The next instant Nona recovered her poise. She was, however, both frightened and angry. Yet if it were possible to avoid it, she did not wish to raise an alarm nor create any kind of commotion upon the street. At first quietly and firmly she attempted removing her arm, at the same time regarding the Frenchman with an expression of scorn and disapproval.
“Let me go at once,” she said, speaking excellent French, so there was no possibility of being misunderstood.
But the young man only shrugged his shoulders, looking, if she had but known it, more mischievous than wicked.
But Nona was now gazing despairingly about her. There were numbers of persons near by, stout mothers and fathers, the respectable tradespeople of Paris, with[24] the usual French family of two children. Nona could, of course, appeal to any one of them. But just at the instant no one was sufficiently near to accost without raising her voice. This would, of course, attract public attention, which, if possible, Nona did not wish to do.
So she waited another second, hoping her tormentor would release her of his own accord. Finding he did not intend this, she glanced about for assistance a second time. Then she discovered two young officers passing within a few feet of her. One of them wore a British uniform and the other French.
Nona spoke quickly, knowing instinctively that the men were gentlemen.
“Stop a moment, please!” she asked. “I am a stranger and have lost my friends in the crowd. This man is annoying me.”
Then in spite of her efforts the girl’s voice shook with nervousness while her eyes filled with humiliated tears.
With her first words the two officers whirled around. At the same moment Nona’s persecutor started to run. However,[25] he was not quick enough, for the young French officer managed to slip his scabbard between the fellow’s feet. At once he was face down on the ground and only brought upright again by the officer’s hand on his collar.
In the interval the other young man was gazing at Nona Davis in surprise and perhaps with something like pleasure.
“Miss Davis,” he began, lifting his officer’s cap formally, “are we never to meet except under extraordinary circumstances? You may not remember me, but I am Lieutenant Hume, Colonel Dalton’s aide. Perhaps you recall that unfortunate affair in which Miss Thornton was concerned at the Sacred Heart Hospital? But before that you know there was our first meeting at the gardener’s cottage in Surrey.”
It was unnecessary for Lieutenant Hume to present Nona with all his credentials of acquaintance. For at this instant she was too unreservedly glad to see him. To have discovered some one whom she knew at such a trying time was an unexpected boon.
[26]
“I am, you see—oh, I can’t explain now,” Nona protested. “But, Lieutenant Hume, if you have nothing very important to do, won’t you be kind enough to put me on the right bus. I am trying to get back to our pension. And though I am sorry to be so stupid, I am lost and dreadfully frightened.”
The hand that Nona now extended to her English acquaintance was cold with nervousness.
Lieutenant Hume took it and bowed courteously. “Of course I will take you home with the greatest pleasure,” he returned. At the same time he smiled to himself:
“Girls are indeed strange creatures, say what you will! Here is a young American girl who has been doing Red Cross work near the battlefield. She has been able to keep her head and remain cool and collected among war’s horrors, but because she has been spoken to on the street by a young ruffian she is terrified and confused.” Possibly she would have scorned his protection in the face of an artillery charge, when[27] under the present conditions a masculine protector was fairly useful.
Now for the first time the young French officer spoke. He had just given his captive a rough shake and then straightened him up again after a second attempt to get away.
“What shall I do with this fellow, Mademoiselle?” he asked, speaking English with difficulty, but showing extraordinarily white, even teeth under a small, dark moustache. Indeed, Nona decided that she had never seen a more charming and debonair figure than the young French officer, when he finally engaged her attention. He could scarcely have been more than five feet, four inches tall, yet his figure was perfectly built. He was slender, but from the casual fashion in which he gripped the other man, who was several inches taller and far heavier, he must have been extraordinarily strong.
“Oh, let the man go, please,” Nona murmured weakly. “Yes, I know I should have you turn him over to a gendarme and appear against him in court, but really I should hate doing it.”
