Otto Littman was quite right in thinking that Reuben Cowder would not
write his daughter about their quarrel. People might say what they
would of Reuben Cowder's business methods, but he never hit below the
belt. Moreover, he was too wise to attempt to influence the likes or
dislikes of his spirited daughter. He had too great faith in the
soundness of her instincts. However deeply she might be interested in
Otto--and he feared it was deep indeed--he was confident that she would
instinctively know whether he was loyal; and, of course, while she was
in Serbia, there was no danger. He was quite right. Nancy was reading
between the lines of Otto Littman's letters, and sensing far better
than any one in Sabinsport the motives which had involved him in the
German intriguing. Besides, she was wholly occupied with her work.
Dick realized, better even than Reuben Cowder, how the sorrows that she
had undertaken to relieve absorbed her. He was getting better and
better acquainted with the young woman in these days, for it came to be
Reuben Cowder's habit, since his first talk with Dick, to bring him
regularly her letters. Sometimes he dropped into Dick's study at night,
sometimes he picked him up as he drove by in his car or stopped him as
he met him on the street; and always Dick found that his reason was the
need he had of talking about his girl. Evidently he talked to no one
else, for nobody in Sabinsport knew any of the details of the terrible
experiences these months had brought Nancy Cowder or anything of the
hell of torment her father had gone through. Dick himself never
mentioned her name, sensing that, at the first hint the hard old man
had that he had talked, his confidence would be silenced. Reuben Cowder
had a terrible resentment against Sabinsport society because it
misjudged his daughter. Sabinsport should never know of her from him,
should not have the stupid satisfaction of rolling over her splendid
service with idle tongue, and Sabinsport did not know more than that
the girl had been in Serbia throughout the bitter months after the
second invasion and repulse.
Dick knew the tragic story in spots, and, by his knowledge of the
country and his careful reading of every scrap of news the leading
journals of the world gave him, had pieced it into a whole. He saved
every item he read to talk over with Cowder, and every day that he
built up the story he unconsciously became more deeply involved. "The
courage of the creature," he said to himself; "the gentleness, the
gayety, the pity--why, she's a wonder woman. Who could have guessed it
from the gossip of this benighted town?"
And as a truth, Nancy Cowder deserved all Dick was attributing to her.
She was showing the qualities of a great, pitying, resourceful soul,
naturally and quietly giving its life to ease the boundless misery of a
brave and neglected little people.
She had first entered the country in 1914, stirred to the undertaking
by the reports of the plight of the sick and wounded after the
Austro-Hungarian invasions. Things in Serbia, indeed, were in a
frightful way. Exhausted by two recent wars, her hospitals, never many,
stripped of supplies, her few physicians and nurses worn out by the
long strain through which they had been going, the country could scarce
have been in a worse condition to stand a new shock. She, to be sure,
repulsed her enemy, but the repulse cost a frightful price of dead and
mutilated. Who shall ever have the courage to tell of the savage
cruelties that attended the retreat of the Austro-Hungarian army from
Serbia in the fall of 1914? Those who followed after found men hanging
in orchards, dead; women huddled in heaps where they'd been felled, the
hideous first step in that decision to exterminate the Serbian people,
which the Central Empires had taken.
It was a heart-breaking story that reached Nancy Cowder from an English
official summoned home by the war. Her decision was immediate: "I'll
go, there is need there. All the world will care for Belgium," and for
a month she worked with her English friend, Betty Barstow, to get
together a unit of a half-dozen women. The result was two physicians,
two nurses, one chauffeur and one "general utility man," as Nancy
called herself. They moved heaven and earth to raise money, collect
supplies and secure such recognition from the English and French
governments as would give their unofficial and volunteer caravan a
standing before the Serbian authorities. They had little need of
passports. A woman with surgical dressings in one hand and food in the
other was welcomed as an angel from heaven by Serbians in those
stricken days.
Nancy's party had gone into the country by Salonika, a city overflowing
with the excited travelers of half the world. From there they had made
their way to Valievo, a little town north of the center of Serbia, the
terminus of a narrow gauge railroad which runs eastward connecting with
the main line between Salonika and Belgrade. It was over this single
track, with its dwarf engine and cars, that the soldiery of all Central
Serbia was traveling--with their supplies, their wounded and their
sick. Since the terrific fighting along the Save and the Dwina, wounded
Serbs and Austrians had been pouring into Valievo. Refugees had
followed them. The little narrow-gauge railroad could not cope with
this mass of misery. It had carried away what it could but numbers had
been left behind.
