The four Red Cross girls were walking about in one of the most beautiful gardens in England. It was late afternoon and they were already dressed for dinner. The Countess of Sussex, to whom they had been introduced by her sister in New York City, had invited them down from London for a few days before leaving for their work among the soldiers. In another thirty-six hours they were expecting to cross the Channel.
Of the four girls, Nona Davis seemed most to have altered in her appearance since leaving the ship. Indeed, no one could have dreamed that she could suddenly have become so pretty. But she had been half-way ill all the time of their crossing and disturbed about a number of things. Here in England for some strange[110] reason she felt unexpectedly at home. The formality of the life on the great country estate, the coldness and dignity of many of the persons to whom they had been presented, the obsequiousness of the servants, troubled her not at all. And this in spite of the fact that the other three girls, although disguising the emotion as well as they knew how, were in a state of being painfully critical of England and the English. Possibly for this very reason Nona had made the best impression, although the letters of introduction which they had so far used had been originally given to Mildred Thornton.
But in a way perhaps Nona was more like an English girl than the others. She had lived the simplest kind of life in the beautiful old southern city of Charleston, she and her father and one old colored woman, almost lost in the big, shabby house that sheltered them. And they had been tragically poor. Nevertheless, a generation before Nona’s ancestors had been accustomed to an existence of much the same kind as the English people about them,[111] although a much more friendly one, with negro servants taking the place of white and with a stronger bond of affection than of caste.
This afternoon Nona felt almost as if she were in her own rose garden in Charleston, grown a hundred times larger and more beautiful. She walked a little ahead of the other three girls, almost unconscious of their presence and dreaming of her own shut-in childhood and the home she had sold in order to give her services to the wounded in this war.
Yet she looked as remote from the thought of war and its horrors as one could possibly imagine. She had on a white muslin dress made with a short waist and long full skirt; a piece of old lace belonging to her father’s mother, an old-time Virginia belle, crossed over her slight bosom, was fastened with a topaz and pearl pin. Her pale gold hair was parted on one side and then coiled loosely on the crown of her head. It did not curl in the wilful fashion that Barbara’s did, but seemed to wave gently. Her pallor was less noticeable[112] than usual and the irises of her brown eyes were like the heart of the topaz. Then with an instinct for color which every normal girl has, Nona had fastened a golden rose, the soleil d’or, or sun of gold, at her waist. Because it was cool she also wore a scarf floating from her shoulders.
“Nona looks like this garden,” Barbara remarked to her two companions, when they had stopped for a moment to examine a curiously trimmed box hedge, cut to resemble a peacock, “while I—I feel exactly like a cactus plant rooted out of a nice bare desert and transplanted in the midst of all this finery. I can feel the prickly thorns sticking out all over me. And if you don’t mind and no one is listening I’d like to let the American eagle screech for a few moments. I never felt so American in my life as I have every minute since we landed. And as we have come to nurse the British I must get it out of my system somehow.”
The two girls laughed, even Eugenia. Barbara had given such an amusing description of herself and her own sensations.[113] And she did not look as if she belonged in her present environment, nevertheless, she was wearing her best dress, made by quite a superior Lincoln, Nebraska, dressmaker. It was of blue silk and white lace and yet somehow was not correct, so that Barbara really did appear like the doll Dick Thornton had once accused her of resembling.
Mildred Thornton had a suitable and beautiful costume of pearl-gray chiffon and Eugenia only a plain brown silk, neither new nor becoming. But, as she had explained to their hostess, she had not come to Europe with any thought of society, but merely in order to assist with the Red Cross nursing. Eugenia seemed to be very poor; indeed, though only one of the three other girls had any fortune, Eugenia’s poverty was more apparent than Nona’s. All her traveling outfit was of the poorest and she was painfully economical. But, as the Countess had declared that they were leading the simplest kind of life in the country, and because of the war doing almost no entertaining, Eugenia had consented to leave their lodgings in London[114] for this short visit. She was particularly interested, since the smaller houses on the estate had been given over to the Belgian refugees, and Eugenia felt that this might be their opportunity for learning something of the war before actually beholding it.
The four girls were on their way now to visit several of the cottages where the Belgian women and children were located. But when the three girls had finished their few moments of conversation Nona Davis had disappeared.
“She will probably follow us a little later,” Eugenia suggested; “we simply must not wait any longer, or dinner may be announced before we can get back to the castle.”
However, Nona did not follow them, although she soon became conscious that the other girls had left her; indeed, saw them disappearing in the distance.
The truth is that at the present time she had no desire to see or talk with the Belgian refugees, nor did she wish any other company than her own for the next half hour.
[115]
She had been so accustomed to being alone for a great part of her time that the constant society of her new friends had tired her the least bit. Oh, she liked them immensely. It was not that, only that some natures require occasional solitude. And no one can be really lonely in a garden.
Had there been wounded Belgian soldiers on the Countess’ estate Nona felt that she would have made the effort to meet them, but up to the present she had not seen an injured soldier, although soldiers of the other kind she had seen in great numbers, marching through the gray streets of London, splendid, khaki-clad fellows, handsome and serious. Even for them there had been no beating of drums, no waving of flags. Nona was thinking of this now while half of her attention was being bestowed on the beauties surrounding her. England was not making a game or a gala occasion of her part in this great war; for her it was a somber tragedy with no possible result save victory or death.
During her divided thinking Nona had wandered into a portion of the garden[116] known as “The Maze.” It was formed of a great number of rose trellises, the one overlapping the other until it was almost impossible to tell where the one ended and the other began. Nona must have walked inside for half an hour without the least desire to escape from her perfumed bower. The scene about her seemed so incredibly different from anything that she had the right to expect, she ............