, why then of
course if you liked you could be friendly. Now----”

Eugenia stopped, but there was no doubting what she meant. Although
Barbara and Nona were both furiously angry at her interference and
sorry for their new friend, nevertheless there was that tiresome
conviction they had so often felt since sailing--Eugenia, though
trying, was frequently right.

Evidently Lady Dorian thought so too. Instinctively she lifted her
hands as though intending to offer one of them to Miss Peabody. But
finding this impossible she dropped her dark lashes to hide her emotion
and then answered as serenely as possible:

“You are entirely right, Miss Peabody, and I am to blame for not having
thought before of what you have just said to me. Please believe that
I _did not think_. Miss Davis and Miss Meade have been very good to
me and their sympathy and care have helped me endure these last three
days. I don’t know many American girls, but not for a great deal would
I allow my acquaintance to make things difficult for them. It would be
a poor return. I shall be arrested as soon as we arrive in Liverpool,
so I think we had best say farewell at once.”

Lady Dorian attempted no denial and no explanation. As she finished her
speech she glanced first at Nona and then at Barbara and let her eyes
say her farewells; then she stepped back a few feet nearer her guards.

Deliberately Nona followed her. Apparently unconscious of the presence
of any one else she lifted up her face and touched her lips to the
older woman’s.

“I believe in you implicitly,” she murmured. “Yes, I know there are
many things you do not wish to explain at present, and of course I
really know nothing in the world about you. Only I feel sure that we
shall some day meet again.”

Nona’s faith proved unfortunate. For the first time Lady Dorian showed
signs of breaking down. But the next moment, smiling, she indicated a
curious scroll pin that was caught in the lace of her dress.

“Will you take that, please,” she whispered, “and keep it until you
have better reason for your faith in me?”

Following Eugenia, Barbara glanced curiously at Nona Davis. She was not
easy to comprehend. After all, she it was who had emphasized all the
reasons for doubting their new friend and then declared her belief in
her entire innocence. It was merely that her faith did not depend on
outward circumstances. Barbara wondered if she herself were equally as
convinced. Then her conflicting sensations annoyed her. As usual, she
began quarreling with Eugenia Peabody.

“If you are taking us to join Mildred and the Curtis family, Eugenia,
then frankly I prefer other society. Nona and I had decided that we
wished to be by ourselves when we first see the coasts of England. But
so long as you feel you must be so terribly careful about chaperoning
us I would like to say that we know nothing about Brooks Curtis or Mrs.
Curtis except what they have told us, and Mildred Thornton has been
almost exclusively in their society for the past few days.” Barbara
tried to smile, but she looked very tiny and forlorn. She was homesick
and the parting with Lady Dorian had been disturbing. Besides, Mildred
was Dick Thornton’s sister and she had more or less promised Dick to
try and look after her. Could anything much more disastrous occur than
to have Mildred become interested in an unknown and presumably poor
newspaper reporter? Certainly Brooks Curtis showed no signs of being
either rich or famous in spite of his mother’s claims for him. Then the
thought of Mrs. Thornton’s anger made Barbara wish to sigh and smile at
the same time.




CHAPTER VIII _A Meeting_


The four Red Cross girls were walking about in one of the most
beautiful gardens in England. It was late afternoon and they were
already dressed for dinner.

The Countess of Sussex, to whom they had been introduced by her sister
in New York City, had invited them down from London for a few days
before leaving for their work among the soldiers. In another thirty-six
hours they were expecting to cross the Channel.

Of the four girls, Nona Davis seemed most to have altered in her
appearance since leaving the ship. Indeed, no one could have dreamed
that she could suddenly have become so pretty. But she had been
half-way ill all the time of their crossing and disturbed about a
number of things. Here in England for some strange reason she felt
unexpectedly at home. The formality of the life on the great country
estate, the coldness and dignity of many of the persons to whom they
had been presented, the obsequiousness of the servants, troubled her
not at all. And this in spite of the fact that the other three girls,
although disguising the emotion as well as they knew how, were in a
state of being painfully critical of England and the English. Possibly
for this very reason Nona had made the best impression, although the
letters of introduction which they had so far used had been originally
given to Mildred Thornton.

But in a way perhaps Nona was more like an English girl than the
others. She had lived the simplest kind of life in the beautiful old
southern city of Charleston, she and her father and one old colored
woman, almost lost in the big, shabby house that sheltered them. And
they had been tragically poor. Nevertheless, a generation before Nona’s
ancestors had been accustomed to an existence of much the same kind as
the English people about them, although a much more friendly one, with
negro servants taking the place of white and with a stronger bond of
affection than of caste.

This afternoon Nona felt almost as if she were in her own rose garden
in Charleston, grown a hundred times larger and more beautiful. She
walked a little ahead of the other three girls, almost unconscious of
their presence and dreaming of her own shut-in childhood and the home
she had sold in order to give her services to the wounded in this war.

Yet she looked as remote from the thought of war and its horrors as one
could possibly imagine. She had on a white muslin dress made with a
short waist and long full skirt; a piece of old lace belonging to her
father’s mother, an old-time Virginia belle, crossed over her slight
bosom, was fastened with a topaz and pearl pin. Her pale gold hair was
parted on one side and then coiled loosely on the crown of her head.
It did not curl in the wilful fashion that Barbara’s did, but seemed
to wave gently. Her pallor was less noticeable than usual and the
irises of her brown eyes were like the heart of the topaz. Then with
an instinct for color which every normal girl has, Nona had fastened a
golden rose, the _soleil d’or_, or sun of gold, at her waist. Because
it was cool she also wore a scarf floating from her shoulders.

“Nona looks like this garden,” Barbara remarked to her two companions,
when they had stopped for a moment to examine a curiously trimmed box
hedge, cut to resemble a peacock, “while I--I feel exactly like a
cactus plant rooted out of a nice bare desert and transplanted in the
midst of all this finery. I can feel the prickly thorns sticking out
all over me. And if you don’t mind and no one is listening I’d like
to let the American eagle screech for a few moments. I never felt so
American in my life as I have every minute since we landed. And as we
have come to nurse the British I must get it out of my system somehow.”

The two girls laughed, even Eugenia. Barbara had given such an amusing
description of herself and her own sensations. And she did not look
as if she belonged in her present environment, nevertheless, she was
wearing her best dress, made by quite a superior Lincoln, Nebraska,
dressmaker. It was of blue silk and white lace and yet somehow was not
correct, so that Barbara really did appear like the doll Dick Thornton
had once accused her of resembling.

Mildred Thornton had a suitable and beautiful costume of pearl-gray
chiffon and Eugenia only a plain brown silk, neither new nor becoming.
But, as she had explained to their hostess, she had not come to Europe
with any thought of society, but merely in order to assist with the Red
Cross nursing. Eugenia seemed to be very poor; indeed, though only one
of the three other girls had any fortune, Eugenia’s poverty was more
apparent than Nona’s. All her traveling outfit was of the poorest and
she was painfully economical. But, as the Countess had declared that
they were leading the simplest kind of life in the country, and because
of the war doing almost no entertaining, Eugenia had consented to leave
their lodgings in London for this short visit. She was particularly
interested, since the smaller houses on the estate had been given over
to the Belgian refugees, and Eugenia felt that this might be their
opportunity for learning something of the war before actually beholding
it.

The four girls were on their way now to visit several of the cottages
where the Belgian women and children were located. But when the three
girls had finished their few moments of conversation Nona Davis had
disappeared.

“She will probably follow us a little later,” Eugenia suggested; “we
simply must not wait any longer, or dinner may be announced before we
can get back to the castle.”

However, Nona did not follow them, although she soon became conscious
that the other girls had left her; indeed, saw them disappearing in the
distance.

The truth is that at the present time she had no desire to see or talk
with the Belgian refugees, nor did she wish any other company than her
own for the next half hour.

She had been so accustomed to being alone for a great part of her time
that the constant society of her new friends had tired her the least
bit. Oh, she liked them immensely. It was not that, only that some
natures require occasional solitude. And no one can be really lonely in
a garden.

Had there been wounded Belgian soldiers on the Countess’ estate Nona
felt that she would have made the effort to meet them, but up to the
present she had not seen an injured soldier, although soldiers of the
other kind she had seen in great numbers, marching through the gray
streets of London, splendid, khaki-clad fellows, handsome and serious.
Even for them there had been no beating of drums, no waving of flags.
Nona was thinking of this now while half of her attention was being
bestowed on the beauties surrounding her. England was not making a game
or a gala occasion of her part in this great war; for her it was a
somber tragedy with no possible result save victory or death.

During her divided thinking Nona had wandered into a portion of the
garden known as “The Maze.” It was formed of a great number of rose
trellises, the one overlapping the other until it was almost impossible
to tell where the one ended and the other began. Nona must have walked
inside for half an hour without the least desire to escape from her
perfumed bower. The scene about her seemed so incredibly different from
anything that she had the right to expect, she wished the impression to
sink deeply into her consciousness that she might remember it in the
more sorrowful days to come.

Then unexpectedly the garden came to an end and the girl stepped
out onto a green lawn, with a small stone house near by which she
recognized as the gardener’s cottage.

Between the garden and the house, however, prone on the ground and
asleep, lay a long figure.

Nona caught her breath, first from surprise and next from pity.

A heavy rug had been placed under the sleeper and a lighter one thrown
over him. Evidently he had been reading and afterwards had fallen
asleep, for magazines and papers were tumbled about and the cover
partly tossed off.

At least, Nona could see that the figure was that of a young man of
about twenty-two or three and that he must recently have been seriously
ill. It was odd that under his tan his skin could yet manage to show so
pallid and be so tightly drawn over his rather prominent cheek bones
and nose. By his side were a pair of tall crutches and one of his long
legs was heavily bandaged.

Nona was standing within a few feet of him, perfectly still, not daring
to move or speak for fear of waking him. Evidently the young man was
the gardener’s son who had come home on a leave of absence while
recovering from a wound.

But the next instant and without stirring, his eyes had opened and were
gazing lazily into Nona’s.

“It is the fairy story of the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ backwards,” he began,
without the least betrayal of amusement or surprise. “You see, our
positions really ought to be reversed. You should be sleeping here.
Then I should not in the least mind behaving as the Prince did when he
woke the lovely Princess. He kissed her, I believe.”

Nona was startled and a little frightened. But one could not be
frightened of a boy who must have been terribly injured and was now
trying to fight his way back to life with what gayety he could.

“Are you the gardener’s son?” she asked, a little after Eugenia’s
manner and really quite foreign to her own. She had never seen a young
man with such blue eyes as this one had, nor such queer brown hair that
seemed to have been burned to red in spots.

“I am a son of Adam,” he answered, still grave as ever, “and he was, I
have been told, the earth’s _first_ gardener. Now tell me: Are you a
Princess?”

The girl smiled a little more graciously. She had possessed very few
boy friends and certainly no one of them had ever talked to her in this
fashion. However, it was amusing and if it entertained the young fellow
there could be no harm in their talking. Nona Davis had the poise and
understanding that came of gentle birth.

So she shook her golden head gravely.

“I am not a Princess, I am sorry to spoil your fairy story. No, I am
just an American girl who has come over to try and be a little useful
with the Red Cross work. My friends and I met the Countess of Sussex
the other day and she was kind enough to ask us down to see her place
before we leave for the front.”

During her speech the young man had been attempting to get himself
off the ground by rising on his elbow. But even with this movement he
must have wrenched his wounded leg, for immediately after he dropped
back again, and although suppressing a groan, Nona could see that
perspiration had broken out on his thin temples and on his smooth
boyish lips.

The next instant she was down on her knees at his side. He had gotten
into an abominably awkward position so that his head hung over the
pillows instead of resting upon them.

How often Nona had assisted her old father in a like difficulty!

She may not have had the training of the other three American Red Cross
girls, but she had practical experience and the nursing instinct.

With skill and with gentleness and without a word she now slipped her
bare white arm under the stranger’s shoulders and gradually drew him
back into a comfortable position. Then she took her arm away again, but
continued to kneel on the corner of his rug waiting to see if there
were to be any signs of faintness.

There were none. Without appearing surprised or even thanking her, the
young Englishman continued his fantastic conversation.

“We have turned American girls into Princesses in Europe quite an
extraordinary number of times. I have wondered sometimes how they liked
it, since I have been told they are all queens in their own land.”

Then observing that his companion considered his remarks degenerating
into foolishness, he groped about until his hand touched the book he
desired.

“Forgive my nonsense,” he urged penitently. “You can put it down to
the fact that I have actually been reading Andersen’s Fairy Tales half
the afternoon. I have grown so terribly bored with everything for the
past six weeks while I have been trying to get this confounded leg well
enough to go back and join my regiment.”

He offered the little book to Nona, and almost instinctively, as the
wind scattered the pages, she glanced down upon the front leaf to
discover her companion’s name. There it was written in an unformed
handwriting. “Robert Hume, from Mother Susan.”

“Robert Hume,” Nona repeated the name to herself mentally without
lifting her eyes. It was a fine name, and yet it had a kind of middle
class English sound like George Eliot, or Charles Dickens. Nona
realized that what is known in English society as the middle class had
produced most of England’s greatness. Nevertheless it was surprising to
find the son of a gardener possessed of so much intelligence.

He even pretended not to have noticed that she had endeavored to
discover his name.

She put the book on the ground and got up on her feet again.

“I must go now,” she said gently, “but it is growing late. May I not
call some one to take you indoors?”

“Please,” he answered, “if you will go there to the small stone house
and tell Mother Susan I am awake, she will have some one look after me.
But I say it _has been ripping_ meeting you in this unexpected way when
I thought I was too used up even to want to look at a girl. Tomorrow
perhaps----”

“Tomorrow we are returning to London on the early morning train.” Nona
suffered a relapse into her former cold manner. She was a democrat, of
course, and came from a land which taught that all men were equal. But
she was a southern girl and the south had been living a good many years
on the thought of its old families after their wealth had been taken
away. Therefore, there were limits as to what degree of friendliness,
even of familiarity, one could endure from a gardener’s son.

Nevertheless, the young fellow was a soldier and, one felt
instinctively, a gallant one.

“Good-by; I hope you may soon be quite well again,” Nona added, and
then went across the grass to the gardener’s house.

The young man was not accustomed to the poetic fancies that had been
besetting him this last quarter of an hour; they must be due to
weakness. But somehow the strange girl looked to him like a pale ray of
afternoon sunshine as he watched her disappear. She did not come near
his resting place again.




CHAPTER IX “_But Yet a Woman_”


Most of the next day the American Red Cross girls devoted to seeing
London. They had visited The Tower and Westminster Abbey and the Houses
of Parliament soon after their arrival. So, as the sun was shining with
unusual vigor for London, they concluded to spend the greater part of
their final time out of doors.

London in late May or early June is a city transformed. During the
winter she is gray and cold and formidable, so that the ordinary
American traveler often finds himself antagonistic and depressed. Then
the Englishman appears as cold and unfriendly as his skies. But let the
sun shine and the flowers bloom in the parks and the spirit of the city
and its people changes.

Naturally, on account of the shadow of the war, the Red Cross girls
had anticipated an atmosphere of sorrow and gloom over London. But
to their utter amazement on the surface of things there was no such
effect. There were, of course, many families in grief over the passing
of one of their dearest, or in even more tragic anxiety over the fate
of others either at the front or prisoners of war. But whatever the
private suffering, there was slight sign of it. No one was wearing
mourning, the theaters and restaurants seemed to be doing a good
business and the streets and parks were everywhere crowded.

Except that the flags of the Allied Nations waved from nearly every
public building and large shop, and that the taxicabs carried placards
urging men to enlist, there was little to suggest a nation at war.

Yes, there was one other curious sight which Barbara from the top of
an omnibus discovered. Over the roofs of the important government
buildings and above many of the great private houses hung a kind of
flat screen of heavy wire netting, closely woven. From a distance it
formed a cobweb effect, as though gigantic spiders had been spreading
their great webs over London.

“I wonder what that means?” asked Barbara, pointing upward, and then
knew the answer, although she listened politely while Mildred explained.

“Oh, the wire is to prevent bombs from dropping down on the house tops
when London has her great Zeppelin raid. Father began telling me that
London must expect them to occur as soon as the war broke out.”

Nona, who had been looking pensive, now leaned over from the back seat
where she was sitting with Eugenia.

“I am not wishing any harm to London; I adore it. But if the Germans
are going to send their marvelous army of the air to bombard the city,
don’t you wish it would happen while we are here?”

Barbara laughed, Mildred shook her head and Eugenia said seriously:

“Nona, you don’t look in the least like a bloodthirsty person. I can’t
understand you, child. You talk as if you had no sense of fear and I
have not been able to make up my mind whether it is because you know
nothing of danger or whether you are different from most women. But
remember that we are going to our work tomorrow, and I don’t think
there will be many of the horrors of this war that we shall miss
seeing. I am afraid I am a coward, for I dread a great part of them.
But isn’t that the hospital we are looking for? At least, it will be a
tremendous inspiration to meet the woman who has done more for nursing
among the British soldiers than any other woman in this war. Dr.
Garrett Anderson established the first woman’s hospital at Claridge’s
Hotel in Paris a month after the war broke out, together with Dr. Flora
Murray. And the women have done such wonderful surgical work that all
the country is talking about them.”

Barbara whistled softly. “So they brought this Dr. Anderson back to
London and made her a major, the first woman ever given military rank
in the British Army!” she exclaimed. “When one considers the Englishman
believes ‘a woman’s place is the home,’ it is hard to tell how he is
going to reconcile what women are doing to help in this war, men’s work
as well as their own. But I’ll bet you the English won’t give the women
the vote when the war is over, just the same. They can go back home
then, although a good many of the poor things won’t have any homes to
go to.”

