AN UNEXPECTED MEETING
Belinda worked that morning in the operating ward until her knees shook
under her and she felt that she would drop.
The guns continued to thunder and shake the huts. The stretcher bearers
came and went. The three operating tables were so thickly surrounded by
white-gowned surgeons that one could not see what was upon them.
The _directrice_ seized Belinda at last and dragged her out of the ward.
"I've been looking for you," she said.
"Oh, Madame!" gasped the girl. "I feel I cannot----"
"Who wants you to? You've done too much already," interrupted the
_directrice_. "It is time you had your soup. Haven't had anything to
eat yet, I suppose? How many times must I warn you girls that your
first duty to the wounded in your charge is to yourselves?"
The decisive little woman drove the girl to the dining-hut, where other
nurses were being supplied with the necessities of life. They were all
oddly silent and preoccupied this morning. Even the most volatile
Frenchwoman of them all wore a subdued air.
The routine in the wards was much disturbed. Belinda went to _Salle
III_ as soon as her nerves were less aquiver. She had learned something
about herself this morning that she had not known before. Technically
she would never be a good war nurse! The _directrice_ was right. A very
few years of such work would leave Belinda Melnotte a nervous wreck.
The stretcher-bearers had already begun to bring into her ward from the
operating room all the surgeons had left of the broken bodies sent back
from the _postes de secours_.
It had begun to rain heavily. The guns rolled on as though they would
never cease. Every time the knee of the leading _brancardier_ thrust
open the swinging door of the ward, cold rain and wind swept in.
Little Erard had a brisk fire burning in the stove, however; and it
was well, for there was a great call among the patients for hot-water
bottles. They complained, too, that Belinda had not given them her
usual attention. Marius thundered forth maledictions upon poor Erard.
The little _infirmier_ had accidentally spilled a little egg upon the
_blessé's_ clean nightshirt.
"But remember, Marius, we have much to do to-day," the nurse
admonished him. "They will fill our ward with unfortunate _opérés_."
"Ah, the dirty fellows!" growled Marius. "Why do they not take them
elsewhere? We do not want them here."
Sympathy for each other's wounds is not always at a high mark among the
_blessés_; but when Gaston, who lacked a leg and an arm both on the
same side, so, as he said, he must always go lopsided, pointed out that
nobody was keeping Marius from leaving the ward and going out into the
rain if he wished to, the growler was silenced.
Sometimes when the door opened to admit a stretcher the wind blew out
the alcohol lamp over which the syringe was boiling. The _brancardiers_
left muddy boot prints down the ward. They dumped the _opérés_ almost
carelessly into the beds, and clumped out again.
The beds in the ward were at last filled. Without little Erard, Belinda
never would have got through that day. Nor did the wounded who had been
with her so long fail, after a time, to appreciate her difficulties,
all save Marius.
The day ended at last. She would have remained, but _Madame la
Directrice_ came herself, supplied a night nurse, and ordered the girl
to go home for the rest she so badly needed.
"There is another day," said the woman sharply. "Or, if there is
not--if this is the end of the world--all the better! The good God
will attend to these _blessés_ in that case.
"If you wear yourself out to-night, how will you do all these dressings
to-morrow? And with only that little ape of a man, Erard, to help you?
For there will be more, and yet more wounded. Hear the guns?"
As though one could shut the sullen roar of the guns out of one's
ears! The hut shook and everything inside was in a tremor from the
rolling discharges of the artillery on both sides. Under cover of this
continual bombardment the infantry was trying to advance.
All day, Belinda learned, the aeroplanes had been flying above the
smoke of the battle. Occasionally she had gone to the door of the ward
for a breath of air and had peered each time into the clouds. But she
could see none of the flying escadrilles serving on this sector.
She had not heard from Aunt Roberta regarding Frank Sanderson. Whether
he had joined the French Flying Corps or not, she had no way of
knowing. He might, even had he joined what was now called the Lafayette
Escadrille, be assigned to this locality and be engaged in this very
battle which seemed now so very terrible.
Her way home through the half-ruined village was lit by the glare of
distant rockets and flares. The rain-drenched air shook with the heavy,
sullen reports of big guns. Minerva's habitation, poor as it was,
seemed a haven of refuge to the girl on this night. She was worn out in
body and spirit.
She feared she would not be able to sleep; not, however, entirely
because of the thundering of the cannon. The sights and sounds of the
day had strongly affected her mind. With the horror and pity she felt
for the torn and broken bodies of the men brought in from the trenches,
had grown in Belinda Melnotte's heart a bitter hatred for the enemy
that had caused their wounds.
For the time she was all French. These were her people--bound to her
by ties of blood and ancestry. They were beating an invading foe back
from the soil of their forefathers. With the vituperative Erard she was
ready to call them Huns and barbarians.
Her heart was hot charged with these thoughts when she went to bed. And
then, as her head touched the pillow, exhausted nature asserted itself.
Almost instantly Belinda fell asleep; nor did she awaken at her usual
early hour.
When finally the awakening came she thought at first it was a Sunday
morning at home, it was so quiet. The sun was coming up, round and rosy.
