The early hours of that morning were the most tedious that Ruth Fielding
ever had experienced. She was tied here to the convalescent ward of the
Clair Hospital, while her every thought was bent upon that rocking
ambulance that might be taking the broken body of Tom Cameron to the
great base hospital at Lyse.
Was it possible that Tom was in Charlie Bragg's car? What might not
happen to the ambulance on the dark and rough road over which Ruth had
once ridden with the young American chauffeur.
While she was looking out of the window at the ambulance as it halted at
the gateway of the hospital court, was poor Tom, unconscious and
wounded, in Charlie's car? Oh! had she but suspected it! Would she not
have run down and insisted that Tom be brought in here where she might
care for him?
Her heart was wrung by this possibility. She felt condemned that she had
not suspected Tom's presence at the time! Had not felt his nearness to
her!
Helen was far away in Paris. Already Mr. Cameron was on the high seas.
There was nobody here so close to Tom as Ruth herself. Nor could anybody
else do more for him than Ruth, if only she could find him!
The battle clouds and storm clouds both broke in the east with the
coming of the clammy dawn. She saw the promise of a fair day just before
sunrise; then the usual morning fog shut down, shrouding all the earth
about the town. It would be noon before the sun could suck up this
moisture.
Two hours earlier than expected the day nurse came to relieve her. Ruth
was thankful to be allowed to go. Having spent the night here she would
not be expected to serve in her own department that day. Yet she wished
to see the matron and put to her a request.
It was much quieter downstairs when she descended. A nodding nurse in
the hall told her that every bed and every cot in the hospital was
filled. Some of the convalescents would be removed as soon as possible
so as to make room for newly wounded poilus.
"But where is the matron?"
"Ah, the good mother has gone to her bed--quite fagged out. Twenty-four
hours on her feet--and she is no longer young. If I can do anything for
the Americaine mademoiselle----?"
But Ruth told her no. She would write a note for _Madame la Directrice_,
to be given to her when she awoke. For the girl of the Red Mill was
determined to follow a plan of her own.
By rights she should be free until the next morning. There were
twenty-four hours before her during which she need not report for
service. Had she not learned of Tom's trouble she doubtless would have
taken a short nap and then appeared to help in any department where she
might be of use.
But, to Ruth's mind, Tom's need was greater than anything else just
then. In her walks about Clair she had become acquainted with a French
girl who drove a motor-car--Henriette Dupay. Her father was one of the
larger farmers, and the family lived in a beautiful old house some
distance out of town. Ruth made a brief toilet, a briefer breakfast, and
ran out of the hospital, taking the lane that led to the Dupay farm.
The fog was so thick close to the ground that she could not see people
in the road until she was almost upon them. But, then, it was so early
that not many even of the early-rising farmers were astir.
In addition, the night having been so racked with the sounds of the
guns,--now dying out, thank heaven!-and the noise of the ambulances
coming in from the front and returning thereto, that most of the
inhabitants of Clair were exhausted and slept late.
The American girl, well wrapped in a cloak and with an automobile veil
wound about her hat and pulled down to her ears, walked on hurriedly,
stopping now and then at a crossroad to make sure she was on the right
track.
If Henriette Dupay could get her father's car, and would drive Ruth to
Lyse, the latter would be able to assure herself about Tom one way or
another. She felt that she must know just how badly the young fellow was
wounded!
To think! An arm torn off at the elbow--if it was really Tom who had been
picked up with the note Ruth had received in his pocket. It was dreadful
to think of.
At one point in her swift walk Ruth found herself sobbing hysterically.
Yet she was not a girl who broke down easily. Usually she was
selfcontrolled. Helen accused her sometimes of being even phlegmatic.
She took a new grip upon herself. Her nerves must not get the best of
her! It might not be Tom Cameron at all who was wounded. There were
other American officers mixed in with the French troops on this sector
of the battle front--surely!
Yet, who else but Tom would have carried that letter written to "Dear
Ruth Fielding"? The more the girl of the Red Mill thought of it the more
confident she was that there could have been no mistake made. Tom had
fallen wounded in the trenches and was now in the big hospital at Lyse,
where she had worked for some weeks in the ranks of the Red Cross
recruits.
Suddenly the girl was halted by a voice in the fog. A shrill exclamation
in a foreign tone--not French--sounded just ahead. It was a man's voice,
and a woman's answered. The two seemed to be arguing; but to hear people
talking in anything but French or English in this part of France was
enough to astonish anybody.
"That is not German. It is a Latin tongue," thought the girl,
wonderingly. "Italian or Spanish, perhaps. Who can it be?"
She started forward again, yet walked softly, for the moss and short
grass beside the road made her footfalls indistinguishable a few yards
away. There loomed up ahead of her a wayside cross--one of those
weather-worn and ancient monuments so often seen in that country.
In walking with Henriette Dupay, Ruth had seen the French girl kneel a
moment at this junction of the two lanes, and whisper a prayer. Indeed,
the American girl had followed her example, for she believed that God
hears the reverent prayer wherever it is made. And Ruth had felt of late
that she had much to pray for.
The voices of the two wrangling people suggested no worship, however.
Nor were they kneeling at the wayside shrine. She saw them, at last,
standing in the middle of the cross lane. One, she knew, had come down
from the chateau.
Ruth saw that the woman was the heavy-faced creature whom she had once
seen at the gateway of the chateau when riding past with Charlie Bragg.
This strange-looking old woman Charlie had said was a servant of the
countess up at the chateau and that she was not a Frenchwoman. Indeed,
the countess herself was not really French, but was Alsatian, and "the
wrong kind," to use the chauffeur's expression.
The American girl caught a glimpse of the woman's face and then hid her
own with her veil. But the man's countenance she did not behold until
she had passed the shrine and had looked back.
He had wheeled to look after Ruth. He was a small man and suddenly she
saw, as he stepped out to trace her departure more clearly, that he was
lame. He wore a heavy shoe on one foot with a thick and clumsy sole-such
as the supposed Italian chef had worn coming over from America on the
Red Cross ship.
Was it the man, José, suspected with Legrand and Mrs. Rose Mantel--all
members of a band of conspirators pledged to rob the Red Cross? Ruth
dared not halt for another glance at him. She pulled the veil further
over her face and scuttled on up the lane toward the Dupay farmhouse.