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 n.o.body 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 f.a.gged 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 a.s.sure 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 gra.s.s 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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, Jose, 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.
CHAPTER XX-MANY THINGS HAPPEN
Ruth reached the farmhouse just as the family was sitting down to breakfast. The house and outbuildings of the Dupays were all connected, as is the way in this part of France. No sh.e.l.l had fallen near the buildings, which was very fortunate, indeed.
Henriette"s father was a one-armed man. He had lost his left arm at the Marne, and had been honorably discharged, to go back to farming, in order to try to raise food for the army and for the suffering people of France. His two sons and his brothers were still away at the wars, so every child big enough to help, and the women of the family as well, aided in the farm work.
No petrol could be used to drive cars for pleasure; but Henriette sometimes had to go for supplies, or to carry things to market, or do other errands connected with the farm work. Ruth hoped that the French girl would be allowed to help her.
The hospitable Dupays insisted upon the American girl"s sitting down to table with them. She was given a seat on the bench between Henriette and Jean, a lad of four, who looked shyly up at the visitor from under heavy brown lashes, and only played with his food.
It was not the usual French breakfast to which Ruth Fielding had become accustomed-coffee and bread, with possibly a little compote, or an egg.
There was meat on the table-a heavy meal, for it was to be followed by long hours of heavy labor.
"What brings you out so early after this awful night?" Henriette whispered to her visitor.
Ruth told her. She could eat but little, she was so anxious about Tom Cameron. She made it plain to the interested French girl just why she so desired to follow on to Lyse and learn if it really was Tom who had been wounded, as the message on the blood-stained envelope said.
"I might start along the road and trust to some ambulance overtaking me," Ruth explained. "But often there is a wounded man who can sit up riding on the seat with the driver-sometimes two. I could not take the place of such an unfortunate."
"It would be much too far for you to walk, Mademoiselle," said the mother, overhearing. "We can surely help you."
She spoke to her husband-a huge man, of whom Ruth stood rather in awe, he was so stern-looking and taciturn. But Henriette said he had been a "laughing man" before his experience in the war. War had changed many people, this French girl said, nodding her head wisely.
"The venerable Countess Marchand," pointing to the chateau on the hill, "had been neighborly and kind until the war came. Now she shut herself away from all the neighbors, and if a body went to the chateau it was only to be confronted by old Bessie, who was the countess" housekeeper, and her only personal servant now."
"Old Bessie," Ruth judged, must be the hard-featured woman she had seen at the chateau gate and, on this particular morning, talking to the lame man at the wayside cross.
The American girl waited now in some trepidation for Dupay to speak. He seemed to consider the question of Ruth"s getting to Lyse quite seriously for some time; then he said quietly that he saw no objection to Henriette taking the sacks of grain to M. Naubeck in the touring car body instead of the truck, and going to-day to Lyse on that errand instead of the next week.
It was settled so easily. Henriette ran away to dress, while a younger brother slipped out to see that the car was in order for the two girls.