Ruth Fielding had already become inured to the sights and sounds of
hospital life at Lyse, and to its work as well. Of course she was not
under the physical strain that the Red Cross nurses endured; but her
heart was racked by sympathy for the _blessés_ as greatly as the nurses'
own.
Starting without knowing anyone in the big hospital, she quickly learned
her duties, and soon showed, too, her fitness for the special work
assigned her. Her responsibilities merely included the arranging of
special supplies and keeping the key of her supply room; but the
particular strain attending her work was connected with the spiritual
needs of the wounded.
Their gratitude, she soon found, was a thing to touch and warm the
heart. Fretful they might be, and as unreasonable as children at times.
But in the last count they were all--even the hardest of them--grateful
for what she could do for them.
She had read (who has not?) of the noble sacrifices of that great woman
whose work for the helpless soldiers in hospital antedates the Red Cross
and its devoted workers--Florence Nightingale. She knew how the sick and
dying soldiers in the Crimea kissed her shadow on their pillows as she
passed their cots, and blessed her with their dying breaths.
The roughest soldier, wounded unto death, turns to the thought of
mother, of wife, of sweetheart, of sister--indeed, turns to any good
woman whose voice soothes him, whose hand cools the fever of his brow.
Ruth Fielding began to understand better than ever before this
particular work that she was now called upon to perform, and that she
was so well fitted to perform.
She was cheerful as well as sympathetic; she was sane beyond most young
girls in her management of men--many men.
"Bless you, Mademoiselle!" declared the matron, "of course they will
make love to you. Let them. It will do them good--the poor _blessés_--and
do you no harm. And you have a way with you!"
Ruth got over being worried by amatory bouts with the wounded poilus
after a while. Her best escape was to offer to write letters to the
afflicted one's wife or sweetheart. That was part of her work--to attend
to as much of the correspondence of the helplessly wounded as possible.
And all the time she gave sympathy and care to these strangers she
hoped, if Tom Cameron should chance to be wounded, some woman would be
as kind to him!
She had not received a second letter from Tom; but after a fortnight Mr.
Cameron and Helen came unexpectedly to Clair. Helen spent two days with
her while Mr. Cameron attended to some important business connected with
his mission in France.
They had seen Tom lately, and reported that the boy had advanced
splendidly in his work. Mr. Cameron declared proudly that his son was a
born soldier.
He had already been in the trenches held by both the French and British
to study their methods of defence and offence. This training all the
junior, as well as senior, officers of the American expeditionary forces
were having, for this was an altogether new warfare that was being waged
on the shell-swept fields of France and Belgium.
Helen had arranged to remain in Paris with Jennie Stone when her father
went back to the States. She expressed herself as rather horrified at
some of the things she learned Ruth did for and endured from the wounded
men.
"Why, they are not at all nice--some of them," she objected with a
shudder. "That great, black-whiskered man almost swore in French just
now."
"Jean?" laughed Ruth. "I presume he did. He has terrible wounds, and
when they are dressed he lies with clenched hands and never utters a
groan. But when a man does _that_, keeping subdued the natural outlet of
pain through groans and tears, his heart must of necessity, Helen,
become bitter. His irritation spurts forth like the rain, upon the
unjust and the just--upon the guilty and innocent alike."
"But he should consider what you are doing for him--how you step out of
your life down into his----"
"_Up_ into his, say, rather," Ruth interrupted, flushing warmly. "It is
true he of the black beard whom you are taking exception to, is a carter
by trade. But next to him lies a count, and those two are brothers. Ah,
these Frenchmen in this trial of their patriotism are wonderful, Helen!"
"Some of them are very dirty, unpleasant men," sighed Helen, shaking her
head.
"You must not speak that way of my children. Sometimes I feel jealous of
the nurses," said Ruth, smiling sadly, "because they can do so much more
for them than I. But I can supply them with some comforts which the
nurses cannot."
They were, indeed, like children, these wounded, for the most part. They
called Ruth "sister" in their tenderest moments; even "maman" when they
were delirious. The touch of her hand often quieted them when they were
feverish. She read to them when she could. And she wrote innumerable
letters--intimate, family letters that these wounded men would have
shrunk from having their mates know about.
Ruth, too, had to share in all the "news from home" that came to the
more fortunate patients. She unpacked the boxes sent them, and took care
of such contents as were not at once gobbled down--for soldiers are
inordinately fond of "goodies." She had to obey strictly the doctors'
orders about these articles of diet, however, or some of the patients
would have failed to progress in their convalescence.
Nor were all on the road to recovery; yet the spirit of cheerfulness was
the general tone of even the "dangerous" cases. Their unshaken belief
was that they would get well and, many of them, return to their families
again.
"_Chère petite mère_," Louis, the little Paris tailor, shot through both
lungs, whispered to Ruth as she passed his bed, "see! I have something
to show you. It came to me only to-day in the mail. Our first--and born
since I came away. The very picture of his mother!"
The girl looked, with sympathetic eyes, at the postcard photograph of a
very bald baby. Her ability to share in their joys and sorrows made her
work here of much value.
"I feel now," said Louis softly, "that _le bon Dieu_ will surely let me
live--I shall live to see the child," and he said it with exalted
confidence.
But Ruth had already heard the head physician of the hospital whisper to
the nurse that Louis had no more than twenty-four hours to live. Yet the
poilu's sublime belief kept him cheerful to the end.
Many, many things the girl of the Red Mill was learning these days. If
they did not exactly age her, she felt that she could never again take
life so thoughtlessly and lightly. Her girlhood was behind her; she was
facing the verities of existence.