Miss Patricia did not cease for an instant to continue to care for her brood. However, she did answer with unusual condescension:
“You are a sensible girl, Vera. I observed the fact on the afternoon I met you in New York City when you made no effort to argue with me in connection with the escape of that ridiculous burglar.”
CHAPTER VII
BECOMING ADJUSTED
It was not a simple matter for the Sunrise Camp Fire unit to become accustomed to their new life in the devastated French country. The conditions were primitive and difficult. More than once in the first few weeks Mrs. Burton wondered if in bringing the Camp Fire girls with her to work in France hers had not been the courage of folly?
Tet they started out with excellent military discipline. Life at the farm house was modeled upon the precepts of the “Waacs,” the Womans’ Army Auxiliary Corps of the British army in France. These girls, many thousands in number, are performing every possible service behind the British armies in the field.
Unexpectedly it was Sally Ashton who first demanded that a proper routine of life and work be laid down and obeyed. Also the household work must be equitably divided, each girl choosing her portion according to her tastes and talents.
Each day’s calendar, written by Mrs. Burton upon her typewriter, was hung in a conspicuous place in the front hall at the French farm.
The domestic schedule read:
“Breakfast 8 o’clock, bedrooms cleaned immediately after.
Dinner 1 P. M.
Supper 6.30 P. M.
No work after 8.30 P. M.
Bedtime 10 o’clock.”
In the proper observance of the hours for meals Sally Ashton was particularly interested, as she had volunteered to undertake the direction of the housekeeping, which consisted of deciding upon the menu of the simple meals and assisting in their preparation. It was not possible that Sally alone should do all the cooking for so large a family without wearing herself out and leaving no time for other things.
However, soon after their arrival Mrs. Burton had secured the services of an old French woman whom she had discovered wandering about the country homeless, her little hut having been entirely destroyed by the Germans. Not knowing what else to do, Mrs. Burton originally invited her to live with them at the farm temporarily. But she had proved such a help in getting settled and the girls had become so fond of her that no one of them willingly would have allowed Mère Antoinette to depart.
After the wonderful fashion of French cooks, Mère Antoinette could make nourishing and savory dishes out of almost nothing, so she and Sally had principal charge of the kitchen. Notwithstanding, two of the Camp Fire Girls were to prepare supper each evening, so that they should not forget their accomplishments and in order to relieve the others.
Marie, Mrs. Burton’s maid, had accompanied her to France, although none too willingly. It was not that she did not adore her afflicted country, but because she feared the dangers of the crossing and the hardships she might be forced to endure.
Marie, alas! was a patriot of a kind each country produces, a patriot of the lips, not of the heart or hand.
It must be confessed that she had wandered far from her chosen work as maid to a celebrated American actress. Would any one have dreamed in those early days when Marie had first entered her service that Mrs. Burton would have followed so eccentric a career as she had wilfully chosen in the past few years? First to wander about the United States, living outdoors in Camp Fire fashion with a group of young girls, then with the same group of girls and two additional ones to undertake the present reclamation work in France!
Having accomplished the journey across the sea in safety, Marie would cheerfully, yes, enthusiastically have remained in Paris, even if it were a Paris unlike the gay city she remembered. She would have enjoyed accompanying her “Madame” to the homes of distinguished persons, caring in the meantime for her wardrobe and urging her to return to her rightful place upon the stage. But since Mrs. Burton for the present would do none of these things and since Marie had refused positively to be separated, once more she had to make the best of a bad bargain.
So voluntarily Marie offered to take charge of the greater part of the housework and to devote the rest of her time to sewing for the French children in their vicinity, whose clothes were nothing but an odd assortment of rags.
Marie had her consolations. It was good to be out of a country which produced men of the type of Mr. Jefferson Simpson, who having once proposed marriage and been declined, had not the courtesy to renew his suit. Also it was good to speak one’s own tongue again, and although at present there were but few men to be seen in the neighborhood under sixty, there were military hospitals in the nearby villages. Moreover, there was always the prospect of the return of some gallant French poilu for his holiday from the trenches. So Marie was unable to feel entirely wretched even while undergoing the hardships of an existence within a half-demolished farm house on the Aisne.
