Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound Part 4

Ruth recovered herself quickly. She gave him her good hand and squeezed his in a hearty fashion.

"Don't mind, Tom," she said. "If this war is pretty near over, as you believe, you will not be long behind me in taking ship for home."

"Right you are, Ruthie Fielding," he agreed cheerfully.

But neither of them-and both were imaginative enough, in all good conscience!-dreamed how soon nor in what manner Tom Cameron would follow Ruth to sea when she was homeward bound. Nor did the girl consider how much of a thrilling nature might happen to them both before they would see each other again.

Tom Cameron left the hospital at Clair that afternoon to make all haste to the aviation camp where he was to meet his friend and college-mate, Ralph Stillinger, the American ace. Ruth was helped by the hospital matron herself to prepare for an automobile trip to Lyse, from which town she could entrain for Paris.

It was at Lyse that Ruth had first been stationed in her Red Cross work; so she had friends there. And it was a very dear little friend of hers who came to drive the automobile for Ruth when she left Clair. Henriette Dupay, the daughter of a French farmer on the outskirts of the village, had begged the privilege of taking "Mademoiselle Americaine" to Lyse.

"_Ma foi!_" gasped plump little Henriette, or "Hetty" as almost everybody called her, "how pale you are, Mademoiselle Ruth. The bad, bad Boches, that they should have caused you this annoyance."

"I am only glad that the Germans did no more harm around the hospital than to injure me," Ruth said. "It was providential, I think."

"But no, Mademoiselle!" cried the French girl, letting in her clutch carefully when the engine of the motor began to purr smoothly, "it cannot be called 'providential.' This is a serious loss for us all. Oh, we feel it! Your going away from Clair is a sorrow for all."

And, indeed, it seemed true. As the car rolled slowly through the village, children ran beside the wheels, women waved their hands from the doorways of the little cottages, and wounded poilus saluted the pa.s.sage of the Red Cross worker who was known and beloved by everybody.

The tears stung Ruth's eyelids. She remembered how, the night before, the patients in the convalescent wards-the boys and men she had written letters for before her injury, and whom she had tried to comfort in other ways during the hours she was off duty-had insisted upon coming to her cell, one by one, to bid her good-bye. They had kissed her hands, those brave, grateful fellows! Their grat.i.tude had spilled over in tears, for the Frenchman is never ashamed of emotion.

As she had come down from her chamber every nurse and orderly in the hospital, as well as the surgical staff and even the porters and _brancardiers_, had gathered to bid her G.o.d-speed.

"The dear, dear people!" Ruth murmured, as the car reached the end of the village street. She turned to throw kisses with her one useful hand to the crowd gathered in the street.

"The dear, dear people!" she repeated, smiling through her happy tears at Hetty.

"Ah, they know you, Mademoiselle," said the girl with a practical nod.

"And they know they will seldom see your like again."

"Oh, la, la!" responded Ruth, using an expression of Henriette's, and laughed. Then suddenly: "You are not taking the shortest road, Henriette Dupay!"

"What! do you expect to get away from Clair without seeing Madame the Countess?" laughed the younger girl. "I would not so dare-no, no! I have promised to take you past the chateau. And at the corner of the road beyond my whole family will await you. Papa Dupay has declared a holiday on the farm till we go past."

Ruth was really very happy, despite the fact that she was leaving these friends. It made for happiness, the thought that everybody about Clair wished her well.

The car mounted the gentle slope of the highway that pa.s.sed the chateau gates. It was a beautiful road with great trees over-arching it-trees that had sprung from the soil at least two hundred years before. With all the air raids there had been about Clair, the Hun had not worked his wrath upon this old forest, nor upon the chateau almost hidden behind the high wall.

The graceful, slim figure of the lady of the chateau, holding a big greyhound in leash, appeared at the small postern when the car came purring up the hill. Henriette brought the machine to a stop where the Countess Marchand could give Ruth her hand.

"Good-bye, dear child!" she said, smiling cheerfully at Ruth. "We shall miss you; but we know that wherever you go you will find some way of helping others. Mademoiselle Jeannie," (it was thus she spoke of her son, Henri's, sweetheart) "has told us much of you, Ruth Fielding. And we know you well, _n'est-ce pas_, Hetty? We shall never forget her, shall we?"

"_Ma foi_, no!" rejoined the practical French girl. "She leaves her mark upon our neighborhood, does she not, Madame la Countesse?"

On they rolled, past the end of the farm lane where stood the whole Dupay household, even to Aunt Abelard who had never quite forgiven the Americans for driving her back from her old home north of Clair when the Germans made their spring advance. But Aunt Abelard found she could forgive the military authorities now, because of Ruth Fielding.

