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

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.”

CHAPTER IV – TWO EXCITING THINGS

Uncle Jabez’s letter and Tom Cameron arrived at the hospital at Clair on the very same day. This was the second visit the captain had made to see Ruth since her injury. At this time Helen and Jennie had returned to Paris and Ruth was almost ready to follow them.

“It reads just like the old fellow,” Tom said, smiling, after having perused the letter. “Of course, as usual he has made a mountain of trouble out of a molehill of vexation. But I am sorry for Aunt Alvirah.”

“The dear old soul!” sighed Ruth. “I begin to feel that my being bombed by the Hun may not have been an unmixed evil. Perhaps Aunt Alvirah – and Uncle Jabez, too – very much need me at home. And without the excuse of my broken shoulder I don’t see how I could have got away from here.”

“I wish I were going with you.”

“What! To leave your regiment and all?”

“No, I do not want to leave until this war is finished. But I hate to think of your crossing the ocean alone.”

“Pooh! I shall not be alone. Lots of other people will be on the boat with me, Tommy.”

“But nobody who would have your safety at heart as I should,” he told her earnestly. “You cannot help yourself very well if – if anything should happen.”

“What will happen, do you suppose?” she demanded.

“There are still submarines in the sea,” he said, grimly enough. “In fact, they are more prevalent just now than they were when you came over.”

“You bother about my chances of meeting a submarine when you are planning to go up into the air with that Mr. Stillinger! You will be more likely to meet the Hun in the air than I shall in the water.”

“Pooh! I am just going on a joy ride in an airplane. While you – ”

“It is not just a joy ride I shall take, I admit, Tom,” Ruth said, more seriously. “I do hate to give up my work here and go home. Yet this letter,” and she tapped the missive from Uncle Jabez, “makes me feel that perhaps I have duties near the Red Mill.”

“Uh-huh!” he grunted understandingly.

“You know I have been running around and having good times for a good many years. Aunt Alvirah is getting old. And perhaps Uncle Jabez should be considered, too.”

“He’s an awful old grouch, Ruth,” said Tom Cameron, shaking his head.

“I know. But he really has been kind to me – in his way. And if he has had to close down the mill, and is making no money, he will surely feel pretty bad. Somebody must be there to cheer him up.”

“He don’t need to run that mill,” said Tom shortly. “He has plenty of money invested in one way or another.”

“But he doesn’t think he is earning anything unless the mill runs and he sees the dollars increasing in his strong box. You know, he counts his ready cash every night before he goes to bed. It is almost all the enjoyment he has.”

“He’s a blessed old miser!” exclaimed her friend, “I don’t see how you have stood him all these years, Ruthie.”

“I really believe he loves me – in his way,” returned the girl thoughtfully. “Poor Uncle Jabez! Well, I am beginning to feel that it was meant that I should go home to him and to Aunt Alvirah.”

“Don’t!” he exclaimed. “You’ll make me wish to go home, too. And the way this war is now,” said Tom, smiling grimly, “they really need all us fellows. The British and the French have fought Fritz so long and at such odds that I almost believe they are half scared of him. But you can’t make our Buddies feel scared of a German. They have seen too many of them running delicatessen stores and saloons.

“Why, they have already sent some of their great shock troops against us in this sector. All the ‘shock’ they have given us you could put in your eye and still see from here to the Goddess of Liberty in New York Harbor!”

“That’s a bit of ‘swank,’ you know, Tom,” said Ruth slyly.

“Wait! You’ll see! Why, it’s got to be a habit for the French and the British to retreat a little when the Germans pour in on top of them. They think they lose fewer troops and get more of the Huns that way. But that isn’t the way we Yankees have been taught to fight. If we once get the Huns in the open we’ll start them on the run for the Rhine, and they won’t stop much short of there.”

“Oh, my dear boy, I hope so!” Ruth said. “But what will you be doing meanwhile? Getting into more and more danger?”

“Not a bit!”

“But you mean right now to take an air trip,” Ruth said hastily. “Oh, my dear! I don’t want to urge you not to; but do take care, if you go up with Ralph Stillinger. They say he is a most reckless flier.”

“That is why he’s never had a mishap. It’s the airmen who are unafraid who seem to pull through all the tight places. It is when they lose their dash that something is sure to happen to them.”

“We will hope,” said Ruth, smiling with trembling lips, “that Mr. Stillinger will lose none of his courage while you are up in the air with him.”

“Pshaw! I shall be all right,” Tom declared. “The only thing is, I am sorry that he has made the date for me so that I can’t go down to Paris with you, and later see you aboard the ship at Brest. But this has been arranged a long time; and I must be with my boys when they go back from the rest camp to the front again.”

Ruth recovered herself quickly. She gave him her good hand and squeezed his in a hearty fashion.

“Don’t mind, Tom,” she said. “If this war is pretty near over, as you believe, you will not be long behind me in taking ship for home.”

“Right you are, Ruthie Fielding,” he agreed cheerfully.

But neither of them – and both were imaginative enough, in all good conscience! – dreamed how soon nor in what manner Tom Cameron would follow Ruth to sea when she was homeward bound. Nor did the girl consider how much of a thrilling nature might happen to them both before they would see each other again.

Tom Cameron left the hospital at Clair that afternoon to make all haste to the aviation camp where he was to meet his friend and college-mate, Ralph Stillinger, the American ace. Ruth was helped by the hospital matron herself to prepare for an automobile trip to Lyse, from which town she could entrain for Paris.

It was at Lyse that Ruth had first been stationed in her Red Cross work; so she had friends there. And it was a very dear little friend of hers who came to drive the automobile for Ruth when she left Clair. Henriette Dupay, the daughter of a French farmer on the outskirts of the village, had begged the privilege of taking “Mademoiselle Americaine” to Lyse.

“Ma foi!” gasped plump little Henriette, or “Hetty” as almost everybody called her, “how pale you are, Mademoiselle Ruth. The bad, bad Boches, that they should have caused you this annoyance.”

“I am only glad that the Germans did no more harm around the hospital than to injure me,” Ruth said. “It was providential, I think.”

“But no, Mademoiselle!” cried the French girl, letting in her clutch carefully when the engine of the motor began to purr smoothly, “it cannot be called ‘providential.’ This is a serious loss for us all. Oh, we feel it! Your going away from Clair is a sorrow for all.”

And, indeed, it seemed true. As the car rolled slowly through the village, children ran beside the wheels, women waved their hands from the doorways of the little cottages, and wounded poilus saluted the passage of the Red Cross worker who was known and beloved by everybody.

The tears stung Ruth’s eyelids. She remembered how, the night before, the patients in the convalescent wards – the boys and men she had written letters for before her injury, and whom she had tried to comfort in other ways during the hours she was off duty – had insisted upon coming to her cell, one by one, to bid her good-bye. They had kissed her hands, those brave, grateful fellows! Their gratitude had spilled over in tears, for the Frenchman is never ashamed of emotion.

As she had come down from her chamber every nurse and orderly in the hospital, as well as the surgical staff and even the porters and brancardiers, had gathered to bid her God-speed.

“The dear, dear people!” Ruth murmured, as the car reached the end of the village street. She turned to throw kisses with her one useful hand to the crowd gathered in the street.

“The dear, dear people!” she repeated, smiling through her happy tears at Hetty.

“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.