As a matter of fact, the old farm house was not in so unfortunate a condition as the larger number of French homes, which had been wrecked by the enemy before he began his “strategic retreat.”
Only a portion of the left wing of the house had been demolished.
This had comprised a large kitchen, a pantry and the dining room. However, a sufficiently large amount of space remained for the uses of the Camp Fire unit.
In the center the house was divided by a long hall. On one side were two comfortably large rooms. The back one was chosen for the dining room and the front for the living room. The pantry was restored so that it could serve for the kitchen; as the old stove had been destroyed, a new one was ordered from Paris. This developed into a piece of good fortune, as it required far less fuel than the old, and fuel was one of the greatest material problems in France, coal selling at this time for $120 a ton.
A single long room occupied the other side of the hall; this room had a high old-fashioned ceiling and was paneled in old French oak as beautiful as if it had adorned a French palace.
Mère Antoinette explained that the farm house had been the property of Madame de Mauprais, a wealthy French woman who had lived in the château not far away. It had been occupied by her son, who had chosen to experiment in scientific farming for the benefit of the small peasant farmers in the neighborhood.
The war had banished Monsieur de Mauprais and whatever family he may have possessed, so that Mrs. Burton had been able to rent his farm for a small sum through an agent who lived in the nearest village.
It is possible that the farm house had been spared in a measure by the German soldiers because of their greater pleasure in the destruction of the old château which was only about half a mile away. At the present time the château appeared only as a mass of fallen stone.
This single spacious room the Camp Fire girls chose for their school room for the French children in the neighborhood.
The better furniture of the farmhouse had been hacked into bits of wood by the German soldiers and was fit only for burning. The simple things had not been so destroyed. Fortunately their camping life out of doors had accustomed this particular group of American girls to exercising ingenuity, so that the problem of furnishing and making attractive their school room with so little to go upon rather added to their interest.
Two long planks raised upon clothes-horses discovered in the barn formed a serviceable table. Stools and odd chairs were brought down from the attic. On the floor were two Indian rugs Mrs. Burton had induced the Indian woman near the Painted Desert in Arizona to weave for her with the special Camp Fire design, the wood-gatherer’s, the fire-maker’s and the torch-bearer’s insignia, inserted in the chosen shades of brown, flame color, yellow and white.
On the walls hung a few Camp Fire panels and the coverings of sofa cushions and some outdoor photographs of the Sunrise Camp during former camping experiences which the girls had brought over with them.
Besides these larger articles, they had managed to store away in their trunks the materials necessary for the regulation Camp Fire work, honor beads and the jewelry indicating the various orders in the Camp Fire. If they were to interest French girls in the movement, they must have the required paraphernalia.
But the school at the farm house was not primarily a place where the French girls of the neighborhood were only to be interested in Camp Fire ideas. It was also a practical school.
During the past year Marta Clark had been studying kindergarten.
She, with Yvonne to help her, had charge of the tiny French children whom they were able to persuade to come daily to the big farm house. They were such starved, pathetic children, some of them almost babies! Yet they had been through so much suffering, their eyes had looked upon such hideous sights, that many of them were either nervous wrecks or else stupefied.
Surely there could be no better service to France than this effort to bring back to her children a measure of their natural happiness!
Yvonne and Marta devised wonderful games in one end of the big school room. At midday Vera and Peggy always appeared with a special luncheon for their small guests and for the older ones as well. Bettina Graham and Alice Ashton took charge of the older pupils, and in teaching it appeared that Alice at last had found her metier.
Vera and Peggy also worked at the farming out of doors.
More important than any other of Miss Patricia Lord’s gifts to the community farm and the surrounding country was a motor tractor, which one day had rolled unconcernedly into the farm house yard, an ugly giant, proving of as much future value to the poor farmers in the neighborhood as any good giant of the ancient fairy tales.
Fortunately Mary Gilchrist was able to explain its use to the French peasants who had never seen the like before, and to show them how speedily their devastated land might again be turned into plowed fields.