Late in 1914 these six young and intrepid Samaritans arrived with bags,
boxes of bandages, cordials and medicines--and more to follow. They had
planned to find a little house on one of the green hillsides, to make
it a home, and from there to go day by day among the people; and thus
they started.
The little house was not hard to find. It looked out over the valley
with its red-tiled roof and its suggestion of a distant time when the
Turks were in the country as conquerors and built houses with
overhanging eaves and trellised windows. It was from this little house
that they started out for their work in what was then one of the most
pitiable spots of all the many--oh, so many--on an earth which lifts a
friendly face to man and begs of him to take of its fruits in peace and
in content.
Their first day's work had brought them back, white and anguished. What
were they in all this thing? It was sweeping back the waves of the sea
with a broom, dipping it dry with a teaspoon, as they told one another.
And so, indeed, it seemed at first sight. Valievo was one big
hospital--its schoolrooms, public halls, churches, cafés, had been
turned into wards--and such wards! The only beds were piles of straw on
the floor. The only utensils the helter-skelter articles the doctors
and nurses could pick up. And to meet this misery, there were just six
doctors! Everything that they could do they had done to bring something
like order and cleanliness into the situation, but it was a task
manifold beyond the most tremendous effort of which they were capable.
Hundreds of wounded men lay for days on their straw beds unattended
save for some rude first aid--and always lumbering ox-carts were
jolting over the cobbled streets bringing from the hills more and more
victims.
The condition was so shocking that Nancy and her friends cringed in
horror at the sights and in despair at their own inadequacy. Yet what
they could do they would. From daylight to dark they went from one
group to another, cleansing and dressing wounds, changing straw often
stiff with blood and filth, fumigating garments, letting in fresh air,
furnishing nourishing food, doing a thousand little things to improve
the conditions and to simplify the care of the stricken groups.
Regularly every week Nancy Cowder had written her father and she had
taken always the greatest care possible that the letters got out.
More than once she had sent a messenger with them to Nish or
Belgrade. Because of this precaution, he had received with fair
regularity news of her life and health for the past twelve
months--and such wonderful letters as she wrote; the first appalled
cry at the suffering--suffering so out of proportion to their puny
efforts--was never repeated. The girl had plunged into steady work,
and it was of what they did that she wrote--letters often actually
gay in their triumph over their difficulties. They had not, to begin
with, the commonest articles; basins, bed clothing, shirts. It took
the most determined and continued efforts to supply themselves, but
they never were discouraged, never downcast.
"Oh, Father, if you knew what we do without. Nothing matters, we know,
if we can keep them clean and warm and fed. Straw on the floor doesn't
matter--sheets don't matter, spoons and bowls don't matter. It takes so
little if the little is right. We wage one long campaign to get things.
I never knew how wonderful money is before. You mustn't mind if I spend
a great deal--if I overdraw--if I cut into my principal. There couldn't
be a better use for it. If it all goes I can work. Why, I could earn my
living as a hospital orderly now, Father. You ought to see what I can
do--what I do do. I sweep floors and change straw. I cook and clean and
drive nails. I've made what we call bedsteads with my own hands--and
proud of it! I never knew that work--work with one's hands--could be so
good. I feel as if I'd just begun to live. What a pity that it takes a
_war_ to teach idlers like me where the essence of life is found!
"Don't you worry, dear. I shall come back to you another person, and I
shall know when I get there how much of real life there is to be had in
Sabinsport."
"I don't understand," said Reuben Cowder.
"I do," said Dick.
"If she will only come back!" groaned Reuben Cowder.
"She will," said Dick.
"And be happy here! How can she be?"
"She's discovering Sabinsport in Serbia," said Dick.
"She can have all the money I have," said Reuben Cowder.
"You couldn't do better with it," said Dick.
Week by week the two men followed the work of the intrepid group. Nancy
was exultant over so many things! The redemption of a forsaken church
on a hillside turned into a perfectly good sanitarium for
convalescents. "It has no windows left, so we do have air. The only way
you get it in Serbia."
The wonderful help they were getting from the wounded who were able to
get about--Austrian and Serbian--who built them incinerators, mended
leaking roofs, brought wood for their fireplaces, scrubbed and cooked
and even sewed. "We have a class in mattress making--such a funny,
funny class. There's a poor one-legged Austrian with a cough which will
carry him off soon, once an upholsterer in Vienna. He has taught us all
here to make strong, comfortable mattresses. I went myself to Nish and
brought all the ticking and needles and thread I could find."
