Part 9

“I said just now that you have suffered greatly, but your sufferings have not been alone physical; they have been also, and even above all, spiritual. You have suffered to be without news of those who are dear, and at not knowing exactly how things were going in free France. As for that which concerns the news of the war and of France I am going to tell you at once, in one word, that all you have read in Le Bruxellois and the Gazette des Ardennes is one tissue of lies, and that, thanks to the armies of France and her Allies, victory will finally crown our banners.

“And now, courage, my dear fellow citizens! Your long martyrdom is about to end. Soon you are going to hear, standing, our sacred hymn, which has not greeted your ears for so long a time, and meantime join me in an act of faith and hope in our well-beloved country, and shout with me: ‘_Vive la France immortelle!_’”

The shout that followed was a shout indeed!

In closing, the Marseillaise was chanted, and by now all the audience was frankly in tears. A Red Cross doctor standing beside me cleared his throat.

“I’ve seen this thing a dozen times,” he observed, “and still I choke up every time!”

Supper over the _rapatriés_ registered and passed to the rear to receive their letters. This letter room is a marvel of perfect arrangement. Here every inquiry from anxious relatives is received, sorted alphabetically, and a note of it filed on an index card as if it were a library book. Thus, when a refugee hands his registration card across the counter, all the girl standing behind has to do is to look him up in her index catalogue and see if he has any mail.

Ah, those long moments of suspense while the girl is looking up a name! Those hundreds of greedy, outstretched hands across the counter! Those faces, so schooled to endurance, twitching now with unconcealed excitement! How slow the girl is! “No, there is nothing for you.” An outstretched hand drops from the counter. Those mutely borne disappointments are horrible.

Some of the tales of this famous letter room are harrowing, some humorous. There arrived one day in Evian a woman refugee, with four sons at the Front from whom she had not heard a single line in three years. Her excitement may be conceived. Were they all alive? Were some dead? Which? Impossible that all four should be preserved for three years. The thing was outside probability. For long months she had brooded over the chances, selected for death first one and then another of her sons. Perhaps all had been killed by this time, for she knew her sons were brave! There was her youngest in particular, a dashing daredevil in the Alpine Chasseurs--the pacemakers in every attack. Yes, undoubtedly he had gone! She must make up her mind to it. And so she did, and unmade it, a hundred times a day. When she arrived in Evian it was five in the afternoon, and before she stood at the mail counter, registry slip in hand, it was nine--four mortal hours of heart-piercing suspense, during which she had buried one, two, three, four of her sons, and resurrected them again in a passion of hope. And now she was going to know! Yes, there was a letter for madame--two letters. Blindly she got herself out of the throng. The next moment there was a loud cry and she fell face down in a dead swoon.

“And for two days,” continued the doctor who told me the incident, “she raved with acute dementia.”

“Poor soul!” I said. “All four were killed? Her intuition was right.”

“Not a bit of it,” laughed the doctor. “All four of ’em were not killed! All four were alive and kicking. And that was the very trouble. It was a chance, of course, in a million. And winning that chance in the great lottery was too much for her. She had steeled herself for disaster. The strong shock of joy was a knock-out blow! But in a few days she was up and speeding on the way to her sons.”

What the American Red Cross is doing for the children in this situation may be grouped under two heads: First, immediate, temporary aid; second, permanent work. Whatever the French Government wishes in the way of personnel, equipment, drivers, and so on, to meet an urgent relief need, the American Red Cross stands ready to deliver at an hour’s notice. But--and this is important and not generally understood--the French themselves must first express the desire, extend the invitation for aid. We are the guests; they are the hosts. And it is not the policy to rush in, take over the whole French problem, willy-nilly, and begin to run things off on brisk American methods. France has her national pride, like ourselves; and it is her pride, even in this stress, to care for her own wherever she can. Such a course of procedure on the part of the Red Cross may mean a little more slowness at the outset; but it means a deeper and more sympathetic bond between the two nations in the end--and in the end it is not less successful than the crude head-on attack. Thus in the Evian problem the French struggled for months to care for the thousands of refugees, and with a pitifully scant nursing and medical staff accomplished marvels. Still, to make a complete medical examination of every incoming _rapatrié_ with such a staff would need a day of a hundred hours. And without such medical attention contagious diseases and epidemics were bound to creep into France, which, in fact, they did.

When these defects were called to the attention of the French Government it at once frankly called for American aid. The same week a dozen ambulances and drivers, in charge of an American _chef de service_ who had won distinction before Verdun, were dispatched to assist in the transportation. In passing it should be said that the winter work of these Red Cross ambulance drivers upon the borders of that glacier lake, in an ice-box temperature, with a keen zero wind thrusting playful darts between the shoulder blades, deserves a special mention. It is not a spectacular service or, save for pneumonia microbes, especially dangerous. It is simply a plugging, monotonous grind in freezing isolation.