The appreciation of this last fact aroused her thoroughly. She knew
she must be late. She sprang to the window to see the fields covered
with low-rolling mist. Nothing was to be seen in the direction of the
battlefield, and only a single broken-down ambulance was in sight on
the road.
She scamped her toilet on this morning to rush down for a drink of
coffee before hastening to the hospital. It was cold, for a biting air
came out of the low-hung fog, and she drew her cape close around her
throat as she walked hurriedly along the road.
She wondered how the battle had ended--or if it had ended. The hospital
had been overcrowded when she left the evening before. Were they still
bringing in those ruins of men that the guns had made?
As she walked on she became aware of a whirring and buzzing apparently
directly in her rear. She turned out to make way for the automobile,
the engine of which she thought she heard.
But nothing came out of the mist in the roadway. Yet the whirring and
clattering increased. Then, suddenly, she knew that the sounds were in
the air.
On one side of the road was a plowed field. Belinda realized that some
pilot was seeking to make his landing in this open space; and landing
in a fog is one of the most uncertain things that confront the pilot.
In the first place the altimetre which is supposed to register the
aeroplane's height is never delicate enough for that purpose when the
machine is descending for a landing. It is always fifteen or twenty
yards behind the rapidly dropping aeroplane. Then, the pilot's eyesight
is of little use in a fog.
It must be by exercise of almost a sixth sense that the aviator judges
the position of the ground when coming down on such a day as this.
Belinda knew this. She almost screamed a useless warning as she heard
the clashing wings drawing nearer so swiftly.
Through the rolling mist a great shape--like nothing so much as a huge
and horrid insect--came plunging down. Belinda did scream as the end of
one wing brushed the top rail of the fence between field and road.
Low as the aeroplane was--its bounding wheels had already touched the
earth--that slight collision almost threw it over. She ran along the
road as fast as she could run to keep pace with the rocketing, creaking
machine.
It stopped with a jolt. As is the rule when nearing the ground for a
landing the aviator had unhooked his belt, and he was catapulted from
his seat. The frightened girl saw him land upon hands and knees on the
ground; but luckily that field had been recently plowed.
She started to climb the fence, when the aviator struggled to his feet.
He saw her almost at once, and before making any examination of his
aeroplane, he stumbled toward her.
He was so bundled in furs and leather, and so masked, that he looked
like a being from another planet rather than a man. Although the sun
had now begun to burn up the mist, objects were still too indistinct
for either to descry clearly the other's features.
"Can Mademoiselle tell me where I have landed?" he asked in a muffled
voice. "What town is this yonder?"
She told him the name of the village in a breathless voice that must
have sounded strange to him, for he stepped nearer to peer across the
fence into her face, and she shrank back, troubled by his scrutiny.
"By jove! Not _you_, Miss Melnotte?" was his amazed cry.
"Mr. Sanderson! How wonderful! What are you doing here?"
"Scouting. I was up for two hours. Pretty near frozen. Believe me, the
temperature is low about six thousand feet up. And I got lost spiraling
down. But you, Miss Melnotte?"
He was looking at her so earnestly, with such warmth in his gaze, that
Belinda was forced to lower the lashes over her own eyes. She could
feel the accelerated pumping of her pulse. The bitter, bitter thoughts
she had harbored regarding Frank Sanderson suddenly melted, now that he
was with her.
She told him swiftly of her work and where her hospital unit lay.
"I must hurry to my _blessés_--I am late now," Belinda went on. "It was
such a terrible day yesterday. And you are in danger here, too."
This final observation seemed almost to burst unbidden from her lips.
Sanderson pressed her hands quickly.
"It's very sweet of you to say so, Miss Melnotte."
"There--there has been nobody I knew so near the battleline before,"
she faltered. "It seems terrible that you should be flying here."
"But you are housed much nearer the danger zone than I," he said. "Why
did you not take up your work in a base hospital?"
"Why did you join the Flying Corps instead of doing some safer work?"
she returned.
"Oh, there's excitement in this flying."
"And after yesterday," she said sadly, "I see that there is plenty of
excitement in my work."
"You are wonderfully courageous," he said. "But I shall worry, now that
I know you are so exposed."
She ignored this suggestion of his intimate interest, saying only:
"Perhaps the battle is ended. There are no guns this morning."
"It is only a lull," he responded earnestly. "I know that we are about
to make a strong attack all along this sector. That is why I must
hasten my return. May I hope to see you again, Miss Melnotte?"
"I hope you will be spared to," she replied frankly. "I must go now. Is
your machine all right? Can you mount again?"
"Must. I'm due back there at B----," and he pointed.
"It is wonderful--this flying."
"It's a bit ticklish," he said. Then, with a laugh: "You should see
Captain Raphe Dexter at it!"
"_He_ has not actually taken to flying? Aunt Roberta said----"
"He surely has. Been up with me at Pau. He is now taking a course in a
private aviation school, he writes me. He's a wise old bird. I believe
some of his money is coming to our escadrille. He's as plucky as they
make 'em, and a fine old gentleman!"
He shook hands with her again and started for the Nieuport. She watched
him from the roadway and waited, late as she was, until he was in the
air before continuing her way toward the hospital.
Sanderson circled above her head in the aeroplane, like a great bird,
and then, mounting higher, winged his way to the rear.