CHAPTER IX
The train rolled on staggeringly. Berth cars had long since been removed from all military trains as being too cumbersome. The exigencies of the situation demanded that comfort and luxuries be sacrificed to a desire to move men—many men—quickly. The gay but strangely practical French more quickly adjusted themselves to the intensely serious fact that the party which endured most was destined to win the war.
It was a strictly military train on which Belinda Melnotte traveled. She was an atom in the Military Department of the French Republic; so why should she not be jounced about on a hard seat as well as the soldiers traveling to the trenches? She was to halt short of the trenches; just how short she did not know.
Her uniform was quite as distinctive as that of the soldiers themselves. Nor could the cross on her cap and breast be mistaken. These marks of her service won the girl a good deal of attention.
She had, during her stay in Paris, become used to hearing little but French spoken. Speaking it so perfectly herself, she did not think she minded the lack of the sound of English. Yet suddenly, while the train stood for some time and for some mysterious reason at a little station, she heard through the open window a high-pitched voice singing a popular music hall ditty—and it sounded good!
"Yet I suppose he is intoxicated. He seems to be," she said to a man in uniform with the empty coatsleeve, who had strolled along the platform to speak to her with the camaraderie which it seemed was quite customary.
"But no, Mademoiselle. He is oneAnglais blessé—agrand blessé. In an ambulance behind there," with a characteristic shrug of the shoulder indicating the direction. "They wait for thetrain sanitaire. He is one of these air pilots, it is said, and fell with his Nieuport—such a young man! And with red hair," added the one-armedpoilu, as though the last fact made it all the more sad.
This information startled Belinda. She jumped up from her seat and rushed to the door, which stood open, for the soldiers returning from furlough who occupied the compartment with her had all stepped out.
"Where is he?" she demanded of the one-armed man. "Show him to me," she added as she leaped to the platform.
"But even you can do nothing for him, Mademoiselle," he said flatteringly. "He is delirious. They have removed both his legs. Theambulancierstates that he cannot live."
Of course, it was foolish of her. Frank Sanderson could not possibly have joined the Aviation Corps, been assigned to this sector, and fallen with his airplane all in a few days' time! Yet the suggestion made her run around behind the station to where the now weakening voice of the singer still chanted the foolish song in English.
One look at the white face on the stretcher reassured her. But, oh, he was so young! And his eyes burned so brightly! He thought in his delirium that he knew her and he smiled and tried to reach forth his hand to her.
"Hi, there, Flossy! Was it you singin' that jolly bit? My word! but you're a long way from home."
"She doesn't understand you, old scout," said the American ambulance driver. "She's French like the rest of 'em."
"Oh, can nothing be done for him?" gasped Belinda.
The ambulance driver came quickly to attention, blushing like the great boy he was. "Beg pardon, Miss. YoulookFrench, you know."
The injured aviator was laughing immoderately, if weakly. "What d'you think of this Johnny, Floss? Callin' you a French girl. Ah!" he added in quite another tone, "they were a long while gettin' these legs of mine off—don't you think? They held a sheet up between me and my legs when they first tried to do it: but I knew when they cut into me—the butchers! The blood spurted up and spread all over the sheet, so it did!"
"Local anesthetic," whispered the ambulance driver to the white-faced nurse. "Couldn't etherize him. And it's all for nothing, I fancy. Might as well have let the poor chap be buried whole as in pieces."
The locomotive whistled a warning. There was really nothing she could do for the sufferer. Belinda fled back to the train and it moved on. She had glimpsed a little of what her work was to be—and thepoilusin her compartment respected her tears.
But they tried to cheer her up immediately. If a woman's tears appeal to men of all nations and in all walks in life, they particularly appeal to a Frenchman. A big, bewhiskered lieutenant sat down beside her and talked to her as though she were a child he was comforting.
"Non! Non!Do not take on so, Mademoiselle. Let the tears be for us chaps who are hit. Thenweweep—not our nurses. We must look to you for cheerfulness—for courage.Mon Dieu!this fighting would be a hard task indeed were it not for you of theCroix Rouge."
Another man had picked a bunch of wild flowers while the train was halted (who but a Frenchman could have made so artistic a bouquet of the poor little blossoms?) and he presented them to Belinda with a polite speech. An apple-cheeked boy slipped into the seat beside her after her bewhiskered comforter was gone and blushingly showed her the photograph of the girl he had just been home to marry. Naturally the nurse had to be interested in that romance.
And so, soon, the train stopped again and there was a cow-shed in sight where clean, mild-eyed cows were standing to be milked. Belinda ventured forth again to beg a cup of the fresh milk. The women milking would not let her pay for it, and when they learned she had come from America they showered her with blessings.
"These good people seem so grateful for the little America is doing for their country," she later wrote in her diary.
There were children, too—bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked little ones in blue smocks and sabots. They clung to her skirt, and the older ones asked her questions about America—especially about New York, which they had heard much of.
Louis, or Alphonse, or Henri had been to New York before the war and had told them unbelievable things. They were now in the trenches, having returned from their work in New York to fight forla patrie. Was it true that there were buildings in New York higher than the Eiffel Tower?
Then the train rolled on again. It drew on toward night. Once they slowly passed a longtrain sanitaire. The chorused, if low, groans from the wounded was a wail as from souls imprisoned in purgatory.
Belinda steeled herself against displaying the feelings of horror these sounds called up. She talked cheerfully with the returningpoilus. Another nurse—one with experience in the field hospitals—joined her and this girl's chatter was very helpful to the recruit.