Eugenia revealed an annoyed frown. She was doing her best to find good
in Barbara Meade, her New England conscience assured her there must be
good in everybody. But so far Barbara’s trying qualities were much more
conspicuous.

“I do wish that you would not use slang, Barbara,” she urged almost
plaintively. “It may be all right in the west, but really it will give
English people such an unfortunate impression of us.”

Barbara flushed. Of course she must break herself of this habit;
nevertheless, she would like to have mentioned that she had heard
a good deal of slang since arriving in England and although unlike
the American kind, equally amusing. However, as it was now time to
dismount from the top of their bus, this required all her energy and
intelligence.

The meeting with Dr. Louise Garrett Anderson was necessarily brief, the
distinguished woman happening to have a single free hour had consented
to meet the new nurses and wish them God-speed. But the visit to the
hospital was also important, because the American Red Cross girls were
to have tea with the other nurses who were to accompany them across the
Channel the next morning.

The new hospital just back of the British trenches at Neuve Chapelle
had sent a hurried call to London for more assistance and the four
American girls and four British girls were to make the journey
immediately.

Crossing the hall to the dining room, Barbara just had time to whisper
to Mildred:

“I have a dreadful premonition that I am not going to be popular with
English nurses. When you consider how ‘New England’ feels toward me,
what can you expect of England?” and Barbara made a wry face behind
Eugenia’s back, wishing for the nine hundred and ninety-ninth time in
her life that she only looked larger and older and more important.

The meeting of the girls was not very successful. It may be that they
were all shy and that they really wished to be friendly without knowing
how to approach each other. But this certainly did not appear to be
true. For after they were properly introduced by the superintendent
of the hospital, the English girls nodded, said “how do you do?” and
then sat down again and continued talking to one another, as if the
Americans had vanished as soon as their names were spoken.

It was embarrassing. Barbara was angry; nevertheless, her sense of
humor made her feel an inclination to giggle. Mildred Thornton seemed
distressed and awkward; one could tell from her expression that she
was once more feeling her old lack of social graces. She was under the
impression that it must be her duty to make things more comfortable
without in the least knowing how. Eugenia was simply returning a New
England manner to the land whence it came, while Nona Davis was frankly
puzzled by the situation.

All her life she had been taught that one’s first duty was to make a
stranger feel welcome in one’s own land. The well-bred southern man
or woman will straightway cease to talk of his own affairs to become
interested in a newcomer’s. They wish to make the stranger happy and at
home and in the center of things. But this did not seem to be true of
this particular party of English girls. Nona wondered why they should
be so unlike the other English people they had been meeting. Perhaps
they were rude because they belonged to a class of society that knew
no better. You see, Nona’s feeling for “family” was very strong. She
was to learn better in the days to follow, learn that it is the man or
woman who counts, and not who his grandmother or grandfather chanced to
be; but the lesson was still before her.

She was now studying the four other girls, too interested to be annoyed
by their manners, and yet conscious of the antagonism that they seemed
to feel.

However, the four English girls were not in the least alike, which
was one reason for their attitude. Two of them appeared in awe of the
third, while the fourth girl silently watched the others. The most
important girl was extremely tall, had fair hair, a large nose and a
lovely English complexion. She was the Honorable Dorothy Mathers. The
second was the daughter of a farmer, healthy and in a way handsome.
If strength alone counted she would be the best of the nurses. Her
name was Mary Brinton and she spoke with a broad Yorkshire dialect,
but hardly said anything except “My Lady this, and my Lady that” and
was evidently not accustomed to titled society. The third girl was
from London, a doctor’s daughter and a friend of Lady Dorothy’s, Daisy
Redmond, while the fourth, whose name was Alexina McIntyre, had given
no clue to her history.

However, she it was who finally forced the group of eight girls to
betray a mild human interest in one another.

She had reddish hair, freckles on her nose, wore glasses, had a
delightful mouth, large, with fine white teeth.

She happened to be gazing directly at Barbara when she first spoke, but
her voice was uncommonly loud, so that it forced everybody’s attention.

“Please, you little wee thing,” she said, “tell us whatever made you
come over the ocean to help with our war nursing? Did you think we
hadn’t enough nurses of our own, that we needed babies like you?”

Barbara stiffened. She had half an idea of declaring that she for one
intended going back home at once. Then to her relief she discovered
that her questioner had not intended being unkind. There was a sudden
twinkle in her light-blue eyes, as if she had become aware of the
discomfort in the atmosphere and wished to relieve it by a frivolous
speech.

“I’m Scotch,” she added with a charming burr in her accent. “I said
that to wake you up.”

Then Barbara smiled back again and afterwards sighed, “Oh, I am used to
having that remark made to me.” She looked steadfastly across the space
of carpet dividing the eight girls. “The sheep from the goats,” she
thought to herself. Aloud she merely said:

“I hope with all my heart that in spite of my being so small you are
going to find me, and indeed all of us, useful. If you don’t, you know,
we can go back. But we used to have a saying in our hospital, out in
Nebraska, that sometimes brains succeed best in nursing as in other
things, rather than brawn.”

Only the Scotch woman understood her meaning. However, the ice being
broken, afterwards there was an attempt at conversation, until finally
in desperation Eugenia gave the signal for farewells.

“We shall meet again in the morning,” she said at parting, but showing
no enthusiasm at the prospect.

“I am sorry,” Mildred Thornton remarked, once the four girls were back
again in their lodgings, “but I am afraid for some reason the girls we
have just met feel a prejudice against our nursing in the same hospital
with them. I wonder what they could have heard against us? Everyone
else has been so grateful and kind. I hope they won’t make the work
harder for us. All of us except Eugenia are inexperienced.”

Eugenia nodded her head in agreement. “I am afraid the girl they called
Lady Dorothy did not seem to favor us. It is a pity, because she is
related to a great many important people, I’m told. But never mind,
even if she does dislike us, she can’t interfere with our doing good
work.”

Curled up on the bed, Barbara yawned. “Oh, don’t let us look for
trouble. One of the things we have got to expect is that some of the
English nurses won’t like our American ways or our methods of nursing.
We have just to remember that we came over here to preach the gospel
of peace, not war, and not dislike anyone. Well, our real life work
begins tomorrow. Then we will see what stuff we are made of. I am glad
our hospital is partly supported by American money and that Mrs. Payne
of New York is sometimes in charge of things. I haven’t yet become an
Anglomaniac; so far I only love the soldiers.”

The next morning the trip to the coast followed, and thence across the
Channel the way was strangely uneventful. Except that the four American
girls now wore their Red Cross costumes, they might have been taken for
four girls on a spring shopping journey to Paris. The Channel boats
were crossing and recrossing from England to France and back again just
as if they had no enemies in the world.

However, the men guiding the destinies of the little steamers were
under no such impression. Every foot of the way was traveled with
infinite caution. For at any moment disaster might overtake them from
the sea or air. But there was no German bomb to destroy the shimmering
gold of the atmosphere this May morning, nor dangers in the pathway
through the sea. Moreover, from tall towers along both coasts farseeing
eyes were watching and protecting the passage of the Channel boats.
This morning some of them were carrying passengers across, others
khaki-clad soldiers to relieve their wounded comrades.

One surprise, however, awaited the American girls. Quite unexpectedly
they discovered that Mrs. Curtis and her son were also crossing the
Channel to France on their boat. And Mrs. Curtis reported that Lady
Dorian had been taken to The Tower in London where she was being held
as a political spy.




CHAPTER X _Behind the Firing Lines_


It was about seven o’clock in the morning ten days later.

Over green fields the sun was shining and the birds were singing in the
tops of the tall chestnut trees which were now covered with fragrant
blossoms. These trees stood close about an old mansion which was
enclosed by a high stone wall with no opening save a tall iron gate
connecting with the avenue that led in a straight line to the house.
But although there was a small lodge beside it, the gate stood open.

The old stone house itself was strangely built. It had three towers,
one taller than the rest, commanding a sweeping view of the country
near by. At one side of the building an old stone cloister led to a
small chapel a few hundred yards away. And this morning two girls were
walking quietly up and down this cloister in uniforms not strikingly
unlike those that used long ago to be worn by the young demoiselles of
the ancient “Convent of the Sacred Heart” in northern France. But these
two modern girls belonged to a newer and braver sisterhood, the order
of the Red Cross.

They were Barbara Meade and Nona Davis, but their faces suggested
that years, not days, must have passed over them. Their cheeks were
white, their expressions strained. From Barbara’s eyes and mouth the
suggestion of sudden, spontaneous laughter had disappeared. She looked
a little sick and a little frightened.

Nona was different, although she suggested a piece of marble. The
experiences of the past ten days had brought out the fighting qualities
in this young southern girl. Her golden-brown eyes were steady, she
carried her chin up and her shoulders straight. She looked the daughter
of a soldier.

Now she put her arm across the smaller girl’s shoulder.

“Let us go for a walk,” she suggested. “No one in the hospital wants
our services for a while and breakfast won’t be served for another
hour. It will do you good to get away from the thought of suffering. We
need not go far; besides, the country near here is entirely peaceful.”

Barbara said nothing in reply, but taking her consent for granted, the
two girls left the cloister and went down the avenue to the open gate
and so out into the countryside.

They did not seem to feel like talking a great deal; the endless
chatter that had kept them busy during the trip across had died away.
But the morning was lovely and the countryside so peaceful that the
thought of the scene of battle not far off seemed almost incredible.
They were in the midst of a meadow and orchard country of rolling
level fields. Beyond them, however, was a line of hills and a forest.
But there were no other large houses near, only some small cottages
at the edges of the meadows. These belonged to the French peasants,
and although the men were now in the trenches, still they appeared
thrifty and well kept. For so far, though the enemy watched so near,
this part of the country had escaped the actual warfare. The hospital
was only a bare five miles from the British line of soldiers, yet was
comparatively safe. And for this reason the famous old French school
had been emptied of its pupils and turned over to the Red Cross.

As they left the big gate Nona glanced behind her. From the top of
the tallest tower floated a white flag, the emblem of peace, and yet
bearing upon it a cross of red, symbol of suffering. Then just for
an instant the thought crossed her mind, Would this flag continue to
protect them throughout the war?

But as there was no possible answer to this question she turned once
more to the idea of diverting her companion.

Barbara did not seem to be noticing anything. She was downcast and
wandered along with her eyes fixed upon the ground.

“I do not think you ought to worry so or take your breakdown so
seriously, Barbara,” Nona began. “Why, it might have happened to any
one in the world and only shows how keenly you feel things. Next time
you will be better prepared.”

But the other girl shook her head. “I had no right to come to Europe
to help with the Red Cross nursing if I haven’t nerve enough not to
flunk. Think of it, Nona, the very first time I was called upon to give
assistance of real importance, to faint!” The girl’s voice expressed
the limit of self-contempt. “And this when Eugenia and Lady Mathers
were the two other nurses. I would almost rather have died than have
had it happen. I believe Eugenia had to stop and drag me out of the
surgeon’s way. But she has been very kind since, and after all my brave
talk on the steamer has not yet mentioned my downfall. I suppose I
ought to go home and carry out my threat.”

The tears were sliding down Barbara’s cheeks, but in spite of this Nona
smiled.

“You are the last person in the world to play quitter,” she returned
quietly. “Now look here, Barbara, you and I know that since we arrived
at the hospital we have both been feeling that perhaps we were not
wanted and that all our efforts and dreams of helping are going to
amount to little.” She stopped and for a moment laid both hands on her
friend’s shoulders. “Well, let’s you and I show people differently.
I haven’t had much experience and so I am perfectly willing to help
in any way I can be useful until I learn more. You know you went to
pieces the other day, not because you did not have courage to help, but
because you have been seeing so many horrors all at once and you have
not yet gotten used to them. That poor fellow----”

But Barbara’s eyes were imploring her friend to silence. “Let’s don’t
talk about him any more,” she begged. “I was used up, there had been
so many others and then this soldier somehow reminded me of some one I
knew.”

Barbara drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders. It may be that
the thought of the some one had given her new resolution. “Of course,
you know I mean to keep on trying,” she added finally.

Then taking off her nurse’s cap and flinging back her head, the girl
called to Nona, “Catch up with me if you like; I am going to run. It
always makes me feel better when I’ve been having the blues.” And the
next instant she had turned off from the road along which they had been
walking and was flying across one of the meadows as swiftly as a child
chasing butterflies.

Just at first Nona attempted running after her. She too wanted to feel
the blood racing in her veins and the wind fanning her cheeks. But her
companion’s flight was too swift. Nona slowed down and followed more
quietly.

What an odd girl Barbara Meade was and what a queer combination of
childishness and cleverness! Assuredly she had not succeeded in making
herself popular at the hospital to which they had lately come. Probably
Nona understood more of the situation than Barbara. Already for some
reason there had been talk of asking the younger girl to go back to
London, if not to her own home. Nona wondered if this were due to
Barbara’s appearance or her manner. Surely her single failure should
not have counted so seriously against her, unless there were other
reasons. Nevertheless, she herself believed in her and meant to stand
by until Barbara had her chance.

Barbara had ceased running now, and as Nona approached her dropped down
on her knees. She had come to the end of the meadow down the slope of a
hill and everywhere around the earth was covered with violets.

In a few moments her hands were full of them. “We will take these back
to the hospital,” she said as cheerfully as though she never had a
moment of depression. “I have promised to read to two of the soldiers
who are better. They say it amuses them, I have such a funny American
voice.”

The next minute she was up and off again, this time with her arm linked
inside Nona’s. “There is such a dear little French house over there.
Let’s go and see who lives in it now that we are so near.”

Nona glanced at her watch. It was a man’s watch and had once belonged
to her father.

“I have a delightful scheme. It isn’t yet eight o’clock and neither
you nor I have to go on duty until ten. Ever since we arrived I have
wanted to see inside one of these little French huts. So if the people
who live in this one are friendly let’s ask them to give us coffee and
rolls. I can talk to them in French and explain where we come from,
then later perhaps we can walk on a little further.”

The girls were now within ten yards of the cottage. No one was
outdoors, yet there were noises on the inside and through the one
small stone chimney the smoke poured out into the air, bringing with
it a delicious odor of coffee. Nevertheless, the two girls hesitated.
They had been told that the French peasants were always courteous to
strangers, and yet it might be difficult to explain their errand.

But they were spared the trouble, for at this instant the heavy wooden
door was pushed open and a woman stepped out into the yard.

But after the first glance the two girls stared, not at the woman, but
at each other.

“It can’t be,” Barbara murmured weakly. “I am not seeing things
straight.”

“Unfortunately, I’m afraid you are,” Nona answered, and keeping tight
hold of Barbara drew her forward.

“Good morning, Mrs. Curtis,” she exclaimed. “I was under the impression
that you were in Paris. It seems more than strange for us to run across
each other again and you so near the hospital where we have been
located.”

At Nona’s words Mrs. Curtis at once came forward and held out both
hands. She was wearing a kimono and did not look attractive, but she
smiled so kindly that at least Barbara relented.

“I don’t wonder at your surprise,” she returned immediately. “Only I
happen to have the advantage of already knowing what had become of you
four girls. But my being near is not so strange as you may think. I
told you my son wanted to see what is taking place inside the British
trenches. We had to go to Paris for certain papers we could not get
in London. But the firing line at present is only a few miles from
here, as you know. So, as I wanted to be reasonably near and still
in no danger, my son and I looked about to find some place where I
could live. There is only an old woman here and a half-witted son. The
father and sons are at the front, of course. But I don’t mind being
uncomfortable, and then knowing the hospital was so near was such a
comfort both to my son and me.”

Mrs. Curtis had not ceased talking an instant and seemed to expect no
reply. “Won’t you come in and have coffee with me now?” she urged.
“The house is clean as a pin and I’ve a letter from my son to Mildred
Thornton I should be so much obliged if you would take to her. I was
going to walk over with it myself some time today, but I did not know
whether an outsider would be allowed to enter the hospital. One can’t
guess what the restrictions may be in these war times.”

She led the way and both girls followed, Barbara because she very much
wanted the coffee and to see inside the little French house. She was
annoyed at the thought of Brooks Curtis writing to Mildred so soon,
but it was scarcely any business of hers. In any case, she did not see
how she could prevent it, since Mrs. Curtis would undoubtedly deliver
her son’s letter unless one of them did.

Nona, however, had no such feeling. She simply had a half-conscious
prejudice against breaking bread with a woman whom she neither liked
nor trusted. But then she had no real reason for her point of view and
had promised herself to rise above it.

Of course, it might be only a coincidence, Mrs. Curtis’ evident
intention to attach herself to them. But after all, what possible
reason could she have except the desire for a little friendly intimacy?
Naturally she must be lonely with her son away on his newspaper work.




CHAPTER XI _Out of a Clear Sky_


The girls remained longer than they expected in the little hut. It was
extraordinarily interesting, with a thriftiness and tidiness that were
characteristically French. Indeed, living seemed to have been reduced
to the simplest conditions.

One big room formed the center of the hut. It had a stone floor and
a big fireplace where the food was cooked over a peat fire. A plain
wooden table and some benches were the only furniture, except two tall
and strangely handsome chairs, which must have been the property of
some old French family. They had drifted into the cottage by mistake,
probably as a gift to an old servant.

On the walls of the room hung a gun of a pattern of the Franco-Prussian
war, a cheap lithograph of President Poincairé, and one of General
Joffre and General French. So this little hut was also filled with the
war spirit. But the old French _mère_ explained that her husband and
four sons were in the battle line, so few persons had a greater right
to a display of patriotism.

