CHAPTER XVI

Another Afternoon in Paris

On this same day Sally Ashton and Dan Webster spent the latter part of the afternoon together in the city of Paris.

They had started out with the others, but before they had walked more than a few blocks from the house, Dan joined Sally who was beside her sister and Lieutenant Fleury and deliberately interrupted them.

“I say, Sally, I want you to go into Paris with me for the afternoon. I have an especial reason. Oh yes, I realize it isn’t considered the thing to do in France, but you and I are like brother and sister. Besides I asked permission and Tante wishes you to go.”

Dan’s bluntness, his boyish straight forwardness were a trifle annoying, nevertheless, after a little demurring and a slight shrugging of her shoulders, Sally agreed.

She was looking a good deal better than she had in some time past; there was more than a hint of the former and more familiar Sally in the mischievous gleam in her brown eyes and in the fleeting suggestion of dimples in her more rounded cheeks.

And the change had been gradually taking place in Sally ever since the day of her meeting with Lieutenant Robert Fleury and of Private Dan Webster on the streets of Paris.

Since childhood Dan and Sally had known each other, had played together when Mrs. Ashton brought her two little girls to the old Webster farm in New Hampshire, near the original Camp Fire grounds.

As, at the time of Dan’s invitation, they were not far from the railroad station, in something over half an hour Sally and Dan had reached Paris.

“I thought we would drive out the Champs Elysee and into the Bois, Sally,” Dan explained, signaling a cab, as soon as he had guided his companion out of the crowd and on to the edge of the sidewalk.

“It is such a beautiful afternoon I don’t want you to miss being out of doors. And as I want to have an intimate talk with you, this would seem about as good an opportunity as we can ever have.”

Nodding her agreement, Sally allowed Dan to assist her into the dilapidated cab with as much grace and dignity as if she had been entering a royal coach. But Sally was the type of girl who very much enjoyed men wait upon her and take care of her in the small matters of life; although perfectly capable of caring for herself, she had too much wisdom always to reveal it.

Settling back now into the seat of the cab Sally remarked amiably, as she was feeling in an unusually cheerful frame of mind:

“Well Dan, what in the world can you have to talk to me about that requires all this secrecy? All I can say is that you are looking fifty percent better than when I discovered you. So please remember if you have anything unpleasant to say that you owe your improvement to me.”

In spite of the fact that Sally was talking in this agreeable fashion, Dan was perfectly aware that at the moment she was paying but little attention to him, or to what he might possibly be going to say.

They had reached the Champs Elysees and were now moving on toward the Arc de Triomphe. Down the broad avenue the “marrons,” or horse chestnut trees were green if not yet in bloom, while apparently every person of leisure who was not visiting the park at Versailles this afternoon was driving out toward the Bois.

“Perhaps we had best wait and I’ll explain what I wish to say after we have enjoyed our drive for a little while,” Dan replied wisely.

Therefore he and Sally discussed only casual matters for the next quarter of an hour. But finally, when they had passed under the Arc and were in the Bois, the wooded park on the outskirts of Paris, Dan remarked without further preparation:

“Sally, I want you to promise me to go back to the United States and to your own people at the earliest opportunity. I have been watching you pretty carefully ever since our unexpected encounter a few weeks ago and I never saw a girl more changed than you have been by your work in France. It is true you are looking a little better today, but that is because you are entertained for the time being. When no one is supposed to be paying any attention to you, you appear terribly depressed. As a matter of fact, Sally, you are not the type of girl who should ever have come over to do war work. The fellows have all said that some of the girls had better have stayed at home and made bandages and knit socks.”

At this Sally appeared deeply hurt.

“You are not kind, Dan, even if what you say is in a measure true. Recently it has seemed awfully difficult for me to take the proper interest in the work of organizing the Camp Fire in France, as the other girls are doing. But I think if you ask Aunt Patricia or Tante, they will both tell you that I tried to do my share of the work at our farmhouse on the Aisne. And don’t you think my returning home at once is a question for Tante or for my mother and father to decide?”

Dan Webster was one of the fortunate persons who was rarely troubled by indecision.

In answer to Sally’s question, he shook his head positively.

“No, I don’t. In the first place your mother and father are not here and so are unable to see what a difference there is in you. Tante is one of the most charming persons in the world, but I have never thought her remarkable for good judgment. Besides, Sally, you must not consider that I intend being rude or unkind to you. It is really because I have always been fonder of you than of most girls, that I take the trouble to interfere. I don’t mean that you have not done your best in France and I don’t mean that your work hasn’t been jolly well done, and of course you have always gotten on with fellows and understood them better than most girls. I was thinking more of the effect upon you of what you have seen in France during the war. I have seen enough myself, never to expect to be exactly the same again, but somehow a man does not want a girl he is fond of saddened, especially when she is so young and such a gay little thing as you used to be. I am pretty stupid at trying to say things, Sally, but I wish you to know that Tante and I had a talk about you and she told me to go ahead and see if you would confide in me. She says she has noticed that something has been the matter with you for a long time and your friends have seen it too. But you have never told her or Alice what troubled you and apparently, if there is anything serious the matter, you have only talked to Miss Lord.”

