The two girls reached the farmhouse in a shorter time than they had
believed possible and at once rushed upstairs to their rooms. There
they dragged out their suit-cases, and Mildred’s and Eugenia’s as well,
and began packing them with the clothes they felt to be absolutely
necessary for their work.
They knew the wounded must first be removed from the field hospital,
with only the nurse and doctors who would have charge of them. But
there would also be other motor cars to transport the additional
nurses, physicians and hospital assistants. Moreover, since all the
tents and the supplies must afterwards be gotten away this would surely
require a fair amount of time. So in case they were late and missed the
first of the departing cars, they would certainly be stored away in one
of the later ones.
“I do wish we had asked Eugenia and Mildred to wait until we returned
to the hospital before they leave,” Barbara called from beneath the bed
in Mildred’s room, where she was dragging out a pair of shoes.
“It wouldn’t have made any difference if we had asked,” Nona answered.
“Mildred is to go in one of the first motor ambulances with the
wounded, as she has charge of two critically ill soldiers. And of
course Eugenia will do whatever she thinks wisest. Certainly she won’t
wait for us if she thinks it best to go first.”
“I am not so sure of that,” Barbara replied, and then there was a
silence lasting for several moments.
Afterwards Barbara and Nona wondered why they were not more frightened
during this half hour. The fact is that they had not yet appreciated
the seriousness of the French retreat, nor the great task of moving the
field hospital beyond the present danger line.
Moreover, they were too busy to think clearly on any subject, and a
time of action is seldom a time of fear.
Except for the two girls moving hastily about, the little farmhouse
was delightfully quiet and peaceful after the dreadful morning at the
hospital. Once the thought flashed through Barbara Meade’s mind: “If
only they might stay here in the little ‘House with the Blue Front
Door’ and take their chances with the enemy!” They would be under the
protection of the Red Cross. However, as they had received their orders
from an authority higher than Eugenia’s, like soldiers they must do as
they were commanded, without considering their personal inclinations.
So Barbara, having finished Mildred’s packing, took her suit-case
downstairs by the front door. She then went up for Eugenia’s, which
Nona had by this time completed. It was heavier than the other and she
staggered a little and had to stop to recover her breath after she had
placed it alongside Mildred’s.
Therefore, she chanced to be standing just beside the front door when
the first knocking on the outside began. Nona had drawn a great,
old-fashioned bolt across the door after entering, chiefly with the
idea that they should not be disturbed at their tasks.
Barbara did not open the door at once.
This knocking was not of an ordinary kind, such as one would expect
from a visitor. It was very insistent, never stopping for a second; it
was indeed, a kind of hurried tattoo.
“Who is there?” Barbara demanded. But before any one else could reply
Nona called from upstairs.
“Please don’t open the door, Barbara, at least not until we are about
to start. There isn’t an instant to waste in talking to any one.”
In consequence Barbara turned away, but immediately after she
recognized the voice of old François.
“Open, open!” he shouted, first in French and then in English, having
acquired a few words from his four American girl friends.
Then Barbara drew back the latch and François tumbled in.
The old fellow’s brown face was ashen and the pupils of his little
black eyes were dilated with fear.
He had evidently been running until he was almost out of breath.
“The French are retreating, all our army at once: They are tramping,
tramping through the fields and the woods. Madame the Countess says you
are to come to the chateau immediately. Soon the Germans will be here
and then----”
The old French peasant flung out his withered hands and rolled his eyes
upward. Words failed to express his pent-up emotions.
But Barbara shook her head quietly.
“You are very kind, François. Tell the Countess Amélie we are most
grateful for her thought of us. But we are going to the rear with the
field hospital staff and in any case we should be safe as Red Cross
nurses. Go back to her now, for she needs you more than we do. This
must be a terrible experience for her.”
Old François straightened his crooked back against the front door,
which he had most carefully closed after entering.
“But you must come and at once, Mademoiselle. For the Countess is ill,
perhaps dying from the shock of the news we have just received,” he
insisted. “Her son’s, Captain Henri’s, regiment has been destroyed.
