Читать книгу Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound; A Red Cross Worker's Ocean Perils - Emerson Alice B. - Страница 3

The shoulder had to be put in a cast; but the healing of the cuts and bruises on Ruth Fielding’s back was a small matter. Only —

“It’s all over for me, girls,” she groaned, as her two friends commiserated with her. “The war might just as well end to-morrow, as far as I am concerned. I can help no longer.”

For Major Soutre, the head surgeon, had said:

“After the plaster comes off it will be then eight weeks, Mademoiselle, before it will be safe for you to use your arm and shoulder in any way whatsoever.”

“So my work is finished,” she repeated, wagging a doleful head upon her pillow.

“Poor dear!” sighed Jennie. “Don’t you want me to make you something nice to eat?”

“Mercy on us, Heavy!” expostulated Helen, “just because you work in a diet kitchen, don’t think that the only thing people want when they are sick is something to eat.” “It’s the principal thing,” declared the plump girl stubbornly. “And Colonel Marchand says I make heavenly broth!”

Helen sniffed disdainfully.

Ruth laughed weakly; but she only said:

“Tom says the war will be over by Christmas. I don’t know whether it is he or General Pershing that has planned out the finish of the Germans. However, if it is over by the holidays, I shall be unable to do anything more for the Red Cross. They will send me home. I have done my little, girls.”

“‘Little!” exclaimed Helen. “You have done much more than Jennie and I, I am sure. We have done little or nothing compared with your services, Ruthie.”

“Hold on! Hold on!” exclaimed Jennie Stone gruffly, pulling a paper out of her handbag. “Wait just a minute, young lady. I will not take a back seat for anybody when it comes to statistics of work. Just listen here. These are some of the things I have done since I joined up with that diet kitchen outfit. I have tasted soup and broth thirty-seven thousand eight hundred and three times. I have tasted ten thousand, one hundred and eleven separate custards. I have tasted twenty thousand ragouts – many of them of rabbit, and I am always suspicious that the rabbit may have had a long tail – ugh! Baked cabbage and cheese, nine thousand, seven hundred and six – ”

“Jennie! Do stop! How could you eat so much?” demanded Helen in horror.

“Bless you! the poilus did the eating; I only did the seasoning and tasting. It’s that keeps me so fat, I do believe. And then, I have served one million cups of cocoa.”

“Why don’t you say a billion? You might as well.”

“Because I can’t count up to a billion. I never could,” declared the fleshy girl. “I never was top-hole at mathematics. You know that.”

They tried to cheer Ruth in her affliction; but the girl of the Red Mill was really much depressed. She had always been physically, as well as mentally, active. And at first she must remain in bed and pose as a regular invalid.

She was thus posing when Tom Cameron got a four-days’ leave and came back as far as Clair, as he always did when he was free. It was so much nearer than Paris; and Helen could always run up here and meet him, where Ruth had been at work. The chums spent Tom’s vacations from the front together as much as possible.

When Mr. Cameron, who had been in Europe with a Government commission, had returned to the United States, he had laughingly left Helen and Tom in Ruth’s care.

“But he never would have entrusted you children to my care,” sighed the girl of the Red Mill, “if he had supposed I would be so foolish as to get a broken shoulder.”

“Quite,” said Tom, nodding a wise head. “One might have supposed that if an aerial shell hit your shoulder the shell would be damaged, not the shoulder.”

“It was the stone window-sill, they say,” murmured Ruth contritely.

“Sure. Dad never supposed you were such a weak little thing. Heigh-ho! We never know what’s going to happen in this world. Oh, I say!” he suddenly added. “I know what’s going to happen to me, girls.”

“What is it, Captain Tom?” his sister asked, gazing at him proudly. “They are not going to make you a colonel right away, are they, like Jennie’s beau?”

“Not yet,” admitted her brother, laughing. “I’m the youngest captain in our division right now. Some of ’em call me ‘the infant,’ as it is. But what is going to happen to me, I’m going up in the air!”

“Oh!” exclaimed Jennie Stone. “I should say that was a rise in the world.”

“You are never going into aviation, Tom?” screamed Helen.

“Not exactly. But an old Harvard chum of mine, Ralph Stillinger, is going to take me up. You know Stillinger. Why, he’s an ace!”

“And you are crazy!” exclaimed his sister, rather tartly. “Why do you want to risk your life so carelessly?”

Tom chuckled; and even Ruth laughed weakly. As though Tom had not risked his life a hundred times already on the battle front! If he were not exactly reckless, Tom Cameron possessed that brand of courage owned only by those who do not feel fear.