[28]
The girl smiled at the young French officer’s evident disappointment. He made no protest, however; only he gave the man another half-savage shake and said rapidly in French:
“Why aren’t you with the army, you miserable loafer? Your name at once?” Then, when the offender mumbled something indistinguishable: “Report to me at the barracks tomorrow. Oh, I shall find you again, never fear, and it will then be imprisonment for you.”
The moment after the man had run away the French officer stood at attention with his shoulders erect and his feet together. The next he bowed to Nona in an exquisitely correct fashion, as Lieutenant Hume introduced him.
“Miss Davis, my friend, Captain Henri Castaigne, one of the youngest captains in the French army.” Lieutenant Hume then added boyishly: “Tomorrow he is to be presented with the Cross of the Legion of Honor.”
Nona was naturally impressed by such an introduction. But evidently the young[29] officer preferred not having his praises sung to a complete stranger. He pretended not even to have heard his friend’s last remark.
“I will say au revoir,” he returned graciously. “Since you and Lieutenant Hume are old acquaintances, he will prefer to take you to your friends unaccompanied by me.”
He was about to withdraw when Nona interposed.
“But you must have had some engagement together for the evening. Now if you separate on my account your evening will be spoiled. So please don’t trouble to take me all the way to the pension; just find my omnibus and——”
Both young men laughed. The idea of leaving a girl alone in such an extremity was of course an absurdity.
“Oh, come along, Henri, Miss Davis will be able to endure your society for a few moments as long as I was braced to endure it all evening.” Lieutenant Hume added: “Besides, it may help your education to talk to an American girl. Castaigne does not know a thing except military tactics;[30] he is rather a duffer,” the English officer continued half proudly and half with a pretense of contempt. It was not difficult to discover that there was a good deal of affection existing between the two young officers of the Allied armies.
Nona wondered how they happened to know each other so intimately.
“By the way, Lieutenant Hume,” she asked, when they had finally reached the desired square and stood waiting their turn on the overcrowded omnibus. “How in the world do you chance to be in Paris instead of at the front? The last time I heard of you, you were in the midst of desperate fighting.”
The young man answered so quietly that no one except his two companions could hear. “I am in Paris on a private mission for the British Government. I am not at liberty to say anything more.”
Nona flushed, a little confused at having appeared to be curious when she had only meant to be friendly. But immediately Lieutenant Hume inquired:
“May I ask the same question of you?[31] How do you chance to be in Paris? Did you come here after the Sacred Heart Hospital was closed? I knew that one side of it had been struck by a shell and partly destroyed.”
Nona nodded. “Yes, but let us not talk of that now, if you don’t mind. We had to move the wounded soldiers, the supplies and everything in a tremendous hurry. So we are resting now for a short time and afterwards mean to go into southern France to help with the hospital work there. But hasn’t tonight’s celebration been too wonderful? It is the very first victory I have ever helped to celebrate and it has made me very happy.”
“Then you are not entirely neutral, as you Americans are supposed to be?” Lieutenant Hume queried, waiting with more interest than was natural for his companion’s reply. “I thought Red Cross doctors and nurses were expected to have no feeling about the war.”
Nona hesitated. “Of course, that is true so far as our nursing goes,” she replied. “Naturally I would nurse any soldier without[32] its making the least difference what his nationality might be. But when it comes to a question of my own personal feeling, well, that is a different matter.”
Nona’s answer was a little incoherent; nevertheless, her companion seemed to find it satisfactory.
On arriving at the pension Eugenia herself opened the door. The concierge had previously admitted the girl and her two escorts to the ground floor.
The apartment where the four girls and Dick Thornton were at present boarding occupied the third floor of an old house that had once belonged to an ancient French family and had afterwards been converted into an apartment building. Such houses are common in Paris. The atmosphere of this one was gloomy and imposing and the hallway very dark.
At first Eugenia only saw Nona outside or she might have been more amiable. However, she had been so frightened for the past hour that she was thoroughly angry, an effect fright often has upon people.