Some of the men have been taken prisoners, the others killed or
wounded. And we have had no word from our young captain since the
fighting began.”
The old servant’s face worked with emotion and his eyes filled with
tears.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” Barbara murmured pitifully, and then realizing the
inadequacy of words at such a time, turned to Nona, who had at this
instant come downstairs, carrying her own and Barbara’s bags.
“What shall we do, Nona?” Barbara demanded. “We should have started
back to the field hospital before this. And yet if we go now and leave
the Countess ill with no one to look after her, it seems too cruel!
Suppose I go with François and you return to the hospital and explain
what has delayed me. Tell Eugenia where I am. Somehow I feel that
perhaps the Countess Amélie needs my care more than the soldiers do
today. There are so many other nurses to look after them, while she is
old and alone.”
Nona’s dark eyes looked troubled, nevertheless she shook her head.
“I don’t agree with you, Barbara. We ought to be at our posts. We have
promised our services to the soldiers; besides, I could not let you go
alone to the Countess. Don’t you know that when the German soldiers
overrun this countryside the chateau will be one of the first places
to be seized? It is the most important house in the neighborhood and
the German officers are sure to take up their headquarters there.” Nona
held out her hand to François.
“I too am sorrier than I can say, but we can’t do what you ask of us,”
she declared, “we must go back to our work. Please try and make the
Countess Amélie understand. Now good-by, François, and may we meet
again in happier times. You must move away from the door and let us be
off, for we are dreadfully late already from talking to you.”
But old François did not stir.
“You have lived in Madame’s house, you have eaten of her food, and yet
when she may be dying you will not serve her. Because you wear on your
arm the badge of the _Croix de Rouge_, does it mean that you care only
for soldiers? Because Madame is a woman and an old one, you feel no
interest in her! Truly if she dies this war will have killed her, for
one does not die only from wounds of the flesh.”
Barbara’s blue eyes had slowly filled with tears during the old
peasant’s speech. But now a resolute line formed about the corners of
her pretty mouth that only showed there occasionally.
“I am going to the Countess, Nona,” she remarked quietly. “You must do
whatever your conscience prompts you to do. Mine tells me that we have
accepted a great deal from the Countess and now she needs me more than
any one else. If the hospital staff consider me a deserter, I cannot
help it. Besides, I almost promised Eugenia that I would go to the
Countess Amélie if the Germans conquered this part of the countryside.
It was for another reason I promised, but tell her, please, and she
will understand. Good-by; I’ll join you as soon as possible. Don’t
worry about me.”
Barbara stooped and picked up her bag.
“I’ll find my way to the chateau alone. Fortunately, I know the way,”
she added. “François, you must go with Miss Davis, so as to carry
the other suit-cases. Then you’ll come back to Madame as quickly as
possible.”
Taking a watch out of her pocket, Nona now glanced at it.
“I am coming with you, Barbara. Already we are nearly an hour behind
the time when the field hospital expected to be on its way. If I return
now I shall either find that everybody and everything has departed,
or else it will merely be an additional trouble to dispose of me at
the last. A day’s loss of _my_ services cannot make such a great
difference. So we can first find out how greatly the Countess Amélie
needs us, and then tomorrow, one or both of us must somehow manage to
rejoin the army. The French retreat may not be so universal as we fear.”
By this time the blue front door had been flung open by François,
so that outside the girls could hear the tramping of many feet. But
the feet were moving with a rhythmical swing that proved the French
soldiers were at least retreating in good order. So far there had been
no rout by the enemy.
Now François was in the greatest hurry of the three. He had taken
Barbara’s bag out of her hand and now laid hold of Nona’s. Then he set
off, trotting so rapidly down the path, in spite of his age and crooked
legs, that the two girls could scarcely keep up with him. Afterwards he
led their way into the woods, skirting along by the edge of the trees
and keeping safely out of sight of the soldiers, although numbers of
them were marching through the same woods on the farther side.
It was by this time early in the afternoon, but the girls found the
chateau undisturbed. Indeed, the autumn sun shone down upon it with
the same tranquillity as though the world had been at peace instead of
war. Across the neglected lawn a peacock stalked as majestically and
disdainfully as if the old gardens had been filled with the belles and
beaus in the silks and satins of a more picturesque age.
