The Château Yvonne
It was night in the Château Yvonne.
The old house was unlighted and extraordinarily still. Now and then from
the recesses of a vine-covered wall, a screech owl sounded his lament,
while from the banks of a small lake nearby a company of frogs croaked
their approval.
Otherwise the château appeared deserted, and in the moonlight one could
see that portions of it were in ruins and that only the oldest part,
which originally had been built of stone, remained intact.
Nevertheless, at present the old château was not uninhabited. It was now
after midnight and a figure, carrying a candle, moved through the wide
hall of the second floor. So silently the figure moved that unless one
were listening intently, one would have heard no footfall.
The apparition was a woman, with her hair bound in two long braids, her
figure slender and agile as a girl’s. Yet she had a look of courage, of
hardly fought anxiety, which, together with her delicacy, held no
suggestion of youth.
As she entered one of the bedrooms, one saw that she was not alone in the
old house, two girls lay asleep in a large, old-fashioned French
bedstead, a third girl in a cot nearby.
Their sleep must have been partly due to exhaustion, because as the light
of the candle flickered across their faces, no one of them spoke or
stirred.
A moment later, slipping as noiselessly into a second room, there was a
faint movement from one of a pair of sleepers. A girl’s lips framed a
question, but before the words were spoken the intruder had moved away.
Now she walked to the front of the house and stood before a tall French
window whose shutters were tightly closed; through the slats came faint
streaks of light.
She seemed to be hesitating. Then blowing out her candle and with
difficulty opening one of the heavy shutters, she climbed out upon a
small balcony. The balcony, which was only a few feet in width, commanded
an unusual view of the surrounding country.
As there were no large objects to obstruct the vision, one could see an
extraordinary distance in the clear and brilliant moonlight. Not a single
tree of any size guarded the old French château, although one might
reasonably have expected to find it surrounded by a forest of a century’s
growth.
Only a few years before, the trees on this French estate had been famous
throughout the countryside. An avenue of oaks bordering either side the
road to the house had been half a mile in length and of great age and
beauty. Strangers in the neighborhood were driven through the grounds of
the château, chiefly that they might admire its extraordinary old trees.
Tonight, looking out from the little balcony down this selfsame avenue,
one could see only a few gnarled trunks of the once famous trees, still
standing like sentinels faithful at their posts till death.
When, soon after the outbreak of the European war the Germans swept
across the Marne, the Château Yvonne and its grounds had been made an
object of their special mania for destruction. Such trees as had not been
destroyed by bursting shells and poisonous gases they had deliberately
set afire.
Yet at present, Mrs. Burton, as she stood on the little balcony and
looked out over the country, was grateful for their loss. She was thus
able to observe so much more of the surrounding landscape. There was no
human being in sight.
For the past four days she and five of the Camp Fire girls had been in
hiding in the Château Yvonne, and within these four days the face of the
world seemed to have changed.
Already it has grown difficult for some of us to recall the last week in
March in the year 1918, when the Germans again appeared to have a chance
of victory and the Allied lines were seen to waver and then recede from
northern to southern France.
It was within this fateful week, with the channel ports and Paris again
threatened, that the Camp Fire guardian and her group of American girls,
had been vainly awaiting at the Château Yvonne the arrival of Miss
Patricia Lord, Vera Lagerloff and Sally Ashton, in order that they might
continue their retreat to Paris.
As Mrs. Burton now gazed out over the landscape, shining serenely in the
clear beauty of the moonlight, she was interested in only two problems.
What had become of Miss Patricia and her companions and how far away from
the Château Yvonne at this hour was the German army?
In leaving the farmhouse on the Aisne and journeying to the château,
instead of withdrawing from danger, they seemed to have approached nearer
it. Yet no one possessed exact information concerning the results of the
last few days of the great struggles. The persons admitted within the
château had brought with them conflicting stories. One of them reported
that the enemy was nearing Soissons, another that the French and American
troops were holding the Germans at Château-Thierry. It was impossible to
reach a definite decision. Yet always there was this conclusion. The
French refugees were all hurrying on toward Paris; Mrs. Burton and her
companions should join them at once.
Now as Mrs. Burton considered the situation for the hundredth time within
the past twenty-four hours, she was as far from a conclusion as ever.
Against her will, but agreeing with Miss Patricia’s wish, she had gone on
ahead, Miss Patricia firmly declining to leave the farmhouse until her
livestock and farming implements, acquired with such difficulty and of so
great use to the French peasants, could be safely hidden from the
approaching enemy.