The two American girls found the old French woman one of the most
picturesque figures they had ever imagined. She wore a bodice and short
blue cotton skirt and a cap with pointed ends. Her shoes were wooden
and her stockings homespun. Although only between fifty and sixty years
old, her visitors were under the impression that Mère Marie must be
at least seventy except for her vigor. For her shoulders were bent
and her tanned cheeks wrinkled into a criss-cross of lines. Only her
black eyes shone keenly above a high arched nose, and she moved with a
sprightliness any young person might envy.

Then too she was agreeably hospitable to her unexpected guests, though
not communicative. She did not appear to wish to talk about her own
affairs.

But although the old woman was so interesting, her son Anton was a
dreadful person of whom the two visitors felt a little afraid. He was
almost uncanny, like a character you may have seen in a play, or read
of in some fantastic book. His coarse black hair hung down to his
shoulders and was chopped off at the end in an uneven fashion, his eyes
were black and stared, but with a peculiar blank look in them, and
his big mouth hung open showing huge yellow teeth. One of the unhappy
things about the boy was that he looked so like the woman who was his
mother and yet so horribly unlike her because there was no intelligence
behind the mask of his face. He did not look brutish, however, only
vacant and foolish, and sat in the corner mumbling to himself while
Nona and Barbara and Mrs. Curtis had their coffee and rolls.

But once the two girls were away from the little house, Barbara,
glancing behind, saw the boy following them. First she shook her head
at him, pointing toward his own home, then she brandished a stick. The
lad only grinned and kept after them.

The girls had not yet started back to the hospital, as they had more
than an hour before them and the morning was too beautiful to be wasted.

“We have got to get rid of that boy somehow, Nona; he gives me the
creeps,” Barbara suggested. “Suppose we slip out of this field, which
may belong to them, and go down to the foot of that little hill. There
is an orchard on the other side of the wall and we can stay there under
the trees until we must go back to work. Hope no one will think it
wrong, our having wandered off in this fashion! The truth is they will
probably be too busy to miss us. At least, I am glad that Mildred and
Eugenia are being so successful. They may save the day for the United
States until our chance comes.”

The two girls then sat down in the grass under an old French apple
tree, which looked very like one of any other nationality, but was the
more romantic for being French. This country of northern France ravaged
by mad armies is an orchard and vineyard land and one of the fairest
places on earth.

Looking up into the clear sky, Nona spoke first.

“It is as though the war were a horrible nightmare, isn’t it?” she
began, leaning her chin on her hand and gazing out over the country.
“But do you know, Barbara, dreadful as you may think it of me, I am
not content to stay on here in the shelter of the hospital, hard and
sad as the work of caring for the wounded is. I feel I must know what
the battlefield is like, smell the smoke, see the trenches. Often I
think I can hear the booming of the great guns, see the wounded alone
and needing help before help can come. I am going over there some day,
though I don’t know just how or when I can manage it.”

The girl’s face was quiet and determined. She was not excited; it was
as if she felt a more definite work calling her and wished to answer it.

Then Nona quieted down, and without replying Barbara lay resting her
head in the older girl’s lap. There was a growing sympathy between
them, although so unlike.

Barbara’s blue eyes were upturned toward the clear sky when suddenly
her companion felt her body stiffen. For an instant she lay rigid, the
next she pointed upward.

“Nona,” she exclaimed in a stifled voice, “it doesn’t seem possible,
but--well, what is that in the sky over there? Perhaps we are not so
far from the fighting as you believe.”

Nona followed the other girl’s gaze, but perhaps she was less
far-sighted and her golden brown eyes had not the vision of her
friend’s blue ones.

“Why, dear, I only see two small black clouds.” Then she laughed. “We
are talking like Sister Anne and Bluebeard’s wife. Remember Sister
Anne’s speech. ‘I can only behold a cloud of dust arising in the
distance.’” And Nona made a screen of her hand, laughingly placing it
over her eyes.

But Barbara jumped to her feet. “Don’t be a goose, Nona. Look, I am in
earnest. Those are not clouds, they are aeroplanes and I believe they
are trying to destroy each other.”

But there was no need now for Barbara to argue; the situation was
explaining itself.

Even in this brief moment of time the two air-craft had come closer,
the one plainly in pursuit of the other. But they made no direct
flight. Now and then they both hung poised in the air, then they darted
at each other, or one plunged toward the earth and the other soared
higher.

“One of them must be a German scout trying to locate the enemy’s
position near here,” Barbara remarked. She herself a few weeks before
would not have believed that she could have seen such a spectacle as
the present one without being overpowered with alarm and excitement.
But war brings strange changes in one’s personality. Both girls were
entranced, awed, but above all profoundly interested. They had not yet
thought of fear for themselves nor for the men who must be guiding the
destinies of the ill-omened birds now driving nearer and nearer toward
them. But for the moment one could not associate human beings with
these winged creatures; they were too swift and terrible.

The German plane was evidently the larger and heavier of the two.

It could escape only by disabling the other craft, but the smaller one
would not remain long enough in one position to have the other’s guns
turned upon it.

Now and then there were reports of explosions in the air above them.
Nona and Barbara expected to see one or the other of the two machines
disabled, but somehow the shots missed their aim.

Barbara had a sudden remembrance of having once seen a fish-hawk chased
by a kingfisher. The resemblance was strange. Here was the great bird,
powerful and evil, moving heavily through the air, while the smaller
one darted at it, now forward, now backward, then to the side, causing
it endless annoyance, even terror. Yet the larger bird could not move
swiftly enough to be avenged.

Once the two planes circled almost out of sight and unconsciously
the two watchers sighed, partly from relief, although there was a
measure of disappointment. For whatever terror the spectacle held
was overbalanced with wonder. Moreover, by this time they were both
becoming exhausted. Nona started to sit down again to rest her eyes for
a moment.

The next instant Barbara clutched her. Back into their near horizon
the fighting air-craft reappeared, and now it was plain enough that
the larger was swaying uncertainly. The smaller aeroplane made a final
dash toward it, another report sounded, then a white flash appeared and
afterwards a cloud of heavy yellow smoke. Away from the smoke, still
lumbering uncertainly but keeping a course in the desired direction,
the big Taube machine was sailing out of sight. For a few moments
longer the smaller aeroplane hung suspended, although it was impossible
to see more than the outline of its great white wings through the thick
vapor surrounding it.

Then the wings began to waver and the aeroplane to descend toward the
earth.

Instinctively, with almost the same emotion that a child feels in
reaching the scene of a falling balloon, Nona and Barbara ran forward.
Unless its course changed the aeroplane must fall in a field not more
than two hundred yards away.

But the atmosphere about them, which a short while before had been
clear and fragrant, was now growing stifling, and blowing about them
was a yellow cloud.

With a suffocating sensation Nona put up her hand to her throat. What
could be the trouble with her? She could see Barbara running on ahead,
and the great ship fluttering downward, leaving much of the cloud of
smoke dissolving behind it. Once she tried to call to her companion,
but the feeling of choking was too painful. It would make no difference
if she should sit down for a few moments. If there were any service to
be done a little later when this curious sensation had passed she could
go on.

But whatever the poisonous air that had suddenly come out of the blue
heavens the fumes grew thicker on the ground. No sooner had she sat
down than Nona dropped backward, her mouth opening slightly and her
face turning a queer dark color.

Nevertheless Barbara kept on. From the beginning she had been slightly
in advance of Nona and running more quickly. She had been conscious
of the sudden thickening of the atmosphere, but had put up her hand,
covering her nose and mouth and so had gotten away from the fumes.
Moreover, she had not become aware that Nona was not following.
Naturally the sight ahead held her mind and eyes.

The airship as it drew nearer the earth seemed to hold its wings
outspread, quiet as a weary bird settling to rest. The machinery did
not appear to have been seriously wrecked by whatever bomb its enemy
had finally used. Barbara could by this time plainly see a man still
seated at his post, his hand holding his steering gear. Yet the man
looked not like a man so much as a wooden image and seemed unaware of
what he was doing. The instant his machine touched the earth he fell
forward face downward, rolled over a little when one of the giant wings
of his air-craft partly covered him.




CHAPTER XII _First Aid_


As soon as Barbara reached the scene of the wreck she turned to seek
Nona’s advice and aid. But to her amazement there was no evidence of
her companion. Stupidly she continued to stare. It was impossible to
conceive what could have become of Nona, yet the last quarter of an
hour had been so full of strange happenings that there was small wonder
at Barbara’s bewilderment.

A moment later, a few yards from where they had first begun to run, she
saw Nona’s figure lying in a crumpled heap upon the ground. Yet was it
imaginable that this could be Nona? Had she fainted or stumbled? The
recollection of the suffocating gas about them really did not occur to
Barbara, as she had felt its effects so slightly.

Yet here she stood torn between two duties. Should she return and find
out what had happened to her friend or try first to release the man?

Barbara suffered only a brief indecision. Though she may have failed
in her first week’s work at the hospital, her training as a nurse now
asserted itself. And one of the supreme requisites of the successful
nurse is that she use her judgment without unnecessary delay.

Straightway Barbara attempted dragging the unconscious man from his
seat in the wrecked aeroplane, it being, of course, out of the question
to move the machine itself. But the body felt as heavy and inert as if
there were no life inside. Still she tugged, and though so miniature
a person her muscles and nerves were for the time at least strong and
steady.

The man was tall, an Englishman Barbara guessed him to be, but happily
he was thin. Many months devoted to war’s service leaves little flesh
upon a soldier, and these modern soldiers of the air bear perhaps the
most terrific strain of all.

But once the man’s head was in the open air Barbara knelt beside him.
So far as she could discover he did not appear to be wounded; there
was no blood upon him anywhere. Holding her smelling salts under his
nose, he showed no sign of consciousness. Then she worked his arms back
and forth, so as to stimulate the action of the heart, used every first
aid method that her three years of study had taught her. This case was
unlike any she had ever known. As she worked an idea came to Barbara.
Once she recalled a man having been brought into the hospital overcome
by the fumes of gas. Such a possibility was absurd with this case and
yet the face had the same dark, frightful look.

Nevertheless, Barbara Meade was not in the least hopeless, nor did she
for an instant cease to work, though now and then she was forced to
glance toward the spot where Nona remained so quiet. What could be the
matter? Why did she not come to her aid?

All this, of course, took place in a very few minutes. A little later
when Barbara gave another frightened look across the fields, she
discovered that Nona had gotten up and was walking toward her. She
seemed dizzy and uncertain, but there was evidently nothing serious the
matter.

Moreover, there was no time for inquiries, for just as Nona reached
her, Barbara’s patient stirred, coughed and struggled to regain his
breath. Then for the first time the nurse put her arm about her friend.
The air would do more for the stupefied man than she could.

Soon after he opened his eyes and in an incredibly short time pulled
himself out from beneath his aeroplane. He then stared in a dazed
half-blind fashion at the two girls standing near him in nurses’
uniforms, in the center of a ploughed field.

But war admits of no surprises. Only the two American Red Cross girls
had not yet grown accustomed to the possible strangeness of their
adventures. Moreover, they were frightened at the appearance of their
first hero. He was not in the least what one would expect an aviator to
be. This man was not young according to Nona’s or Barbara’s ideas. He
must have been about thirty, his hair and eyes were dark and the lines
of his face stern and severe. His skin was now a queer mottled color,
with ugly blue splotches.

However, he began struggling to speak. But his tongue was so swollen
that he choked and coughed, neither did he seem able to see clearly.

Meanwhile Nona Davis, although considerably less affected, was also
plainly not herself. She too coughed uncomfortably and seemed weak
and stupid. She expressed no surprise over what had just taken place
and offered her friend neither advice nor assistance. But Barbara had
already made up her mind. They must get back to the hospital and as
soon as possible. Yet her patient could not walk, Nona could not help,
and Barbara did not wish to leave them while she went for assistance.

Fortunately, however, in looking about she discovered that Anton, the
boy whom they had been endeavoring to escape, had been attracted by the
vision in the air. Or if he had not seen it, he was now plainly visible
not far away, staring in a bold, half-terrified fashion at the scene,
which was past his understanding.

Barbara summoned him imperatively.

Between them they then managed to get the air man clear of his machine.
As soon as he was on his feet, with Anton’s and Barbara’s arms grasping
his, he stumbled on for a few steps. Afterwards he found himself better
able to walk.

“Extraordinary thing,” he began, and Barbara immediately thought
his words and manner so intensely English that she wanted to laugh.
Would any American man under the same circumstances remain so coldly
dignified and superior as this one appeared?

“I am not in the least hurt, you know, only confoundedly weak and
suffocated,” he said finally. “New trick, that of our enemy’s; they
have been using their asphyxiating gas on our soldiers in the trenches,
but this is the first time a gas bomb has been thrown from a Taube
aeroplane. Lucky thing for me the gas was too heavy to stay long in the
upper air.”

This speech was made thickly and with a great deal of effort, but both
Nona and Barbara were able to understand. They knew, of course, of
the use of the chlorine missiles, Germany’s novel weapon of war, which
had lately been thrown into the trenches of the Allies. The papers had
been full of the mysterious effects the gas had upon the soldiers. How
stupid not to have dreamed of this! Of course, the situation was now
explained, even Nona’s odd share in it. Evidently the poisonous gas
which they had seen in a greenish yellow cloud encircling the aeroplane
had fallen to earth and Nona had been wrapped in its fumes. But it had
been too diluted with air to have done her serious harm, and after her
fall a favoring wind must have blown it away.

By the time the second field was reached Nona was herself again.
Indeed, it was she who decided to hurry on to the hospital and send
back aid. They were finding the way too long for the still stupefied
man, who could only see dimly and was still suffering as if he had been
recently paralyzed.

The two nurses had been missed at the hospital and Nona felt the
atmosphere of disfavor as she entered the great stone house.

Fortunately, however, she found their Scotch friend, Alexina McIntyre,
waiting in the hall for the arrival of a fresh ambulance of the
wounded. The ambulances brought the men from the battle front to this
hospital only a few miles away. A few moments later help was dispatched
to Barbara.




CHAPTER XIII _The Summons_


A few days after Eugenia Peabody opened the door of one of the rooms
on the top floor used for the nurses. It was a small room which
fortunately the four American Red Cross girls were allowed to share
without any of the other nurses. Simple as possible, it contained four
cot beds, a single bureau, and a great old-fashioned wardrobe. Convents
in France were built long before the days of closets.

Eugenia, looking very exhausted, was like most tired persons, cross,
when she discovered Nona and Barbara lying on opposite beds peacefully
talking.

However, both girls got up instantly.

“Do try and rest a while, Eugenia,” Barbara urged. “You seem dreadfully
worn out. Isn’t there anything I can do to help you?”

Eugenia dropped down upon the nearest wooden chair shaking her
head. And in spite of her weariness the two other girls watched her
admiringly. One had to see Eugenia in her nurse’s costume to realize
what a handsome, almost noble looking girl she was. Her ordinary
clothes were so shabby and unbecoming and so old style. But the stiff
white cap outlined her broad forehead, her somber dark eyes. Even her
too serious and sometimes too severe expression seemed in a measure
fitted to the responsibility of her work.

“You are wanted downstairs in the convalescent ward, Nona,” she began.
“The Superintendent says she finds the things you are able to do very
useful, even though you are not trained for the more responsible
nursing. But before you go here is a letter that has come from London
for you. Who can you know in London, child, to be writing you here?”

Nona was moving toward the door, but she paused long enough to receive
her letter and then to stand staring in the stupid fashion people have
at the unfamiliar handwriting on the outside.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” she answered Eugenia, but tearing apart
the envelope she suddenly flushed.

“The letter is from Lady Dorian, Eugenia. Remember we met her on the
steamer where she was accused of all kinds of dreadful things. She
has been imprisoned in London, but this letter must mean that she is
free. Anyhow, I’ll tell you what she writes when I come back. I am
on duty now and haven’t time to wait and read it.” This was entirely
true. Nevertheless Nona had other reasons for wishing to read her
letter alone. Lady Dorian had made a strange impression upon her for so
short an acquaintance. She had scarcely confessed it even to herself,
but she felt a girl’s peculiar hero worship for the older woman.
Moreover, she was passionately convinced of her innocence and yet did
not wish Barbara or Eugenia to know at once what must be told them
afterwards. For Lady Dorian could only have written either to say she
had been released or to ask aid. There had been no suggestion of their
exchanging letters in their brief acquaintance.

Once Nona was out of the room Barbara inquired:

“What has become of Mildred? Isn’t this her afternoon to rest? Nona and
I were expecting her in here.”

The older girl did not answer; she had gotten up and in spite of her
fatigue was walking about the small room. She stopped now and looked
out of the tiny casement window.

“Oh, Mildred,” she returned carelessly, “has gone to spend the
afternoon with that Mrs. Curtis. They are to take a walk somewhere, I
think. Mildred said she felt the need of fresh air. I believe Mildred
is missing her family more than she likes to confess and this Mrs.
Curtis is so kind, Mildred seems pleased to find her living so near us.”

On her small cot bed Barbara had managed to get herself into an
extraordinary position. She had on her kimono and sat hunched up with
her knees in the air and her arms about them while her curly head
bobbed up and down like a Chinese mandarin’s.

“Sorry,” she commented briefly. “I told you on the ship I was afraid
Mildred was becoming interested in Brooks Curtis. I don’t like Mrs.
Curtis locating so near the hospital. Don’t see any reason for it
except that she and her son do not want to lose sight of Mildred. And
it would not surprise me if her son turned up in this neighborhood
himself fairly often--oh, to see his mother, of course.”

Barbara spoke petulantly, particularly when she discovered that Eugenia
was paying scant attention to her remarks.

“Oh, do come on and lie down a while, Eugenia,” she concluded. “You
behave as if all the Allied forces would go to pieces if you stayed off
your job an hour, or at least as if all the soldiers in the hospital
would die at once.”