After the ambulances had been dispatched a group of medical specialists were sent out to study the problem on the ground and suggest plans of permanent value. The result of their examination was the establishment of a receiving hospital of one hundred beds in Evian to care for the sick; a second hospital in Lyons for the chronic cases; and still a third hospital on the Mediterranean for the tuberculosis patients.

In addition to the hospitals, a clinic has been established right in the Casino itself, so that no child leaves the building without a medical examination. And these two agencies, the inside clinic and the outside hospitals, render the situation, so far as the danger to the state is concerned, practically water-tight. For the clinic catches the small, microbe-ridden victim and shoots him straight to the hospital, thus turning a secure lock upon the spread of disease. As is the case on the northern frontier, these children suffer chiefly from malnutrition, contagious skin diseases and tuberculosis. It has been estimated roughly that about ten per cent of the _rapatriés_ need hospital attention each day, and about one-third of that ten per cent are tuberculous.

The hospital at Evian is as modern and complete in its child equipment as expert thought can achieve. At present there is a colony of about fifty workers on the ground. One phase of the hospital service, as the head nurse outlined it to me, is of especial educational value.

“All of our nurses’ aids, our _auxiliaires_, are French refugee girls,” she explained. “This means practically a training school for nurses. And when it is realized that the French nursing standards are as low as the French surgery standards are high the need for general instruction in this line becomes apparent. We shall teach these raw, untrained peasant girls simply the first principles of caring for the sick. But if we do no more than instill into them the fundamentals of cleanliness, convince them that all-over baths are not scandalous, that babies do not thrive on wine, that fresh air does not kill, that sheets should be changed slightly oftener than once a month, that pneumonia and tuberculous patients do not prosper in hermetically sealed rooms, and a few other modern, common-sense maxims, I for one shall be very content!”

These hospitals for children, established in needy zones throughout all France as fast as may be, constitute one of the most effective and long-range pieces of work that the American Red Cross has undertaken, for they minister to the immediate want and at the same time strengthen permanently the general health tone of a nation. That the French appreciate our effort in this field is undoubted, and one of their statesmen has said that the impetus given by America to the conservation of child life in France is one of the most beneficial by-products of this great war.

A CANTEENER IN FRANCE

Hooray! _Vive la belle France!_ I’m going to France! I’m going to be a canteener! Maybe I shall go right up to the Front just behind the first-line trenches and be under shell fire and be bombed by boche avions and hear the _alerte_ and have to scurry to _abris_ and all that sort of thing. I don’t know any of the details yet--nobody over here does--but anyhow I’m going! That’s the chief thing.

I’m so excited and thrilled I scarcely know what I’m doing, but outwardly I try to keep poised and calm, for mamma has been disappearing at intervals into her handkerchief ever since she gave her consent; and as for papa, he doesn’t say much; in fact, the dear old sport is quieter than ever--but I catch him looking at me, when he thinks I don’t see, in a way that makes me realize I’m the only girl he’s got down here below and that he’d never send me if he had a son to give. Not having a son and being a true-blue American with generations of fighting blood inside of him--for the man who said “Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes!” was my father’s great-grandfather--he’s figured it out that the best he can do is to send his girl instead. That’s the ground of his consent. And mamma’s a Daughter of the American Revolution, so that lets her out.

It was pure accident--or fate--which made me run into Edith on the street a week ago to-day and thus start the wheels of destiny.

“Come in and have some tea,” she said after congratulating me on my engagement, which had just been announced, “and tell me all about it--and him. You deep little mouse--to pull this off right under everybody’s nose and keep as secret as the grave! Who is he, anyhow?”

“He’s Major B----, of the Fifty-blank Infantry. He’s just received his majority and he’s just twenty-nine.”

“Major, eh? That’s not so bad.”

“And, oh, Edith, he’s leaving for France sometime this month, and I--I don’t know what to do!”

“What would you like to do?” asked Edie, laughing a little at my blushes.

“I’d like to go over there, too,” I replied without hesitation, staring straight into her deep blue eyes. “It doesn’t seem as if I could stand it--the long, long separation. Irregular letters. And when they go into action, not knowing, not hearing, maybe never hearing. Never. Just the silence!”

“You’re in the same fix as a million other American women right now,” replied Edith grimly. “And you’ve got to stand it. That’s our job.”

