CHAPTER X
Thedirectricewas just as positive and bustling a little Frenchwoman as Aunt Roberta. Belinda was quite sure she must have made an atrocious nurse, even in time of peace; but she possessed great executive ability and was inured to the work by long experience. It was "the job" to her, and "the job" only. If the wounded looked to her for pity rather than justice, they looked in vain.
"Don't let them bully you, these wounded," she instructed Belinda. "They will do it if you do not put your foot down firmly. It's their work to get back to the trenches as soon as possible—or be sent home. It's our job to get them back on the firing line as quickly as it can be done. Remember that."
"Ah!" breathed the queer little man who wasinfirmierofSalle IIIto which Belinda was assigned. "Madame la Directrice, her bark is much worse than her bite.Ma foi!one would think to hear her that her hand wore a steel gauntlet instead of being like velvet.Oui! Oui!"
He was a man with a twisted foot and a harelip, named Erard.
He had been born with the harelip, of course; but the twisted foot he had suffered as a boy. A heavy truck had run over it, he told Belinda. He could not, of course, serve in the trenches; but no more patriotic son of France ever lived, it seemed.
"Just now," Erard said, "mademoiselle will find it easy. Only eighteen of the beds are filled. There are thirty-fourblesséswhen the ward is full."
Erard watched at night. He gave the patients their breakfasts; he washed them; he lifted them when the nurse dressed their wounds; he fetched and carried; he had so many duties that Belinda wondered if the little man with the harelip ever slept—if he ever found time to eat.
Theblessésin the care of the American recruit were just at the "fussy stage." They were inclined at first to be critical. They resented losing a nurse they had got used to, to have foisted upon them "a greenie." Too, she was an American, it was said, and these woundedpoilushad their doubts concerning the good intentions ofles Américains.
"Why, they tell me thesales Bochesare just as welcome in that America as we French," one said.
During these first few weeks, there were not many new cases brought intoSalle III. Just enough to keep the number up to the average of eighteen or twenty. Quite as many were discharged to go back to the trenches, or died, or were sent to the base hospitals as being practically unfit for "gun fodder," as were brought in from the front. Just now there was a lull in this sector. The French and the Germans seemed merely watching each other.
The wise ones said a great battle was in preparation. But it was very monotonous, this waiting. The guns growled and thundered, but in the distance. Belinda was not sure she would have found an occasional shell bursting near by hard to bear.
From the doorway of her hut where she found time occasionally to stand to breathe the pure air Belinda could see the huge captive balloons, wagging lazily back and forth at their tethers. Sometimes a smaller shape darted across the horizon—an aeroplane of some kind—occasionally chased by black bursts of smoke, the shells fired by the German aerial guns.
Somewhere over there, perhaps eight or ten kilometres away, were the trenches. At any time—at first the thought made Belinda very nervous—a battle might break out along this sector. Like leashed dogs the French and the Germans were tugging to get at each other—ready to fly at each other's throats.
The aeroplanes she watched with particular interest. She wondered if Frank Sanderson had as yet joined the Flying Corps. Was he already assigned to work on the battle front? Was he one of those whom the French acclaim the greatest heroes, the pilot of a battleplane? She had heard nothing from him—nor of him—since they had parted at the little Paris café.
That was her own fault and the girl fully realized it. She had dismissed him with an abruptness that must have hurt the aviator if he cared for her at all. And Belinda was positive that he did care.
She could not forget "Stella" and "the kiddies." She told herself stoutly at first that she wished nothing to do with a man such as Frank Sanderson had proved himself to be. Yet her intimacy with the young aviator back in the New York hospital and on board ship had revealed no characteristic of his nature that bore out the suspicions of him which had been bred in her heart and mind.
This was why her thought returned ever and again to the careless, cheerful, smiling American. He would make, she was sure, the very highest type ofpilote.
The characteristics that made him what he was seemed to deny the possibility of his playing fast and loose with any woman. Belinda could not understand these contradictions.
In the loneliness of her poor lodging at night these and similar thoughts fastened upon her mind. How she had been interested in him from the very first! When he was brought into the New York hospital—wounded and delirious—Sanderson had appealed to her as no other young man had ever appealed.