Vera and Peggy made frequent trips to the nearby villages, gaining the friendship of the country people, inviting the younger ones to their farm and helping in whatever ways they could. Now and then Sally Ashton went with them and sometimes Sally played with the smallest of the children, but nearly always her interests were domestic.
In contrast, Mary Gilchrist never remained in the house an hour if it were possible to be away. Besides engineering the tractor and being a general express delivery for the entire neighborhood, she had formed the habit of motoring into Soissons, which was one of the large towns nearby, and offering her services and the use of her car to the hospitals. Occasionally she spent days at a time driving invalided soldiers either from one hospital to another, or else in taking them out on drives for the fresh air and entertainment.
It would therefore appear as if each member of the Sunrise Camp Fire unit had arranged her life with the idea of being useful in the highest degree, except the Camp Fire guardian.
As a matter of fact, Mrs. Burton often used to say that she found no especial reason for her presence at the farm now that Aunt Patricia had become the really important and authoritative guardian. Nevertheless, with that rare quality of personality which as a girl Polly O’Neill had infused into every interest of her life, there was nothing which took place at the farm or in the neighboring country which she did not in a measure inspire.
Once their household had been adjusted, it was true Mrs. Burton did not do a great deal of the actual work. Instead, and oftentimes alone, she wandered from one end of the French countryside to the other, occasionally returning so late to the farm that Aunt Patricia would be found waiting for her at the front door in a state of fear and indignation.
Nevertheless the country people began to watch and wait for her coming.
After a time she brought newspapers with her. Then they began to gather together in one of the larger huts to listen while she read aloud the war news, with not always a perfectly correct French accent, and yet one they could understand.
When they were weary of the reading she used to talk, speaking always of the day when France would be free and the invader driven beyond her boundaries, never to return. And among her audience were a few of the old peasants who could recall the Franco-Prussian war.
How amazingly these talks cheered the old men and women! Actually the daily round of toil once more became worth while, so near seemed the return of Victor and Hugo and Etienne. They would be happy to find the little homes restored and the fields green that had been drenched in blood.
Occasionally Mrs. Burton made her audience laugh until the tears ran down their wrinkled faces with funny stories of the trenches, of their own poilus, and the British Tommies and the new American Sammees.
Never had the great actress used her talent to a better purpose.
At least it gained for her from these simple and almost heart broken peasants the eternal tribute of laughter and tears.
Her greatest triumph was when Grand’mère, one of the oldest women in the little village of M–, was at last persuaded to pour forth her story.
In more than three years she had not spoken except to answer “Yes” or “No,” or now and then to make known her simple needs, not since the Germans carried off her granddaughter, Elsie. Elsie was the acknowledged beauty and belle of the countryside and engaged to marry Captain François Dupis, who was fighting with his regiment at Verdun.
Mrs. Burton had gotten into the habit of stopping at Grand’mère’s tiny hut, which her neighbors had restored. At first she brought the old woman little gifts of food in which she seemed not to take the least interest. Now and then she talked to her, although the old woman seldom replied except to nod her head with grave courtesy.
Then one day without any warning as Mrs. Burton was standing near, Grand’mère drew her new friend down into her lap and poured out her heart-broken story. It left the younger woman ill and shaken.
Afterwards returning late to the farm alone and entirely unafraid, so completely had the country people become her friend, Mrs. Burton wondered what had given the French nation its present faith and courage. Nothing approaching it has the world ever before witnessed! Then she recalled that having paid so dearly for their freedom in those mad days of the revolution, the French people would never again relinquish the supreme gift of human liberty.
CHAPTER VIII
THE OLD CHÂTEAU
One afternoon the French farm house was deserted except for Sally Ashton, Mère ’Toinette and Miss Patricia.
As a matter of fact, Miss Patricia was not in the house, but in the farm yard which was separated from the house by a newly planted kitchen garden. It was here that she spent the greater part of her time working far more diligently than if she had been engaged for a few dollars a week. Yet in Massachusetts Miss Patricia Lord’s three-hundred-acre farm was one of the prides of the state. In ordinary times she was accustomed to employing from twenty-five to fifty men, although always Miss Patricia acted as her own overseer.