The feat over which Nancy crowed most, to which she was always coming
back, was the Water Works. She always capitalized the words: "You can
imagine, Father dear, how we've been handicapped for water. After our
first week we never gave our patients a drink that had not been boiled
at the house. We hired a stout peasant woman--there were no men to be
had--to carry it--two buckets full on an ox-yoke! She followed us from
place to place. We did our best to make the sick understand how
dangerous it was to drink the dreadful water used in Valievo. We didn't
succeed very well, though some of them would do almost anything to
please us. When we took over the old church we were put to it for water
at first. It had to be carried for nearly a mile. Then, oh, Happy Day,
Dr. Helen and I made up our minds there must be water above us
somewhere and we'd find it and pipe it down. We found a perfectly good,
bubbling spring, grown about with willows. We paid the owner of the
land his price for the water and I, Father, _I_, your spoiled, useless
daughter, stood over three crippled Serbians while they cleaned and
walled that spring and I, _I_ taught them how to make a trough of
boards to bring it to the house. At least I began by making myself a
joint of the wooden trough we used to see at home and when they
understood they made something far better. Now it flows, cold and sweet
and clear into the sanitarium. I'm just crazy over it."
Nothing stirred Dick or alarmed Reuben Cowder more than the long fight
with typhus, which began late in the year in Serbia--and lasted through
the winter. It was not at first realized that the peculiar form of the
disease which ravaged the country was carried by body lice, but where
it was known, the war on the pests which the unit had always waged took
on a fury and an ingenuity worthy of the enemy. It was war, war, war.
The girls shaved, sulphurized and burned from morning until night. They
isolated the incoming, they so frightened their patients by their
horror at a single beastie that it came to be a shame and a crime to be
caught with one. And they conquered. And with the conquest typhus
slowly retired from every spot in which they ruled. Nancy was jubilant.
"We've met the enemy and they are ours. We have a new National Anthem
and we sing it daily. Don't tell it to the Sabinsport Woman's Club. It
would swoon with shock--but, oh Father, if you'd seen what we have
seen--if you had known the cause and if you had labored and sweat day
and night for weeks to remove that cause, you would understand why we
sing what we do. The words came to us from the Berry unit over the
mountain where they, too, have fought and won--indeed from them we
learned the danger and the way to meet it. Now take our National Anthem
straight, Father:
"There are no lice on us,
There are no lice on us,
No lice on us.
There may be one or two
Great big fat lice on you,
NO LICE ON US."
Reuben Cowder read that to Dick with tears running down his cheeks.
"My little Nancy," he said.
"She's a brave lady," said Dick.
The spring and summer came and went. The letters were unfailingly
cheerful. They had settled down to work. With the end of the fighting
and the conquest of typhus their life was more like that of a normal
hospital. If primitive, it was sufficient. There was but one exciting
episode. It came in one of the spring letters.
"A curious thing has happened, Father; one of the strange meetings this
war is continually bringing about. A week ago an ox-cart drove in from
the north with a Serbian wounded months ago--his leg had been
amputated--sawed off. He had had no care in the winter. He had had
typhus somewhere back in the mountains. Friendly peasants had tried to
take care of him, but he was in a terrible shape--no flesh--just a
spark of life left. They brought him finally to us--and we did our best
of course. It's strange what a fury to save seizes you when a poor
shattered thing like this is put into your hands. You fight and
fight--and won't give in, and we won with this man, but I don't believe
we would if he had not been so determined to live. He whispered it to
one of the girls, speaking for the first time days after he came,
whispered in perfectly good English, 'I must live.' She almost turned
his broth over him she was so surprised. It was strange to us to find
one like that. Most of them are so done they don't help--just lie
staring, waiting to die, and only asking not to be touched. I have seen
my dogs look at me as they do when they were dying. Their eyes always
beg that you let them die in peace.
"Well, he grew stronger, and when he was able to keep his eyes open
they never left me when I was in the ward. I knew there was something
he wanted to say but was too weak, or perhaps his poor head was not yet
quite clear. It was as if he knew me. And that was it, Father. He did.
"One day when he was better he called me. 'America?' he said.
"'Yes,' I told him.
"'Sabinsport?'