However, the two American girls were living in a too tragically
workaday world. They had no thought and no time for beauty, since a
shorter and more compelling word urged them on.
The lower part of the old chateau was deserted, and as neither Nona nor
Barbara knew the way upstairs, François preceded them. He opened first
the door of the Countess Amélie’s room, but found it empty. Without
hesitating, he then turned and walked quickly down a narrow corridor to
another room at almost the opposite end of the house. Knocking at this
door and receiving no answer, he crept in softly, beckoning to the two
girls to follow him.
But this room was so vast that neither Nona nor Barbara immediately
discovered its occupant. Evidently it was a man’s room and must have
covered the entire southern end of the chateau. Yet it was almost bare
of furniture of a conventional kind. On the walls old muskets hung and
bayonets of a bygone generation. The floor was of stone, uncarpeted,
and there were only two chairs, a tall chest of drawers and a single
iron bed in the apartment. If the young Captain Castaigne was a dandy,
as Eugenia considered him, certainly there was nothing about his room
to suggest it!
But Barbara was first to reach the bed, because she first saw that
the Countess Amélie had thrown herself upon it. She may have fainted
earlier in the day and thus alarmed François, but at present she
showed no signs of serious illness. Her face was drawn with suffering,
nevertheless she attempted to rise and speak to her guests as soon
as Barbara approached. The Countess Amélie belonged to the ancient
aristocracy of France whose women went to the guillotine with smiles
upon their faces. It was a part of their pride of class not to betray
their deeper emotions.
Yet Barbara found the small hand held out to her extremely cold, and it
was with an effort that the older woman found herself able to stand.
“I am more than glad you have been able to reach the chateau, Miss
Meade,” she began. “Doubtless you know as well as I do that our
French army is in retreat and that the German army may occupy this
neighborhood at any hour. But where are your other two friends? I
promised my son that in case of danger I would send for you. He could
not contemplate the thought of your being alone if the barbarians
overwhelmed us.”
The Countess spoke quietly enough, yet there was bitter antagonism in
her voice. One could hardly expect a French woman to feel otherwise
at an hour like this. Remember also that this was a portion of France
near the border of Alsace-Lorraine, which the Germans took as a part of
their booty at the close of the Franco-Prussian war.
The French people had not recovered from the bitterness of that defeat
when the great war began.
Barbara was looking somewhat nonplussed at finding that the Countess
was not in need of her services as a nurse, so she allowed Nona to join
her and make the first reply.
“We were under the impression that you were ill and needed us, or we
should not have come,” Nona answered. “The field hospital has been
moved and we intended leaving with them, so we should have been as safe
as possible. Our friends, Miss Thornton and Miss Peabody, have gone on
with the staff. Still, we appreciate your wishing to protect us,” she
ended gently.
In reality, both Nona and Barbara were deeply chagrined at the position
in which they now found themselves. Yet there was no doubt that the
older woman had meant to be kind. Besides, nothing could be gained by
making a protest now.
Both girls accompanied the Countess Amélie out of the room.
“I am alone here, except for François,” she explained. “If the Germans
come this way, doubtless my chateau will be one of the first places
which they will require for their own use. Therefore, it is necessary
that we be ready to leave at once. You need not be frightened;
François, will go with us, and there is a secret passage leading away
from the chateau, through which we can make our escape without danger.
I am going to ask you to help me pack a small store of provisions, as I
think we will be happier with work to occupy our hands.”
Not a word of her anguish over her son’s uncertain fate, nor a protest
at being forced in her old age to turn her back upon the home of her
ancestors! Surely this was aristocracy of the spirit as well as of
class, Nona and Barbara both thought to themselves, although neither
said a word to the other upon the subject.
That afternoon, between five and six o’clock, François brought word
that the German army had captured the last line of French trenches and
would soon overflow into the countryside.
Ten minutes later the Countess Amélie, Nona, Barbara and François,
voluntarily deserting the chateau, started upon an uncertain journey to
overtake the retreating French army.