Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound; A Red Cross Worker's Ocean Perils

“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 château. 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 passed the château 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 château almost hidden behind the high wall.

The graceful, slim figure of the lady of the château, 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 aprons 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 assist 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 embarrass 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 passenger 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 petite 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 institutions.

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 assigned, 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!”

“What a spendthrift you are, Helen,” drawled Jennie. But she watched Ruth narrowly as the latter opened the sealed letter accompanying the flowers.

“You lose,” said Ruth cheerfully, the moment she saw the card. “But somebody at the front has remembered me just the same, even if Tom did not.”

“Well!” exclaimed Tom’s sister, “what do you know about that?”

“Who is the gallant, Ruthie?” demanded Jennie.

“Charlie Bragg. The dear boy! And a steamer letter, too!”

Helen Cameron was evidently amazed that Tom was not heard from at this time. Ruth had kept to herself the knowledge that Tom was going to the aviation camp and expected to make his first trip into the air in the company of his friend, the American ace. This was a secret she thought Helen would better not share with her.

After she had opened Charlie Bragg’s letter on the ship she was very glad indeed she had said nothing to Helen about this. For along with other news the young ambulance driver wrote the following:

“Hard luck for one of our best flying men. Ralph Stillinger. You’ve heard of him? The French call him an ace, for he has brought down more than five Hun machines.

“I hear that he took up a passenger the other day. An army captain, I understand, but I did not catch the name. There was a sudden raid from the German side, and Stillinger’s machine was seen to fly off toward the sea in an endeavor to get around the flank of the Hun squadron.

“Forced so far away from the French and American planes, it was thought Stillinger must have got into serious trouble. At least, it is reported here that an American airplane was seen fighting one of those sea-going-Zeppelins – the kind the Hun uses to bomb London and the English coast, you know.

“Hard luck for Stillinger and his passenger, sure enough. The American airplane was seen to fall, and, although a searching party discovered the wrecked machine, neither its pilot nor the passenger was found.”

Charlie Bragg had no idea when he wrote this that he was causing Ruth Fielding, homeward bound, heartache and anxiety. She dared tell Helen nothing about this, although she read the letter before the Admiral Pekhard drew away from the pier and Helen and Jennie went ashore.

Of course, Stillinger’s passenger might not have been Tom Cameron. Yet Tom had been going to the aviation field expecting to fly with the American ace. And the fact that Tom had allowed her, Ruth, to sail without a word of remembrance almost convinced the girl of the Red Mill that something untoward had happened to him.

It was a secret which she felt she could share with nobody. She set sail upon the venturesome voyage to America with this added weight of sorrow on her heart.

CHAPTER VI – A NEW EXPERIENCE

Tom landed from a slowly crawling military train at a place some miles behind the actual battleline and far west of the sector in which his division had been fighting for a month. This division was in a great rest camp; but Tom did not want rest. He craved excitement – something new.