At the time there had seemed no immediate danger to be feared. In proof
of this Vera Lagerloff had not only remained behind, but by her own
request, Sally Ashton, and Sally had always insisted that she was the
least courageous of her group of Camp Fire girls.
Expecting to make the same journey later, now four days had passed
without word of any kind from them.
There was the possibility that, upon learning there might be greater
danger along the route which Mrs. Burton had traveled, Miss Patricia had
decided to take some other road.
Yet considering this suggestion, again Mrs. Burton remained unconvinced.
Miss Patricia Lord was a woman of her word; having told her to await her
coming at the Château Yvonne, she would reach there finally if it were
humanly possible. Otherwise Miss Patricia would fear that they might stay
at the château indefinitely and so become involved in another tragedy of
the Marne.
Finally, however, Mrs. Burton crouched down in the ledge of the window
jutting out into the balcony. Having reached a halfway decision she at
last could admit to herself her own fatigue.
In the morning the Camp Fire girls, who were her present companions, must
start off alone toward Paris, leaving her at the château.
She could plead the excuse that she had become too exhausted to travel
further until she had an opportunity to rest.
In the midst of her reflections, Mrs. Burton was even able to smile a
little whimsically. Since the hour when Jean had brought the news of
danger to the quiet farmhouse on the Aisne how completely she seemed to
have ignored, if not to have forgotten, her own invalidism. And yet until
that hour no one of her household had believed her equal to the least
exertion!
Only a short time before, her husband, Captain Burton, had at last
considered her to have grown sufficiently strong for him to leave, in
order that he might continue his Red Cross work in France. And afterwards
how strictly she had been guarded by Miss Patricia and the Camp Fire
girls!
There is a familiar axiom that necessity knows no law. At present Mrs.
Burton did not believe that she felt any the worse from her recent
experiences save an increasing weariness.
The Camp Fire girls would undoubtedly oppose her wish to wait for Miss
Patricia alone, she must therefore summon the strength to enforce her
will.
The March winds were growing colder. At this moment, although wrapped in
a heavy coat, Mrs. Burton shivered, partly with apprehension and partly
from cold.
She knew that the five girls were not far off and yet, in the silence and
loneliness of the night, with no human being in sight, she suddenly felt
desperately solitary.
She was frightened. Notwithstanding her fear was not so much for herself,
though she dreaded being left perhaps to face an oncoming German horde,
her greater fear was that the Camp Fire girls might meet with disaster,
traveling without their guardian and with a horde of French refugees,
toward greater security in Paris.
How greatly she longed at this moment for a sight of Miss Patricia Lord’s
gaunt and homely figure, always a tower of strength in adversity.
Yet not only was there no sign of her approach, there was an ominous
quiet over the entire countryside.
“Mrs. Burton!”
The older woman started, a cold hand had touched her own and a girl,
climbing through the window, sat beside her.
“Yvonne!”
Mrs. Burton’s hand closed round Yvonne Fleury’s.
Nearly four years before the young French girl, who was now a member of
Mrs. Burton’s Camp Fire, had been forced to escape from her home during
the first victory of the Germans along the Marne. In the flight her
younger brother had been killed and her mother had afterwards died. Her
older brother, Lieutenant Fleury, whom she afterwards believed to have
been killed at the front, was at that time fighting with the French army.
Small wonder that tonight, Yvonne, perhaps facing another flight from her
home, was unable to sleep.
“I must talk, Mrs. Burton, if you don’t mind,” she whispered. “I will
disturb no one. Tell me you do not believe the Germans will cross the
Marne a second time. If they do, nevertheless, I mean to stay on here at
my home. I have just concluded to beg you and the Camp Fire girls to
leave the château in the morning and go on with your journey to Paris. I
will be here when Miss Patricia arrives to explain and later she can
follow the route you will take. If my home is to be destroyed a second
time I shall be here when the destruction takes place.”
Understanding the young French girl’s mood too well to argue with her at
this moment, Mrs. Burton answered:
“Perhaps the situation is not so tragic as we fear, Yvonne. But in any
case you must remember that your brother, Lieutenant Fleury, is again at
the front fighting for the honor and glory of France. You cannot of your
own choice add to his sorrows. Besides, you and I never doubt for a
single moment that the Allies will ultimately win. Then you will have
your home and your brother restored to you again!”
At present Mrs. Burton was able to say no more. At this moment toward the
southeastern line of the horizon, suddenly the sky had become a flaring
crimson. The next instant there followed the noise of an explosion and a
sound of distant firing.