As she had announced, for the present she had managed to secure the services of an old French peasant, nearer seventy years of age than sixty, to act as her assistant. But Jean was possessed of a determination of character only equaled by Miss Patricia’s. Not a word of any language did he know except French, while Miss Patricia’s French was one of the mysteries past finding out. Also Jean was nearly stone deaf. This misfortune really served as an advantage in his relation with Miss Patricia, as he never did anything at the time or in the way she ordered him to do it, there was consolation in the thought that he had not understood the order. Jean had his own ideas with regard to farming matters and an experience which had lasted through more than half a century.
Therefore with the assistance of Peggy and Vera the outdoor work on the Sunrise Camp Fire farm was progressing with surprising success. The supply of livestock had been increased by a second shipment from the United States. This shipment Miss Patricia had divided with her French neighbors.
Beside old Jean there was at this time another rebel in Miss Patricia’s camp, Sally Ashton. The other girls were frequently annoyed by the old lady, nevertheless, appreciating her gallant qualities and for the sake of their Camp Fire guardian, they usually agreed to her demands when it was impossible to evade them. But Sally was not fond of doing anything she was told to do. Not that Sally was disagreeable, and it was not in her nature to argue, she simply ignored either suggestions or commands, always pursuing her own sweet way.
This afternoon, for example, several of the girls had invited her to walk with them to one of the French villages. Once a week they distributed loaves of bread and a few grocery supplies to the neediest of the peasants, those who had been unable to rebuild their huts or find regular occupation. Sally had declined with entire frankness. She had done her duty by making the bread for the others to give away and more successfully than any one of the girls could have made it. She disliked long, fatiguing walks.
Mrs. Burton had gone off alone on one of her dramatic pilgrimages.
Mary Gilchrist had again motored into Soissons and Sally would have enjoyed accompanying her. To have driven about through the French country with convalescent soldiers would have been extremely entertaining. But Mary had not asked her, preferring to take Yvonne, whom the American girls all appeared to adore.
So in consequence Sally was vexed and a little jealous.
Observing the others depart and that apparently Sally had nothing of importance to occupy her, Miss Patricia had ordered her to come out into the yard and help with the young chickens. They seemed to be afflicted with some uncomfortable moulting disease.
To this invitation Sally had made no reply. She especially disliked foolish, feathery outdoor things and had no intention of sacrificing her well-earned leisure. The school had a semi-weekly half holiday and for once the house was quiet.
Yet after a little more than an hour of leisure, Sally found herself bored. Many times of late she had missed her old friendship with Gerry Williams, since this was her first Camp Fire experience without Gerry, who had married Felipe Morris the summer before in California.
At least Gerry occasionally had been frivolous! Certainly these were war times and yet could one be serious forever and ever, without an intermission? The other Camp Fire girls now and then got upon Sally’s nerves.
As she was seldom warm enough these days, covered with her steamer blanket Sally had been curled up on the bed in her room which she shared with her sister. First she had taken a short nap and then attempted to read a French novel which she had discovered in the attic of the farm. The French puzzled her and it was tiresome to have to consult a dictionary. So Sally lay still for a few moments listening to Mère ’Toinette singing the Marseillaise in a cracked old voice as she went about her work downstairs.
Finally, stretching in a characteristically indolent fashion, Sally rose and walked over to a window. She could only see through one small opening. All the glass in the countryside had been smashed by the terrific bombardments, and as there was no glass to be had for restoring the windows, glazed paper had been pasted over the frames. The one small aperture had been left for observation of climate and scenery.
Even without her birdseye view, Sally was conscious that the sun was shining brilliantly. A long streak had shone through the glazed paper and lay across her bed.
She decided that she might enjoy a short walk. She really had forgotten Mrs. Burton’s suggestion that no one of the girls leave the farm alone and had no thought of deliberately breaking an unwritten law.
Mère ’Toinette and Sally had become devoted friends and also there was an unspoken bond of sympathy between her and Jean, expressed only by the way in which the old man looked at her and in certain dry chucklings in his throat and shakings of his head.