At this instant and for the first time during his long speech Dan hesitated and colored hotly.

He was a splendid looking young fellow nearly six feet high with shining black hair and deep blue eyes. Ordinarily he had a brilliant color, but at present his complexion had not recovered from the long months spent in a German prison.

“Is there anything I can do, Sally? Oh, I might as well speak plainly, I don’t know how to speak in any other way. My sister Peggy told me that you had nursed that French lieutenant, Lieutenant Fleury through an illness of some kind months ago and that a few of the girls believe you care more for him than you would like people to know. That is why I wish you please to go on back home, Sally. You are too young and you are an American girl and he is a Frenchman, and oh, I should hate it, Sally! Forgive me, you know I want to do what your brother would do under the same circumstances, we have known each other so long and you have no brother of your own.”

Sally stopped gazing at the scenery at this moment and turned her golden brown eyes to stare into Dan’s blue ones.

There was a mischievous gleam in their centers and yet oddly there was also a suggestion of tears.

“But I have had another offer of a brother, Dan, oh, not so very long ago! Lieutenant Fleury also suggested that he would like to be a brother to me. I don’t like being ungrateful, but I declined. Really so long as fate sent me no real brother I don’t think I care for an adopted one.

“Just the same, Dan dear, don’t feel I do not appreciate what you have just said. It is true I have never been happy since our retreat to Paris. I am not in love with Lieutenant Fleury, no one need worry over that possibility, but something did happen on the way here which might not have affected any one else seriously, but which I have never been able to forget. You cannot forget the sights and sounds of a great battle, neither can I forget what I saw and heard on our retreat to Paris.

“I saw poor old women and children dying from cold and hunger and babies as well. I saw them being driven a second time penniless and broken from their little homes. Yet it was not these things altogether, Dan, it was something else.”

Along the seat Sally slid her small hand until it was held comfortingly in Dan’s large one.

“I think I would like to tell you, Dan, perhaps it would be easier to speak to you than anyone else and afterwards I shall feel happier.

“One night on our way to Paris from our farmhouse, Aunt Patricia and Vera Lagerloff and I discovered a young girl, not perhaps as old as I am, sitting alone by the side of the road.

“When Aunt Patricia spoke to her, she did not answer, or even look at us. Then Aunt Patricia got down from her wagon and spoke to the girl and asked if she could help her. She found that the girl could not speak and so we took her into the wagon with us.”

Sally’s voice shook a little and she looked so particularly soft and childlike that Dan would have given a good deal to have been able to comfort her at the instant.

Nevertheless he did not interrupt, knowing it was best that Sally be allowed to tell her story in her own way.

“For some strange reason the girl we were trying to be kind to took an extraordinary fancy to me. If Vera or Aunt Patricia asked her a question, she seemed terrified, but she sat for hours as we jogged along the road with her hand in mine and her eyes staring tragically toward me.

“By and by she began to be able to talk to me, just a few words at a time. Toward night she was so weak and ill that Aunt Patricia was frightened, so we halted at one of the deserted French villages and found an old doctor, too old to serve at the front, who was doing his bit for France by treating the refugees as they journeyed on to Paris. He told us that our young French girl had received a terrible nervous shock, perhaps a long time before. He also told us that she was extremely ill, dying from exhaustion and perhaps from other things that she had suffered. So that night we delayed our trip and in the night the girl died. She died with her hand in mine and before she died, Dan, she was able to talk and told me what she had endured. Do you wonder that I do not want to talk of it? I suppose I would have told Tante except that she has been ill and I did not wish to make her unhappy. But of course I can never feel just the same, although I suppose after a time I’ll forget a good deal. You are right, Dan, I do not believe I was really fitted for the work here in France, I was too selfish, too self absorbed and worst of all I knew too little of life. Oh Dan, I can never bear to live in a world again where there is another war.

“But please do let us talk of something else now and never mention this subject again.”

Taking out of her pocket book an infinitesimal handkerchief, Sally now dried her eyes and the next moment pointed toward a small house a few yards from the road.

“Dan, please go in there and get me some tea and cakes won’t you? I am dreadfully hungry. It is a funny thing about me and always amuses the other Camp Fire girls, but it makes me dreadfully hungry to be unhappy. No, I would rather not go with you, we might stay too long and must be in Versailles again before dark.”

In the interval while Sally waited alone a carriage drove past and in the carriage was a tall man with a serious, kindly face, whom Sally recognized at once. Beside him was an attractive middle aged woman with shining brown eyes and hair.

Instinctively Sally bowed and smiled, her lips unconsciously framing the names: “President and Mrs. Wilson.”

Then as they both returned her greeting, a little prayer went up from the girl’s inner consciousness, that this great man who so desired the future peace of the world, might be able to help in bringing it to pass.