"I would like to ask you to begin at the beginning. In what condition and how long ago did you find me here? If I could only guess the time!
But I am under the impression I have not been myself for several weeks until these last few days. Yet I have a vague recollection of finding my way to this old house and of seeing you standing one day framed in that open arch. After that I have no memory of anything else until I became conscious of your face and of old Jean"s bending over me and then of this extraordinary place. If I have been ill, why have I not been cared for in a hospital?
"I remember escaping from the Germans who had taken me prisoner and then wandering, wandering about in a country where there were no trees, no gra.s.s, no houses, nothing but the upturned earth and exploded sh.e.l.ls.
Afterwards I was not sure I had reached the French country. I know I used to hide in the day time and prowl around at night. I think I must have become ill soon after my escape, because I have an indistinct impression that I was trying to find my old home, the chateau where I lived before the outbreak of the war. I suppose that is one reason why I hid myself in here. But nothing I can remember explains _you_."
Sally sighed.
"I do not understand what you are talking about, at least not exactly. I am not even convinced you do. But if you really are a French soldier and managed to escape from the Germans, I am glad. I know you will think me stupid, but still how could I have been expected to understand that you were a French soldier when you seemed so horribly afraid of being discovered? You were in your own country and among your own people!
Personally there is very little for me to tell about myself.
"I am an American girl, I don"t suppose you consider me French, and I am living at a farm house not far away with some American friends. One day I was taking a walk and just from curiosity slipped over here to look more closely at the chateau. It frightened me when I discovered you were hiding in here. You can never guess how you startled me! At our first meeting you told me some mixed-up story and asked me to bring you some food. I thought you were an escaped prisoner and I did not want to have anything to do with you. But you insisted if you were caught you would be hung. The next day when I arrived with the food you were too ill to recognize me. There is nothing more to tell."
"That is all," the soldier repeated. "But that sounds more like the beginning, does it not? You were not even sure of my nationality and yet you have been coming here every day to care for me. Suppose I had been your enemy?"
By this time the soldier was sitting up and intently studying the face of the girl before him. He was wearing a faded dark blue shirt which Jean had generously bestowed upon him the day before, this being the first occasion for which he had made an effort to dress himself.
"Strange human beings, women! I wonder if we men will ever understand you? I have no doubt you would blow up the united armies of the Central Empires if it were possible without a qualm and yet you would make any sacrifice to save the life of one prisoner."
"But I was never convinced about you," Sally apologized. "Then after you became so seriously ill I never thought. But I am sure I beg your pardon. As you are a Frenchman of course you would have been infinitely better cared for in a hospital. If anything had happened to you it would have been my fault. But really I did not know what was done to prisoners who ran away from their captors and you suggested such an uncomfortable fate for yourself.
"Now you are better I don"t think I will come back to the chateau again.
You see you made me promise not to tell anyone that you were hiding here, and my sister and friends think it strange because I have been spending so much time away from the farm recently. I don"t suppose I shall ever be able to make anyone understand. It is hard, isn"t it, to be blamed for things and then find they have been of no use? Jean will do whatever is necessary for you until you are entirely well. He can bring me news of you and he will take a message to anyone you care to see if you do not feel strong enough to be moved to a hospital immediately."
Sally rose as if she meant to leave at once, then something in her companion"s expression made her sink down into her chair.
"No, you must not come to see me again," he answered, "although I shall wish to see no one else. Perhaps it will not be long before I am able to call upon your friends if you will allow me. I am stronger than you realize; but you have not told me what you are doing in this neighborhood."
Unexpectedly Sally had a remarkable sensation. It was as if suddenly her position and the soldier"s changed and as if he had begun to think of her welfare rather than to have her devote herself to his.
"Oh, we are doing reclamation work," Sally returned; "that is, my sister and friends are. I have not accomplished anything that is important. I told you I was stupid."
All at once Sally"s soldier broke into a peal of clear boyish laughter which was of more benefit to him than either of them appreciated.
"No, you have done nothing except save my life. It is not kind of you under the circ.u.mstances to announce you consider it unimportant. Some day when I am able to rejoin my regiment perhaps I may be able to prove your work worth while. Thanks to you, perhaps I shall again serve France as I have never served her before! The enemy has taken from me everything else, my mother, my sister, my little brother and my home. I made up my mind that they should not hold me a prisoner whatever might befall me. If I had to give up my life I meant to die in the open."
Then more excited and exhausted than either he or Sally had appreciated, the soldier lay down again, closing his eyes.
It was a part of Sally"s recent training which made her continue sitting quietly beside him for the next few moments without speaking or moving.
In the interval she studied the soldier"s face.
For the first time he was appearing to her as a man. Up until now he had simply been a human being who must be cared for, allowed to suffer as little as possible and at last be restored to health.
