AT LAST!
The uncertainties--the desperate peril--of the situation wrung Belinda
Melnotte's heart until it seemed that no longer drops could filter from
her eyes. She had wept all her tears away without assuaging either her
grief or her fears.
Erard's pitiful, yet noble, death was only the beginning of the
tragedy. Doctor Herschall would now glut his thirst for revenge with
Frank's blood--and with her own!
No other explanation could she imagine for the surgeon's delay in
revealing Sanderson's identity. He could easily prove that the
so-called Herr Lieutenant August Gessler was actually an American
aviator, flying for France.
His suspicion of the young man, perhaps previously aroused, had
become conviction when Carl had brought to him the canteen with Frank
Sanderson's partly obliterated name on it. He had then proved his case
by finding the old scar on the American's shoulder.
Both Belinda and the man she could not help but love were helpless in
the hands of the Prussian surgeon. And could mercy be expected of one
who did not know what mercy meant?
Belinda expected at any moment to be sent for by the Herr Doktor for
the threatened interview in his lodge. Fate, however, intervened.
Since before noon there had been increased activity along the
battlefront. The British on one side, the French on the other of
the German wedge driven into this territory, were increasing their
pressure. They had brought up more heavy guns. The French 75s and the
British mortars were tearing great gaps in the new trenches of the
German line.
So, the ambulances rolled more frequently and the wounded began pouring
into this hospital station in such numbers as they had only once before
and under the French régime.
Doctor Herschall came directly from the château where the court had
been held to the operating ward. He threw off his helmet, cloak and
outer garments, got into a fresh smock, rolled the sleeves back upon
his hairy arms, bathed hands and arms in an antiseptic wash, and called
for his case of polished instruments.
He called, too, for Nurse Genau.
"Send her here at once," he commanded. "She is worth all these other
women put together. She knows what I want--and when I want it."
Belinda had already made herself useful. Her old ward was quite
filled, so no new cases were being entered there. But the hut the
women nurses had slept in was being hastily made ready for the freshly
wounded. Where the nurses would sleep thereafter was a question.
"But by the sound of those guns," said one phlegmatic German woman to
Belinda, "we shall have no time for sleep. Yes?"
Belinda shrank from obeying the surgeon's command. The horrors of the
operating ward seemed to her now more than she could bear. Yet there
was no escape. She was forced to join the black-browed Herr Doktor at
the chief table--the table to which most of the serious cases were
brought.
She worked far into the night--worked until she was so foot-weary she
thought she must drop beside the table.
The Prussian surgeon seemed tireless. Each fresh case renewed both his
vigor and his interest. Between operations he would stand, picking at
the long black hairs upon his arms, or exercising his already supple
fingers in that grim way which was his habit.
He was a marvel. In Belinda's mind, wearied and sick as she was, grew
the wonder again of this strange man. Seemingly without heart, without
conscience, a person apart from all humanity because he lacked humane
feeling--or the power of expressing it--this being performed the most
delicate operations with the sure skill of a master, in the same haste
that another surgeon might tie up finger wounds!
He turned with his usual harshness to Belinda at the end:
"You are excused, Nurse Genau. Report at nine-thirty again. There will
be some pretty cases by that time, I have no doubt."
The nurse could not reply had she wished. She almost staggered from the
ward. Where she would sleep she did not know. The whole hospital was
now crowded, and everybody working with might and main, while the guns
thundered closer--closer.
Belinda found Carl Baum awaiting her outside. His quick hand bore her
up or she would have stumbled and fallen.
"That beast!" the corporal muttered. "Has he made you work in that
shambles all this time? Paul said he would."
"Hush!" begged his cousin. "Then you and Paul are friends again?"
"_Ach!_" growled Carl, "we have arranged a truce. For one purpose only,
perhaps. But we will keep it. Never mind. You are under my care now,
Cousin Belinda."
"What do you mean, Carl?"
"I am to take you to a new lodging. You will be safe there and may
sleep soundly. Come."
It was to a cottage near by in which the wife of a brother corporal had
set up housekeeping amid the abandoned lares and penates of its former
French occupant. The woman had an honest face, and the Red Cross nurse
felt safe with her.
