Whether she slept or not, Bianca did not realize. But suddenly she heard Sonya murmur.
"Don"t go to sleep again, Bianca dear. We are just about to enter Coblenz and I want you to remember it all your life. See it is a splendid, prosperous city along the bank of the Rhine."
But Bianca would not rouse herself until their automobile had entered the centre of the city and gone by the Coblenzhof, one of the finest hotels in the city, and then past the mammoth statue of Wilhelm I the grandfather of the deposed Kaiser.
Then Bianca decided to display a mild interest in her surroundings.
Coblenz is known as one of the most beautiful cities in the world and the German defeat had dimmed none of its outward glory.
Finally the Red Cross automobile drove to the outskirts of the city and entered a large court yard. On a hill beyond the courtyard rose an old castle which was to be the new American Red Cross hospital.
The building itself was grim and forbidding with its square, serrated towers and heavy, dark stone walls.
Bianca gave an instinctive shiver.
"The castle looks more like a dungeon than a hospital," she whispered to Sonya, "I wish they had given us a more cheerful place for our headquarters. Perhaps our soldiers will not mind, but I should hate to be ill in such a dismal place. Yes, I know the outlook over the Rhine is magnificent but just the same it depresses me."
Then Bianca"s manner and expression changed.
Standing in the yard before the castle were a group of their friends waiting to receive them.
Dr. Clark had arrived in Coblenz a number of hours before his wife and had already taken command of the new Red Cross hospital for American soldiers. He and his wife had not seen each other in nearly a month, as they had made the journey to the Rhine with different portions of the army.
With Dr. Clark were other members of his Red Cross staff and several representatives of the German Red Cross, who were to turn over certain supplies.
Unexpectedly a private soldier formed one of the group, who must have received permission from his superior officer to share in the welcome to his friends.
The young man was Carlo Navara.
Bianca extended her hand like a child for Carlo to a.s.sist her out of the car.
"I was never so glad to see you before," she announced. "I don"t care what the other Red Cross girls may say, but I have found the journey to the Rhine since we left Luxemburg extremely tiresome."
CHAPTER XII
_New Year"s Eve in Coblenz_
THERE was no great difficulty in establishing the American Red Cross hospital at Coblenz. Dr. Clark had a large and efficient staff who were accustomed to working with him and naturally the demands were not so severe as in time of war.
Indeed Dr. Clark had no idea of asking the same degree of energy and devotion which the last six months of fighting had required of every human being in any way engaged in the great struggle in Europe. A reasonable amount of work and of discipline was as necessary for the hospital staff as for the soldiers and officers of the American Army of Occupation engaged in their new duty of policing the Rhine. Yet whenever it was possible opportunity was given for freedom and pleasure.
There were but few of the expected difficulties between the Americans and the Germans which the people of both nations had feared. A certain friction of course and suspicion and gossip about secret plots, but no open quarreling or dissension.
The new Red Cross hospital occupied an old castle which had formerly been used as a German hospital, although the last German wounded had been removed before the arrival of the American army.
The castle itself stood on a hill with a drop of a hundred feet to the bank of the Rhine, a path led down the hill to the river"s edge.
Crowning the summit were two old Roman towers which commanded a wonderful view; through the windows one could see many miles up and down the historic stream and on either side other castles famous in ancient legends long before the foundation of the modern German empire.
Within view of the American Red Cross hospital was the famous German fortress of Ehrenbreitstein across the river from Coblenz. The fortress was set on a rocky promontory four hundred feet above the river and surrounded by a hundred acres of land. From its flagstaff, where for a hundred years the German standard had waved, now floated the stars and stripes.
On New Year"s day at about four o"clock in the afternoon Sonya Clark stood waiting just outside the hospital for the appearance of her husband. It had become their custom for the past two weeks, whenever there was no real reason to prevent, to take a walk every afternoon at about the same hour.
However, on this afternoon, Sonya and Dr. Clark had a definite destination.
A New Year"s eve entertainment for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the soldiers was to take place at the Red Cross headquarters about a mile from the hospital and both Sonya and her husband had promised to be present. As a matter of fact as many of their Red Cross nurses as Miss Blackstone had been able to release from their duties had been spending the afternoon at the headquarters and an equal number of the hospital staff of physicians and orderlies.
A light snow was falling when Sonya and Dr. Clark set out. The court yard in front of their hospital sloped gradually to the road, so that the steep incline was only in the rear.
To her husband at least Sonya looked very young and handsome in her long fur coat and hat, which had been one of his gifts since reaching Europe.
Their walk was to lead through a number of quiet streets and then along one of the main thoroughfares of the German city.
At first Sonya and Dr. Clark spoke of nothing of any importance and then finally walked on for several moments in silence.
At the end of this time, Sonya glanced toward her husband and smiled.
"What is it you wish to talk to me about?" she inquired. "I don"t know why, but I always seem able to feel a something in the atmosphere when you have a problem on your mind which you can"t quite decide to discuss with me."
Dr. Clark laughed.
"Well, you see, Sonya, when I married you I was under the impression that you were unsuited to Red Cross work and that so far as possible, since you would insist upon working with me, you must be saved from as many difficulties as possible. At present, although I have not yet quite reached the state of advising with you upon my professional responsibilities, when my problems are human, you are the only person to whom I can turn. Miss Blackstone is an admirable superintendent of a hospital along the same lines that I have been a fairly successful physician and surgeon, but when we have to deal with personal equations we are both hopelessly unfit."
