"That is just what I am going to tell you, because that explains where I have been and why I have not been able to let you hear from me. Our Russian doctor ordered our motor car stopped and we entered a Russian house some distance from any main road. We purposely chose a house that had been deserted, and there we have been for two weeks, struggling to save the life of General Alexis. Of course, his wound had been more serious than he would admit. The wonder is that he is still alive!"
"But he has recovered?" Barbara inquired with her usual unsatisfied curiosity. "Goodness, Mill, what a heroine you will be, to have nursed one of the most famous generals in the Allied armies and to have restored him to health. Won"t your mother be charmed!"
Naturally Mildred smiled. The thought of her mother"s pleasure in her distinction _had_ occurred to her several times in the last two weeks.
"Oh, of course I am glad to have had the honor, Bab, because I too think General Alexis a great man. He is perhaps the simplest man I have ever known, except my father, and I like him very much. Only he has not recovered and I have not restored him to health. If General Alexis had recovered he would never have come to Petrograd, he would have rejoined his troops. But he was well enough to be moved and Petrograd seemed the safest place for him at present. Besides, I believe he wished to have an audience with the Czar."
Barbara again rocked back and forth. "You say "Czar," Mill, just as if you were speaking of an everyday person. Really, I believe you are the best bred girl I ever saw. Position, wealth, no distinctions seem to excite you. You just take people for exactly what they are," Barbara murmured, in reality speaking to herself.
But Nona overheard her. "You are quite right, Bab," she agreed. "Mildred does not know it, but she has taught me many a lesson on that subject since we came to Europe. It would be a nicer world if everybody thought and acted as Mildred does. But what has become of your general, Mill?
Are you to go on nursing him or to see him again?"
"No, to the first question, Nona dear, and yes, to the second. Now I am so tired I simply must go to bed. I told the doctor and General Alexis that since he was better, I wanted to come to you. Besides, I was sure that here in Petrograd there would be so many cleverer nurses than I can ever hope to be. And I didn"t want to stay at the Winter Palace with you girls here."
"You mean," Nona asked quietly, "that you were invited to be a guest at the Czar"s own palace and you declined?"
Mildred clasped her hands behind her head. "Oh, I thought I told you.
General Alexis is to be at the Winter Palace while he is in Petrograd.
He is very close to the Czar, I believe. As his nurse, of course I was asked to stay there with him; he is to have his physician and his aides as well as his servants in attendance. There was nothing personal in my being permitted inside the Palace. Some other nurse will take my place."
"But the point is, Mildred Thornton, that you refused to stay under the same roof with the Czar of all the Russias. Never so long as you live will your mother forgive you."
The other girl flushed and laughed. "I hadn"t thought of that, Bab dear.
Please don"t tell on me. But we are to be under the same roof with the Czar some day for a few moments, all of us. General Alexis said that he wished to have us presented to the Czar and Czarina, if it were possible to arrange. He seems to feel grateful to me for the little I was able to do. But please, Bab, don"t say that I refused to continue to nurse General Alexis. I only asked that they get some one to take my place, who would be wiser."
"Did General Alexis agree to a new nurse for that reason, Mildred?"
Barbara demanded in her driest manner.
But Mildred was too tired for further conversation.
"Oh, he was kind enough to say that I needed a rest more than he required my services. Am I to have a bed or the cot in this sitting room?"
"You may have them _all_, Mildred Thornton!" Barbara returned, getting up on her feet and then bowing until her forehead almost touched the floor.
"Any human being who is going to allow me to enter the presence of the Czar and Czarina, has got to be treated like royalty for the rest of her life."
Nevertheless, Barbara kissed Mildred good night. Mildred whispered, "Don"t be a goose," and then at last was permitted to retire.
CHAPTER XV
_The Winter Palace_
The next day Nona found opportunity for confiding to Mildred the fate of Sonya Valesky. She found Mildred more deeply concerned than Barbara had been. This was true because Mildred had a different nature; it was easier for her to understand a temperament that would sacrifice everything to its dream, than for the more practical and sensible Barbara. Moreover, Barbara was so much in love these days that she found it difficult to give a great deal of thought to other people.
She struggled against the tendency, but it is ever the vice of lovers.
Finally, on Thursday, Mildred Thornton received a note from General Alexis inviting her and her two friends to come that afternoon at four o"clock to the Winter Palace. And although the three girls were Americans, they understood that such an invitation was not in reality an invitation, but a command. For the Czar and Czarina had announced that they would be pleased to meet the three American Red Cross nurses.
The meeting was to be informal, as these were war times and there were no court levees. Indeed, the Czar was only staying for a brief time at his palace before going to take command of his own troops. Owing to the frequent Russian defeats in the past few months, the Czar had concluded that he must command his men in person in order to give them greater courage and steadfastness. The munitions of war, of which they had been sadly in need for several months, were now pouring in from j.a.pan and the United States.
Of course, in the excitement and nervousness due to such an important and unexpected occasion, the three Red Cross girls had the same problem to settle that attacks all women at critical moments:
"What on earth should they wear to the presentation?"