Still Eugenia made no reply. Although getting out of her working
uniform, she too slipped into a comfortable negligée and letting down
her heavy dark hair followed Barbara’s rather ungraciously offered
advice.

A few minutes later the younger girl stood at the side of her bed with
a cup of beef tea in her hands which she had just made over a tiny
alcohol lamp.

“Drink this, please, and forgive my bad temper, Eugenia,” she murmured.
“I presume if I confessed the truth even to myself, I am jealous of
your success at the hospital. But honestly I don’t think I am being
given a fair chance here. Ever since we arrived I have been shoved into
the background and never called on for any really important work. Oh, I
know I failed that one time, but that is no reason why I shouldn’t be
all right the next.”

While the older girl finished the bouillon Barbara sat down on the side
of the bed. Then the moment the cup had been set down, to her surprise
Eugenia took hold of her hand almost affectionately.

“You are going to be given a chance, Barbara, at least one that will
take a whole lot of courage. It is what I came upstairs to tell you and
Nona, and what I have been feeling so worried about. For really I don’t
know whether you ought to agree. You are both so young and pretty.”
Eugenia hesitated and Barbara took hold of both her shoulders, giving
her a tiny shake.

“What do you mean? I hate suspense worse than anything.”

“Oh, simply that four girls have to be appointed for service in the two
new motor ambulances that are to bring the wounded soldiers from the
battle front to the hospital. The Superintendent has decided to ask you
and Nona to take charge of one and Lady Mathers and Daisy Redmond the
other. Of course, you can refuse if you like, Barbara, for the work
may be dangerous. It isn’t that you will have to do very much for the
soldiers except to see that they are properly bandaged and keep life in
them till you can get them here. Of course there is a surgeon in each
ambulance to tell you what to do. The danger is that you will have to
go much nearer the fighting line and that you may see even more painful
things than you have been seeing in the hospital. Really, child, I
don’t advise you to attempt it.”

For with the first realization of what Eugenia meant Barbara had
turned deathly pale and was now fighting a sensation of faintness.

“It isn’t that I am in the least afraid, Eugenia,” she faltered, as
soon as she could trust her voice. Even then it was fairly shaky. “I
don’t mind running the risk or the work or any of those things. You
know what it is, Eugenia; there is no use trying to hide it. I simply
haven’t the nerve I thought I had. It is seeing the wounded soldiers,
so many of them. I lie awake at night and dream the most dreadful
dreams. I keep thinking I--but I had better not speak of it. I’ve
simply got to say I can’t undertake the work. I hate it too on account
of Nona; she is sure to try this ambulance work, for only the other day
she told me that she longed to get closer to the scene of action. But
what must I say, Eugenia, when I refuse? I’m afraid I can’t make any
one understand that I’m not exactly a coward; I am used to sickness,
but somehow this all seems so different.”

Again Eugenia pressed the small hand she held in her large, capable
one.

“Tell the truth, my dear, and then go back home to the United States.
From the moment I saw you I didn’t believe this Red Cross work would be
suitable for you. I told you you were too young, and I thought you were
too quick-tempered and emotional, though I did not speak of this. There
is plenty of nursing you might be able to do at home--children, or old
people.”

Eugenia was growing sleepy; she had such a little while to rest that
she was forgetting to be tactful.

“Whether you wish to go back home or not, Barbara, I’m afraid you must
if you won’t undertake this ambulance work. The Superintendent says
she likes you very much and all that, but really does not feel it wise
for you to stay on at the hospital. There is so much nursing required
and so little room that the girls who cannot give the best kind of
service are really in the way. I am sorry to hurt your feelings, but
it is better for me to tell you this than any one else,” Eugenia
concluded, again made sympathetic by the hurt in the younger girl’s
face. Barbara looked so broken and humiliated, so intensely ashamed
of her own failure. Nevertheless, Eugenia could not help seeing that
even at this minute Barbara suggested a little girl who has been caught
in wrongdoing at school. She simply did not seem able to appear like a
grown-up person into whose hands life and death could be intrusted.

For ten minutes afterwards Barbara made no reply. But she got up and
put on her nurse’s uniform again, hiding her short brown curls beneath
her stiff white cap and covering her blue frock with her white apron
bearing its cross of red.

Then for a moment when Eugenia seemed to be asleep Barbara dropped on
her knees before the open window, gazing out in the direction where
she knew the zone of danger and terror lay. Swiftly the girl uttered a
prayer for strength and courage. The next moment she crossed over to
Eugenia.

“I am going to undertake the ambulance service. I may flunk that too,
but at least I can try, and as the book says, ‘angels can do no more.’
And I’m distinctly not an angel.”




CHAPTER XIV _Colonel Dalton_


In the meantime Nona was on duty in the convalescent ward. It was the
work that she had been able to attend to with peculiar success ever
since her arrival at the base hospital. This was a duty which many of
the Red Cross nurses liked the least. For the convalescent soldiers
were often like spoiled and nervous children. It was amazing how many
drinks of water they required, how frequently their pillows had to be
turned, how often letters from home had to be read and re-read until
the nurses knew them by heart as well as the patients.

It was a dark, cloudy afternoon when Nona entered the big room and
before she had more than crossed the threshold she became aware of an
atmosphere of gloom and ill-temper.

Daisy Redmond, the English girl with whom they had crossed the Channel,
had been in attendance on the ward before Nona’s appearance and she
seemed bored and annoyed. She was a very good nurse for an ill person,
but too serious and reserved to cheer the convalescent, and on Nona’s
entrance she gave a sigh of relief.

The room, which was used for the soldiers who were on the high road to
recovery from whatever disaster they had suffered, must have been the
refectory or the old dining hall of the convent in the days before the
Franco-Prussian war. It was an oblong room with a high ceiling crossed
by great oak beams. Midway up the walls were of dark oak and the rest
of stone. The floor was of stone and the windows high and crossed
with small iron bars. While they let in the air and sunlight, it was
impossible to see much of the outside world unless one climbed a ladder
or chair. Evidently it had been thought best not to permit the little
French convent maids to seek for distractions even among the flowers
and trees.

So the great room, in spite of its perfect cleanliness, had little
suggestion of gayety or beauty to recommend it at present. The floor,
walls, beds, everything apparently had been scrubbed to the limit of
perfection and were smelling of antiseptics. But there was not a flower
in the room, not a picture, only two long rows of beds each containing
a weary, impatient soldier, longing to be home with his own people or
back at the front with the other Tommies.

Almost anyone might have become discouraged with the prospect of two
hours’ effort in such surroundings, but Nona never dreamed of flinching.

As she went up toward the first bed, the young fellow with his right
arm in a sling who was trying to write with his left hand, used a short
word of three letters. He was a boy who worked in a butcher’s shop in
London. When he saw Nona so near him, he blushed crimson and stammered
an apology.

Nona only laughed. “Oh, I say that myself sometimes, inside of me,” she
whispered. “If it hurts your arm, do let me finish your letter. I’d
like to add a line or two anyhow just to let Addie know you are really
getting well and not trying to encourage her with false hopes.”

The young fellow smiled. It was clever of the little American girl to
remember his girl’s name. He was glad enough to have her end his letter
so that he might lie down again. Besides, he liked to have her sitting
near him, she was so pretty--the prettiest nurse in the hospital in his
opinion. Five minutes after when Nona had finished his letter and made
him comfortable, he sighed to have her leave him. She was only going to
another duffer a few beds away, who had been trying to read and dropped
all his magazines on the floor. With one of his legs in a plaster cast,
he had almost broken his neck trying to fish for them.

So Nona wandered up and down the ward doing whatever was asked of
her. She felt that she was being useful in spite of her lack of long
experience in nursing. But it was amusing the queer things she was
called upon to do.

She was passing one of the cots where a boy lay who had received a
wound in his head. He was not more than seventeen or eighteen, and
was a blue-eyed, fair-haired boy with a mouth like a young girl’s. You
would never have dreamed of him as a fighter; indeed, he had left Eton
to join the army and had never before known a real hardship in his
life. But now a pair of wasted white hands clasped Nona’s skirt.

Looking down she discovered that the bandage had slipped off his
forehead and that his eyes were full of tears.

Nona’s own eyes were dim as she bent toward him.

“Are you suffering again?” she asked gently. “I am so sorry; I thought
you were almost well.”

“It isn’t that,” the boy whispered. “I wouldn’t mind the pain; it’s
only--oh, I might as well say it, I want my mother. Funny to behave
like a cry-baby. I wish I could sleep. I wonder if you could sing to
me?”

At first Nona shook her head. “Why I can’t sing, really,” she returned.
“I have never had a music lesson in my life. I only know two or three
songs that I used to sing to my father way down in South Carolina. I
expect you hardly know there is such a place.”

Then suddenly the boy’s disappointed face made the girl hesitate.

She glanced about them. In the bed next to the boy’s the man she and
Barbara had rescued from the aeroplane disaster lay apparently too
deeply absorbed in a bundle of newspapers to pay the least attention to
them.

By this time he had almost recovered and was enormously impatient to
return to his regiment. It appeared that he was not a regular member of
the aviation corps, but a colonel in command of one of the crack line
regiments. However, he happened also to be a skilled aviator and on the
morning of the accident, having a leave of absence from his command,
had gone up to reconnoiter over the enemy’s lines.

No, Colonel Dalton would pay no attention to her, Nona felt convinced.
He was very quiet and stern and a distinguished soldier, so that most
of the nurses were afraid of him.

“If you’ll try to sleep, why I’ll sing softly just to you, so we need
not disturb any one else,” Nona murmured, kneeling down by the side of
the boy’s cot so that her face was not far from his. “I only know some
old darkey songs.”

Straightway the young English boy closed his eyes. Very quietly in a
hushed voice Nona began to sing, believing no one else would listen.

She chanced to be kneeling just under one of the tall windows and the
afternoon sun shone down upon her white cap, her pale gold hair and
delicate face. If she had known it she was not unlike a little nun, but
fortunately Nona had no thought of herself.

She had only a small voice, but it was sweet and clear.

  “All this world am sad and dreary,
     Everywhere I roam,
   Oh, darkies, how my heart grows weary,
     Far from the old folks at home.”

Not one, but half a dozen soldiers lay quiet listening to Nona’s song.
She was only aware that the boy for whom she was singing was breathing
more evenly as she sang on and that there was a happier curve to his
lips. In a few moments more, if nothing occurred to disturb him, he
must be asleep.

So Nona did not know that Colonel Dalton, although holding his beloved
London newspaper before his face, had been watching her and that her
old-fashioned song had touched him.

She was slipping away with her patient finally asleep when he motioned
to her.

“It is a wonderful thing you are doing, Miss Davis,” he began in a low
tone, so as not to disturb the sleeper, “you a young American girl
to come over here to help care for our British boys. I want to shake
hands with you if I may, you and that clever little friend of yours,
who helped me out of my difficulty. I shall be away from the hospital
in a few days and back at my post, as I’ve almost entirely recovered
from the effects of the chlorine gas. But later on if I can ever be of
service to you in any way, you are to count upon me. I trust that at
some future day the English nation can show its appreciation for what
the United States has done for us in this tragic war.”

Colonel Dalton spoke with so much feeling and dignity that Nona was
both pleased and embarrassed. Of course, she seemed like a young girl
to him, and yet after all Colonel Dalton could be only a little over
thirty. It must be something in his character or in his history that
gave his face the expression of sadness and sternness. Although his
duties as an officer in the war might already have created the look.

“You are very good,” she murmured confusedly. She was moving away when
she noticed that Colonel Dalton was staring fixedly, not at her, but at
a brooch which she wore fastening her nurse’s apron to her dress.

But probably he was in a reverie and not seeing anything at all!

However, Nona did not have to remain long in doubt. Colonel Dalton
spoke abruptly.

“That’s an extraordinary pin you’ve got there, a collection of letters
isn’t it? I wonder if by any chance it represents the motto of your
own family?”

Nona shook her head and carelessly unclasped the pin. “No,” she
answered, “and I have scarcely been able to find out what the letters
spell. I wonder if you could tell me.”

The man scarcely glanced at the pin. “The letters are ‘Vinces,’ the
Latin for ‘Conquer.’” Then strangely enough Colonel Dalton flushed, a
curious brick-red, which is a peculiarity of many Englishmen.

“It’s a remarkable request I wish to make of you, Miss Davis. But would
you mind parting with that little pin? It’s an odd fancy of mine, but
then every soldier is superstitious and I should like very much to
possess it. Possibly because of the meaning of the word, for the word
‘Conquer’ never meant more in the history of the world than it does to
an Englishman today.”

But Nona had crimsoned uncomfortably and was clutching at her brooch
in a stupid fashion. “I am awfully sorry,” she murmured, “it must seem
ungracious of me, but I value the pin very much. You see, it was given
me by some one----”

“In this country, or in your own?” Colonel Dalton interrupted.

Again Nona hesitated. Suddenly she had become conscious of the unread
letter in her pocket which she had just received from Lady Dorian, and
of the hour of their parting and her bestowal of the pin.

She smiled. “It wasn’t given me in either your country or mine, but
upon the sea.”

Then she walked over to another patient who required a drink of water.




CHAPTER XV _Newspaper Letters_


Curiously Mildred Thornton was also spending an unexpected afternoon.
She had been looking forward to her walk with Mrs. Curtis. Mildred
too had been feeling the strain of the first weeks at the hospital
more than she had confessed. She was one of the girls whom one speaks
of as a natural nurse--quiet, sympathetic and efficient--and so had
immediately been given especially trying cases. And Mildred was not
accustomed to roughing it, since her home surroundings were luxurious
and beautiful. So though she had made no complaint and showed no lack
of courage, as Barbara had, she was tired and now and then, when she
had time to think, homesick.

Mrs. Curtis had been kind and whatever prejudice the other girls
felt, she sincerely liked her. Moreover, Mildred also liked her son,
although this she had not confessed so freely to herself. But she was
thinking of both of them as she walked through the fields to the home
of Mère Marie.

Perhaps Mrs. Curtis would have received news from Brooks. He was
supposed to be not far away making a study of conditions in the
British line of trenches not far from the Belgian border. He must know
extraordinarily interesting things. Mildred too shared the almost
morbid curiosity which everybody of intelligence feels today. What is a
modern battlefield really like, what is the daily life of the soldier,
and what is this strange new world of the trenches, where men live and
work underground as if all humanity had developed the tendencies of the
mole?

Mildred did not share Nona Davis’ desire to go and find out these
things for herself, but being so near the scene of action as they were
could not but stimulate one’s interest. And daily the motor ambulances
brought the wounded from the nearby battlefield to their door.

At Mère Marie’s Mildred first saw the boy Anton sitting crouched
before the hut. He leered at her foolishly and said something which
she did not understand. So somewhat nervously Mildred knocked on the
heavy wooden door. She too was afraid of Anton; one could scarcely help
being, although all the people in the neighborhood insisted that he was
perfectly harmless. As he used to bring vegetables from his mother’s
garden and run errands for the staff at the hospital, he was a very
well-known character.

However, Mildred was just as glad when the door opened.

But to her surprise, instead of seeing Mrs. Curtis, Brooks Curtis was
there to greet her.

He seemed a little nervous at first, but when Mildred showed pleasure
at seeing him, became more cheerful.

Mère Marie’s big room was empty and so the girl and young man sat down
on wooden stools in front of the smouldering peat fire.

It appeared that Brooks was discouraged. So far he had not been allowed
to get inside the British firing line and feared that his newspaper at
home would be disappointed in him.

Mildred did her best to reassure him. She was accustomed to trying to
make people more comfortable. All her life her brother Dick had been
confiding his annoyances to her, depending on her sympathy and advice.
And Mildred had been missing Dick dreadfully since the first hour of
her sailing. For though possibly he was as spoiled and selfish as
Barbara Meade plainly thought him, he was a fairly satisfactory brother
in his way. So she found it not unpleasant to behave in a sisterly
fashion toward Brooks Curtis.

Indeed, half an hour had passed before it occurred to Mildred that Mrs.
Curtis had not appeared and that she had not even asked for her.

However, just as she was making up her mind to inquire, Mrs. Curtis
came into the room.

She had on a dressing gown and looked pale and ill.

“I am so sorry. I suppose Brooks has explained to you,” she began.
“But I have a frightful headache and don’t feel equal to going out this
afternoon. I don’t think you should miss your walk, Miss Thornton, you
are kept indoors so much at the hospital. So I wonder if you won’t take
your walk with Brooks instead of me and then come back here and have
coffee and cake.”

Mildred felt a little uncomfortable. There was no doubt of Mrs. Curtis’
illness; seldom had she seen anybody more nervous and wretched from a
headache. Yet Mildred did not know exactly what to do or say. Very much
she desired to spend a part of her one free afternoon in the air and
sunshine away from the pain and sorrow of the hospital. She was not
averse to spending it with Brooks Curtis instead of his mother. But she
was not sure whether it would be right for her to take a walk alone
with a man whom she really knew nothing about. The days on shipboard
had made them behave like fairly intimate friends. However, she also
felt it would appear stupid and unfriendly of her to refuse. Even if
Eugenia and the other girls disapproved later, the whole question of
Mrs. Curtis and her son was not their affair. Moreover, Mildred did not
intend confiding in them.

So she blushed a little and then answered awkwardly.

“Oh, of course I don’t want to miss my walk and I don’t mind if Mr.
Curtis wishes to come with me. Only he is not to trouble, because I am
not afraid to go alone.”

Then Mildred felt like stamping her foot. Ever since getting away from
the conventional society atmosphere of her own home she had been more
at ease and less self-conscious. Had not her friendship with Mrs.
Curtis and her son proved that she was not always stiff and silent?
Assuredly Brooks had preferred her to any of the other girls, even
though they were far prettier and more attractive. Yet here she was,
through her old shyness, spoiling everything.