Was it because she was now so lonely that she could not scatter these thoughts—that she could not drive his spirit away from her? Was it because she was away from friends and amid strange and trying surroundings that she was so weak? She tried to excuse herself by admitting these reasons for a time; but at length she had to face the thing out.
Belinda Melnotte was no coward. The turmoil in her soul could not go on for long without arousing scorn for herself.
"Why, he is not worthy of my thought," she told herself bitterly. "A married man! A man with wife and children! Oh! I should be ashamed of myself! I who call myself good!
"This certainly cannot be love. He has a fascination for me; just as Doctor Herschall inspires me with disgust—with hate! Am I different from other girls? Is there something wrong with me—something innately bad? I do love him! I do! Ido! And I hate myself for it!"
She threw herself upon her bed, muffling her sobs in the pillow. This acknowledgment of what she termed her weakness in caring so deeply for Frank Sanderson seared her very soul. And her agony was the heavier because she had nobody in whom she might confide.
The monotony of her work in the hospital finally deadened her apprehension of the coming battle; but it dulled no other thoughts. Her little round of life was made up of petty duties and interests that were narrowing to both body and mind. She had the same wounds to dress each day; the same physic to administer; the same complaints to hear; the same jokes to listen to—some of them not at all clean; the same faces to see and voices to hear. Oh, yes! her work at the New York hospital had been vastly more interesting, had had more variety.
Yet a war hospital is so much cleaner than a hospital in time of peace. Here there were none of the foul diseases which came under her care while she was a probationer. And there were no old people doddering to their graves, full of the ills that come with advancing years.
"I wish you might see me and my children now, Tante," wrote Belinda to Aunt Roberta. "The ward is spick and span. There is a trophy of flags draped at the head, which all theblessésface. When I had arranged this and hung branches of bright-hued autumn leaves over each window (and bribed two of the orderlies to wash those windows till the panes shone!) my littleinfirmierof the harelip marched proudly in with a small silk American flag which he had secured from one of theambulanciersfrom New York. This he placed up with my arrangement of banners and the whole ward applauded—that is, all those of the poor fellows who possess their full complement of hands and can applaud.
"It made my eyes sting. Not so much because of the Stars and Stripes, perhaps—although to a full-blown American I suppose it is a comforting sight—but at the thought expressed. My queer littleinfirmier, as well as my wounded, have learned through these weeks to love me.
"If you think the furnished flat on the Rue di Rivoli something of a cross, dear Tante, I wish you could see our makeshifts here. And the room I have to sleep in at the other end of the village—quite fifteen minutes' walk.
"Old Minerva, the aged dame is called with whom I lodge. She remembers '70 of course, and is never through talking about it.Thenthe Germans marched by twice triumphant—going to Paris and returning.
"'But it is not so this time—thesales embusqués! They strut by quite as grand as before,'—she points south, to Paris—'but they come back on the run!Ça y est, maintenant! Ça y est!' and she smiles a toothless but delighted smile.
"She does well by me, does Minerva. When I have made my toilet by six o'clock (and now it is still pitch dark at that hour) she has ready a huge bowl of coffee, bread and butter, with sometimes a baked apple or some othercompote.
"I walk briskly to the hospital. The sentinel at the gate salutes me, for know you, dear Tante, I am a real officer of the French army—I wear the insignia, A. D. F. and a bar, beside mycroix rouge. Erard is sure to be brushing out the entrance ofSalle IIIand welcomes me with his crooked smile.
"He has already cleaned up the ward, emptied the slops, cleansed pans, got rid as well as possible of all the more offensive things. He does not slip out at night through the hedge, as some of the otherinfirmiersand orderlies do, to visit a neighboringestaminetand get drunk. He is a faithful little man, is my Erard.
"I must speak to each of my children first, or they would feel the day had begun wrong. Then I look to see that all things are in order, and start instrument boiling. Ah, that instrument boiling! It is an endless task.
"Taking temperatures and marking charts is the next duty. Face washing and mouth rinsing go with this, and Erard officiates at the combined ceremonies.