"'What!' I cried, 'you know Sabinsport?'
"'Yes--my wife, children there, Miss Cowder?'
"'How do you know?'
"'I saw you once, at the Emma.'
"He has been _my_ patient from that hour, and if I never do another
thing in Siberia I mean to get him on his feet and take him back to
Sabinsport. As soon as you get this, cable if his family is there and
well. It will help so. His name is Nikola Petrovitch."
Reuben Cowder hurried the letter to Dick. "You know the man, what about
his family?"
"Living where he left them--well--and if they know he's alive, happy.
It's been months since they've had news. Stana had almost lost hope.
This will be wine to her. May I tell her Miss Cowder is nursing him?"
The old man gulped. "I suppose," he said, "it would give her more hope.
If you don't mind, I'll go out with you. If Nancy has adopted Nikola, I
guess I'll take the family." And so, for the first time in his life,
Reuben Cowder entered the house of a miner, bringing glad news and
honest sympathy.
The summer of 1915 came and passed slowly. News came regularly. Nikola
was gaining strength, was sitting up; they had made him crutches, he
was learning to walk; and then, in September, that which gladdened
Reuben Cowder's sore heart as he had not believed it ever again would
be gladdened--Nikola could take care of himself now. Nancy really
needed a rest, and they were all insisting she take it. They would
leave Serbia as early as possible in October, couldn't Reuben Cowder
meet then in London? They would cable when they reached Salonika, and
he would have ample time.
It was wonderful to Dick to see the change in the man with the coming
of the news. His silent tongue was loosened. For the first time in
their lives, his business friends heard him talk freely of his
daughter. For the first time Sabinsport learned in details of what
Nancy Cowder had been doing, for when the seal he had put on his lips
was broken by Reuben Cowder's change of heart, Dick told both Patsy and
Mary Sabins the story, omitting no heroic touch and cunningly enlarging
on two widely separated details--the romantic discovery, cure and
expected return of Nikola Petrovitch and the continued support of
Nancy's unit by Lady Barstow and her circle!
The story was quickly set loose, as Dick had expected it to be. The
Woman's Club, the War Board, all High Town seized it as one more
personal connection with the Great War. It is safe to say that the
location of Serbia on the map of Europe had never been known to the
tenth of one per cent, of Sabinsport up to the day that Dick confided
the adventures of Nancy Cowder in that land to Patsy McCullon and Mary
Sabins; but before a week had passed the library had it penciled in
blue on a fresh outline map, with Valievo marked probably within fifty
miles of the true location, but quite as exact as the maps which
amateur cartographers of the press were publishing; the Woman's Club
had engaged a lecturer to tell it what he knew of Serbia; a
subscription had been started, and in the alley on the South Side Jimmy
Flannigan's goat had been harnessed to Benny Katz' two-wheeled cart,
and Reuben Cowder, coming through as usual, found the gang in white
paper caps, marked with a crayon red cross, receiving Nick Brown who,
limp and groaning, was impersonating Nikola Petrovitch's first
appearance at the Valievo sanitarium. Here again it was Jimmy
Flannigan's big brother who, listening to Patsy at high school, had
inspired the play.
The keenest interest was taken in Reuben Cowder's trip--for of course
he was going. He was settling things for as long an absence as
necessary, doing it feverishly, joyfully--he who had always stuck night
and day at his post and grumbled at every business trip that he could
not escape. He would be ready to start as soon as the cablegram came;
Nancy had said early in October.
But October came. The first week passed--and no cablegram. The second
week, and none. And then there fell on Reuben Cowder with crushing
force the news of the second invasion of Serbia. From north and west
came the Austro-Hungarians--from the west the Bulgars--hordes of them.
This time there was to be no mistake. Serbia was not merely to be
conquered; she was to be crushed, and the remnants swept into the sea.
The suddenness, the mass, the extent of the attack, left no doubt in
Reuben Cowder's mind that whatever Serbia's fate might be--and that was
as nothing to him--Nancy had been trapped. Unless she had reached
Salonika before the advance, she'd have hardly a shadow of a chance.
And he told himself, too, that if she saw need, she would not leave.
His forebodings were so black that Dick urged him to go at once to
London, as he had planned, not waiting for a cablegram: "I will send it
when it comes. You'll be there to greet her when she does get out. If
she doesn't come, try to arrange to go to Serbia yourself."
And it was on this advice that late in the month Reuben Cowder acted.