Mildred smiled unexpectedly, which always relieved the plainness of her
face.

“I was not telling the truth then,” she added, “I should enjoy my walk
ever so much more if Mr. Curtis will go with me.”

An hour later and the girl and her companion had climbed the nearest
hill in that part of the country. It was not quite a mile from the
hospital and was not a very high hill, yet Mildred was surprised at the
splendid view.

Brooks Curtis had brought with him the fine telescope which he had used
on the steamer in spite of the difficulty with his eyes.

He pointed out to Mildred the direction in which General Sir John
French’s army lay entrenched. One could not see the exact place because
the line of trenches covered twelve miles of battle front and many
other miles of underground passages. Then he told her that the right
wing of the British army which was in position nearest their hospital
was under the command of Lieutenant-General Porter and that Colonel
Dalton, who was ill, was one of his most talented officers.

Secretly Mildred Thornton was amazed and fascinated. She had been
convinced early in their acquaintance that Brooks Curtis was an
unusually clever fellow. He was not handsome and there was something
a little odd about him. Mildred was sympathetic with people who were
not good looking and not at ease. Now she was really surprised at his
information about the British army. For after all he had only been in
France for a short time.

“But I thought you said you had not been able to go through the
trenches,” Mildred expostulated, “yet already you know a great deal.”

The young man shook his head mournfully. “I know nothing of importance
yet,” he returned with such emphasis that Mildred was the more
impressed. Above all things she admired determination of character.

Then for a few moments neither the girl nor the young man spoke.

Mildred was trying to locate in a vague fashion certain positions of
the army which her companion had just described. Two miles farther to
the north Mildred could see a low range of hills which seemed deeply
curtained by trees. In the midst of those trees Brooks insisted the
British army had stationed long-range guns. They were guns of a new
character and no one yet knew what their power of destruction might be.
Behind the artillery there were telephone connections with the trenches
miles away.

Really Mildred Thornton was too interested in the information imparted
by her new friend to pay any special attention to what he might be
doing.

However, he had taken off his glasses, gotten out a note book and was
now writing as rapidly as possible.

By and by he got out an envelope and put the papers inside it, together
with some others that were there previously.

At this minute Mildred looked around.

“Oh, dear, it is late; we must be going back as quickly as possible!”
she exclaimed, and then got up without allowing her companion
opportunity to assist her.

Nevertheless, the young man did not follow her for a moment.

“I wish you would stay just an instant longer,” he asked instead.

And when Mildred turned he still held the envelope in his hand.

“I want to ask you a favor, Miss Thornton, and I don’t know just how
to explain. I wonder if you will be good enough to mail this letter
of mine from the hospital along with your own home mail? You see, it
is like this with the newspaper fellows, all our mail is so censored
that the news we want to send to the United States is usually cut out
before it arrives. There is no good my writing exactly what the other
fellows send. So I thought if you would mail this for me like private
mail along with the nurses’ letters, why I’d stand a chance. I know it
is asking a good deal of a favor of you. But somehow I have felt you
were my friend ever since our first meeting and my mother feels the
same way. You see, we are awfully poor. Of course you can’t know what
that means, but for my mother’s sake and my own I’m terribly anxious to
make good with my war stories. I feel if I can make a reputation now my
future will be assured.”

Whether Brooks Curtis was a student of character or not, one does not
yet know. But certainly he had gauged Mildred.

If there was anything that did appeal to her it was the thought of
another’s struggle and the possibility that she might help. Just
because she had always spent such a rich and sheltered life her desire
to aid others was the stronger. So Mildred promised to mail the letter
to an address in Brooklyn, placing the address on the envelope with her
own handwriting so as to avoid questioning.

Neither did she feel that she was doing anything unusual. The deception
was too small to be considered. Besides, what difference could it make
to the hospital authorities if one more letter were added to their mail
bag?

“I shall never cease to appreciate your kindness,” Brooks Curtis said
at parting, “and you won’t mind, will you, if now and then Anton brings
you other letters to the hospital? I may not be able to get away to
bring them myself.”

Mildred nodded without thinking of this side of the question seriously.
The truth of the matter was that she was in too much of a hurry now to
return to her work. Although she had not gone back to Mère Marie’s for
coffee, they had been out longer than she realized.




CHAPTER XVI _The Ambulance Corps_


A few days later it was definitely arranged that Nona Davis, Barbara
Meade, Lady Dorothy Mathers and Daisy Redmond should be enrolled in the
Red Cross ambulance work.

To understand the service of the Red Cross ambulances one must be
familiar with the unusual conditions which existed in this most
terrible war of all human history.

Most of us know, of course, that the greater part of the fighting
was done at night. By day scouts in aeroplanes endeavored to locate
the enemy’s positions, while sentries kept guard along the miles of
trenches to fire at any man who dared venture within what was called
the zone of death. So all the work of war except the actual fighting
must take place behind each army’s line of entrenchments.

This means that in the early morning, when the night’s cruelties were
past, the wounded soldiers were carried from the field of battle or
from the trenches to some place of safety in the rear. Here nurses
and doctors could give them first aid. And this required tremendous
personal bravery. The stricken soldiers must be borne in the arms of
their companions to the nearest Red Cross, or else lifted into the
ambulances or smaller motor cars. These traveled with all possible
speed across the tragic fields of the dead, as soon as a lull in the
firing made attempt at rescue possible.

There, behind a barricade of trees, or of sand bags, or of a stone
wall, or whatever defense human ingenuity could invent, stood white
tents, or else a stable or house. These waved flags of white bearing a
crimson cross, demanding safety for the suffering.

These temporary hospitals had to be established at any place where the
need was greatest. But the soldiers could not remain in these quarters.
As soon as possible they were taken to the nearest properly equipped
hospital, sometimes fairly near the fighting line. At other times they
were loaded into trains and borne many weary miles away.

But in nearly every case they were carried to the cars or to the nearer
hospitals in the Red Cross ambulances. They were the only chariots of
peace the war had so far acquired.

However, it is good to know that together with all the modern
inventions for the destruction of men, science had done all that was
possible to make the new Red Cross ambulances havens of comfort and of
cure. In Paris, the great Madame Curie, the discoverer of radium, had
been giving her time and talent to the equipment of ambulances for the
soldiers. From this country much of the money that had been poured so
generously into Europe had been devoted to their purchase.

So the four Red Cross girls from the Hospital of the Sacred Heart (so
named in honor of the old convent school) were naturally impressed with
the importance of their new duties.

The plan was that they were to travel back and forth from the field
hospitals with the wounded soldiers who required the most immediate
attention. A doctor would be in charge of each ambulance and of
necessity the chauffeur. Under the circumstances it was thought better
to have two nurses instead of one. The four additional nurses were
required because two new ambulances had just been added to the British
service, as a gift from New York City, through the efforts of Mrs.
Henry Payne, who was especially interested in the Sacred Heart Hospital.

The morning that the girls left for the nearer neighborhood of the
battlefield was an exquisite June day. The sun is one of France’s many
lovers, turning her into “La Belle Dame,” the name by which she is
known to her own children and to some of her admirers from other lands.

All the nurses who were off duty at the hospital poured out into the
garden to say farewell and God-speed to their companions.

Except for the prejudice which Lady Dorothy Mathers and her friends
continued to feel against the four Americans, everybody else had
been most kind. The English manner is colder than the American or the
French, but once having learned to understand and like you, they are
the most loyal people in the world.

Three of the American Red Cross girls were beginning to realize this.
But Barbara Meade still felt herself misunderstood and disliked. Under
normal conditions Barbara was not the type of girl given to posing as
“misunderstood” and being sorry for herself in consequence.

The difficulty was that ever since her arrival the horror of the war
and the suffering about her had made her unlike herself. She felt
terribly western, terribly “gauche,” which is the French word meaning
left-handed and all that it implies. Then Barbara had a fashion of
saying exactly what she thought without reflecting on the time or
place. This had gotten her into trouble not once but a dozen times.
She did not mean to criticize, only she had the unfortunate habit of
thinking out loud. But most of all, Barbara lamented her own failure
as a nurse and all that it must argue to her companions. For so far
they had the right to consider her a shirker and a coward, or at least
as one of the tiresome, foolish women who rush off to care for the
wounded in a war because of an emotion and without the sense or the
training to be anything but hopelessly in the way.

It was for this reason that Barbara had finally decided to accept the
new opportunity offered her. If she should make a failure of it, she
agreed with Eugenia’s frank statement of her case: she must simply go
back home so as not to be a nuisance.

Curious, but one of the reasons why Barbara loathed the thought of her
own surrender was the idea that if she turned back, she would have to
face Dick Thornton in New York City. This thought had been in her mind
all along. For one thing she kept recalling how bravely she had talked
to Dick of her own intentions, and of how she had reproached him for
his idle existence.

The worst of Barbara’s conviction was that should she return a
failure, no one would be kinder or more thoughtful of her feelings than
Dick. Of course, she had not known him very long, but it had been long
enough for her to appreciate that Dick Thornton was utterly without
the ugly spirit of “I told you so.” But perhaps his sympathy and quiet
acceptance of her weakness would be harder to endure than blame.

So it was a very pale and silent Barbara who walked out of the old
stone convent that morning with her arm linked inside Eugenia’s. She
was beginning to appreciate Eugenia more and to realize that her first
impression of Miss Barbara Meade’s abilities, or lack of them, was not
so ridiculously unfair as she had thought.

Certainly no one could be kinder than Eugenia had been in the few days
between Barbara’s acceptance of her new work and the time for actually
beginning it.

She kept looking at her now, feeling almost as one would at the sight
of a frightened child. Poor Barbara was pretending to be so brave.
Though she had not spoken again of her own qualms, it was plain enough
to the older girl that Barbara was almost ill with apprehension. Not
that Eugenia believed she was afraid of the actual dangers that might
befall her from going so much closer to the battle front. She suffered
from the nervous dread of breaking down at the sight of the wounded and
so again failing to make good.

The superintendent of the nurses, a splendid middle-aged woman from one
of the big London hospitals, was also aware of Barbara Meade’s state of
mind. For several days with all the other work she had to do she had
been quietly watching her. Here at the last moment she had an impulse
to tell Barbara to give up. After all, she was such a child and the
strain might be too much for her. Then she concluded it would be best
to let the girl find out for herself.

The contrast was odd between the two American girls who were answering
this new call of war. Nona Davis did not seem nervous or alarmed. Not
that she was unconscious either of the dangers or the difficulties. She
seemed uplifted by some spiritual emotion. She was like a young Joan
of Arc, only she went forth to carry not a sword but a nurse’s “Red
Badge of Courage.”

A little after daylight the four girls and two of the hospital surgeons
left for the front. The two new ambulances had been taken directly to
the field hospital where they were to meet them.

The night before news had come that there had been fresh fighting and
help was needed at once. So one of the hospital automobiles had been
requisitioned to transport the little party.

“We will be back by tonight with the wounded,” Nona Davis said calmly
as she kissed Mildred Thornton good-by. “You are not to worry about us.
I don’t think we are going into any danger.”

Barbara made no attempt at farewells; she simply sat quietly on the
back seat of the car with her hand clasped inside Nona’s, and her eyes
full of tears. Had she tried to talk she might have broken down and
she was painfully conscious that the two English girls, Lady Dorothy
Mathers and Daisy Redmond, were staring at her in amazement. It was
hard to appreciate why if she was afraid of the war nursing, she would
not give it up.

The first part of the drive was through country like that surrounding
the Sacred Heart Hospital. General Sir John French had given orders
that in every place where it was possible the agriculture of France
should be respected. The crops must not be trampled down and destroyed,
for the rich and poor of France alike must live and also feed their
army.

So all along the first part of their route the girls could see women
and children at work. They wore the long, dark-blue blouses of the
French working classes, at once so much cleaner and more picturesque
than the old, half-worn cloth clothes of our own working people.

It was all so serene and sweet that for a little while Nona and Barbara
almost forgot their errand.

Then the face of the countryside changed. There were no peasants’ huts
that were not half in ruins, great houses occupied but a few months
before by the wealthy landowners of northern France were now as fallen
into disuse as if they had been ancient fortresses. Here and there,
where the artillery had swept them, forests of trees had fallen like
dead soldiers, and over certain of the fields there was a blight as if
they had been devastated with fire.

Then the car brought the little party to the spot where in the morning
sunshine they caught the gleam of the Red Cross flag.

The place was a deserted stable sheltered by a rise of ground. To the
front lay the British trenches, covered with thatch and the boughs
of many trees; to the right and some distance off, hidden behind
breastworks, were enormous long distance guns.

Also one of the surgeons explained to Lady Dorothy and Nona, who seemed
most interested, that on the hill beyond the hospital where nothing
could be seen for the denseness of the shrubbery, several of the
officers had their headquarters and from there dictated the operations
in the trenches and in the fields.

The night before must have been a busy one, for as the car stopped
behind the improvised hospital, soldiers in khaki could be seen
staggering back and forth with the wounded, surgeons with their work
showing all too realistically upon them. Then there were the sounds as
well as the sights of suffering.

As Barbara Meade crawled out of the automobile she felt her knees give
way under her and a darkness swallow her up. Then she realized that she
must be fainting again.




CHAPTER XVII _Dick_


“Steady,” a voice said in Barbara Meade’s ear, as a strong arm slipped
across her shoulders, bracing her upright.

And so surprised was she by the voice and its intonation that she felt
herself brought back to consciousness.

“Dick Thornton,” she began weakly, and then decided that in truth she
must be taking leave of her senses, to have an image of Dick obtrude
upon her at such a moment and in such a place.

Naturally curiosity forced her to turn around and so for the instant
she forgot herself and her surroundings.

She saw a young man in a khaki uniform of a kind of olive green with
a close-fitting cap and visor. But beneath the cap was a face which
was like and yet unlike the face of the friend she remembered. This
fellow’s expression was grave, almost sad, the dark-brown eyes were no
longer indifferent and mocking, the upright figure no longer inactive.
Indeed, there was action and courage and vigor in every line of the
figure and face.

Barbara stepped back a few paces.

“Dick Thornton,” she demanded, “have I lost my mind or what has
happened? Aren’t you several thousand miles away in New York City, or
Newport, where ever the place was you intended spending the summer? I
simply can’t believe my own eyes.”

Dick slipped his arm inside Barbara Meade’s. For the time no one was
noticing them; the scene about them was absorbing every attention.

“Just a moment, please, Barbara, I want to explain the situation to
you,” Dick asked, and drew the girl away behind the shelter of one of
the hospital wagons.

“Sit down for a moment,” he urged. “Dear me, Barbara, what have they
been doing to you in the few weeks since we said good-by in good old
New York? You are as white and tiny as a little tired ghost.”

But Barbara shook her head persuasively. “Please don’t talk about me,”
she pleaded. “I must know what has occurred. What could have induced
you to come over here where this terrible war is taking place, and what
are you doing now you are here? You aren’t a soldier, are you?” And
there was little in Barbara’s expression to suggest that she wished her
friend to answer “Yes.”

Dick had also taken a seat on the ground alongside Barbara and now
quite simply he reached over and took her hand inside his in a friendly
strong grasp.

“I don’t know which question to answer first, but I’ll try and not make
a long story. I want you to know and then I want you to tell Mill.
I came over to this part of the country so as to be near you. But I
haven’t wanted to see either of you until I found out whether I was
going to amount to anything. If I wasn’t of use I was going on back
home without making a fuss. You see, Barbara, I suppose your visit to
us set me thinking. You had a kind way of suggesting, perhaps without
meaning it, that I was a pretty idle, good-for-nothing fellow, not
worth my salt, let alone the amount of sugar my father was bestowing
on me. Well, I pretended not to mind. Certainly I didn’t want a little
thing like you to find out you had made an impression on me. Still,
things you said rankled. Then you and old Mill went away. I couldn’t
get either of you out of my mind. It seemed pretty rotten, me staying
at home dancing the fox trot and you and Mill over here up against
the Lord knows what. So I--I just cleared out and came along too. But
there, I didn’t mean to talk so much. Whatever is the matter with you,
Barbara? You look like you were going to keel over again, just as you
did when you tumbled out of that car.”

The girl shook her head. “You can’t mean, Dick, that you have come over
to enlist in this war because of what I said in New York? Oh, dear me,
I thought I was unhappy enough. Now if anything happens to you your
mother will have every right not to forgive me; besides, I shall never
forgive myself.”

Barbara said the last few words under her breath. Although hearing them
perfectly, Dick Thornton only smiled.

“Oh, I wouldn’t take matters as seriously as that,” he returned. “I
didn’t mean to make you responsible for my proceedings. I only meant
you waked me up and then, please heaven, I did the rest myself. See
here, Barbara, after all I am a man, or at least made in the image of
one. And I want to tell you frankly that I’ve gone into this terrible
war game for two reasons. I don’t suppose many people do things in this
world from unmixed motives. I want to help the Allies; I think they are
right and so they have got to win. Then I thought I’d like to prove
that I had some of the real stuff in me and wasn’t just the little son
of a big man. Then, well, here are you and Mill. I’m not a whole lot
of use, but I like being around if anything should go wrong. We didn’t
know each other very long, Barbara, but I’m frank to confess I like
you. You seem to me the bravest, most go-ahead girl I ever met, and I
am proud to know you. I believe we were meant to be friends. Just see
how we have been calling each other by our first names as if we had
been doing it always. Funny how we left our titles behind us in New
York.”

Dick was talking on at random, trying to persuade his companion to a
little more cheerfulness. Surely they were meeting again in gruesome
surroundings. Yet one must not meet even life’s worst tragedies without
the courage of occasional laughter.