"The doctor comes about eight o'clock, and after he goes I am left to my own resources for the rest of the day unless something unexpected happens to some of my patients.
"Dressings follow, and the first to manage are the more important ones. Sometimes I accomplish only three or four of these before the bell rings for soup at a quarter to eleven. At first these major wounds almost keeled me over! The washing of huge shrapnel holes, the putting in of drains, the probing for bits of shell—all the horrible by-bits of work that the surgeons have no time for!
"We nurses have ourdéjeuner à la fourchetteimmediately after the patients are fed, crowding into a small detached hut where we eat and gossip as fast as possible. It is the single hour of general relaxation during the day. There is not another American girl here (am I American, I wonder?), but they are all lovely to me.
"Mail arrives immediately after lunch. And thoseblesséswho receive little presents from home—oh, how they are envied by the others! Dear fellows! they almost always pass the goodies around, even though they be but a few cheap candies. And I am obliged to take my share. These gifts I often hide away, however, to slip into some poor fellow's hand before I go at night. It is marvelous what comfort there seems to be for even the most sorely wounded in a peppermint or a lime wafer.
"The remaining dressings follow, and so all the afternoon. Then comes soup for my children—and for myself—after which I give massage to those who need it, prepare soothing drinks for the night, give injections and play 'ma mère' in general to the ward—stuffing cotton under weary backs and plastered limbs; and so bid all good-night. Then I polish my instruments, clean up in general, and am relieved by my harelippedinfirmier, who comes stumbling in for another vigil, bravely blinking the sleep out of his eyes.
"Ah, Tante, I shall want to forget all this some day. I wonder if I can!
"You say Captain Dexter has called. If he comes again give him my best love—the dear, brave man! If he is as interested in flying as you say he is, he must know what has become of Mr. Sanderson."
Aunt Roberta wrote frequently and sent on, too, letters which arrived from America. One came from Sue Blaine—a cheerful and newsy missive and one which the Red Cross nurse read over and over again. Especially this portion of it:
"Oh, my darling Belinda! you should have seen Herr Doktor's face when I told him of your departure for France. It seemed he had called at your house and you were gone. He was actually white when I explained your sudden disappearance—I do not know whether with rage or because he feared for your precious life, honey!"However, it was not long before the Herr Doktor left us himself. He bade nobody good-by, and I learned on good authority that he had secretly slipped out of the States, homeward bound. Many of the warmer supporters of the Kaiser among our New York Germans are doing so. And, of course, Doctor Herschall would be of infinite help to the Prussian Hospital Staff."The trenches will, I presume, separate you and him, if the Herr Doktor succeeds in reaching Germany. At least, you will not have to serve under his direction in your hospital work. Now isn't that a blessing, Belinda?"
"Oh, my darling Belinda! you should have seen Herr Doktor's face when I told him of your departure for France. It seemed he had called at your house and you were gone. He was actually white when I explained your sudden disappearance—I do not know whether with rage or because he feared for your precious life, honey!
"However, it was not long before the Herr Doktor left us himself. He bade nobody good-by, and I learned on good authority that he had secretly slipped out of the States, homeward bound. Many of the warmer supporters of the Kaiser among our New York Germans are doing so. And, of course, Doctor Herschall would be of infinite help to the Prussian Hospital Staff.
"The trenches will, I presume, separate you and him, if the Herr Doktor succeeds in reaching Germany. At least, you will not have to serve under his direction in your hospital work. Now isn't that a blessing, Belinda?"
Not that this news of Doctor Herschall's departure, presumably for the battlefields, should have been of any moment to the Red Cross nurse. Yet she admitted the fact that he had a certain influence upon her and that this had not been dwarfed by separation from him.
"This war will make him famous I am sure," she told herself. "Those wonderful hands of his will perform operations that other medical men will acclaim as scientific marvels. But the unfortunates whom he operates upon—will it be worth while? Will it be really a Christian act to drag them back from the grave to spend torturing years as cripples and half-men?"
