The Girl Philippa
fellow cleared out--got clean away, I regret to say. That is how the
thing happened. I'm very glad to be able to reassure you, Mr. Gray."
"Thanks, awfully. It's been hell not to know. You see, I was hurt; the
beggars got me. I've been lying in a cottage down the road a bit--I
don't know where. I was badly knocked out--knocked silly, you
know--fever and all that.... I woke up the other day. Couldn't get the
people to stir--tried to make 'em hunt up Halkett. They were just
stupid--kind, but stupid. Finally one of their kiddies, who comes to
school here, told Sister Eila that there was a sick _Anglais_ in his
daddy's cottage--" He looked up at her as he spoke and she smiled.
"--And Sister Eila, being all kinds of an angel of mercy, came all the
way there to investigate.... And she wheeled me back here in a
_charette_! What do you think of that, Mr. Warner?"
"He was in _such_ a state, poor boy!" said Sister Eila. "Just think, Mr.
Warner! They had not even washed him when they put on their dreadful
poultices--good, kind, ignorant folk that they are! So of course I
insisted on bringing him here where Sister Felicite and I could give him
proper attention."
Gray smiled tremulously:
"I've been bathed, cleansed, patched, mended, beautifully bandaged, fed,
and spoiled! I don't know what you think of the Grey Sisters, but I
know what I think."
"There's no difference of opinion in the world concerning them," said
Warner, and Sister Eila smiled and blushed and held up an admonitory
finger:
"It is I who am being spoiled, gentlemen." Then, very seriously to
Warner: "Have you seen the pitiable procession which has been passing
along the Ausone road since before dawn? Is it not heartbreaking, Mr.
Warner? What is happening in the north, that all these poor people come
hurrying southward? I thought the cannonade was from our own forts."
Gray looked up at him curiously.
"I don't yet know what is happening north of Ausone," said Warner
quietly. "There were three fires burning last night. I think they were
villages in flames. But it was far to the north. The Ausone Fort was
not engaged--except when an aeroplane came within range. Then they used
their high-angle guns."
There was a silence. Listening, Warner could hear the cannonade
distinctly above the shuffle of feet and the childish singsong of
recitation in the schoolroom underneath.
Presently, glancing up, he caught Sister Eila's eye, rose, and followed
her to the window.
"I don't know what to do," she said. "Sister Felicite is going to try
to keep the children here, but a gendarme came day before yesterday,
saying that the school might be required for a military hospital, and
that the children were to remain at home. I have telephoned to Ausone;
I have telegraphed to the rue de Bac; I have done all I could do. But I
am directed, from the rue de Bac, to prepare for field service, at the
front. And from Ausone they telephone Sister Felicite that she may keep
the children until the last moment, but that, when needed, she must turn
over our school to the military authorities. And so, Mr. Warner, what
am I to do with that poor boy over there? Because, if I go away, Sister
Felicite cannot properly attend to him and care for the children, too."
Warner stood thinking for a moment. Then:
"Could you get me permission to use your telephone?" he asked.
"Only for military purposes. It is the rule now."
Warner walked over to Gray:
"You are a British officer, I take it."
"Yes."
"Captain?"
"Yes."
Sister Eila, listening, understood and took Warner to the telephone.
For a few moments he heard her soft voice in conversation with the
military operator, then she beckoned him and he gave the number he
desired and waited.
Presently he got the Chateau des Oiseaux, and after a few moments Madame
de Moidrey came to the telephone.
"Ethra," he said, "would you care to be hospitable to a British officer
who has been injured?"
"Certainly! Where is he?"
"At Sister Eila's school. Is there anything left to harness up and send
for him?"
"Yes; there is a donkey and a basket wagon. I'll have a groom take it
over at once. Is the officer badly hurt?"
"I don't know. I think he merely needs bandaging and feeding. He's the
comrade of my friend, Captain Halkett. Gray is his name, and he's a
captain or something or other. May I tell him that you will receive
him?"
"Of course, Jim. You need not have asked; you could have brought him
here immediately."
The military operator cut in:
"A thousand thanks to Madame la Comtesse for her kindness to our allies,
the English! Madame, I regret, very much that I must switch off----"
click!
Warner smiled and turned to Sister Eila:
"Madame de Moidrey takes him!"
"I am so thankful! I will go up and make him ready."
"What is the matter with him?"
"Think of it! He was coming on his motor cycle full speed toward Sais
through the night, when right ahead he saw a car drawn up beside the
road, and four men standing in it with pistols aimed at him. Only one
bullet hit him, making a deep furrow over his temple. He remembers
losing control of the motor cycle, of being hurled through the air.
Then, evidently some time afterward, he found himself struggling under a
thin covering of dirt and sticks and lumps of sod--fighting for air,
pushing, creeping, crawling out of the hasty and shallow grave where
they had flung him beside his ruined motor cycle. He thinks that the
frame of the motor cycle kept him from being suffocated by the sod and
earth piled over him.
"It was early morning; a peasant was breaking ground in another field
not far away, and Mr. Gray managed to crawl near enough to make the man
hear. That is all he remembers until he regained consciousness once more
in the man's cottage."
"Good heavens, what a ghastly experience!" muttered Warner.