“But I’m not brave, or any of the things you are kind enough to think
me; I’m not even deserving of your friendship, let alone your praise,”
the girl answered meekly. Her old sparkle and fire appeared gone. Dick
Thornton was first amazed and then angry. What had they been doing
to his little friend to make her so changed in a few weeks? He said
nothing, however, only waited for her to go on.

But Barbara did not continue at once. For of a sudden there was an
unexpected noise, a savage roaring and bellowing and then a muffled
explosion.

The hand inside the American boy’s turned suddenly cold.

“What was that?” she whispered.

But Dick shook his head indifferently. “Oh, just a few big guns letting
themselves go. They do that now and then unexpectedly. There is no real
fighting. I have been here a week. Sometimes at night there is a steady
crack, crack of rifles down miles and miles of the trenches from both
sides and as far off as you can hear. Then every once in a while like
thunder of angry heathen gods the cannons roar. It’s a pretty mad, bad
world, Barbara.”

By this time the noise had died away and Barbara took her hand from
Dick’s.

“We must not stay here much longer,” she suggested, “yet I must tell
you something. You remember all the things I said to you in New York
about being useful and a girl having as much courage as a boy and the
right to live her own life and all that?”

Dick nodded encouragingly. Nevertheless and in spite of their
surroundings he had to pretend to a gravity he did not actually feel.
For to him at least Barbara appeared at this moment enchantingly pretty
and absurd.

If only she had not been so tiny and her eyes so big and softly blue!
Of course, the short brown curls were now hidden under her nurse’s
cap. But her lips were quivering and the color coming and going in
her cheeks, which now held little hollows where the roundness had
previously been.

She held her hands tight together across her knees.

“I have turned out a hopeless failure with my nursing, Dick. All
the silly things I told you about myself were just vanity. Eugenia
and Mildred and even Nona, who has had little experience, are doing
splendidly. But the Superintendent and all the people in charge of our
hospital want me to go home. You see, the trouble is I’m a coward.
Sometimes I don’t know whether I am afraid for myself or whether it is
because I am so wretched over all the pain around me. I try to believe
it is the last, but I don’t know. When that cannon was fired I was
frightened for us.”

Dick Thornton’s expression had changed. “Why, of course you were. Who
isn’t scared to death all the time in such an infernal racket? Suppose
you think I haven’t been frightened out of my senses all this week? I
just go about with my knees shaking and scarcely know what I’m doing.
The soldiers tell me they feel the same way when they first get into
the firing line; after a while one gets more used to it. But see here,
Barbara,” Dick’s brows knit and the lines about his handsome mouth
deepened. “If you feel the way you say you do, in heaven’s name tell me
what you mean by coming so near the battlefield? Whatever put it into
your head to attempt this ambulance work? Why don’t you stay at the
hospital and make yourself useful? That’s what Mildred is doing, isn’t
she?”

Barbara nodded. “Yes, but I wasn’t useful at the hospital. So I decided
to walk right up to the cannon’s mouth and see if I couldn’t conquer
myself. If my nerves don’t go to pieces here I feel I can endure most
anything afterwards.” Barbara glanced fearfully about her. Fortunately
they were hidden from any sight of suffering. Then she got quietly up
on her feet.

“I must go to my work now, I’m afraid I have already been shirking,”
she said. “But please, Dick, you have not yet answered my question.
What is it you are doing with the army? Have you enlisted as a soldier?”

Dick took off his cap. Already his skin had darkened from the week’s
hardships and exposure, for a line of white showed between his hair and
the end of his cap.

“No, I am not a soldier, Barbara. After all, you know I am an American
and I don’t quite feel like killing anybody, German or no German. So
I am trying to do the little I can to help the fellows who are hurt,
just as you are, although in a different fashion. Remember I told you
once that my real gift might be that of a chauffeur. Well, that’s what
I am these days, a glorified chauffeur. I am running one of the field
ambulances. You see, I am a pretty skilful driver. I go out over the
fields with my car whenever the Deutschers give us a chance and with
two other fellows pick up the wounded Tommies and try to rush them back
to safety. It’s a pretty exciting business. But somehow in spite of
being scared I like it.”

Barbara again held out her hand. “Will you shake hands with me before
we have to say good-by? Because I want you to know that when I thought
you were careless and good for nothing you were really brave and
splendid. While I--oh, well, it is tiresome to talk about oneself.
You’ll come to see us as soon as you can. Mildred will be so anxious.
And please, please be careful for her sake.”

For half a moment Barbara had an impulse to mention Mildred Thornton’s
intimacy with Brooks Curtis, the young newspaper correspondent, to
her brother. But then she realized that there was not time. Moreover,
Mildred would probably prefer telling him whatever there might be to
tell herself.

Besides, at this instant Nona Davis appeared, looking both worried and
annoyed. What had become of Barbara Meade that she was not attending to
her duties? Was she ill again?

Naturally on discovering Barbara talking to a stranger at such a time
Nona was puzzled and displeased. She had never seen Dick Thornton to
know him, although Mildred had of course frequently spoken of her
brother.

A few seconds later, when the necessary explanations had been made,
Nona and Barbara went together into the temporary hospital building.
Dick found his quarters and dropped asleep. He had not thought it worth
while to mention to Barbara that he had been working like a Hercules
since earliest dawn.




CHAPTER XVIII _A Reappearance_


After several weeks of the ambulance work, Barbara found herself
growing more accustomed to it. Not that she had recovered from her
horror and dread. But she had at least learned to control her nerves
and to become more useful. She was able to make up her mind, as Dick
had told her, that everybody felt much as she did, but simply showed
greater stoicism.

Fortunately for Barbara, her first two weeks of work came after a lull
in the fighting at Neuve Chapelle. There were but few desperately
wounded soldiers to be brought to the hospital. Most of the men were
either ill from natural causes or from some disease contracted in the
trenches. Only now and then an occasional shot from across the line
found the way to its victim.

Then frequently during this period Barbara and Dick enjoyed
opportunities for short conversations. Several times Dick had received
leaves of absence to come and see his sister and her friends.

He was immediately a great favorite with the hospital staff. He and
Nona Davis seemed to understand each other particularly well. There was
some bond of likeness between them. Both of them moved slowly, had an
air of languor and easy grace, and yet when the necessity arose were
capable of the swiftest and most definite action.

Several times the idea came to Barbara: would Dick and Nona some day
learn to care seriously for each other? She used to feel lonely and
cold at this thought, yet all the while recognizing that this might
prove a beautiful relationship.

Nona seemed so brave. The other girl could not but marvel.

Whatever work she had to do she went through it and so far as one could
see showed no qualms or misgivings. In the dreary ride from the field
Nona used always to take charge of the patient who suffered most.
And though sometimes her delicate face was like alabaster she never
faltered either in her care or cheerfulness.

Dr. Milton, a young Englishman who had charge of one of the new
ambulances, was open in his praise of Nona’s assistance. He could
scarcely believe she had so little previous nursing experience. But
then Daisy Redmond insisted that the young surgeon was half in love
with the southern girl and so his opinion was prejudiced.

Moreover, Mildred Thornton also seemed greatly cheered by her brother’s
appearance, although this was natural enough. At first she had been
frightened for his safety, but as the days passed and no fresh fighting
took place her fears abated.

By nature Mildred Thornton was extremely reticent. Never being
congenial with her mother, she had never made a confidant of her. Then,
while Dick always told her his secrets, she had but few of her own
and not specially liking to talk, kept these to herself. So perhaps
by accident and perhaps because of her nature she said little to her
brother about her new acquaintances, Mrs. Curtis and Brooks Curtis. In
a vague way Dick knew of them both, understood that Mildred now and
then went to call on the mother and liked her. But he did not know
that Mildred ever saw the young man or that she received frequent
letters from him. Nor that these letters were brought to her in a
mysterious fashion by Anton, the half-witted French boy, by an especial
arrangement.

In the rear of the garden there chanced to be a loose stone in the old
convent wall. The letters were thrust under this stone. So whenever
Mildred was alone and had the chance she could collect her own mail.

There seemed nothing so specially remarkable to Mildred in this
arrangement. The letters usually only contained a short note written
to her. The rest of the enclosure were presumably the letters which
Brooks Curtis was sending to his newspaper in the United States through
Mildred’s aid. For she used to address them to the street and number he
had given her and mail them at the same time she mailed her own home
letters.

Probably Mildred did not talk more of her friendship with the young
newspaper man because she did not wish to betray what she was doing for
him. There could be no harm in it and yet there was a possibility that
the hospital authorities might object, everything was being so strictly
and so carefully managed.

Only two or three times since their walk together had Mildred seen the
young man himself. But she always spent the hours she was off duty with
his mother and apparently knew the history of the son from his youth up.

Mrs. Curtis said that she herself was a New Yorker, but that her
husband had been a foreigner, of what nationality she did not mention.
But Brooks had been taught several languages when he was a young boy,
both French and German. These were most useful to him in his work. Then
she spoke freely of the admiration her son felt for Mildred and that
ordinarily he did not like the society of girls.

So Mildred was pleased and a little flattered. Brooks Curtis was
unusually clever, there was no disputing that, and at times had
agreeable manners, only he was moody and changeable. Possibly had
Mildred met him under other circumstances she would have felt no
interest in him. But she had a kind of fellow feeling for her own
countryman in a strange land.

And though Mildred was not aware of it, Mrs. Curtis was an adept in the
art of flattery. No one in her life had ever said such charming things
to the girl, or made her feel of so great importance. Mrs. Curtis
hung on everything Mildred said. She persuaded her she could not have
endured her own loneliness except for the girl’s kindness.

Perhaps owing to the same streak of reticence and a little
self-depreciation, Mildred had not yet become very intimate with the
other three American Red Cross girls who were her companions. They were
nice to her, but Barbara and Nona had developed a friendship which made
her feel a little left out, and Eugenia was too cold and too occupied
with her work for confidences. One so often wondered if she could be a
real flesh-and-blood woman.

So the days passed. In spite of the tragedy surrounding them a kind of
routine filled the lives of the Red Cross girls, as it did those of the
soldiers at the front except during the hours of actual warfare.

Actually one afternoon Nona and Barbara drove back to the hospital in
the ambulance with only one patient, who was fast asleep for most of
the journey.

By and by Nona took a letter out of her pocket. “I have been meaning to
tell you, Barbara, and have never had a real chance. Lady Dorian, the
friend we met on the ship, has been acquitted of the charges against
her in London. She says that they were not able to prove anything,
though she does not feel sure that she is not still regarded with
suspicion. The papers she carried with her were family papers and had
nothing to do with political matters. She declares that she is not in
the least a German sympathizer, but that she longs and prays for peace.
She has been trying to establish some kind of peace party in London,
I think. Some time ago, in the first letter I received from her, she
told me to ask Eugenia if she still objected to our friendship, now
that there were no clouds against her. Of course Eugenia said, ‘No.’ So
Lady Dorian writes me that she is coming over to our hospital. Not to
nurse; she does not know how to do that, but she has given the hospital
a lot of money and is going to help with the office work. I am deeply
interested to see her again. You know I had a feeling we would meet. I
don’t often take fancies to people, but I have taken a strange one to
her.”

Barbara nodded. “I like her too, but perhaps not just in the way you
do. For I still feel there is some mystery about her that makes me
uncomfortable. But she is beautiful and charming and I shall look
forward to her coming.”

That same afternoon just at dusk Barbara and Nona arrived at the Sacred
Heart Hospital. They were so tired that they went straight to their
rooms and laid down.

Half an hour afterwards Eugenia Peabody knocked at the door and opened
it. She had with her a tall woman dressed quietly in a plain dark-blue
dress fitting the lines of her figure closely. Even in the dusk she
gave one a sense of beauty and poise, and there was an odor about her
like lilacs.

She kissed both girls as if they had been real friends.

“I have been hearing of what you have been doing and I’m very proud of
you,” she murmured. “I hope I may be useful too.”

But Nona half saw and half felt that the woman for whom she had
conceived such an intense fancy looked very weary and sad.




CHAPTER XIX _The Test_


One morning a short time afterwards, as the Red Cross ambulance drew
within two miles of the field hospital, the chauffeur stopped.

For a quarter of an hour before, though no one had spoken of it, the
four occupants of the wagon had heard the far-off echo of a tremendous
cannonading. It was not possible to locate the sound.

Now the chauffeur turned to Dr. Milton.

“I don’t know whether we ought to report for duty this morning,” he
volunteered. “I’ve an idea the trouble we hoped was pretty well over in
this neighborhood has broken out again. We will probably get into the
thick of things if we go much nearer.”

Dr. Milton’s lips tightened. “That’s what we are here for, isn’t
it? Oh, I understand what you mean; of course you have no fear for
yourself. Let’s think the situation over.”

The young fellow who had charge of the particular ambulance in which
Nona and Barbara were acting as nurses was a young Englishman who had
volunteered for the service from one of the Manchester automobile
factories. He was a skilled and trained workman and believed that in
guiding a Red Cross ambulance he was doing more for his country than in
actual fighting. But he was as gallant as possible and utterly fearless
for his own safety.

The two men were together on the front seat of the car. Nevertheless,
when they began talking, as long as the ambulance was no longer in
movement, both Barbara and Nona were able to understand the subject of
their conversation.

However, neither girl spoke immediately.

Nona Davis turned to gaze at her companion.

But Barbara seemed to have her entire attention engaged in straining
her ears to the noise of the bombarding. Now and again there was a
faint lull and then the noise broke out with added fury. Sometimes
the sound came from one side of the line and sometimes from the other.
There could be no disputing the fact, fighting had indeed begun again.

Dr. Milton swung around and looked at Nona.

“Miss Davis,” he began. “I know it is a great deal to ask of you and
Miss Meade. We are several miles this side of the hospital and the walk
will be a long one; nevertheless, won’t you both attempt it? Of course,
you have guessed, just as we have, that trouble has broken out afresh
in our neighborhood and if our ambulance goes on much farther we may
at any moment be in the midst of it. We are flying the Red Cross flag,
but that does not always save us, and couldn’t save us in any case from
the bursting of a shell. Yet Martin and I feel we must go on toward the
battlefield, as we are needed now more than any other time. We must not
take you into such danger, so if you will leave us----”

Nona’s golden brown eyes wore almost an exalted look, they were so
free from thought of self.

“But won’t nurses also be more needed?” she asked, although not
requiring an answer to so self-evident a question.

“Dr. Milton, I entirely appreciate your feeling, but honestly I am not
afraid. I don’t exactly know why, but I don’t believe anything will
happen to me. If it does, why of course when one comes here for the Red
Cross work, one expects to take chances.” Again Nona glanced toward
Barbara, who still had not spoken. “Do you think there would be any
danger if Miss Meade should walk back to the hospital alone?” she asked.

Really Nona had not the least idea of the insult her words implied to
the other girl. Not for worlds would she have wounded or offended her!
Neither did she believe Barbara a coward because she felt that the work
ahead of them might be too much for her. This business of nursing is
often a matter of sensibility. The people with the finest nerves and
tenderest hearts are least fitted for the profession. So it had become
almost a matter of course in the past few weeks for the three American
Red Cross girls to regard the fourth of their number in this light.

But Barbara flushed so painfully that tears filled her eyes.

“So that is what you think of me, is it, Nona?” she queried. But she
offered no further reproaches; only turning quietly toward the driver
of the ambulance said, “Drive on, will you, please. I too am unwilling
to go back now. We will, of course, be as careful as possible, since
only in that way can we really help.”

Then nobody said another word for the next half an hour. Perhaps their
hearts were too full for speech or their nerves on too terrible a
tension. Also the noise of the firing as they approached nearer the
line of the British trenches grew more appalling.

But along the way Nona slipped her hand inside Barbara’s and though
her lips were not opened, her apology was made and accepted. Moreover,
in a sub-conscious fashion Barbara appreciated that no distrust had
been intended. For indeed, the two girls were daily becoming closer and
closer friends now that their ambulance work gave them the chance for
spending long hours in each other’s society. Unlike as they were they
appreciated the very differences between them.

But now was not the time for thinking of themselves nor of their
friendship.

The thought of what lay before them called only for brave silences.

With great skill and care the driver of their Red Cross ambulance
moved in the direction of the battle. There could be no doubt in any
mind of what was taking place. Therefore to approach even within the
neighborhood of the little field hospital near the trenches required
infinite caution and judgment.

Once the car stopped short. Thirty yards before them a giant shell
tore through the air and fell, ripping a tunnel in the green earth.
The big ambulance wagon felt the shock of the explosion, but was not
sufficiently near to be endangered, except of course the thought would
force itself: Next time would they escape so easily?

Yet mysteriously Nona and not even Barbara were so frightened as one
might expect. In moments of great peril, as we all know, a courage is
born which one does not have in the lesser moments of life.

Once Barbara thought with a whimsical twisting of her lips no one saw,
that in all probability she was so terrified that she had no ordinary
method of showing it. One could not scream or cry out and certainly
one could not weep like a nervous school girl. Having made up her mind
to go through with whatever lay before them, stoicism was the only
possible way of facing the situation.

Finally the ambulance arrived at the edge of a woods about half a mile
back from the stable which had been transformed into the temporary Red
Cross hospital at the beginning of the fighting at Neuve Chapelle.

For the moment the noise of the cannon and guns from the two lines of
trenches lying so tragically near one another, made speech between the
occupants of the wagon almost impossible. Yet the young Englishman
brought his ambulance to a stand-still behind a clump of trees that so
far had been spared from destruction.

“We must leave the ambulance here,” he directed, “it will be wiser to
bring the soldiers to the car, than run the risk of having it made a
target.”

The ambulance surgeon nodded; there was no time for discussion.

“Will you wait here or come with us nearer the hospital?” he asked,
looking at Nona.

