THE PREPARATION
Belinda Melnotte took to her lodging that night a heavy and troubled
spirit. Sanderson's visit to the hospital had lifted not at all the
burden of doubt and unhappiness that she had borne so long.
She confessed to herself--and confessed it with shame--that the
appearance of the young aviator had caused her joy unspeakable. When he
had clasped her hands she had been obliged to fix her gaze elsewhere
that Sanderson might not see in her eyes the very expression he
evidently longed to see there.
Yet, how she had dismissed and flouted him! Every word she said in
spurning his half-spoken address had cut her own heart like a knife.
She loved him. She needed him particularly now in her heavy trials and
ungrateful tasks at the hospital. Ah, if beside her stood just such a
strong-souled, tender yet cheering presence as the aviator possessed!
Yet she cried: "Unworthy! Unworthy! He _must_ be bad! He _is_!"
That other woman and her children stood beside the aviator in Belinda's
vision. She could not recall his presence to her thought without
bringing up, too, the wraiths of the family he must wrong in his
thoughts every time he tried to address her--Belinda--with affection!
Even if he contemplated divorcing Stella, the Red Cross nurse could not
think of him as her fit mate. It was against her religious training and
abhorrent to her own conscience.
It became difficult for Belinda to bring into her ward a cheerful face,
as had been her wont, to speak lightly to her charges, to raise--as she
had heretofore--the spiritual temperature.
Desultory fighting continued; but after all there had been no great
push. It was abandoned, they said, till spring. Snow and mud, rain and
frost, made of all Northern France where the trenches lay an almost
impassable wilderness. Nature and the elements gave the embattled
armies a respite from the fray.
That is, these circumstances made all but ordinary trench fighting and
air activities impossible. There were sorties and counter attacks along
the sector almost daily; but the general result was _nil_ for either
side.
The Red Cross nurse went back to Minerva's one evening under a lowering
sky that was copper colored by the rays of the setting sun all along
the horizon. The landscape, Belinda thought, was the dreariest she had
ever seen. Here and there stood tortured, broken trees, where shells
had burst in the branches. Everywhere in the fields were _marmite_
holes, or the craters made by the shells from the "Big Berthas." Many
of the houses along the way had been burst asunder by the shells, and,
of course, had never been repaired.
In her room under the now-thatched eaves of the stone-walled cottage
Belinda delayed undressing, not because her body was not wearied, but
because her brain was wide, wide awake. In the dull radiance of a smoky
lamp she read over again the few letters from Aunt Roberta and from
girls whom she had known in New York or at college that had reached her
since she had come to the battlefields.
There was a cheerful note in all--even in Aunt Roberta's.
* * * * *
"Captain Dexter has called again and reports that you are very well and
as pretty as ever. Ah, he is a dear man. He knows how to compliment
a woman. He should be French," was the burden of Aunt Roberta's last
letter.
"He calls in the morning in a taxicab and takes me to drive, if I have
time to go. In the afternoon he sometimes takes tea with me. That is,
if I and Margot are not housecleaning. Such a house as this is for
dirt! And Margot must be watched like a hawk or she will sweep the
sweepings under the furniture. If all goes well the captain sometimes
takes me to dinner. The cafés and restaurants are not very gay, I must
confess. It is very different now from my remembrance of Paris as it
used to be. Why, it is not even as gay as New York! And these landlords
here evidently never heard of hot-water supply! All I get through the
rusty registers in these rooms, too, is the smell of coal gas--no heat,
I vow! I know why the nobles who once lived in this hotel are here
no more; they all froze to death in the cold winter of '74--and the
present winter promises to be even colder. I have set up a coal stove
in the parlor, as the tradesmen seem to know nothing about oil heaters.
The captain says he would like to have the opportunity of putting his
feet up on a base-burner (whatever that may be) and of eating a baked
apple at night before he retires, as he used to do in Old Saybrook.
That Old Saybrook must, in truth, be a place very charming."
* * * * *
There were three of Belinda's school friends in France--one married to
a Frenchman and thoroughly imbued with the spirit of French patriotism;
the other two working for the suffering wounded. But letters from all
three were in cheerful vein. The wearied girl mentally compared their
state with her own. In her diary she wrote:
"There is something lacking in my life. I have no spring left
in me. It is not that I am more exhausted in body than I used
sometimes to be in the hospital at home (the 'home' was crossed
out and 'New York' written instead), but I miss something--I need
something----"
A clatter against the closed shutter of her window made the girl look
up. Again the rattling--was it pebbles?--startled the silence of the
room. The whole house was still.
Belinda stood up, dropping her pen, one hand upon her heart. She saw
her face in the little oval mirror over her dressing-table. Her lips
were wreathed in a smile, her eyes were aglow. Her appearance startled
the girl.
She crossed the room quite calmly as, for a third time, the pebbles
clattered on the shutter. She unhooked and pushed back the swinging
blind. A figure stood in the middle of the road, looking up at her.
"Belinda! Miss Melnotte!"
"Yes."
"This is Sanderson."