[33]
“Nona, what does this mean?” she demanded, speaking like an outraged school-marm. “You have given us one of the worst hours any one of us has ever spent. Why did you not come along with the rest of us? Of course, no one wished to leave; it was quite as much of a sacrifice for us as for you. Now Mildred and Barbara and Dick have had to go back to look for you and to inform the police of your disappearance. I have waited here, hoping for a message from them or you.”
“Yes, I know. I am dreadfully sorry,” Nona replied more apologetically than she actually felt. Naturally regretting the trouble she had given, yet she did not enjoy being scolded before entire strangers.
“Eugenia,” she protested, changing the tone of her voice in an effort to stem the tide of her friend’s resentment, “I was so fortunate as to meet Lieutenant Hume on the street. You may recall he was Colonel Dalton’s companion when he visited the Sacred Heart Hospital. He and his friend have been good enough to bring me home. I should like to have you meet them.”
[34]
Certainly Eugenia was somewhat nonplussed on discovering that there had been an audience to overhear her reproaches. Still she was no less offended. However, she could not exactly make up her mind to refuse to be introduced to Nona’s acquaintances, who had undoubtedly been kind.
The result was that she was stiffer and colder than ever before as she stalked ahead into the pension drawing room, leaving the younger girl and the two men to follow her.
Moreover, Eugenia undoubtedly looked plain, partly as the result of her severe mood and partly of her fatigue and anxiety. She had removed her street suit and was wearing a gray frock that might have been cut out by the village carpenter, so free was it from any possible grace or prettiness. The dress had been intended to be useful and undoubtedly had been, for Eugenia must have been wearing it for the past five years.
But Eugenia really believed that she was fairly gracious to the two young officers. She shook hands with both of them and[35] asked them to be seated. She even thanked them for escorting the scapegrace home, yet all in a manner that suggested ice trying to thaw on an impossibly cold day.
Lieutenant Hume paid but little attention to her, being frankly too much interested in Nona Davis to do more than be polite to Miss Peabody, whom he regarded strictly in the light of a chaperon.
But to Captain Castaigne Eugenia was at once a puzzle and an amusement. In his life he had never seen any one in the least like her.
The young French officer belonged to an old and aristocratic French family. Had France remained a monarchy instead of becoming a republic, he would have held a distinguished title. He was not a native of Paris, for he had been brought up in the country with his mother upon their impoverished estate. Later, as she considered a soldier’s life the only one possible for her son, he had attended a military school for officers. So it was true that he knew but little of women. However, those he had met previously had been his mother’s[36] friends and their daughters. They were women with charming, gracious manners, of unusual culture and refinement. Moreover, they had always been extremely kind to him. Now this remarkable young American woman paid no more attention to him than if he had been a wooden figure, and perhaps not so much. Her appearance and manner recalled an officer whom he had once had as a teacher. His colonel had been just such a tall, stern person, who having given his orders expected them to be obeyed without demur. So the young French officer was torn between his desire to laugh, which of course his perfect manners made impossible, and his desire to offer this Miss Peabody a military salute.
She spoke the most extraordinary French he had ever heard in his life. Her grammar was possibly correct, but such another accent had never been listened to on sea or land. Captain Castaigne was not familiar with Americans, so how could he know that Eugenia spoke French with a Boston intonation?
[37]
Ten, fifteen minutes elapsed, while conversation between Eugenia and the French officer became more and more impossible. Nevertheless his friend failed to regard Captain Castaigne’s imploring glances.
At last the English officer realized that their call was becoming unduly long under the circumstances. Yet before saying farewell he managed a few moments of confidential conversation with Nona.
“You will persuade your friends to come to the Review tomorrow? I shall call for you more than an hour ahead of time. President Poincaré himself is to present decorations to a dozen soldiers. I say it would be rotten for you to miss it.”
Undoubtedly Nona agreed with him. “You are awfully kind. I accept for us all with pleasure and shall look forward then to tomorrow,” she returned. “Thank you again for tonight, and good-by.”