She made no reply, only started to follow the two men across the open
field that lay between the hiding place of the ambulance and the work
before them. Barbara silently kept at her side.

The girls could see the ground shake as if stirred by an earthquake.
Then from the line, where they knew the British trenches to be
concealed, poured a steady stream of low-lying smoke crawling across
the land like innumerable serpents. This was returned in the same
fashion, while overhead thundered the larger field guns, whose smoke
hung like a giant cloud overhead.

None of the guns were being turned upon the open space over which the
two girls and two men were running at a steady pace. Moreover, they
were somewhat protected by the breastworks which had been thrown up
before the little emergency hospital and the fact that the Red Cross
flag flew from a tall flagstaff set in front of it, visible many miles
away.

They were well in sight of the hospital when Barbara’s former terror
reasserted itself. With this first glimpse, things were worse than her
most terrified dreams had pictured.

Running across the meadows whenever a lull came in the firing were
soldiers bearing their stricken comrades. Because few of them dared
cease from their own labor of firing, the men at the work of rescue
were not soldiers but those who had specially volunteered for the
saving of the wounded.

It is not worth while to speak of the scene at the field hospital. If
one’s own imagination cannot picture it, perhaps it is better never to
know of the horrors of a battlefield.

For the next few hours Barbara and Nona worked as never before in
their lives. They became inspired human machines. No longer did they
consciously hear even the noises of the cannonading. Every instant
something had to be done. There were wounds to be cleansed, bandages
put on. The surgeons assisted when an operation could not be delayed.

Often the two American Red Cross girls stood close together without
recognizing each other’s presence.

Once and only once did Barbara Meade wake up.

By chance she was standing by the opening of a great tent that had been
put up near the stable now serving as a temporary relief station after
it had become too crowded for usefulness.

Some special sight or sound must have attracted her attention, although
she was not aware of it at the time. Her hands were busy holding a
basin of water, but her eyes were drawn in another direction. At that
moment Dick Thornton came into the tent bearing a wounded man in his
arms.

Barbara paid no attention to the soldier. She found herself wondering
two things: one of them why she had not thought before of Dick’s peril,
and the other, how had she been able to recognize him so swiftly when
it was scarcely possible to see his face?

Surely the Dick she recalled lounging in the beautiful old New York
library smoking a cigarette, wearing a velvet coat, perfumed and
smiling, had indeed vanished. This fellow’s face was covered with smoke
and blood, his khaki coat had been wrapped about a comrade so that now
he was in his shirt sleeves, but the shirt was torn and crimson.

Was Dick wounded? Barbara had no chance to ask. Her friend did not look
toward her--was apparently not aware of her presence. A surgeon had
come forward to assist him, and finding an empty cot he put his burden
down upon it. The next instant he had gone.

To Barbara’s credit she did not let the basin in her hands tremble for
even the slightest instant, neither did she falter in body or spirit.
She closed her lips tight together, stiffened her body and went on with
her work.

But when her task was finished perhaps she showed the passing of an
unusual strain. Anyhow the doctor whom she had been helping chanced to
glance at her.

“I say, Miss Meade,” he said kindly, “you are overdoing things. Nothing
to be gained by that. Go out in the fresh air, get away from this if
you can and rest ten or fifteen minutes. You should know when you feel
better.”

The girl hesitated.

“Do as I tell you,” the surgeon continued more sternly. “We haven’t
time to have you on our hands, and you look like you might keel over
after a little more of this.”

Then wearily Barbara crept out into the fresh air, feeling all of a
sudden that her knees did not belong to her and that she was nearly
unable to stand.

But once outside and with no duty before her, she managed to walk for
some little distance. In truth she did long to escape for a while from
the sorrow about her. But of course at such a time and in such a place
this was impossible. Between her and the battleground were only a few
meadows and fields. Nevertheless, the girl sank thankfully down upon
the earth, closing her eyes. At least she need _see_ no more terrors of
battle for a little time.

How long she kept her eyes closed Barbara did not know, but when she
opened them she stared ahead of her with nothing definite in her mind,
as she was too fatigued to think.

What she saw, however, was a small field ambulance waving a Red Cross
flag tearing across a space at no great distance away from her. It
traveled so fast that the car shook from its own vibrations, and in
the chauffeur’s seat Barbara had an instantaneous vision of the same
stained face she had recognized a short while before.

It was all plain enough, Dick Thornton was engaged in the work of
rescue. He must have driven his field ambulance back into the danger
line and be again returning with wounded men.

Barbara got quickly on her feet. Some instinct drove her forward, or
was it the inspiration of that careening wagon with its load of human
freight?

Dick must have had a forewarning of danger, for never had he attempted
reaching safety with a more reckless effort at speed. Yet the disaster
came when he had about ceased to look for it. They were nearing the
hospital, there were no guns trained in their direction. Yet possibly a
mistake was made somewhere at this moment. The German gunners may have
thought that they had located a position where British officers were
giving their commands.

Unexpectedly, and of course without warning, Barbara saw a cloud of
smoke surrounding the field ambulance, heard the noise of an exploding
shell and before the car overturned, Dick Thornton, with his arms
outspread, pitch forward and land with his face and half his body
buried in the earth.

Nor did the firing cease in the place where he lay.




CHAPTER XX _A Girl’s Deed_


It may be just as well that there are crises in human life when one
acts without thinking.

So it was now with Barbara Meade. She did not consider her own danger,
nor perhaps the foolishness of her deed. All she saw was that Dick
Thornton was lying defenseless upon the ground with a rain of shrapnel
descending about him.

It may have been that he was dead and that nothing could further injure
or aid him, but Barbara did not contemplate this. She did not cry for
help nor even turn back for a moment toward the hospital. Quick as a
flash, with the swift movement and decision characteristic of the girl,
she darted from her own place of comparative safety out into the open
field.

The ambulance had overturned slowly so that one-half of it had sunk
down at the side, but in any case the wounded men were safer within
its covered walls than under the angry skies.

It required only a few moments for the girl to reach the prostrate
figure of the American boy. He had not stirred after his fall, so
that Barbara instantly dropped down on her knees beside him and with
a nurse’s knowledge took hold of the limp hand that was lying in the
dust, to count the beating of his pulse. It was so faint she could
hardly be sure of it.

She must find out his injury, and yet first he must be gotten to a
place of greater security.

Curious that Barbara, who had been so fearful of the horrors of war,
should be so fearless now! But it did not occur to her that she was in
equal peril there by the body of her wounded friend. The gun fire which
might again strike him was equally apt to choose her for a victim.

Indeed, the girl’s body partly covered that of the boy as she leaned
over him and seizing him firmly by the shoulders began dragging him
backwards.

If they could get behind the partly overturned ambulance perhaps in a
little while the firing might cease in their neighborhood long enough
for the hospital staff to rescue them.

Barbara set her teeth. If she had been weary a short while before
she had forgotten it now. But Dick was tall and heavy and she was so
stupidly, ridiculously small. However, Barbara made no effort to be
gentle. If Dick had been a log of wood that she had been forced to
bring to a certain spot she would have hauled it in much the same way.

Yet once she believed she heard Dick groan and this was perhaps her one
consciously glad moment, for at least he was alive; before she had not
been altogether sure.

But once behind the wagon, Barbara sat down and drew Dick’s head into
her lap. Gently she pushed the hair back from his face and then from a
little canteen she always carried poured a few drops of water between
his lips. He seemed to swallow them. She could see now that his right
shoulder had been struck and that his arm hung strangely at his side.
There might be other worse injuries, of course, but this one she could
discern.

Then Barbara wiped the grime from her companion’s face with the white
linen cloths she had in her pocket. Only then did the tears start
to her eyes, because the blood which had been stopped by the dirt
encrusting it began to flow afresh. Dick also had a wound across his
face. It did not appear serious, but Barbara had suddenly thought of
Mrs. Thornton’s pride in Dick’s appearance and of what she would suffer
should she see him like this. The girl had a sudden, unreasonable
feeling of resentment against Dick himself. After all, what right had
he to risk his life in this horrible war? He was an American and owed
no duty to another country.

The next instant Barbara realized her own absurdity. Was she not in her
way doing just what Dick had done, only of course far less nobly and
well? And after all, were not men and women fighting for the right,
brothers and sisters in the divinest sense?

When Dick Thornton finally opened his eyes Barbara was crying in
earnest. It was ridiculous and utterly undignified of her. Here she had
done the bravest kind of deed quickly and efficiently, but now that she
should be showing all the calmness of a well-regulated trained nurse,
she had taken to weeping.

Of course, Dick did not return at once to a full understanding of the
situation. For to Barbara’s credit it must be said that while she was
indulging in tears she was also bandaging Dick’s forehead with all
possible skill. It was perhaps the touch of her hands that had awakened
him.

For a moment he gazed at the girl stupidly. But when her work was
finished and his head again rested quietly in her lap, Dick endeavored
to look about him. A movement made him faint with pain, yet he could
turn his eyes without stirring. Vaguely he saw the overturned ambulance
in front of them, heard faint moans on the inside. Then there was the
field. He recalled driving like mad across it and the explosion that
had plunged him out of the car. What had taken place was becoming
fairly clear except for the presence of his little western friend.
What on earth was Barbara Meade doing here in a desperately dangerous
situation? He remembered now having seen her assisting one of the
surgeons inside the hospital tent earlier in the day. At least he
believed he had seen her; there had been no moment then even for
thought.

But what must he do now?

“Barbara,” Dick began with surprising firmness, “you must get out of
this death trap at once. The Lord only knows how you got here! Some one
will look after us as soon as there is half a chance.”

But Dick’s last words were lost. Over in the dust a few feet from the
place where he had first fallen a piece of broken shell fell with a
kind of shriek. Stone and earth shot up in the air like a geyser and
falling again partly covered the young man and Barbara and also the
white sides of the ambulance.

“Don’t talk, Dick,” Barbara returned firmly. “You are right, some one
will look after us as soon as possible.”

Perhaps another five minutes passed, perhaps half an hour; there is no
way of counting time in danger. Now and then a bullet or a piece of
shrapnel passed beyond them or sunk into the earth at no great distance
away. Dick again lost consciousness, Barbara remained almost equally
still. Whatever fate might send they must accept.

But while Barbara Meade had given no thought to the nearness of the
relief hospital and the men and women at work there, when she had made
her swift rush to Dick Thornton’s aid, naturally the overturning of the
Red Cross ambulance had not gone long unobserved.

As everyone except Barbara was at work at the moment of the actual
accident to the car, no one had seen her immediate action. However,
the noise of the explosions so close to them naturally attracted the
attention of the hospital staff. It was unusual, although it did happen
now and then, for the German firing to be directed toward a Red Cross
hospital. Perhaps it was intentional, perhaps a mistake had been made;
one could only accept the fact that war is war.

Through a small telescope one of the hospital surgeons studied the
position of the overturned ambulance a short time after Barbara
succeeded in drawing Dick behind its shelter. Then he became aware that
one of their Red Cross nurses was also beside the ambulance. He could
distinctly see her uniform, even the Red Cross on her arm.

The next moment he called Dr. Milton, who happened to be passing with
Nona Davis on their way to another case.

You may remember that the accident had taken place between a quarter
and a half mile across the fields.

Therefore it was not difficult when Nona’s turn came to look through
the telescope to recognize Barbara Meade. Dick she did not recognize,
but indeed she paid scant attention to the khaki figure on the ground.
Her interest was in her friend.

As soon as possible six volunteers made their way to the ambulance.
Dick was carried safely back to the hospital and the two wounded men
inside the ambulance whom he had been trying to save. Barbara walked
beside them.

A little later, when the firing in the neighborhood had entirely
ceased, the ambulance itself was righted and dragged back to the
hospital for repairs. Fortunately, the car itself had been little
injured.




CHAPTER XXI _An Unexpected Situation_


Dick Thornton for a short time was desperately ill.

He had, of course, been removed to the Sacred Heart Hospital as soon as
possible in order that his sister Mildred might be near him. But both
Mildred and Barbara helped with the nursing.

It was considered wiser by the hospital authorities that Barbara should
not return immediately to her work with the Red Cross ambulance at the
front. She was more shaken by her experience than she herself realized,
or at least so her appearance suggested. No one, not even Mildred
Thornton, dreamed that a part of her pallor might be due to anxiety
for Dick. Nevertheless, Barbara went about her work at the hospital
looking spent and exhausted, yet she no longer flinched at anything she
was called upon to do. The greater tragedies she had lately seen had
taught her more self-control.

Just at first Barbara was not aware of the change in the attitude of
the hospital staff toward her after her rescue of Dick Thornton. It had
seemed such a natural action to her she had not given it any thought.

But Nona Davis had not seen it in the same light, nor had Dr. Milton
nor the other nurses and physicians near the battlefield.

Everywhere there was talk of the valor and common sense of the young
American girl. Whether or not it was true, she was given the credit for
having saved Dick’s life. Had he remained unprotected a stray shot must
have done for him.

Mildred made no effort to conceal her gratitude and affection for
Barbara, and even Lady Dorothy Mathers and Daisy Redmond, the two
English girls who at first had small faith in Barbara’s ability, were
now generously kind to her. Actually Lady Dorothy apologized for having
previously slighted her, while Alexina McIntyre gathered Barbara into
her capable arms.

“You’re a wee thing, there is no denying it, but I’ve always believed
you had grit and now you have proved it.”

So in course of time Barbara grew happier and stronger, though not,
as it turned out, until Dick was out of danger. The wound on his face
healed rapidly enough, but the trouble had been with his splintered
shoulder. He would hardly be useful at the front for some time to come.

Nevertheless, though Barbara remained behind for the regular staff
nursing, Nona Davis continued in the ambulance service. The suggestion
was made that she be relieved by one of the other nurses, but Nona
preferred to make no change. For some reason she seemed peculiarly
fitted for the work at the front. It required a coolness and obedience
to orders that she was able to give. Her lack of long training did not
count so seriously against her, since she was always under a surgeon’s
orders. Moreover, her courage and devotion never appeared to falter.

Often when she returned to the hospital at night Eugenia Peabody would
look at her in amazement. Could Nona be made of flesh and blood? She
seemed so slender and fragile and yet was like fine steel. The truth
was that all her life Nona had been accustomed to taking care of some
one, so that she thought far less of herself and her own sensations
than other girls of her age. Moreover, back of her stretched a long
line of cavalier ancestors, who have a peculiar quality of endurance
under conditions of war, whatever their weakness in times of peace.

But really Nona was animated by none of these toploftical ideas; she
was merely doing the best she could in the place where she seemed most
needed.

However, other persons besides Eugenia marveled at her. Now and then
when they were both free, Lady Dorian and Nona spent an hour or so
together. The older woman was assisting with the business affairs of
the hospital. An outsider can scarcely realize how much business there
is that must be wisely administered. So Lady Dorian spent her time
ordering supplies and watching over their disposal, but she made no
friends except with Nona. An air of mystery still clung like a tangible
atmosphere about her, and though the rest of the hospital staff were
aware of it and did not understand her presence among them, they were
too busy to give her much attention or thought.

Yet Nona Davis frequently thought of her in her long journeys back and
forth. In spite of their increasing intimacy Lady Dorian had told her
nothing more of herself. She mentioned no details of her arrest in
London nor of the reasons the authorities had for finally releasing
her. So Nona could not help feeling a slight curiosity, although she
tried to smother it by scolding herself for her lack of good taste.
Certainly one should never wish to know anything of a friend’s life
except what the friend wishes to tell, and yet at times it is hard not
to desire the knowledge.

However, Nona’s own affairs at this period should have been
sufficiently absorbing to have made her forget other people’s. The
soldiers she had helped to care for, the surgeons she was in the habit
of assisting, showed a peculiar affection and kindness for the young
southern girl. And Dr. Milton made no effort to disguise his devotion.

At first when he discovered his own emotion the young English physician
had no intention of betraying himself. He had come to the war to do
his duty and not to give way to the ridiculous weakness of falling
in love. But Nona had proved too much for him. So far, however, he
had sufficient self-control not to have spoken of it to her. And
if he showed his feeling in other ways Nona gave no sign of having
understood, so the young surgeon had not been able to decide whether
she felt more than a passing friendliness for him.

Nevertheless, he was glad one morning to be entrusted with a special
message which was to be given in person to Miss Nona Davis.

An orderly had called at the temporary hospital near the British line
of trenches to say that Colonel Dalton would like to speak to Miss
Davis at his headquarters.

Naturally Nona was surprised by the message. She knew, of course, that
after his recovery Colonel Dalton had returned to his command. There
was almost daily talk of him, as he was regarded as one of the most
capable officers at the front. But she had not seen him since the hour
of their conversation by his bedside. What could he possibly wish of
her? However, the interview was to take place a little before noon on
the same day and an officer would call to escort her into the presence
of his superior.

Frankly other persons beside the girl were mystified by Colonel
Dalton’s command. He was not in the habit of paying any attention to
the Red Cross work or its workers. His reputation was that of a stern
disciplinarian, whom his men respected but did not always like. So when
Dr. Milton suggested that his intention might be to bestow some mark of
favor upon Miss Davis for her devotion to the soldiers, no one took the
idea seriously. Fortunately Nona did not even hear of it.

Before noon, however, she was ready to do as she had been bidden. She
was waiting in the rear of the relief hospital when a young officer
in the uniform of a lieutenant of the South Lancastershire regiment,
riding one horse and leading another, drew up before her and dismounted.

Almost without regarding him Nona allowed him to help her into the
saddle. Then they set off across country together, the young lieutenant
a little in the lead. The secret of an officer’s headquarters is
sometimes so carefully guarded that not even his own soldiers know its
exact location.