As for sleeping, that was another matter. Aside from the thundering
discharge of the heavy guns--seemingly at every round coming
nearer--which shook the atmosphere so that their eardrums seemed almost
to crack under the strain, the Red Cross nurse had a heart and mind too
full for slumber to be a welcome visitor.
Yet she could scarcely meditate consecutively in a single line
of thought as she lay on her mattress. So many, many topics--all
hateful--seemed scurrying through her mind. And between these rose
scenes of horror from her day's work.
She could not even cling to the thought of Sanderson's peril. For when
she considered him at all there seared her conscience the thought that
she had irrevocably given her love, her confidence, all that was best
and greatest in her, to a man who had no right to accept the sacrifice.
She did not blame him now. She was too fair to the facts, too honorable
by nature, to accuse Frank Sanderson of being the more guilty of the
two.
Indeed she knew that had she not flung herself and her all upon the
altar at that moment when he was brought wounded into her ward, Frank
would not have known her heart, or fully revealed his own.
No. She was the wicked one, and was not all this peril that threatened
them both, the punishment for their sin?
Ah, an uneasy mind is harder to bear than physical ills! Whether she
deserved it or not, Belinda Melnotte bore a burden on her heart that
seemingly nothing in the future could lift.
Save death. They could die together--she and Frank. Indeed, she felt
she should die if Sanderson were stood up and shot as poor Erard had
been. Without doubt she would have no choice in the matter. The Herr
Doktor's evidence against the aviator would convict her as well.
But to have the decision postponed--to wait in this wretched
uncertainty on the pleasure of the Prussian surgeon!
That is exactly what Belinda was forced to endure. She rose, coming
heavy-eyed and with dragging limbs to the operating ward at the hour
appointed. Doctor Herschall met her as though he saw none of the misery
in her face, and by no word or look displayed interest in anything but
the eternal operations.
The battle went on, and went on with unabated ferocity. The hospital
was crowded as it never had been crowded before.
Day after day dragged by. Belinda did not see her cousins. Few
able-bodied soldiers remained at the hospital. All were hurried to the
very front to stem the rising tide of British and French success. The
Allies' great push was going forward, causing the sacrifice of many
Germans, and that in spite of von Hindenburg's counter attacks.
Of Sanderson, interned in the château, she heard no word. She knew that
every wounded man in her old ward that could be moved, save Ernest
Spiegel, had been sent to the rear. The Herr Doktor evidently had use
yet for his spy.
Suddenly the burdened ambulances ceased rolling into the hospital
enclosure. They passed on to the rear. The cessation of new cases,
however, did not relieve the anxious expression upon the faces of most
of the surgeons.
Doctor Herschall stretched his bared arms above his head, working his
fingers spasmodically.
"Ho, ho! Soh! It's over? We may as well pack our kits, brothers. The
order to move will soon come."
He expressed boldly the thought they all had. This army corps was being
forced back. The territory gained for a few short weeks would soon be
lost to the German line. The hospital station would become untenable.
They had not come into this part of France, after all, to remain!
Belinda fled from the operating ward the moment the work there stopped.
The sentinel at the gate knew she now lodged outside the hospital
enclosure and allowed her to pass.
She observed, yet without the fact making any deep impression upon her
anxious mind, that the soldiers she passed, as well as the civilians,
wore a hurried and harried air.
She had seen the rout of the French; now was she about to behold the
falling back of a more sullen and more broken army?
From a soldier whose face she recognized she learned that Major von
Brandenburg retained his headquarters at the château. A part of her
cousins' regiment was still detailed there and she might find Paul or
Carl near by.
Through them she might be able to learn something about Frank. If he
was merely being detained at the instance of the Herr Doktor, with no
serious accusation made against him, she hoped to reach the aviator. It
seemed to Belinda as though she must see and speak to him. The several
days that had passed since they had parted had been a nightmare.
Nobody sought to interfere with Belinda on the road. Her Red Cross
uniform protected her even when she reached the château.
Of course, had she tried to enter the major's offices, the sentinel
would have stopped her. But that was not her object.
If Frank Sanderson was still here he must be somewhere in the wing of
the building in which poor Erard had spent a few brief hours in a cell.