Fortunately, under the circ.u.mstances there was but one answer to this question. They were invited to the Palace as Red Cross nurses, they must therefore wear their Red Cross uniforms. Since the three girls had almost nothing else left in their wardrobes, this was just as well.
Constant moving from place to place, with little opportunity for transportation, had reduced their luggage to the most limited amounts.
Yet a.s.suredly they were as handsome and far more dignified on the afternoon of their appearance at the Winter Palace in the costumes of American Red Cross nurses, than if they had been appareled in the court trains and feathers of more gala occasions.
Mildred always looked especially well in her uniform. She was less pretty than the other two girls. But for this very reason her dignity and the sense of serenity that her personality suggested showed to best advantage in the simple toilette of white with the Red Cross insignia on the arm. However, over her uniform Mildred wore the magnificent sable coat in which she had appeared at her friends" lodgings in Petrograd.
This afternoon, in spite of her excitement over what lay ahead of them, Barbara did not allow the coat to pa.s.s unnoticed a second time.
"For goodness" sake, Mildred, where did you get that magnificent garment?" she demanded, just as they were about to go downstairs to get into their sleigh. "You owned a very nice coat when we left you behind in Grovno, but some fairy wand must have changed it. This is the most wonderful sable I ever saw."
Mildred flushed and then laid her cheek against the beautiful, soft brown warmth of her furs. "It is time you and Nona were speaking of my grandeur," she declared. "You see, in getting away from the fort at the last I stupidly left my own furs behind; indeed, I don"t know what became of them. General Alexis noticed that I was cold almost immediately. Somehow, after he began to get stronger, he managed to have this coat brought to the country house where we were staying.
Then just before we started to Petrograd he presented it to me. Of course, I did not feel that I ought to accept it and insisted I could not. But General Alexis said that he had received so much kindness from me, he thought it very ungenerous of me to make him altogether my debtor. I didn"t know what to do. Do you think it wrong to accept it, Bab? Somehow I did not know how to continue to refuse."
As Barbara was just going into her bedroom at this moment, she made no reply. Nona was more rea.s.suring.
"Of course it was all right, Mildred, or at least I suppose it was if General Alexis insisted, and you had done a great deal for him."
Then Nona followed Barbara. Barbara was standing perfectly still in the center of the room and apparently thinking with all the concentration possible.
"I wonder if this General Alexis is more fond of Mildred than he would be of any nurse who might have cared for him?" Barbara murmured. Then she shook her head. "That was an absurd suggestion on my part and Mildred would not like it. I am sorry," she said.
At the door of the Winter Palace, after the girls had pa.s.sed beyond the servants and the detectives who watch every human being permitted to approach their Imperial Majesties, the three American girls were ushered into a reception room. Except for the fact that there were more paintings on the walls, the room resembled other similar chambers now left on exhibition at Versailles or the Louvre in Paris.
However, the girls had little time for investigation, for almost at once General Alexis entered the room to greet them. He was accompanied by a lieutenant who was his aide. To Nona Davis" surprise, the young man proved to be Lieutenant Michael Orlaff, whom she had not seen since the afternoon when she had walked to the fortress with him and confided the news of Sonya Valesky"s arrest.
After a few moments of general conversation a man servant, wearing an elaborate uniform, announced that General Alexis and his guests might walk into the Czar"s private sitting room.
Naturally this was a very unusual proceeding, but war times had changed the manners of courts as well as other places. Moreover, General Alexis was a personal friend of the Czar"s, so far as a Czar may ever have a friend. In any case, he was one of his most trusted generals. This reception to the American Red Cross girls was entirely due to the fact that General Alexis had declared Mildred Thornton"s courage and devotion had saved his life. But of this she was not yet aware.
The Czar and Czarina were not decorating gilded thrones as one sees them in portraits or paints them in one"s own imagination. Indeed, they were seated in chairs, but rose as any other host and hostess might when their guests came into the room. They were not alone, however, for beside the guards stationed outside their door, two of them kept always within a short distance of the Czar himself.
The Czarina was a beautiful woman, tall and dark, but looking infinitely sad. The girls could not but remember having heard how frequently she suffered from a melancholia so severe that it was almost akin to an unbalanced mind.
She now murmured a few words to the three girls and then reseated herself. Barbara hoped profoundly that the distinguished audience would soon be over. Of course, this meeting of the Czar and Czarina was perhaps the most extraordinary honor that had yet been paid to any American Red Cross nurses in Europe. But like other honors, it carried its discomfort. For Barbara had not the faintest idea what she should do or say, when she should stand up and when sit down. She had never imagined herself a large person before, but now she felt so awkward that she might have been a giant. Yet really there was but one thing for her to do: she must merely keep still and watch what was taking place.
Actually the Czar, Nicholas II, was talking pleasantly with Mildred Thornton, and Mildred was answering with her usual quiet dignity.
The Czar looked older than Barbara would have supposed from his pictures. But then the war may have aged him. His close-cropped brown beard with the tiny point was turning gray. And he had large, full and, Barbara thought, not particularly intelligent eyes.
At this moment he moved toward a small table and picked up what appeared like a medal.