Nona was not even particularly interested. She realized that she rode
about three-quarters of a mile and then stopped in front of what
appeared like an immense pile of brushwood. Behind it was a small
wooden building, evidently a temporary structure, and inside the
building, seated before a small pine table with a telephone receiver in
his hand, was Colonel Dalton.

Here at last Nona became vitally interested. She had been told that
innumerable telephone wires, most of them underground, connected the
British officer’s quarters with the trenches at the front as well
as with the headquarters of other officers and with the different
positions of the field artillery. Here was certain proof of it. The
officers with the men in the trenches must take their commands from
their superiors who were in truth the “gods behind the machines.”

The lieutenant saluted. Colonel Dalton returned the salute curtly. Nona
simply waited and watched.

By and by Colonel Dalton put down the telephone receiver.

“Be seated,” he said briefly, and Nona sat down on a wooden stool the
younger officer thrust toward her. She had no special sensation of awe;
she was seldom afraid of people except in social life. This was simply
a part of her day’s work. Nevertheless she wondered why Colonel Dalton
was frowning at her so severely.

The same instant he took a bundle of papers from inside his pocket.

“Sorry to trouble you with this, Miss Davis, but for the present you
seem the best person to get hold of. I remember our talk at the
hospital, and moreover, I’ve the impression you can answer questions
and keep your own counsel when it’s necessary. There is some ugly work
going on at the Sacred Heart Hospital. I’ve reason to believe that
there is a spy among the workers over there. Is there any one you can
think of who might be willing to give news of the British positions,
the amount of our ammunition and other facts to the enemy? Think
this over quietly and coolly. I promise you that no one will be held
responsible whose guilt is not plainly proved and also that whatever
you are willing to tell me will be kept in strictest confidence.”

“But why do you think such a thing? How can you possibly imagine?” Nona
faltered, and then appreciated that this was not the manner in which to
address an officer. Colonel Dalton would not make such an accusation
without due proof of his suspicion.

Nona had a dreadful sensation of horror and confusion. Surely Colonel
Dalton must be mistaken. Never were there a more devoted, more sincere
group of workers than the Red Cross nurses and physicians at the Sacred
Heart Hospital. That treason could dwell among them was out of the
question. Yet all the while the American girl was voicing this silent
protest in her own heart, automatically she was reviewing the name and
character of every member of their staff. There was no one, no one, who
could not be wholly trusted, whose family and whose history were not
open books.

Then a face and figure passed before the girl’s vision and in a flash
she controlled the leaping of the hot blood to her cheeks.

Nona looked directly at Colonel Dalton.

“You have asked me a question I will not answer,” she returned quietly.
“I do not, of course, know whether you have the right to force me, but
I feel that I have no right to say a single word that would reflect on
any man or woman at our hospital. What I could tell you would amount to
nothing; it would only be guessing at best. For I have no actual reason
for being suspicious of any one.”

“No _actual_ reason?” Colonel Dalton repeated. “Have you any reason at
all?”

“No,” Nona returned.

The Colonel glanced again at the papers in his hands. “Because you
were so kind as to nurse me at the Sacred Heart Hospital and because
I am aware of the noble work their nurses and doctors have been doing
for the wounded, I want no evil gossip to surround you. Do not mention
my errand, but say to your superintendent that I will call in person
to see her tomorrow evening. Perhaps you are right in not betraying
whomever it is you seem to suspect. Good-by.”

Colonel Dalton again bowed his head, and as another officer had entered
the room to speak to him, Nona hurried out.

The same lieutenant escorted her back to her starting point, but once
again Nona paid no attention to him. She was in a tumult of surprise,
apprehension and sorrow. A spy at the Sacred Heart Hospital, what
knowledge had Colonel Dalton to go upon? Yet he appeared convinced and
was too wise a man to accept a suspicion without proof.

No intimate personal sorrow had ever disturbed Nona Davis more
seriously. Yet these were days when one could not give way. She must
continue with her work as if nothing had happened and Colonel Dalton
had commanded that she confide in no one. Yet if she could only speak
of his suspicion to one single person, perhaps her own fears might be
dissipated, or else, or else--here Nona scarcely faced her own thought.
Perhaps the telling might enable the offender to escape while there was
still opportunity.

She was dazed and sick when her escort assisted her to alight for the
second time. Yet she had a vague sensation that his eyes were gazing at
her with a strange combination of amusement and sympathy. But of course
she must have been dreaming, because after she had walked several yards
away she thought she overheard him say, “Are you the gardener’s son?”
And really she had no right to believe the young officer had suddenly
lost his mind.




CHAPTER XXII _Recognition_


Nona Davis delivered Colonel Dalton’s message to the superintendent of
the Sacred Heart Hospital. However, after second thought Colonel Dalton
also sent a letter explaining the circumstances more fully and asking
for a private meeting in order that a thorough investigation be made.

A woman of about forty with a large experience of life, Miss Grey,
though deeply disturbed by the British officer’s suspicion, did not
allow herself to go to pieces over it. She knew that they were living
in the heat and turmoil of the most terrible war in history, where
every day thousands of men and women were willing to give their lives
to afford the slightest aid to their country. Everywhere there had been
stories of spies and oftentimes many of them were the last persons to
be suspected. It was dreadful to learn that a spy had crept within the
shelter of the Sacred Heart Hospital, and yet there was no reason why
one place should be spared more than another.

So very quietly Miss Grey set to work to study possibilities for
herself, in order that she might be able later to assist Colonel
Dalton in his effort to unearth the guilty person. She knew the name
and something of the past history of every individual on her hospital
staff, including both the outside and inside servants. This, owing to
the conditions of war, she had considered a part of her duty. Indeed,
she kept a small book in which their names, previous addresses and
occupations were carefully registered and the Red Cross nurses had also
presented their nursing certificates with a brief outline of their
circumstances.

So without discussing the situation with any one else seriously, Miss
Grey studied the contents of this little volume, intending to hand it
to Colonel Dalton as soon as they met.

Without the least sense of prejudice she found herself most interested
in the latest arrivals at the hospital. Of course, there was as yet no
reason, so far as she knew, why one person should be suspected beyond
another. The spy may have been in their midst many months waiting the
opportunity for betrayal. Nevertheless, as the discovery of treachery
was so recent, it was natural for her to guess that the evildoer was a
comparatively new member of their staff.

The newcomers chanced to be the eight new nurses, four of them American
and four British, who had begun work about two months before, and Lady
Dorian, who was the last arrival.

Just as Nona had felt a sudden chill at the thought of Lady Dorian’s
painful experience and her evident wish not to talk of herself, so Miss
Grey frowned and flushed when she came upon her name in the hospital
biography.

Had the authorities been wise in accepting Lady Dorian’s presence among
them and the very generous gifts she had made so soon after her trial
in London? It was true that nothing had then been proven against
her and so very probably she had naught to do with the attempted
destruction of the ship upon which she had chanced to be a passenger.
However, it might have been the better part of valor to have regarded
Lady Dorian with possible scepticism, more especially as so little was
known of her previous history.

Yet with no facts at her disposal Miss Grey took the only wise course,
she reserved judgment.

Thirty-six hours later, just after dusk, Colonel Dalton, accompanied
by the lieutenant who was one of his aides, rode up to the Sacred
Heart Hospital. He went straight into the business office of the
superintendent, where he spent half an hour with Miss Grey, Mrs. Payne
and other persons in positions of trust.

At the close of that time a command was issued, asking the surgeons,
nurses and servants in relays of eight or ten to come into the office
in order that Colonel Dalton might question them. No one, of course,
except Nona Davis, had any conception of why a British officer should
be devoting his valuable time to interviewing the members of a hospital
staff for any purpose whatsoever.

But by chance Eugenia, Mildred, Barbara and Nona, Lady Mathers, Alexina
McIntyre and Lady Dorian made one of the latest groups. It was not by
chance, however, that Nona went first to Lady Dorian’s tiny room at
the top of the tallest tower and asked that they might go downstairs
together.

To the girl’s horror Lady Dorian absolutely refused to accompany her.

She was sitting by a window with only a lighted taper in the room,
apparently nervous and unhappy.

“Please present my respects to Commander Dalton,” she said, “and say
that as I am not well it will be impossible for me to see him.” Lady
Dorian spoke so quietly, as if there were no question of her wish not
being respected, that Nona was frightened.

“But you _must_ come, please,” the younger girl urged. “I am afraid you
don’t realize how important it is that all of us be present. Don’t you
appreciate that whatever reason Colonel Dalton may have for talking
with us, it would not look well for any one of us to refuse to be
interviewed?”

But Nona’s arguments and persuasions proved of no avail. Finally she
had to go down to the office with the others, leaving Lady Dorian in
her own room.

Nevertheless Nona did not dare repeat aloud the message her friend had
given her. She only whispered its substance confusedly in Miss Grey’s
ear and the next moment the superintendent left the room.

No one of the four American Red Cross girls nor any one else present
ever forgot the next quarter of an hour.

Colonel Dalton was intensely angry. He considered that he was not
doing the work of a soldier and only his interest in the Sacred Heart
Hospital induced him to conduct an inquiry of such a nature. However,
the traitor had to be discovered and at once.

In his hand he held the bunch of papers which Nona recognized as the
same he had in his conversation with her. Also she recognized the
lieutenant as the young officer who had previously escorted her and who
had made such an extraordinary speech at their moment of parting.

However, Colonel Dalton was only beginning his cross-examination of the
latest comers when the door of the office again opened and Miss Grey
entered accompanied by Lady Dorian.

Nona gave a little gasp of relief and dismay. For never had she seen
any one look so ill and wretched as Lady Dorian. She was plainly making
every effort to keep her face averted from the gaze of the older man,
who was sitting in a chair beside a small table.

But Nona was the more amazed when she turned to see what impression
had been made upon Colonel Dalton. Disturbed by the opening of the
door, he had glanced up. Now his face was no longer crimson from anger
and outdoor exposure, but white and drawn, and his eyes expressed
extraordinary surprise and discomfort.

For a moment his lips moved without making a sound, but the next he had
assumed his former military bearing.

“In the past few weeks letters have been mailed from this hospital,
supposedly addressed to a newspaper in New York City for publication,
but in reality exposing the secrets of the British army in this
neighborhood to our enemy,” he began. “It should not be difficult for
some one on this staff to tell me who posted these letters and where
the information they contain was obtained.” The officer then struck the
table harshly with the papers in his hand. “One of these letters got
through the post, the others are in my possession, so there will be
little chance for the informant to escape. Has any one a suggestion as
to who the man or woman may be?”

At the question had all the persons in the room been spies they could
scarcely have appeared more miserable and guilty. Moreover, for a
moment no one attempted to reply.

Presently Mildred Thornton walked over to the table.

Mildred was not handsome, yet at this moment her dignity, her
refinement and more than that, her look of intelligence which was like
her distinguished father’s, had never been more apparent.

“Will you show me the letters you speak of, Colonel Dalton?” she asked
in a low tone.

The officer appeared to hesitate, but after a careful study of the girl
he gave the letters into her hands.

Near them was a lamp on the table and Mildred stooped as she went
rapidly through the papers. Then she straightened up and her lips were
like chalk.

“I mailed the letters,” she said distinctly. “But listen to me for a
moment while I explain, then I’m ready to take whatever punishment I
deserve.”

There was a complete silence. Mildred spoke very calmly, very proudly;
nevertheless, no one of her three American friends believed her.
Mildred’s statement was so incredible, she must have lost her senses.
Instinctively Barbara started forward to protest, but both Eugenia and
Nona held on to her.

“Wait until she has spoken,” Eugenia ordered.

Colonel Dalton himself did not appear particularly convinced. A spy was
not apt to proclaim guilt with so little pressure. Yet the young woman
looked as if she had brains.

“A young man and his mother have been staying in this neighborhood
almost ever since our arrival,” Mildred began. “Brooks Curtis, the
man called himself. We met him on board the steamer coming over to
England and he told me that he was a newspaper correspondent and
meant to report the war. I don’t know anything else about him, but I
liked him, although my friends did not.” Here Mildred flushed and her
hands trembled, yet she went on bravely. “Mrs. Curtis settled in the
neighborhood in one of the peasants’ cottages and I used to see her
nearly every week and now and then her son. One day Mr. Curtis told me
he was having difficulty in mailing his letters to his New York paper
and asked me to mail them for him. Also he asked me not to mention the
fact. I was very stupid, I was worse than stupid, but of course I did
not dream of what I was really doing. Still, I feel that I deserve
imprisonment or punishment of some kind. I came to Europe to try to be
of service to the soldiers and I’ve brought them misfortune.” The girl
for the moment could say nothing more. But then everybody in the room
was equally aghast, Mildred’s explanation was so astounding and at the
same time so simple.

“Is there a way of getting hold of this young man to find out if your
story is true?” Colonel Dalton demanded.

And this time Nona and Barbara answered together. “Mrs. Curtis could be
found at the home of Mère Marie and Anton. From her one might obtain
information concerning her son.”

A moment later the two girls and the lieutenant were on their way to
the hut of Mère Marie. A little later they returned with the news that
Mrs. Curtis had disappeared the day before and the old peasant woman
had no knowledge of her whereabouts.

But during their absence Colonel Dalton and Mildred had a long talk
together, so the girl herself was able to convince him. He was very
severe, he could find little excuse for her foolishness; nevertheless,
recognizing at the end Mildred’s innocence and utter inexperience
of life, he assured her that she need fear no penalty. The British
Government, however, would seek to find the young man calling himself
Brooks Curtis, and on his arrest she would be expected to appear.

Finally Mildred was allowed to go up to her room and Barbara and
Eugenia went with her. Lady Mathers and Alexina wandered off to express
their opinions on the situation.

So by accident Nona Davis was left for a moment standing in the hall
with the young English lieutenant. She had seen him several times
lately, it was true, and yet she was annoyed at this moment to find him
smiling at her in a surprisingly friendly fashion.

From the single rose bush in front of Mère Marie’s cottage even in the
darkness he had plucked a rose. Now he extended the rose to Nona.

“Have all Americans poor memories?” he asked. “Or is it because you
wish to forget? Once upon a time there was a young man asleep in an
English garden and lifting his eyes he saw a fairy princess standing
over him with a rose in her dress as yellow as her hair.”

Nona blushed delightfully. “You mean,” she said, “that you are the
gardener’s son? Then you are well and back at your post again? I’m so
glad.”

Her companion nodded. “I am a son of Adam.”

But at this moment Colonel Dalton, Miss Grey and Lady Dorian made their
appearance and the young officer turned to salute his superior.

Miss Grey accompanied them to the door, leaving Nona and Lady Dorian
alone.

Impulsively the younger girl kissed her friend. “I am so happy,” she
whispered.

Lady Dorian walked away with her. “I understand, dear,” she returned.
“The truth is Colonel Dalton and I knew each other very intimately in
the past and I felt it might be pleasanter for us not to meet again.
Naturally I did not dream of the seriousness of his errand. Some day I
may tell you the whole story; now good night.”

Nona went on upstairs without replying and the next hour the three
girls devoted to trying to console Mildred Thornton.

It was Barbara’s conviction that they would some day meet Brooks Curtis
again. Then Mildred could repay his deceit by surrendering him to the
British authorities. But Mildred had no wish to find the young man. If
only he did no further harm to the Allies she wished that she might
never see or hear of him again.

And the girls did not hear. Several months passed by and each day found
them more and more absorbed in their Red Cross work.

Nona Davis did not mention Lady Dorian’s confidence. However, there was
little she _could_ tell. The older woman had simply explained that she
had spent several years in England, where she and Colonel Dalton had
known each other intimately.

But there was too much for the Red Cross Girls to do, they were living
too full lives themselves to give more than passing thoughts to other
persons.

When Dick Thornton had in a measure recovered he returned to London.

So the early part of the winter vanished. Now and then there came a
lull in the fighting between the armies of northern France. Afterwards
it would break out again with greater violence.

Finally the climax came.

By chance Nona and Barbara, who had again joined the ambulance corps,
first brought the news to the Sacred Heart Hospital. The order had come
from Colonel Dalton. Later it was delivered in person by Lieutenant
Hume.

The Sacred Heart Hospital must be abandoned. Having forced the British
line for several miles, the Germans were now dangerously near. If the
hospital wished to protect its wounded, to save supplies, to safeguard
its workers, their present habitation must be abandoned.

No army ever moved its encampment with greater efficiency. In between
their periods of nursing the four American girls assisted with the
packing. No one of them ever forgot the experience. Yet at the last
there was a sudden rush. The enemy was reported advancing before
another refuge could be found for the Sacred Heart staff. Wounded
soldiers had to be transported in half a dozen directions wherever a
spot could be found for them. At the time there was no place for so
many extra nurses.

It was Eugenia Peabody who finally made the suggestion to Miss Grey.
She proposed that she and her three friends should find a retreat for
themselves, and there await orders. It would relieve so much of the
Superintendent’s responsibility.

So one afternoon the four American girls were hurried away in one of
the army motors to the nearest railroad station in a zone of safety.

The next morning, in a little less than a year after their arrival in
Europe, they found themselves in a small French city.

A few days after Nona Davis suggested that they offer their services
to the French Red Cross. Having come abroad to serve the Allies, it
was natural they should wish to care for the wounded soldiers of the
different nationalities.

       *       *       *       *       *

This first volume in the American Red Cross series can, of course,
only begin to tell the adventures and experiences of the four American
girls, who, forgetful of self, offered their services to the wounded
soldiers in the war. The stories of their lives and the friends they
gather around them will be continued in the next book in the series, to
be known as “The Red Cross Girls on the French Firing Line.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Transcriber’s Notes:

Punctuation has been made consistent.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have
been corrected.

The following change was made:

p. 187: Captain changed to Colonel (that Colonel Dalton)





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