“I know,” I said heavily. “But it doesn’t make your own toothache any better to know that there’s an epidemic of toothache raging over the whole civilized world.”

Edith sat looking at me with a smile deep down in her eyes. She has been married three years, the first of our class; and now she looks at the entire outside world with that same air of tender smiling abstraction.

“It’s all part of the game,” she said finally. “And we women must keep the flag flying. Jack”--Jack’s her husband--“is going over next month. He doesn’t have to, of course, being over the age limit. But he foresaw this two years ago, and went and prepared himself at Plattsburg. He wouldn’t volunteer then on account of me and baby. But now the call has come it finds him ready. He feels the whole situation deeply. I’m glad.”

“Oh, Edie, you--brick!” I breathed, squeezing her hand hard. I thought of her left alone with her child--and not any too much money either.

“Edie’s all right,” she murmured unsteadily, her blue eyes bright as diamonds. “Don’t you fuss about her! But now about you--I have an idea. What can you do? Practically, I mean.”

“I’ve had a six-months’ course in the hospital----”

“They don’t take anything but graduate nurses now.”

“----and I’ve had two years of domestic science and food values. Then last summer I operated a cafeteria in the suburbs for the Women’s League--did all the buying and accounts myself. It was fun. In college I was head of the basket-ball team and the tramping club, and I’ve never been sick a day in my life.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-four.”

“A bit young. However,” said Edith briskly, rising, “I’ll see what I can do. There’s just a bare chance--but I’m not going to tell you beforehand, for fear we burst the bubble. Run home now. Stick round the telephone. There may be a long-distance call. Put a few things into a bag while you’re waiting. Do you think you could go on to New York to-night?”

I suppose my eyes must have been as big round as saucers with excitement, for suddenly Edith bent right over and dropped a kiss on my cheek. “You darned little kid!” she whispered. “I know exactly how you feel. Now trot!”

I trotted--walking on air.

For the next two hours I hung round the landing where the telephone is, and finally settled down on the top stair.

“For goodness’ sake, child!” cried mamma, stumbling over me as she came out of the sitting-room, “what on earth are you doing here, all bunched up in the dark?”

“I--I’m----”

Just then the telephone rang. I sprang to the receiver.

“Oh, I see!” said mamma, laughing as she went downstairs.

But she didn’t.

Central got the long-distance line cleared and then over the wire there came a woman’s clear, crisp, businesslike voice: “I wish to speak to Miss Carlotta Murray.”

“This is she.”

“Miss Murray, could you sail for France a week from Saturday?”

My heart gave a sort of big thrilly jerk and I had a sudden shock as if my nerves had got short-circuited.

“Ye-yes!” I gulped faintly.

“What? Speak louder.”

“Yes!” I shouted into the mouthpiece, holding on to the wall for support. “Dee-lighted!”

“Very well. Be at our office at eleven to-morrow morning. You’d better come prepared to go straight on to Washington to arrange about your passes. Good-b----”

“Wait!” I cried excitedly. “Who is it speaking? I don’t know who you are.”

“Red Cross Headquarters. New York office. Good-by.”

She hung up and left me gasping in the darkness on the stair. Well, I was in deep over my head now; and so I found mamma and put it straight up to her: Would she give her consent if papa did? At first she refused up and down, but by six o’clock I had her coaxed round to the point where she was packing my suitcase and making up lists of things I’d need in France--woolen underwear and galoshes and sweaters and first-aid outfits and what nots. And all the time we didn’t either of us know what I was going to do when I got over there any more than the man in the moon. The call had tumbled right out of a clear sky. But once I’d got mamma to see the situation as it really was, outside her motherhood so to speak, she was as keen as mustard for it.

We had dinner upstairs in my room. Delia served it on a tray. And when she heard I was sailing for France she just said, “Oh, my Gawd! Submarines!” and dropped the tray and burst into tears. You’d have thought the submarines were right under my bed. At that mamma broke down altogether and Delia embraced her--Delia’s been with us ever since I was born--and there followed a hectic half hour. I was beginning to think Delia had spilled the beans for me with her “Oh, my Gawd!” when all of a sudden mamma glanced at the clock, pulled herself together and exclaimed sharply:

“Good gracious, child, get into your clothes--quick! Do you want to miss that train? Delia, run down and phone for a taxi.”

Delia went, still dribbling tears and tomato bisque. Then mamma rushed off a telegram to Uncle Jim to meet me in New York, rushed me into my things, rushed me down to the station, through the gate, onto the train, gave me a swift breathless hug and departed. That’s the way she is, all tears one second and a regular little whiz-bang field marshal the next. But it was some evening!

