CHAPTER XVI--THE DAYS ROLL BY

Ruth Fielding had already become inured to the sights and sounds of hospital life at Lyse, and to its work as well. Of course she was not under the physical strain that the Red Cross nurses endured; but her heart was racked by sympathy for the _blessés_ as greatly as the nurses' own.

Starting without knowing anyone in the big hospital, she quickly learned her duties, and soon showed, too, her fitness for the special work assigned her. Her responsibilities merely included the arranging of special supplies and keeping the key of her supply room; but the particular strain attending her work was connected with the spiritual needs of the wounded.

Their gratitude, she soon found, was a thing to touch and warm the heart. Fretful they might be, and as unreasonable as children at times. But in the last count they were all--even the hardest of them--grateful for what she could do for them.

She had read (who has not?) of the noble sacrifices of that great woman whose work for the helpless soldiers in hospital antedates the Red Cross and its devoted workers--Florence Nightingale. She knew how the sick and dying soldiers in the Crimea kissed her shadow on their pillows as she passed their cots, and blessed her with their dying breaths.

The roughest soldier, wounded unto death, turns to the thought of mother, of wife, of sweetheart, of sister--indeed, turns to any good woman whose voice soothes him, whose hand cools the fever of his brow.

Ruth Fielding began to understand better than ever before this particular work that she was now called upon to perform, and that she was so well fitted to perform.

She was cheerful as well as sympathetic; she was sane beyond most young girls in her management of men--many men.

"Bless you, Mademoiselle!" declared the matron, "of course they will make love to you. Let them. It will do them good--the poor _blessés_--and do you no harm. And you have a way with you!"

Ruth got over being worried by amatory bouts with the wounded poilus after a while. Her best escape was to offer to write letters to the afflicted one's wife or sweetheart. That was part of her work--to attend to as much of the correspondence of the helplessly wounded as possible.

And all the time she gave sympathy and care to these strangers she hoped, if Tom Cameron should chance to be wounded, some woman would be as kind to him!

She had not received a second letter from Tom; but after a fortnight Mr. Cameron and Helen came unexpectedly to Clair. Helen spent two days with her while Mr. Cameron attended to some important business connected with his mission in France.

They had seen Tom lately, and reported that the boy had advanced splendidly in his work. Mr. Cameron declared proudly that his son was a born soldier.

He had already been in the trenches held by both the French and British to study their methods of defence and offence. This training all the junior, as well as senior, officers of the American expeditionary forces were having, for this was an altogether new warfare that was being waged on the shell-swept fields of France and Belgium.

Helen had arranged to remain in Paris with Jennie Stone when her father went back to the States. She expressed herself as rather horrified at some of the things she learned Ruth did for and endured from the wounded men.

"Why, they are not at all nice--some of them," she objected with a shudder. "That great, black-whiskered man almost swore in French just now."

"Jean?" laughed Ruth. "I presume he did. He has terrible wounds, and when they are dressed he lies with clenched hands and never utters a groan. But when a man does _that_, keeping subdued the natural outlet of pain through groans and tears, his heart must of necessity, Helen, become bitter. His irritation spurts forth like the rain, upon the unjust and the just--upon the guilty and innocent alike."

"But he should consider what you are doing for him--how you step out of your life down into his----"

"_Up_ into his, say, rather," Ruth interrupted, flushing warmly. "It is true he of the black beard whom you are taking exception to, is a carter by trade. But next to him lies a count, and those two are brothers. Ah, these Frenchmen in this trial of their patriotism are wonderful, Helen!"

"Some of them are very dirty, unpleasant men," sighed Helen, shaking her head.

"You must not speak that way of my children. Sometimes I feel jealous of the nurses," said Ruth, smiling sadly, "because they can do so much more for them than I. But I can supply them with some comforts which the nurses cannot."

They were, indeed, like children, these wounded, for the most part. They called Ruth "sister" in their tenderest moments; even "maman" when they were delirious. The touch of her hand often quieted them when they were feverish. She read to them when she could. And she wrote innumerable letters--intimate, family letters that these wounded men would have shrunk from having their mates know about.

Ruth, too, had to share in all the "news from home" that came to the more fortunate patients. She unpacked the boxes sent them, and took care of such contents as were not at once gobbled down--for soldiers are inordinately fond of "goodies." She had to obey strictly the doctors' orders about these articles of diet, however, or some of the patients would have failed to progress in their convalescence.

Nor were all on the road to recovery; yet the spirit of cheerfulness was the general tone of even the "dangerous" cases. Their unshaken belief was that they would get well and, many of them, return to their families again.

"_Chère petite mère_," Louis, the little Paris tailor, shot through both lungs, whispered to Ruth as she passed his bed, "see! I have something to show you. It came to me only to-day in the mail. Our first--and born since I came away. The very picture of his mother!"

The girl looked, with sympathetic eyes, at the postcard photograph of a very bald baby. Her ability to share in their joys and sorrows made her work here of much value.

"I feel now," said Louis softly, "that _le bon Dieu_ will surely let me live--I shall live to see the child," and he said it with exalted confidence.

But Ruth had already heard the head physician of the hospital whisper to the nurse that Louis had no more than twenty-four hours to live. Yet the poilu's sublime belief kept him cheerful to the end.

Many, many things the girl of the Red Mill was learning these days. If they did not exactly age her, she felt that she could never again take life so thoughtlessly and lightly. Her girlhood was behind her; she was facing the verities of existence.