They all waved ap.r.o.ns and caps until the motorcar was out of sight. It dipped into a swale, and the last picture of the people she had learned to love faded from Ruth Fielding's sight-but not to be forgotten!

CHAPTER V-THE SECRET

Ruth spent one night in Lyse, where she went to the pension patronized by a girl friend from Kansas City, Clare Biggars. She was obliged to have somebody a.s.sist her in dressing and disrobing, but she was in no pain. Merely she was warned to keep her shoulder in one position and she wore her arm in a black silk sling.

"It is quite the fashion to 'sling' an arm," said Clare, laughing. "They should pin the _Croix de Guerre_ on you, anyway, Ruth Fielding. After what you have been through!"

"Deliver us from our friends!" groaned Ruth. "Why should you wish to embarra.s.s me? How could I explain a war cross?"

"I don't know. One of the Kansas City boys was here on leave a few weeks ago and he wore a French war cross. I tried to find out why, but all he would tell me was that it was given him for a reward for killing his first ten thousand cooties!"

"That is all right," laughed Ruth. "They make fun of them, but the boys are proud of being cited and allowed to wear such a mark of distinction, just the same. Only, you know how it is with American boys; they hate to be made conspicuous."

"How about American girls?" returned Clare slyly.

That evening Ruth held a reception in the parlor of the pension. And among those who came to see her was a little, stiff-backed, white-haired and moustached old gentleman, with a row of orders across his chest. He was the prefect of police of the town, and he thought he had good reason for considering the "_Mademoiselle Americaine_" quite a wonderful young woman. It was by her aid that the police had captured three international crooks of notorious character.

Off again in the morning, this time by rail. In the best of times the ordinary train in France is not the most comfortable traveling equipage in the world. In war time Ruth found the journey most abominable. Troop trains going forward, many of them filled with khaki-uniformed fighters from the States, and supply trains as well, forced the ordinary pa.s.senger trains on to side tracks. But at length they rolled into the Gare du Nord, and there Helen and Jennie were waiting for the girl of the Red Mill.

"Oh! She looks completely done up!" gasped Helen, as greeting.

"Come over to the canteen and get some nice soup," begged Jennie. "I have just tasted it. It is fine."

"'Tasted it!'" repeated Helen scornfully. "Ruthie, she ate two plates of it. She is beginning to put on flesh again. What do you suppose Colonel Henri will say?"

"As though _he_ would care!" smiled Jennie Stone. "If I weighed a ton he would continue to call me _pet.i.te poulet_."

"'Chicken Little!' No less!" exclaimed Helen. "Honest, Ruthie, I don't know how I bear this fat and sentimental girl. I-I wish I was engaged myself so I could be just as silly as she is!"

"How about you, Ruthie?" asked Jennie, suspiciously. "Let me see your left hand. What! Has he not put anything on that third finger yet?"

"Have a care! A broken shoulderbone is enough," gasped Ruth. "I am looking for no other ornament at present, thank you."

"We are going to take you to Madame Picolet's," Helen declared the next minute, as they left the great train shed and found a taxicab. "You would not disappoint her, would you? She so wants you with her while you remain in Paris."

"Of course," said Ruth, who had a warm feeling for the French teacher with whom she had been so friendly at Briarwood Hall. "And she has such a cosy and quiet little place."

But after Ruth had rested from her train journey, Madame Picolet's apartment did not prove to be so quiet a place. Besides Helen Cameron and Jennie Stone, there were a lot of other young women whom Ruth knew in Paris, working for the Red Cross or for other war inst.i.tutions.

Of all their clique, Ruth had been the only girl who had worked right up on the battleline and had really seen much of the war. The visitors wanted to know all about it. And that Ruth had been injured by a Hun bomb made her all the more interesting to these young American women who, if they were not all of the calibre of the girl of the Red Mill, were certainly in earnest and interested in their own part of the work.

The surgeons had been wise, perhaps, in advising Ruth to take boat as soon as possible for the American side of the Atlantic. The Red Cross authorities gave her but a few days in Paris before she had to go on to Brest-that great port which the United States had built over for its war needs.

Helen and Jennie insisted on going with her to Brest. Indeed, Ruth found herself so weak that she was glad to have friends with her. She knew, however, that there would be those aboard the _Admiral Pekhard_, the British transport ship to which she was a.s.signed, who would give her any needed attention during the voyage.

Up to the hour of sailing, Ruth received messages and presents-especially flowers-from friends she was leaving behind in France. Down to the ship came a boy from a famous florist in Paris-having traveled all the way by mail train carrying a huge bunch of roses.

"It's from Tom," cried Helen excitedly, "I bet a penny!"