Before sailing, he had in Washington used every official channel to get
information of his daughter, but to no avail. When it seemed certain
that for the time being--and he was everywhere assured it was only for
"the time being"--that he could not get news, he sailed, having first
made elaborate arrangements with Dick about informing him if anything
was heard.
By the time he reached London, the completeness of the disaster to
Serbia was known. Her armies had been defeated on every side--they, and
practically the entire population, were in retreat; had embarked for
Corfu. For the moment the little island held the only organized remnant
of the Serbian nation.
From time to time news came of this or that group of nurses or doctors
who had joined the retreat, had been taken prisoner, or on their own
had reached safety; but Reuben Cowder could get no clew to Nancy's
whereabouts, though he worked day and night, interviewing every
returning soldier or civilian of whom he heard, sending agents to
Salonika and to Corfu to search. It was not until the opening of the
year 1916 that news came to him that he trusted. This was when three of
his daughter's companions in the Serbian unit reached London. They
brought him the first trustworthy report of what had happened to Nancy
when the invasion began, and while they could give no assurance that
she was still living they at least left him the hope that this might be
true. How improbable the girls felt this to be, they took care not to
let the distracted man know.
Their story, so far as it interested Reuben Cowder, was soon told. The
approach of the Austro-Hungarians from the north and the Bulgars from
the west had begun the middle of October. The Serbians, who, through
the months since the first invasion, had been accumulating stores and
preparing for a second attack, welcomed the enemy, confident of their
ability to drive him back. Their confidence was quickly destroyed. The
mass thrown against them was overpowering. Nish was taken early in
November by the Bulgars, while by the middle of the month the army from
the north was sweeping Valievo. Nancy's unit, unable to believe that
they were in danger and unwilling to desert now that every day was
multiplying the wounded, remained at their posts until the population
was ordered out.
They quickly determined not to abandon the fleeing people. They would
go with them, a traveling unit. Two great ox carts were secured, and
their stores and a few of the most helpless patients loaded into them.
Two native women who had become particularly useful were taken, and
thus equipped these dauntless young women voluntarily threw themselves
into the great river of Serbs flowing southward.
Of the terrors and hardships of that journey the girls passed over
lightly. It was needless to torture Nancy Cowder's father, they felt.
They told him only that a week after they started Nancy had become
separated from them, that Nikola Petrovitch and one of their Serbian
women attendants were with her at the time, and that as they were in a
part of the country well known to both of them, they, in all
probability, finding it impossible to overtake their own party in the
rush and confusion of the fleeing mob, had sought to find a way out by
another route, or had taken refuge in some mountain farm or village
known to Nikola and unlikely to be reached by the enemy troops. This
was the most hopeful thing they could tell him, and they made the most
of the possibility, assuring him again and again that Nikola, although
on crutches, was now strong and so good a mountaineer and so devoted to
Nancy that he surely would find a place of safety for her. It was a
slim hope--but it was a hope.
If the girls had had the courage to tell Reuben Cowder the truth about
their parting with Nancy, he probably would have held the hope that she
had escaped as lightly as they did; but that they could not do. They
urged him, more for his own sake than for hers, to go himself to Corfu
or Salonika, and arrange for a search party of Serbians familiar with
the western mountains. This would at least occupy him. And so, early in
January, 1916, he left London.
Armed with every conceivable passport and credential that sympathetic
friends and officials could provide, he made straight for Durazzo,--the
Albanian port held then by the Italians--the port from which so many of
the refugees had been transferred to Corfu, to Corsica, and to Italy.
It seemed to him sometimes on his journey that he was following a call.
"Durazzo!--Durazzo!"--rang in his ears, whispered itself to him in his
sleep.
So impelling was his conviction that he must at once get there that all
contrary counsels, whatever their source, left him unmoved, and so to
Durazzo he went, arriving the third week of the month. The
Austro-Hungarians were already in Albania; they had taken ports to the
north. It looked very much as if Reuben Cowder had arrived only in time
to witness the Italian evacuation.
Searching for a lost one in that confusion was heart-breaking work.
What was one woman among the thousands lost and dead in that horrible
flight before the advancing army! The valleys, the hillsides, the
crannies of the mountain on the route that they had traveled, were
filled with hideous proofs of the anguish and death that marked the
escape of the Serbians. Fully half of the army and of the civilian
hordes that followed it were scattered or dead. Durazzo had been filled
for weeks with the laments of those who sought fathers, mothers,
husbands, wives, children--and never found them.