“I don’t blame Tommy,” said Jennie Stone. “I’d like to try ‘aviating’ myself; only I suppose nothing smaller than a Zeppelin could take me up.”

“Will you really fly, Tom?” Ruth asked.

“Ralph has promised me a regular circus – looping the loop, and spiraling, and all the tricks of flying.”

“But you won’t fly into battle?” questioned Helen anxiously. “Of course he won’t take you over the German lines?”

“Probably not. They don’t much fancy carrying amateurs into a fight. You see, only two men can ride in even those big fighting planes with the liberty motors; and both of them should be trained pilots, so that if anything happens to the man driving the machine, the other can jump in and take his place.”

“Ugh!” shuddered his sister. “Don’t talk about it any more. I don’t want to know when you go up, Tommy. I should be beside myself all the time you were in the air.”

So they talked about Ruth’s chances of going home instead. After all, as she could be of no more use in Red Cross work for so long a time, the girl of the Red Mill began to look forward with some confidence to the home going.

As she had told her girl friends that very day when the hospital had been bombed and she had been hurt, the sweetest words in the ears of the exile are “homeward bound!” And she expected to be bound for home – for Cheslow and the Red Mill – in a very few weeks.

Her case had been reported to Paris headquarters; and whether she wished it or not, a furlough had been ordered and she would be obliged to sail from Brest on or about a certain date. The sea voyage would help her to recuperate; and by that time her shoulder would be out of the plaster cast in which Dr. Soutre had fixed it. Whether she desired to be so treated or not, the Red Cross considered her an invalid – a “grande blessée.”

So, as the days passed, Ruth Fielding gradually found that she suffered the idea of return to America with a better mind. The more she thought of going home, the more the desire grew in her soul to be there.

It was about this time that the letter came from Uncle Jabez Potter. A letter from Uncle Jabez seemed almost as infrequent as the blooming of a century plant.

It was delayed in the post as usual (sometimes it did seem as though the post-office department had almost stopped functioning!) and the writing was just as crabbed-looking as the old miller’s speech usually was. Aunt Alvirah Boggs managed to communicate with “her pretty,” as she always called Ruth, quite frequently; for although Aunt Alvirah suffered much in “her back and her bones” – as she expressed herself dolefully – her hands were not too crippled to hold a pen.

But Uncle Jabez Potter! Well, the letter itself will show what kind of correspondent the old miller was:

“My Dear Niece Ruth:

“It does not seem as though you was near enough to the Red Mill to ever get this letter; and mebbe you won’t want to read it when you do get it. But I take my pen in hand just the same to tell you such news as there is and perticly of the fact that we have shut down. This war is terrible and that is a fact. I wish often that I could have shouldered a gun – old Betsy is all right now, me having cleaned the cement out of her muzzle what your Aunt Alvirah put in it – and marched off to fight them Germans myself. It would have been money in my pocket if I had done that instead of trying to grind wheat and corn in this dratted old water-mill. Wheat is so high and flour is so low that I can’t make no profit and so I have had to shut down the mill. First time since my great grandfather built it back in them prosperous times right after we licked the British that first time. This is an awful mean world we live in anyway. Folks are always making trouble. If it was not for them Germans you’d be home right now that your Aunt Alvirah needs you. You see, she has took to her bed, and Ben, the hired man, and me, don’t know much what to do for her. Ain’t no use trying to get a woman to come in to help, for all the women and girls have gone to work in the munitions factory down the river. Whole families have gone to work there and earn so much money that they ride back and forth to work in their own automobiles. It’s a cussed shame.

“Your Aunt Alvirah talks about you nearly all the time. She’s breaking up fast I shouldn’t wonder and by the time this war is done I reckon she’ll be laid away. Me not making any money now, we are likely to be pretty average poor in the future. When it is all outgo and no come-in the meal tub pretty soon gets empty. I reckon I would better sell the mules and I hope Ben will find him a job somewhere else pretty soon. He won’t be discharged. Says he promised you he would stick to the old Red Mill till you come back from the war. But he’s a eating me out of house and home and that’s a fact.

“If it is so you can get away from that war long enough, I wish you’d come home and take a look at your Aunt Alvirah. It seems to me if she was perked up some she might get a new hold on life. As it is, even Doc Davidson says there ain’t much chance for her.

“Hoping this finds you the same, and wishing very much to see you back at the Red Mill, I remain,

“Yr. Obedient Servant,

“J. Potter.”