The prisoners were down there. On the upper floors were offices and the
quarters of some of the baron's staff. One of these rooms was that, it
might be, in which Sanderson was detained until Doctor Herschall had
decided upon his case.
Necessity made Belinda bold. She selected a side entrance of this wing
well away from the main door of the château and approached quickly.
Soldiers and servants were hurrying about. Two great motor-trucks were
backed up here and into them the personal belongings of the staff were
being loaded.
Retreat was expected, if it had not already been ordered.
In the doorway stood a soldier, his back to the nurse as she drew near.
"Will you please tell me," she began softly, when he wheeled and she
beheld Paul Genau.
"Belinda!" he exclaimed.
"Oh, Paul! I am so glad to see you are safe. And Carl?"
"_Ach!_ You can't kill that thickhead," declared the sergeant-major.
"He and I were in a raid last night; just back from the front now. He's
gone to have his head sewed up. He led his squad in a charge and tried
to kill a Frenchman by butting him to death like a goat. And, _mein
Gott_! I believe Baum succeeded. He'll get the Iron Cross for it, I
have no doubt, _der Glückshund_!
"But you, Cousin? How have you done? I fancy the Herr Major smells
a change in the wind," and he gestured toward the lorries and the
hurrying servants.
"You will move back?"
"Or forward," declared Paul tartly. "A strategic retreat, dear Cousin,
is often the forerunner of a safe advance."
"But whichever happens," the nurse said earnestly, "I wish to know what
has become of--of the flying-man?"
"Ah! Is it so?"
"I have come to see him, Paul. You must help me!" she whispered. "Is he
still here?"
"The Herr Lieutenant August Gessler is here and very comfortably
entertained," Paul said. "Merely, for some reason best known to the
Herr Doktor, he is requested not to leave his room--in the rear on this
floor."
"Oh, Paul! I must see him," she repeated.
"Why?" asked the young man, his eyes averted from her face. "Why are
you so deeply interested in this flying-man?" he added.
"If you are my friend, Cousin Paul, you will not ask," she told him
softly.
He looked at her again and there was something in his countenance she
did not understand.
"Belinda," he said, "you evidently do not know what has happened."
"What is it? Not to Fra--to the flying-man?"
"_Ach!_ all you think of is this flying-man," muttered Paul. "No. It is
something of considerable more moment. You are an American, you say.
We can be no longer friends, for our countries--yours and mine, sweet
Cousin--are at war!"
"Oh, Paul!"
"So I have just learned. It is not our Kaiser who makes this war; it is
your President. War was declared by the United States yesterday. So, do
you expect me still to be your friend?"
She could not answer him. Something in her throat choked back any word
she might have uttered. Her cousins! Not only Paul, but Carl!--all her
mothers relatives in Germany--were now actually arrayed against her if
she was an American! She held out her arms to her cousin.
The young man took her hand and with no further word led her down a
corridor, across a great and almost bare room, and there knocked upon a
door.
"Come in," said a voice in German that made Belinda's heart leap. She
looked again at Paul, her gratitude in her eyes.
"This much I may do for you, Cousin Belinda," he whispered. He raised
her hand to his lips. But she impulsively put both arms about his neck
for a moment and her warm lips left their impress on his brow.
"Come in!" said the voice again.
Belinda pushed inward the door. Frank Sanderson sat with a book at the
table in the middle of the great chamber, the barred windows of which
looked out upon the deserted rear premises of the château.
"Belinda! My dear girl!"
An unseen hand drew the door close again. Paul shut out of his tortured
vision the sight of his cousin running hysterically into another man's
arms.
"At last!" murmured Frank, after a moment. "I feared----Do you
know what day this is? The date Renaud set for our rescue. But the
rendezvous is in that wood where I fell with the German--do you
understand? It was to be to-night or early to-morrow morning. How shall
we get there?
"I am practically a prisoner," continued the aviator. "And you,
Belinda?"
She told him swiftly, her head on his bosom the while, his good arm
encircling her. They stood thus when a sharp and sudden explosion of
voices arose in the anteroom. The door was flung open. Doctor Franz
Herschall stood confronting them.