"I know," breathed the girl, resting both palms on the window-sill and
looking down upon him. If her face had not been in the shadow! If he
could have seen her luminous eyes!
"I wanted to see you again--just to speak to you," he pleaded, coming
closer under the window.
"What is it? You are not going back?" she asked, but keeping her voice
perfectly steady.
"No. I am going forward." He laughed with a strange tenseness in his
tone. "I cannot tell you much about it. It is forbidden. 'Even the
night hath ears.'"
"Oh! An air attack?" she whispered.
"In force. Several squadrons. Before daybreak. I--I wished to see
you--to speak to you. If I should not return at once, you'll--you'll
tell Captain Dexter to attend to my papers. He'll understand. I've
fixed things for the kiddies----"
"Oh! Yes," she said. Her voice was suddenly hoarse and dry. She drew
back further into the shadow.
"Good-by, Miss Melnotte--Belinda."
"Good-by, Mr. Sanderson."
He turned away rather abruptly and trudged back along the road toward
the town.
She stood long at the casement--long after he was out of sight, and
her thoughts were bitter. She had let him go from her without a tender
word--without a whisper to console him. She fought down sternly the
desire to call him back--to slip into her cape and run after him along
the dark and lonely road.
He would go into the air at dawn on a mission that seemed to her
mind almost sure to have a fatal ending. How often he faced death in
his daily flights she did not know. But evidently Frank Sanderson
considered this present venture as threatening more than usual peril,
or he would not have come so far for a last glimpse of her.
A last glimpse! She thought of that moment on the _Belle o' Perth_ when
the nearness of death from the submarine attack was so heavy upon them.
She had been kinder to him then. She had let him see for a moment that
she cared.
Would he remember that weakness on her part when he mounted into the
skies at dawn? Or would his last thought of her be as she was when she
let him go from her window without a word of cheer?
On Sanderson's part, plodding gloomily campward, he felt as though he
had been guilty of a weakness in venturing to see Belinda. He had no
right to try to interest the girl in his affairs. How chaotic those
affairs might be in another twenty-four hours!
He had learned that afternoon that there was to be a strong air attack
over the German lines. For some reason the general in command desired
the Germans harassed at this point.
The town was filled with new troops and arriving guns and supplies. The
loaded, low-hung wagons ground through the streets and on toward the
north. Troops of all kinds marched through--the most of them fresh,
lively young fellows who hailed the aviators as they passed their camp
with, "Hey, Bill!" "'Ello, Charley!" "_Américain Aviateur!_ Hi! Hi!"
A train of giant mortars had gone up only two days before, mounted on
great trucks and drawn by big motor lorries. It seemed as though all
the world was in arms and was deploying past that aviation camp.
The preparations for the coming flight of at least three
squadrons--perhaps more--were carried on in secret; yet a bustle
all through the camps preceded it. The first business was an air
reconnaissance. Every pilot wished personally to see that his machine
was in the best shape possible, leaving nothing to chance, and very
little to the judgment of his mechanicians.
Sanderson's aeroplane was a small Nieuport--one of those called by the
French _appareils de chasse_ on account of their great speed (over one
hundred miles an hour)--and had long since reached the front. The young
American had been favorably marked during the winter as a cool and
well-balanced pilot, with plenty of nerve and daring in reserve. His
type of machine made him distinctly a fighting _aviateur_.
As he came back from his call upon the Red Cross nurse, foot-weary
and not altogether composed in his mind, it was midnight. Before he
reached the château where the members of his escadrille were quartered,
he saw the bombarding unit going up--the first of this planned aerial
attack on the Germans.
The machines mounted slowly, turning in great circles overhead until
they reached the proper altitude--twenty-two of them. Then they
vanished with their destructive bombs into the north. These bombs have
propellers attached so as to retard their fall; otherwise they might
sink too deeply into the earth to do much damage when they explode.
Before the bombarding squadron returned in the early morning the order
came for the battleplanes to get under way. Sanderson had not had much
sleep, but he was perfectly ready for the work in hand.
As the young American "jumped" his aeroplane from the ground and
soared upward he saw many other machines rising--not only of his own
escadrille, but of the several others brought to the sector for this
attack.
His Nieuport scaled up the airways at a sharp angle--too sharp,
perhaps, with the wind that was blowing. Surely the American was not
careless in his management of the aeroplane--on such an occasion as
this, too!
Yet his mind might not have been wholly upon the work before him. Was
Belinda thinking of him at this moment? Was she kinder to him in her
secret thoughts than she was openly?
She must know that an attack in force upon the German aircraft fleet
would mean the destruction of many French aeroplanes and the death of
their pilots. _He_ had no charm against disaster!
Suddenly his Nieuport swerved, rolled sideways, and seemed about to
turn over. Sanderson shut off the motor. The machine, quivering and
shaking, seemed to stand still on its tail for a moment.
A stronger draft of air had struck the wings, and only the pilot's
quick action in shutting off the motor had saved him from a fatal
accident. The Nieuport righted itself, and Sanderson drove on after the
members of his escadrille.