“My dear Eugenia, you might as well confess that you are desperately interested. If you say anything else we won’t believe you,” Barbara declared positively. Three days afterward, between four and five in the afternoon, the four American Red Cross girls were leaving the little French farmhouse together, and evidently with some definite intention. Nevertheless, the journey could have nothing to do with their nursing, since the faces and the costumes of three of the girls suggested a gala occasion. Eugenia, however, having entirely recovered her health and poise, had returned to her former manner and character. Yet she too was wearing her best dress, recently purchased in Paris, and was looking sternly handsome.
“Then I might as well not answer you at[127] all, Barbara, since you have made up your mind already what I should reply,” she answered curtly. Without intending to be ungracious she stalked off in front of the little procession.
The other two girls laughed, but Barbara, making a little grimace, ran on until she was able to catch up with Eugenia. She was beginning to think now and then that the older girl’s manner was more severe than her emotions. Now she gave her arm a little shake.
“Don’t be so superior, Miss Peabody from Boston! You must make your confession along with the rest of us. So tell me the honest truth—‘hope I may-die-if-I-don’t’ kind—aren’t you terribly pleased that the Countess, whose guests we have been for some time, has condescended to be willing to meet us and has asked us to have coffee with her this afternoon at her chateau?”
Still Eugenia demurred. “Oh, I presume it will be a novel experience. Nevertheless, I don’t think we show proper pride in accepting an invitation before the Countess has called upon us. It isn’t the way we do[128] such things at home. If it comes to a question of family, of course I am an American, but the Peabodys of Boston——”
Barbara’s laughter rang out deliciously. She was in the gayest possible humor and suggested a little woodland creature in her brown cloth suit and hat with a single scarlet wing. What had become of the serious-minded young American woman devoting her life to the care of the wounded?
“But it isn’t a question of family, Eugenia, or how should I dare live and breathe in the same world with you, any more than with a French countess?” she protested. “But please remember that we have accepted a great deal more from this same Countess than a simple invitation to spend an hour with her. We are living in her house, we have been eating a goodly portion of her food. Oh, I know this is because we are in France to nurse the soldiers she adores! Still, I can’t see that this cancels our obligations. Besides, she is a much older woman and——”
Eugenia put her one disengaged hand up to her ear.
[129]
“I surrender, Barbara, in all meekness! But really, it is not necessary to produce so many arguments for doing a thing you are simply crazy to do. You merely wish to gratify your curiosity. You know, I don’t believe that we should be engaging in frivolous pursuits like paying visits upon strangers, when we are here in Europe for such serious purposes. Still, I don’t suppose that an occasional break really interferes with our work.”
“Certainly not,” Barbara finished with emphasis. Then she skipped along beside her taller companion like a small girl endeavoring to keep up with a large one. “Besides, Eugenia, think of how wonderful the news is! The Germans are actually retiring of their own accord! There hasn’t been any fighting in our neighborhood for over a week now. No wonder the Countess Amélie feels like having guests at last. Fran?ois says that she has not been so cheerful since the war began. I don’t know how you feel, Eugenia, but Mildred and Nona and I think it a wonderful experience to see the inside of an old French home[130] which was in existence long before the French Revolutionary days. It seems that this Countess has never even gone to Paris, nor visited anyone except her old family friends who are also members of the nobility. She won’t even acknowledge that France is today a great Republic. She still tries to live like the grande dames of the days before the Revolution.”
Eugenia fairly sniffed. Also she held her shoulders straighter and her head higher.
“Then she must be a very absurd old woman and I am more than ever sure that I shall not like her. The idea of not realizing that a republic is the only just form of government in the world! I wouldn’t be anything except an American——”
Once more Barbara smiled, patting the older girl’s arm soothingly.
“Of course you wouldn’t, my dear, and neither would any of the rest of us, except perhaps Nona. She is really an old-time aristocrat, although she would rather perish than think so. But just the same I don’t see why one should not be interested in[131] contrasts in this life! What could be greater than the gulf between this old French aristocrat and us?”
“What indeed?” answered Eugenia, more wisely than she then knew.
For at this moment the interest which the four girls had been feeling in their new hostess temporarily died away.
According to Nona’s and Barbara’s suggestion, and in spite of the distance, they were approaching the chateau through the woods, which the two girls had visited the day after their arrival in this portion of southern France.
November had come, but the autumn was so far deliciously warm. Difficult it was to imagine a world at war on this afternoon and in this particular forest! For, by some freak of fortune, this woodland had so far escaped the ravages of the German shells. Over it and around it they had ploughed their devastating way. But until now the birds prepared their winter nests here undisturbed in the tall trees, and the pool of Melisande remained unbroken save by its own ripples.
[132]
Again the girls walked more quietly along the path under the trees than in the open country. They were thinking perhaps of different things, whil............