The lull between battles was not to last for long after this letter was received from America. Despite the prophecies that there would be no push until spring, and in spite, indeed, of the pouring October rains, one night at midnight the near-by guns broke out and shook Belinda in her bed.
She got up and dressed. There was no possibility of sleep for her, for neither her ears nor her nerves were attuned to this thunderous music. Belinda went to the window, opened the creaking shutter, and leaned across the sill. She could feel the tremor of the house after the report of each gun.
Toward the north, where she knew the trenches lay, a red flash abruptly illuminated the starless sky. A roar like the blowing up of a gas-tank followed in train of the flash. It was one of the huge German guns.
The artillery battle soon became general. The horizon was lit with flames. The air crashed about her ears. She was so deafened that she did not at first hear the noise of the troop of ambulances getting under way for the front.
They swept under her window, their shapes but dimly outlined, for they carried no lights. A lamp moving along the road—especially an automobile lamp—was an object easily spied from a directingtaubeor a captive balloon; and a shell was likely to drop upon the bright mark within a few moments.
Belinda put on her long blue cape, pulled up the hood, and went out. Minerva and the other lodgers remained in bed. They had suffered other bombardments.
The nurse needed nobody to tell her that those dark cars rolling off to the north, finding their way over the broken roads by the light of the illuminating bombs thrown up from the trenches, or by the flash of the shells, would begin soon to return laden with wounded. She must be "on the job," asMadame la Directricewas so fond of saying.
Suddenly the searchlights began to play more rapidly above the trenches. High up in the gloom they revealed certain drifting shapes against which the anti-aircraft guns were turned—a squadron of bombarding machines returning from a raid behind the German lines.
She watched these vague forms as the moving lights searched them out. Then the shrapnel began to burst about them.
They came on slowly, as though tired after their long journey into the enemy's country. She hoped they would soon be safely across the battleline.
Suddenly, like a new star in the murky firmament, a red flame appeared. Belinda watched it with terrified gaze, for she knew instinctively what it was.
In the midst of the squadron of bombarding aeroplanes this light had sprung up. It spread rapidly—and began to fall.
One had been set afire! This thought only for an instant preceded another in the girl's mind: Suppose Frank Sanderson was in that burning machine!
Faster and faster the flaming aeroplane plunged toward the earth, trailing behind it a tail of sparks like the tail of a comet.
The shells ceased bursting high in the air. The glow of the fallen aeroplane was swallowed up in the flashes of the trench guns. The squadron had passed behind the French battleline.
But somewhere on that No-Man's-Land between the trenches, the wreck of the bombarding machine and the aviators who accompanied it were being devoured by the flames.
The girl hurried along the road, shuddering and fearful. When she arrived at the hospital there was an air of excitement and expectancy that she had never seen there before. It was communicated to the restless patients in her ward. The little wooden hut shook and rattled to the roar of the guns.
"A great day has begun, Mademoiselle," chirped the harelipped Erard, bustling about, doing unnecessary things, setting the whole ward "by the ears," until Marius swore at him.
"Dirty little rabbit-mouth!" declared the irritableblessé. "He will never learn. And with that broken foot dragging, dragging, like a child's toy cart.Mon Dieu!What a useless beggar!"
"Hush, Marius," the girl said. "Poor Erard is very kind to me."
"Sale embusqué!Why is he not kind tome?" growled Marius.
It was scarcely light—gray dawn of a cloudy fall day—when the ambulances began to trundle in at the gateway of the hospital enclosure with their burdens of wounded.
Belinda was called to the operating ward to help. Piles of clothing lay here and there on the floor—filthy, muddy, blood-soaked; torn or cut from the broken bodies on the beds. Thebrancardiersstepped on these heaps, or kicked them aside, as they lifted the stripped wounded, one by one, to the brown canvas stretchers, and carried them, walking carefully out of step, to the operating room.
That operating room! Belinda had a vision for a moment of the spotless, sterilized compartment at the New York hospital, with Doctor Herschall in mask, apron and white apparel, waiting at the table for a single case to be brought to him, putting his wonderful hands and fingers through an exercise like a pianist's gymnastics, to make them supple.
Then the girl was suddenly so busy that she had no time for visions.