"It is dreadful. If they knew that his heart still beat, it was inhuman
of them to do such a thing as that. But perhaps they considered him
dead. He may have appeared so. I have had to bandage both arms and
both knees where he was hurled over the ground when he fell. He has a
fracture of the left wrist which is doing nicely, and two broken ribs
are mending without trouble. As for the scar on his temple, it is
nearly closed now. I think all will be well with him. Now, I shall go
and prepare him for his little journey."
At the foot of the stairs she paused, turned slowly to Warner, and he
thought her lovely face had become somewhat pale.
"I think you said over the telephone that you have had no word from Mr.
Halkett?"
"Not a word, Sister Eila."
"Thank you."
*CHAPTER XXVII*
The journey back along the Ausone road was a slow and stifling one.
Warner, walking on the left, led the donkey by the head; Philippa moved
beside the basket cart on the right. In the cart sat the wounded
Englishman, his bandaged head lying on Sister Eila's shoulder.
Through the heavy, suffocating cloud of dust, group after group of
fugitives loomed up ahead, coming toward them, parting right and left to
let the basket cart and the little, plodding donkey pass through. Sheep
were driven aside for them; cattle swung out into the roadside ditches
on either hand, halting there with stupid heads turned toward them while
the basket cart took right of way.
Once, from the toiling procession behind them, distant shouts arose, and
the ground began to quiver and shake; and Warner called out a sharp
warning to Philippa and drew the donkey cart out among the dusty weeds
of the ditch, while everywhere ahead of them people, cattle, vehicles,
were being hurriedly turned out and crowded aside along the grassy
roadside gullies.
Louder grew the clamour behind; heavier the jarring of the ground; a
mounted gendarme--a _marechal de logis_--appeared, alternately cantering
and galloping his superb horse, and sweeping the crowds aside with
vigorous gestures of his white-gloved hand.
Behind him trotted six more gendarmes, sabers sheathed, their single
rank stretching the entire width of the road from ditch to ditch. And
behind these, in a writhing storm of dust and flying gravel, came the
field artillery on a swift, swinging trot, drivers erect in their
saddles, kepis strapped tight, sun-scorched faces sweating under masks
of dust.
Tan-colored limbers, guns, caissons drawn by powerful, dust-whitened
teams, rushed past thudding and clanking, escorted by galloping pelotons
of artillerymen armed with saber and carbine, flanked by smart officers
flashing all over cherry red and gold.
Battery after battery, with forges and wagons, passed; a fanion with
trumpeters sped by; a squadron of remount cavalry in clearer blue
jackets followed, then came two squadrons of galloping dragoon lancers,
their steel helmets covered with brown holland slips, and the pennons
streaming wildly from their lance heads. A gendarme or two galloped in
the rear, mere ghosts in the driving dust. And the flying column had
passed.
Sister Eila, covering Gray's mouth and nose with her grey-blue sleeve,
bowed her head and closed her eyes while the storm of dust and pebbles
lasted; then Warner nodded to Philippa, and between them they led out
the donkey cart once more and pushed slowly ahead into the oncoming
torrent of vehicles--cattle, men, women, and children.
It was nearly noon when they arrived at the Chateau des Oiseaux. A
footman aided him to carry Gray upstairs to the room prepared for him.
"Are you all right?" asked Warner doubtfully.
Gray opened his haggard eyes.
"All right, thanks.... May I have a little water, if it's not too much
trouble----"
Sister Eila entered the room with a carafe and some lemons; and Warner
withdrew.
In the hallway below he encountered Madame de Moidrey and Peggy Brooks
in earnest consultation with the village physician--an old man crippled
from 1870, and wearing the Legion and an empty sleeve.
Warner shook hands with Dr. Senlis and told him what he knew of Gray's
condition. Sister Eila came down presently and everybody greeted her
with a warmth which unmistakably revealed her status in Sais.
Presently she went upstairs again with Dr. Senlis. Later the Countess
went up. Peggy and Philippa had gone out to the south terrace where the
reverberation of the cannonade was now continually shaking the windows,
and where, beyond, Ausone, a dark band of smoke stretched like a rampart
across the northern sky.
As Warner stood thinking, listening to the dull shock of the concussions
rolling in toward them on the wind from the north, the footman, Vilmar,
approached him.
"Pardon, Monsieur Warner, but there is a frightful _type_ hanging about
whom it seems impossible to drive away----"
"What!" said Warner angrily.
"Monsieur, I have hustled him from the terrace several times; I have
summoned aid from my fellow domestics; the chauffeur, Vignier, chases
him with frequency into the shrubbery; Maurice and the lad, Henri,
pursue him with horsewhips----"
"Is it that _voyou_ who is all over bandages?" demanded Warner
incredulously.
"It is, Monsieur----"
Out of sheer contempt for the creature and for all his species, Warner
had ordered him to be fed and turned loose. And here he was, back
again, hanging around!
"Where is he?"
"He dodged into the shrubbery across the lawn."
The effontery of Asticot amazed Warner. With an impatient gesture he
turned on his heel to traverse the lawn. And at the same moment Asticot
emerged from the bushes bordering it.
His bruised and ratty eyes blinked nervously; his battered _casquette de
marlou_ was in his hand; his knees, and his teeth also, seemed inclined
to smite together. Plainly, he was terrified; and when Warner walked