When he told the officials all he knew of Nancy since she left Valievo
in November, he was assured that there was not a chance in a
hundred--one despairing official said a thousand--that she was alive.
True, she might have gone through with some group which had reached
Corfu or Corsica or Italy, but the probabilities were that in that case
she would have cabled. It was not likely that she was alive if she had
fallen behind. True, she might be concealed in some mountain hamlet,
but no searching party was possible under any auspices now. "You would
have to bring over an American army to protect you, and I understand
you Americans are too proud to fight," one bitter, over-worked Italian
Red Cross official flung at him. In all his determined, well-ordered,
effective life, Reuben Cowder had never experienced before what he
acknowledged to be a hopeless situation. This was hopeless.
He had followed a call. It had led him to Durazzo, and now, as if to
mock his faith, he saw the enemy ready to sweep him into the sea as it
had the people his daughter had befriended, and for whom he was willing
to say now that she had died.
And then the impossible happened. Three days after his arrival, a Red
Cross official, who had been particularly interested in his case,
hastily summoned him to headquarters. A party of five men and two
women, disguised as Albanian peasants, had just reached Durazzo. Such
groups were common in those days. One of the men in this party--a man
on crutches, a Serbian, claimed that a woman whom they carried with
them in a rude hammock was an American. He had begged them to cable at
once to Reuben Cowder of Sabinsport, U. S. A., telling him his daughter
was alive. He had asked for a nurse, and one had been sent to their
lodgings. The Serbian had not been told that the man whom he sought was
in all probability at that moment in Durazzo.
The Red Cross official said he felt certain, from the passports and
papers that the man carried, there could be no doubt of the identity of
the woman, but he did not want to raise any false hopes. Mr. Cowder
must await the nurse's report before trying to see the girl. If she
were as weak as the Serbian claimed, the shock of seeing him might be
bad for her. A guide would conduct him to her lodgings. And this
arranged, the over-worked, horror-fed, shock-proof Red Cross unit
stopped for an instant to wonder and to rejoice over the amazing
incident, and then turned back again to snatch what human drift it
could from the flood of misery flowing through its hands, never again
even to remember the names of the father and daughter so miraculously
reunited.
Reuben Cowder never knew how he reached the wretched inn in which the
little party had found shelter. Seeing him reeling and running through
the street, one might have thought him demented, but dementia was too
familiar in Durazzo in those days to cause remark. Nikola Petrovitch,
meeting him at the door, shrank from his outstretched hands as if they
were those of a ghost. In all his imaginings of what might happen to
hasten the day when he could put his precious charge still alive into
her father's care, he had never dreamed of this. Reuben Cowder here!
Shaking his hands--begging for the truth--Was Nancy alive? Could he see
her?
Nikola Petrovitch had no squeamish notions about joy killing; also he
knew better than nurse or doctor the spirit and the courage of the
woman for whose life he had dared every danger that nature and man in
their most murderous moods devise. He took Reuben Cowder by the hand
and led him straight into the narrow stone-floored chamber where Nancy
Cowder lay, and he took the astonished nurse by the arm and led her
out. He was right, for a half hour later, when Reuben Cowder called
back the nurse, the first color that had tinged the girl's cheeks in
weeks was on them, and every day that followed, in spite of the
difficulties and dangers in getting away from Durazzo, and the
discomforts of the passage across the Adriatic on the crowded steamer,
Nancy Cowder grew stronger. She would get well, she told her father
confidently. These brave people who had brought her safe to Durazzo
should not have risked themselves for nothing. And as for her father,
never, never again would she leave him.
But getting well was to be a slow, slow process. They took her to a
nook in the French Mediterranean, and there for months she lay,
regaining little by little her all but exhausted vitality. Reuben
Cowder stayed at her side, and Nikola Petrovitch was sent back to
Sabinsport and to his family.
It was from Nikola that Sabinsport learned more of the heroism of Nancy
and the devotion of her Serbian rescuers than Reuben Cowder himself
ever knew. Her parting with her friends had not been an accident, as
they had led him to believe. It had been a chance deliberately taken by
Nikola when Nancy, worn out by her long year's work, had totally
collapsed after a few days of the terrible sights and hardships of the
retreat. They had found her one morning burning with fever and babbling
nonsense. It was then that Nikola had asserted himself. Give him a
bullock and a cart and the food they could spare, send one of the
Serbian women with him, and he would take her to a place he knew in the
mountains which the Austrians would never find. When she was fit to
move he would get her to a seaport or send her father word how to find
her. And the group of terrified girls, knowing that death was almost
certain in the rout in which they found themselves, believing this a
chance, consented, yet in their hearts they never thought to see her
again.