The next morning in New York Uncle Jim and I breakfasted at the Belmont, after which I walked over to Red Cross Headquarters, had an interview, and took the train to Washington. I had already wired papa, who was down there on business, to meet me, and told him to watch out for a life-size jolt. When I stepped off the train, there he was, leaning against a pillar and looking, as the novelists say, singularly handsome and debonair.

“Hello, Miss Murray!” he said, taking my bag away from the porter. “Now come on with your jolt.”

“_Vive la France!_” I said by way of commencement.

“Ha! So that’s the bill of fare? With all my heart. May she _vive_ forever. But what’s that got to do with the price of winter umbrellas?”

“The _Rochambeau_ sails a week from to-morrow.”

“Well,” said papa, still bluffing away, though I could see from the way he started that I had landed him one right over the heart, “I haven’t any stock in her. The submarines may go as far as they like.”

“They want me to sail on her--as a canteener.”

“As a whatter?” demanded papa.

“A canteener. A person that works in a canteen. You know--serves hot drinks and food and all to the soldiers.”

“Who wants you to go?” he growled in his crossest cross-examining-witness manner.

“President Wilson. God. American Red Cross. Mamma. Delia. Me.”

“Pretty good references,” observed papa dryly. “Especially Delia. But not worth a single red cent in the present instance--unless indorsed by me. Now let’s get down to brass tacks. What is this all about?”

That’s the way papa always talks with me, straight from the shoulder, just as if I were his law partner and we were threshing out a case. And so I told him. I told him how the high commissioner for Europe of the American Red Cross had cabled to Washington for women to be sent immediately to France to work in canteens; how Washington had telegraphed to New York to collect a group of workers without delay; how New York had telegraphed to Boston for names of suitable persons with training along that line; how Edith, the president of her Red Cross chapter, had been called into council--and how that led to me.

“It’s the finger of destiny, papa,” I wound up; “and it’s pointed straight at me--like the man in the ad. There’s just one hitch.”

“Only one?” observed papa with his grim little half smile.

“The cable says women over thirty.”

“Well,” chuckled papa, “I guess that lets you out--for about six years anyhow. And by that time the war will be over. Though Bairnsfeather says that the first seven years will be the worst, and after that every fourteenth year.”

“I’m within the draft limit,” I protested. “And if they take infants of twenty-one to be soldiers I don’t see why a college graduate of twenty-four, captain of the basket-ball team and with a record in Greek, hasn’t enough gumption to stand behind a counter and deal out sandwiches and coffee. It makes me sick!”

“Well, all that’s a minor matter,” said papa. “It’s fitness, not age or lack of it, that counts. But let’s waive that for the moment and get down to the kernel of this proposition. Why are you interested in this thing? Why do you want to go--or think that you want to go? Now don’t hand out any cheap sentimentality. Don’t insult the cause by any tawdry emotionalism. Come clean. What are your reasons?”

Followed a conference--or moral examination, rather--which lasted for over four hours, straight through dinner, up to eleven o’clock; and still we sat on at table, papa smoking one cigar after another, until the big hotel dining-room was deserted and the lights went out. There was no question from the first of a downright refusal. He simply talked to me, eye to eye and man to man. He spoke as if I were his son, a soldier, going off to war, and he charted the cardinal points of conduct. He saw the thing big from the start, and I loved him for it. Then we talked about life and love and marriage, the rights of men and nations, and how this war was going to temper and fuse America like steel that’s been through fire; we talked about personal responsibility, the Red Cross, and he showed how any human institution rested straight back on the individual, so that if I fell down on my job the whole organization would feel the shock. He didn’t give me a whole decalogue of “Don’ts” to guide me over there, but he did give me three big “Do’s.” Here they are:

Number One: Get round your own job and leave it to the other fellow to get round his.

Number Two: Keep alive and lovable. Women, he said, are a little more apt than men to go to seed.

Number Three: Keep your sense of humor.

Altogether, it was the best talk I’ve ever had on earth, and when it was done he kissed me; and then we sailed out arm in arm for some ice-cream soda at the corner drug store, and I treated him and he treated me--our immemorial custom.

It was all settled the next morning that I was to go to war. They didn’t even query my age!

That morning, after breakfast, papa said, “Guess I’ll just walk over with you to that shebang of yours, in case you need identification.”

“No, you don’t!” I said. “I’m going to get this on my own credentials--my cafeteria credentials!--and not because I’m the daughter of Judge Murray, alias Old Silver Tongue. ‘Get round your own job and leave it to the other fellow to get round his.’ Axiom One.”

Papa grinned. “Strike one--right over the plate. All right. Let me hear what the jury decides.” And we went our separate ways.