As Sally was about to leave the front door suddenly Mère ’Toinette appeared, to present her with a little package of freshly baked fruit muffins. Sally’s appetite in war times, when everybody was compelled to live upon such short rations, was a standing household joke and one which she deeply resented. Mère ’Toinette resented the point of view equally, preferring Sally to any one of the other girls, and also it was her idea that the good things of this world are created only for the young. There was no measure to her own self-sacrifice.
A few yards beyond the house Sally discovered old Jean, who was doubtless coming to find her, as he bore in his hand a French fleur-de-lis, the national wild flower, which he had found growing in a field as hardy and unconquerable as the French spirit.
Sally accepted his offering with the smile of gratitude which seemed always a sufficient reward for her many masculine admirers.
With Mère ’Toinette’s gift in her Camp Fire knapsack and with Jean’s flower thrust into her belt, Sally then made a fresh start. She had not thought of going far, as the roads and fields were in too disagreeable a condition.
Pausing about an eighth of a mile from the farm house, she considered whether after all it were worth while to remain out of doors. Even if the afternoon were enchanting, walking through the heavy upturned soil was unpleasant.
Then by accident Sally chanced to observe the ruins of the old French château shining under the rays of the winter sun.
It was not far away and suddenly she made up her mind to go upon an exploring tour. Half a dozen times in the past few weeks the Camp Fire girls had discussed paying a visit to the château to see what interesting discoveries they might unearth among the ruins. But no one of them had so far had the opportunity.
Ordinarily Sally Ashton was the least experimental of the entire group of girls. Instinctively, as a type of the feminine, home-staying woman, she disliked the many adventurous members of her own sisterhood. With not a great deal of imagination, Sally’s views of romance were practical and matter of fact. Young men fell in love with one and she had no idea of how many lovers one might have and no thought of limiting the number so far as she was personally concerned. Then among the number one selected the man who would make the most comfortable and agreeable husband, married him, had children and was happy ever afterwards. So you see, a romance which might bring sorrow as well as happiness had no place in Sally Ashton’s practical scheme of life.
Therefore the fates must have driven her to the old French château on this winter afternoon.
The walk itself occupied about half an hour. Around the château in times past there had been a moat. For their own convenience the German troops quartered at the old place had left the bridge over the moat undisturbed, else Sally would never have hazarded a dangerous crossing.
The house had been built of gray stone and it was difficult to imagine how the enemy had managed so completely to reduce it to ruins. An explosion of dynamite must have been employed, for the château appeared to have fallen as if it had been destroyed by an earthquake. Certain portions of the outer walls remained standing, but the towers in the center had caved in upon the interior of the house.
As Sally drew near she felt a little desolate and yet she was not frightened, although a proverbial coward.
The place appeared too abandoned to fear that any living thing could be in its vicinity. It was only that one felt the pity of the destruction of this ancient and beautiful home.
The waste and confusion of war troubled Sally as it does all women. So hard it is to see why destruction is necessary to the growth and development of human history!
Wondering what had become of the French family who formerly had lived in the château before the outbreak of the war, Sally walked up closer to the ruins. From a space between two walls, forming an insecure arch, a bird darted out into the daylight. Not ordinarily influenced by the beauties of nature or by unexpected expressions of her moods, nevertheless Sally uttered a cry of enchantment.
Between the walls she had spied the ruins of an old French drawing room. The bird must have flown through the opening into the room and then quickly out again into the sunshine.
A little table remained standing with an open book upon it, laid face down. There was a rug on the floor, now thick with mould, and yet it was a rare Aubusson rug with sturdy cupids trailing flowery vines across its surface. There were pieces of broken furniture and bric-a-brac strewn over the floor.
Sally must have continued staring inside the room for several moments before she slowly became aware that there was a human figure seated in a chair in the shadow near one of the half fallen walls.
The figure was that of a young soldier. He was asleep when Sally discovered him and incredibly dirty. His hair was long and matted, hanging thick over his forehead. One arm was wrapped in a soiled bandage.
Yet Sally did not feel frightened, only faint and ill for an instant from pity.
Coming to their farm house after a few days in Paris, Sally had seen trains filled with wounded soldiers. In Paris she also had noticed blinded and invalided men being led along the streets by their families or friends, yet never so piteous a figure as this.