There was more hope of escape in Nikola's undertaking than they had
realized. Already the Serbian soldiers had begun to break into bands,
seeking hiding places little likely to be disturbed for months at
least, and it was one of these bands that, coming on Nikola and his
charges two days after they had started into the mountains, volunteered
to act as a guard.
No one ever will know with what tenderness and devotion these rough
soldiers, flying for their lives, cared for the delirious girl. The
cart had to be abandoned, but from the coarse blankets they carried
they rigged up a rough hammock, and for days took turns in carrying it.
The spot they sought, and finally reached, was a tiny hamlet, hidden in
a cleft of a mountain--a group of huts, a few women and children, a few
goats and bullocks and sheep--all huddled together for the winter. They
only too gladly welcomed the party, for if they brought tragic news,
the soldiers had stout hearts and willing hands, and put hope again
into the abandoned groups.
The guest house of the Zadruga, the one important family in the hamlet,
was set aside for Nancy, and into it went every comfort that the
community afforded--their homespun rugs, their homespun
"tchilms"--hangings, some of which would have done credit to a Persian
weaver--covered the walls. Homespun linen furnished her bed, native
embroideries were spread over every piece of furniture. She had been an
angel of mercy to their men; she had left her home to aid them--all
they had was here.
The Serbian woman had learned in the months at Valievo that in the
opinion of English and Americans at least, fresh air, warmth and
cleanliness were essential if the sick were to recover, and in spite of
the protestations of the inhabitants in regard to air she saw to it,
with almost religious zeal, that Nancy had all three. Great goat skins
made her a soft, warm bed; a roaring fire burned day and night in the
fireplace; and on the hearth there was always a big jar of hot water.
After many days of fever and delirium, the girl began to rally, to know
them, to understand where she was; and with consciousness came courage,
and she lent her help to theirs.
Reuben Cowder, spending his time and money and wits in inventing
devices to hasten Nancy's recovery, never could understand how anything
but a miracle had saved her life, cut off as she was from everything
that to him seemed essential. He little understood the power of
resistance to death in Nancy herself, and he gave nothing like their
due to the bracing mountain air the girl was breathing and the goat's
milk and venison broth on which she was feeding.
The real miracle had been their escape from the mountains to the shore.
Nikola Petrovitch had not waited for Nancy to rally to make his plans
for the hazardous journey. He was dominated by the fear that sooner or
later the Austrians might reach this hiding place, that he might be
killed. What, then, would become of Nancy? He must get her to the sea.
The project was not so wild as it would seem. The band of soldiers who
had accompanied him to the hamlet was one of numerous bands that,
breaking away from the main army in its flight, had taken refuge in
remote places in the mountains of western Serbia and in the Albanian
hills. Communications were soon established between these groups.
Secret routes for messages were opened. It was not long before they all
had learned of the rapid sweep of the enemy into Montenegro and
Albania, of the escape of their king and a portion of the people into
Corfu, of the setting up there of the Serbian Government, and of the
plans already afoot to rebuild the army.
Taking advantage of the opening connections, Nikola planned with the
soldiers for getting Nancy out as soon as she was able to be carried.
When, late in December, she began to sit up a little, he put his plan
before her, told her of the groups scattered from point to point, which
could be used as resting places, as refuges in case of need. These
groups would know the best routes to follow, would send guides with
them, would provide food. If she would risk it, he felt that they
should begin the journey at once.
Weak as Nancy was in body, she was indomitable in spirit and welcomed
the venture.
They wrapped her like a mummy in goat-skins, put her into a hammock of
the same warm covering, and with bundles on their back, started
out--two strong Serbian soldiers, the native woman who had never
wavered in her devotion from the beginning of the flight, and Nikola,
still on his crutches.
Nikola was never tired of telling his Sabinsport friends of the perils
and hardships of the journey. To him the marvel was not at all that he
and his fellows should have risked their lives, as surely they did; it
was that, whatever the danger, the exposure, the privation, the girl
they carried never lost heart, never complained, never failed to greet
them with smiles. They knew she grew daily weaker and weaker; but they
knew, too, she meant to live. Her courage was like a banner to them. It
was something they followed--something they must not shame by
discouragement or failure. They followed it to the end, reaching
Durazzo, as I have told.