"Of course, there really are no field hospitals in this war. Where those big guns throw their iron fourteen, sometimes sixteen, kilometres, a hospital in the field would have small chance of escaping bombardment, to say nothing of attack fromtaubenthat have little respect for the Red Cross flag," she said bitterly.
"The first dressing of wounds—if the victim cannot walk—is done right in the trenches by the first-aid men. Rude enough the dressing is sometimes; but many lives are saved by the work. In the hospital you will go to, you'll be within sound of the guns all right. Don't worry about that. And it'll be very different from the hospitals you've been used to, no matter how much experience you've had at home. My faith, yes!
"They have settled on the huts as the best of all for this work—a nurse to a hut and from twenty-four to three dozen patients for her to attend. Work? I believe you!"
It was midnight when the Red Cross recruit arrived at the end of her railway journey. She was to report here to an official who would tell her how to reach her assignment. But the morning must do for that.
Belinda got a room above a wineshop on the main street of the town, and was made comfortable by the shopkeeper's wife. It seemed strange to her to be going about so absolutely alone and unattended. Yet she felt no fear. These people—everybody she met—were so kindly disposed that one could not feel otherwise than confident of perfect safety.
At least, no anxiety kept Belinda Melnotte awake after her tiring journey from Paris. The clatter of wagons and the braying of mules awoke her with the rising sun. A baggage train was going through the central street of the town, and there was no sleep for the nurse after that.
The housewife served her coffee and a roll with which to break her fast, being likewise glad to talk to the mademoiselle who had come so far to nurse the poorpoilus. Her husband—"mon brave"—the woman declared, was fighting somewhere for France—she knew not where.
"He has promised me not to get killed," she said cheerfully. "Of course I would not have him anembusqué—no Frenchman may show the white feather at this time. But some of these men are so reckless! They think more of a smoke than they do of their lives—and we poor women at home suffering agonies of fear for them!Ça y est!That is what we are here for,n'est-ce pas, Mademoiselle?"
As early as possible the nurse sought an interview with the major. He was a big, hairy man, with twinkling blue eyes behind his eye-glasses. He was young, but very decisive.
"You are very welcome, Mademoiselle," he said in English, although Belinda had addressed him in his own tongue. "Do you speak German, too?"
"I am part German and part French by ancestry," she told him. "I speak both languages."
"But you are American born," he responded with satisfaction. "That is a saving grace—at this time," and he smiled. "I know your hospital in New York. Is Doctor Herschall still on its staff?"
"Yes."
"His name is known, Mademoiselle. Many of these German surgeons are quite wonderful fellows—masters in their art. But it has been remarked—and wondered at—that Herschall has not returned to his own country. He is in sympathy with his people, is he not?"
"I know very little about the Herr Doktor's opinions," said Belinda cautiously. "From some of his speeches, however, I should think him quite favorably disposed toward his Government. Prussians generally are, I believe."
The French surgeon nodded. "Now for you, Mademoiselle," he said. "With your evident knowledge and experience you will be very helpful in the place I shall send you to. 'Let nothing you dismay,' as the English marriage service puts it. As you Americans say, 'Tackle any job.' Remember that in all probability there will be nobody near who knows any more than you do, or who can do the task any better."
With this he sent her away in an empty ambulance that was returning to a small village up near the battle front, and beyond. The growl and rattle of the big guns had been a disturbing factor to Belinda's hearing since soon after sunrise. The driver of the ambulance, however, said they were very distant. There was no fighting on the immediate front at present.
Thisambulancierwas nothing but a boy. He had finished his freshman course at Columbia and had insisted on coming over to serve France in the Red Cross. Like Belinda, he was "half French."
"Mom and the girls are in Paris. They're knitting socks and winding bandages for the Red Cross. Dad stays at home and makes dollars for us all. Poor dad! he has the hardest job—and serves France more perfectly than any of us!"
Belinda began to realize after listening to him that driving a cheaply built American ambulance behind the battleline was no sinecure.
"The British chaps call these motor-cars 'mechanical fleas.' But they do the work—and as a usual thing it takes a shell to really put 'em out of commission. We drivers learn how to repair them—even if we break down on the road. The British Johnnies can laugh; but France should strike that Detroit manufacturer a special medal-of-honor.
"I carry in my tool and repair kit almost everything but a new chassis," the boy added, laughing. "That's since I broke down once coming along from the front with twoblesséson the stretchers. Seemed to me at the time the old girl busted in half a dozen places at once.
"I'd have made the hospital on three cylinders at that, only for a steep hill. Twice the old car all but got to the top only to die, coughing, and slide clear back to the bottom. My twoblesséswere pretty well shattered below their waists; but they were good sports. They were laying bets with each other as to whether I'd pull 'em over the hill before aBocheshell got 'em."
"But youdidsave them?" Belinda asked.
"One of 'em," said the boy soberly. "I had to walk twelve kilometres for help. While I was gone one of the wounded chaps died. He had taken the short end of the bet and he paid the other chap just before he went off. Good sports, thosepoilus, after all."
Belinda listened—and looked. Not many physical and visible signs of war along this road. It was a warm morning; the dust rose behind them in a stifling cloud, but ahead the driveway and the fields were clear. Why! there were neatly staked vineyards, blooming gardens, vegetable fields—all the signs of farm industry.
But here, beside the road, was an excavation. Had somebody started to dig a cellar—or a well—and abandoned it unfinished? It was right at the roadside.
A little farther on there were several similar holes in a row. The road circled around them through a field that had been plowed. Suddenly the nurse was thrilled by a thought.
"Oh!" she cried, "what are they?"
"Shell holes—craters," replied the ambulance driver. "This section was under fire a week ago."