In considering him at present Sally did not particularly admire his appearance. She thought his nose was rather too large and his lips too thin and in spite of Jean"s devotion, his services as a barber left a good deal to be desired.
"Your arm is nearly well, still I think I should like to bandage it once more before I go," Sally suggested. "You do not realize it, of course, but I have learned a great deal about nursing since I began to look after you. I don"t like sick people, else I suppose I could become a Red Cross nurse after more training if I wished. But I don"t think I should like the work."
As Sally talked she was accomplishing her task, certainly with a good deal more skill than she had shown several weeks before.
However, her patient was not conscious of the fact. At present he was not thinking of his wound but of his nurse.
There was something about her so deliciously frank and ingenuous. At least she seemed ingenuous to him, although it was difficult always to be sure concerning Sally.
When she had finished the young Frenchman took one of her hands and touched it lightly with his lips.
"Will you tell me your name, please, and where to find you before you say farewell? I am Lieutenant Robert Fleury of the French-cuira.s.siers."
Ten minutes later Sally was walking back home alone to the farm house, having left Jean to continue to care for their patient.
She was not to go back to the chateau again and she was to tell her friends exactly what had taken place in the past few weeks. She seemed to have promised this to her patient.
Yet Sally was not sure when she would tell her story. She had no desire to make a confession to Alice, and Aunt Patricia was not to be considered. If only she might arrange to wait until Mrs. Burton"s return from her journey into southern France.
CHAPTER XVI
AN UNEXPECTED SHELTER
It was after the hour for their midday dinner when Sally finally arrived at the farmhouse; however, she was able to reach her own room without any questions being asked concerning her delay.
Undressing slowly with the idea of lying down for a little while before facing her friends, Sally was interrupted for the second time that day by the unexpected appearance of her sister. On this occasion Alice"s expression made any further discussion not only unnecessary but impossible.
"Will you come with me, please, to Aunt Patricia"s room?" she began at once. "I have been talking to Aunt Patricia and she says it is only fair that we should hear your explanation before pa.s.sing judgment. I have spoken to no one else, although I suppose it will be impossible to hide the facts from the other girls. In reality, I believe they already have guessed a great deal and have been trying to keep the truth from me."
At the moment of her sister"s entrance Sally had been slipping into a little blue dressing gown which had been her mother"s final gift the day before their parting. The dressing gown did not have a utilitarian appearance, since it was made of a soft blue, light woolen material with little cl.u.s.ters of yellow roses scattered over the design and with blue ribbons and lace about the throat and sleeves.
In response to her sister"s speech Sally gathered about her the dressing gown, which she had not yet fastened, and immediately started to leave the room.
"I shall be very glad indeed to talk to Aunt Patricia, but not to you, Alice, nor do I ever intend to forgive you. I suppose you followed old Jean and me to the chateau and have drawn your own inference from what you observed. Do you know, Alice, I have often wondered why the puritanical conscience is always so suspicious of other people?" And in this last speech of Sally"s there was more of truth that she could fully appreciate.
But if in this final a.n.a.lysis she were speaking the truth, the first part of her remark had been a complete falsehood. At the present time there was nothing she desired so little as being forced into making her confession to Miss Patricia Lord, a severe spinster with no consideration for human folly. Would any one else on earth be more difficult or more unrelenting?
In the past hour or more, following her conversation at the chateau, Sally had been facing one of the hardest experiences of life.
Her weeks of self-sacrifice and devotion had been not only unnecessary, they had been absurd. If only she could have enjoyed the inward satisfaction of considering herself a heroine or a martyr! But she had risked her own reputation and the young French officer"s life to what end?
As the two girls entered Miss Patricia"s room, Sally, accompanied by her sister, whose existence on earth she refused to recognize, considered that Miss Patricia appeared as implacable as a stone image. Yet one could scarcely compare her to the Sphinx. That ancient stone figure with the head of a woman and the body of a lioness looks as if she had devoted the many centuries since her creation to solving the riddles of human life.
Miss Patricia would consider anything but plain speaking a sheer waste of energy and truth. There were no riddles in Miss Patricia"s mental category.
Nevertheless, Miss Patricia"s voice did not sound unkind when she suggested that Sally occupy the solitary chair in her bedroom, although undoubtedly this would leave the elderly woman standing as well as Alice. But then Sally did not realize how appealing her appearance was at this moment even to so harsh a critic of human nature.
Sally indolent, Sally dreaming her own small and rather selfish dreams, or a Sally self-a.s.sured and self-content were not unfamiliar figures to her world. But Sally confused and tired, hurt and bewildered, not by her own actions or any one"s else, but by a web of circ.u.mstance, was a new study.
"No, I would prefer not to sit down, Miss Patricia, and in any case I would not have you stand," Sally answered, still with an innate sense of her own dignity and value which at no time in her life was she ever wholly to lose. "Alice seems to have told you some disagreeable story about me. So I think it just as well for me to tell you the exact truth.