To Sabinsport the tale took on the features of some great Odyssey, and
it was their Odyssey, for did not both the heroine and the hero to whom
she owed her life belong to them? Sabinsport had not yet realized that
at that hour every nook and corner of the European continent had its
Odyssey.
And it was the town's introduction to the Balkan question. Up to now,
Serbia had scarcely been included in the field of war. There was a
Western front and an Eastern for them, but that was all. Serbia's
tragic fate, brought home to them as it was by Nancy Cowder's escape,
set them to asking what it meant. Why should Austria set out to
annihilate a people? Why, even Belgium's fate, hard as it had been, did
not compare in cruelty with this. She meant to exterminate--nothing
else. How could such things be? Should such things be? And if not, what
should Sabinsport do about it?
The War Board was terribly stirred over the matter, and Captain Billy
did not hesitate to condemn the Allies bitterly for not having sent aid
in time to prevent the disaster. "If we'd gone into this war when we
ought to," he declared loudly, "this thing never would have happened.
Our boys would have gotten around there in time." And there was a
constantly increasing number of people who agreed with him.
Mr. John Commons, with his usual Shavian perversity, sneered at the
indignation of the body, and he spent an entire evening reviewing the
history of the Balkans, pointing out with real enjoyment the
inconsistencies, violated agreements, murders and cruelties with which
the states charge one another. He claimed he could match every Bulgar
atrocity with a Serbian, and quoted a well-known modern commission to
prove his point. They were a group of lawless states, born and brought
up to cut one another's throats--and that a peaceful group of American
citizens should lash themselves into fighting mood because one of the
cut-throats was getting the worst of it, was only another of the
unspeakable absurdities of this war. And why were they so stirred up?
They hadn't even remembered Serbia was in the war until this story
about Nancy Cowder came out. Fool thing for any woman to do--just
another example of the mania for notoriety that had seized women in
these times. He supposed Sabinsport would insist on making a lion of
her when she came back. He hoped she'd have sense enough to have
nothing to do with the people that had ignored her so long; that she'd
see their interest in Serbia was nothing in the world but vanity--their
desire to flatter themselves they knew somebody who had been in the
thick of things. Absurd, he called it--enough to make the gods laugh.
The members of the War Board went home much perturbed after this long
harangue, for they were considerably muddled in their minds. Was their
sudden interest and sympathy ridiculous? Dick was much interested to
find how the thoughtful ones figured it out. Of course Captain Billy
didn't need to figure it out. Captain Billy instinctively and promptly
took his position on any question which arrested his attention. He
never had to think--he knew. To him all this "back history" had nothing
to do with the case. Germany and Austria were the enemy. Serbia was on
the side of the Allies. That was all that was necessary for him to
know. Neither the War Board nor the town was so sure. In many a quarter
of the town Dick ran on efforts to understand what Europe herself has
so long and so fatally failed to understand. The boys in his club began
to ask for books on the Balkans. It was no uncommon thing to find the
butcher or the grocer catechizing Czech or Serb or Greek, getting their
point of view. And the stories they heard were repeated. Nikola
Petrovitch became one of the most popular men in town. The radical Rev.
Mr. Pepper gave a series of Sunday night talks on the submerged Balkan
States, boldly declaring for a United States of Europe, which, if not a
new idea to statesmen and journalists, certainly was new, and not very
intelligible to his congregation, most of whom thought he was going
rather far afield for something to talk about. And yet they listened,
tried to understand, and many of them discussed the idea--studied their
maps--looked up forgotten histories.
It was leaven--working leaven; and slowly there rose out of it the
conviction in Sabinsport that something was very wrong indeed in
Southwestern Europe, and that the powerful states of those parts,
instead of trying to right the wrongs by just agreements, faithfully
observed, were, and long had been, intent on keeping the hot-headed
little states in turmoil and in suspicion, watching their chance for a
plausible excuse to pounce on them one by one and absorb them.
Certainly this was as near the truth as you could get in regard to
Serbia and Austria; and it ought to be stopped. There were few, if any,
in Sabinsport yet, however, that felt that our responsibility reached
that part of the world. To rescue France and avenge Belgium might come
to be our business--_was_ our business, certain ones felt more and more
strongly. But the Balkans? No, that was not for us.