"And all this long speech, which may or may not be complimentary, leads up to just what human equation at present?" Sonya queried.
"Can"t you guess and tell me first, Sonya?" Dr. Clark demanded. "I always feel so much better satisfied if you have noticed certain situations yourself before I speak to you of them. Then I am convinced that I have not made a mistake in my own sometimes faulty observations."
"I suppose at this instant you are considering the problem of Hugh Raymond and Thea Thompson, aren"t you, if problem there is in which any outside human being has a right to interfere? No, don"t interrupt me until I finish," Sonya protested.
"I realize that you are very seriously opposed to the least personal relation existing between any of your Red Cross nurses and physicians and so far we have been remarkably successful. But it has been more luck I think than my distinguished husband"s objection to the possibility.
One can"t arrange, when young persons are more or less intimately a.s.sociated with each other and living under the same roof, that they always maintain a friendly and yet highly impersonal att.i.tude. Of course I also understand that you have great hopes for Hugh Raymond"s future, and that as he is extremely poor you would dislike to see him marry a poor girl before his position is more a.s.sured. I also understand that neither you nor I especially like Thea Thompson. She has rather a curious history and is not herself an ordinary person. One thing I have noticed. At the beginning of their acquaintance it was Thea who made an effort to interest Hugh, since then I don"t think she has been particularly interested in him. The interest has been on his side. It is to me rather unfortunate because Ruth Carroll might have liked Hugh, and, oh well, I must not speak of this! All I wished to say was that whatever our personal feeling in the matter it will be wiser, my dear husband, for you to say nothing to Hugh at present and for me to say nothing to Thea, which is what you rather had in mind to suggest.
Moreover, nothing has so far developed between them for which you need have cause to worry! Thea told me the other day that she was happy here in Coblenz because she has been able to have a relief from the constant strain of the hospital work, which she confesses was becoming a little hard to endure, by dancing with the soldiers at the Red Cross headquarters in her free hours. She has been helping one of the Red Cross managers, a Mrs. Adams, to teach some of the soldiers folk dancing. I believe she has a gift for it and the soldiers are getting a good deal of amus.e.m.e.nt out of their own efforts to learn. A good thing for all of them! We must remember our years and realize that young people need all kinds of relaxation."
"Thanks, Sonya, for including me along with your youthful self, even if we are in a cla.s.s apart," Dr. Clark returned. "I wonder if you will be as severe with me concerning my other complaint. As a matter of fact I am ashamed of this myself and do not honestly consider it gravely. But you know we are in a curious position here in Coblenz. On the outside apparently everything is going well. As comfortable a relation as one could expect has been established between our former enemy and ourselves. Yet Coblenz is full of rumors. There is a very strong pro-Kaiser element in the city, which means there is a party deeply in opposition to all American thought and feeling and to the establishment of any new form of government in Germany which shall not include the Kaiser.
"The point of all this is that I insist there be no display even of conventional friendliness between any member of our Red Cross unit and a single German resident of Coblenz. The information has been brought to me that Nora Jamison, one of our own nurses, has been making friends with a group of German children. They meet her and the little French girl, Louisa, in one of the city parks every afternoon and there they play together. Of course, this appears innocent, but knowing the children in a too friendly fashion may mean knowing their families later. The army officers tell me there has been this same problem among our soldiers. No one seems to have been able to prevent their getting on intimate terms with every little Hans and Gretel who makes their acquaintance. But I do wish you would protest mildly to Miss Jamison. It is true that we know little of her history except that her credentials must have been satisfactory to the Red Cross. I confess I agreed to have her form a part of our Red Cross unit rather on an impulse, when I learned Barbara Thornton was forced to return home. Besides, Miss Jamison herself attracted me. She has some unusual characteristic which I cannot exactly explain, but which nevertheless--"
"Ah, well, you need not try to explain it, David, because the thing is "charm," which I believe no one has successfully explained so far,"
Sonya answered. "I presume this same charm is what endears her to the German children; it has kept the little French Louisa close beside her since we left France. The little girl is getting all right too, talking and behaving like a normal person. But of course I"ll ask Miss Jamison to be careful that her friendship with the German children does not lead to any intimacy in their homes. She told me that she was a kind of Pied Piper of Hamlin. Do you remember how the Pied Piper led the German children away into some undiscovered country when their parents refused to pay him his just dues? But I think the girl is Peter Pan instead and has some childish quality which we cannot understand but which children recognize and love in her. You see the young soldier to whom she was engaged was killed in the fighting near Chateau-Thierry and apparently children are her one consolation. She is friendly with all our Red Cross unit, but not intimate with one of us."
When Sonya and her husband finally reached the Red Cross headquarters, already the large building was lighted, as the darkness fell early in the winter afternoons.
Going unannounced into the big reception room they found it fairly crowded. The room must have been fifty feet in length and nearly equally wide and extended from the front of the building to the rear.
In one end was a giant Christmas tree, left over from the Christmas celebration for the soldiers which in honor of New Year"s eve was again lighted with a hundred white candles according to a German custom.