"He was in _such_ a state, poor boy!" said Sister Eila. "Just think, Mr. Warner! They had not even washed him when they put on their dreadful poultices--good, kind, ignorant folk that they are! So of course I insisted on bringing him here where Sister Felicite and I could give him proper attention."
Gray smiled tremulously:
"I've been bathed, cleansed, patched, mended, beautifully bandaged, fed, and spoiled! I don't know what you think of the Grey Sisters, but I know what I think."
"There's no difference of opinion in the world concerning them," said Warner, and Sister Eila smiled and blushed and held up an admonitory finger:
"It is I who am being spoiled, gentlemen." Then, very seriously to Warner: "Have you seen the pitiable procession which has been passing along the Ausone road since before dawn? Is it not heartbreaking, Mr. Warner? What is happening in the north, that all these poor people come hurrying southward? I thought the cannonade was from our own forts."
Gray looked up at him curiously.
"I don't yet know what is happening north of Ausone," said Warner quietly. "There were three fires burning last night. I think they were villages in flames. But it was far to the north. The Ausone Fort was not engaged--except when an aeroplane came within range. Then they used their high-angle guns."
There was a silence. Listening, Warner could hear the cannonade distinctly above the shuffle of feet and the childish singsong of recitation in the schoolroom underneath.
Presently, glancing up, he caught Sister Eila's eye, rose, and followed her to the window.
"I don't know what to do," she said. "Sister Felicite is going to try to keep the children here, but a gendarme came day before yesterday, saying that the school might be required for a military hospital, and that the children were to remain at home. I have telephoned to Ausone; I have telegraphed to the rue de Bac; I have done all I could do. But I am directed, from the rue de Bac, to prepare for field service, at the front. And from Ausone they telephone Sister Felicite that she may keep the children until the last moment, but that, when needed, she must turn over our school to the military authorities. And so, Mr. Warner, what am I to do with that poor boy over there? Because, if I go away, Sister Felicite cannot properly attend to him and care for the children, too."
Warner stood thinking for a moment. Then:
"Could you get me permission to use your telephone?" he asked.
"Only for military purposes. It is the rule now."
Warner walked over to Gray:
"You are a British officer, I take it."
"Yes."
"Captain?"
"Yes."
Sister Eila, listening, understood and took Warner to the telephone. For a few moments he heard her soft voice in conversation with the military operator, then she beckoned him and he gave the number he desired and waited.
Presently he got the Chateau des Oiseaux, and after a few moments Madame de Moidrey came to the telephone.
"Ethra," he said, "would you care to be hospitable to a British officer who has been injured?"
"Certainly! Where is he?"
"At Sister Eila's school. Is there anything left to harness up and send for him?"
"Yes; there is a donkey and a basket wagon. I'll have a groom take it over at once. Is the officer badly hurt?"
"I don't know. I think he merely needs bandaging and feeding. He's the comrade of my friend, Captain Halkett. Gray is his name, and he's a captain or something or other. May I tell him that you will receive him?"
"Of course, Jim. You need not have asked; you could have brought him here immediately."
The military operator cut in:
"A thousand thanks to Madame la Comtesse for her kindness to our allies, the English! Madame, I regret, very much that I must switch off----" click!
Warner smiled and turned to Sister Eila:
"Madame de Moidrey takes him!"
"I am so thankful! I will go up and make him ready."
"What is the matter with him?"
"Think of it! He was coming on his motor cycle full speed toward Sais through the night, when right ahead he saw a car drawn up beside the road, and four men standing in it with pistols aimed at him. Only one bullet hit him, making a deep furrow over his temple. He remembers losing control of the motor cycle, of being hurled through the air. Then, evidently some time afterward, he found himself struggling under a thin covering of dirt and sticks and lumps of sod--fighting for air, pushing, creeping, crawling out of the hasty and shallow grave where they had flung him beside his ruined motor cycle. He thinks that the frame of the motor cycle kept him from being suffocated by the sod and earth piled over him.
"It was early morning; a peasant was breaking ground in another field not far away, and Mr. Gray managed to crawl near enough to make the man hear. That is all he remembers until he regained consciousness once more in the man's cottage."
"Good heavens, what a ghastly experience!" muttered Warner.
"It is dreadful. If they knew that his heart still beat, it was inhuman of them to do such a thing as that. But perhaps they considered him dead. He may have appeared so. I have had to bandage both arms and both knees where he was hurled over the ground when he fell. He has a fracture of the left wrist which is doing nicely, and two broken ribs are mending without trouble. As for the scar on his temple, it is nearly closed now. I think all will be well with him. Now, I shall go and prepare him for his little journey."
At the foot of the stairs she paused, turned slowly to Warner, and he thought her lovely face had become somewhat pale.
"I think you said over the telephone that you have had no word from Mr. Halkett?"
"Not a word, Sister Eila."
"Thank you."
*CHAPTER XXVII*
The journey back along the Ausone road was a slow and stifling one. Warner, walking on the left, led the donkey by the head; Philippa moved beside the basket cart on the right. In the cart sat the wounded Englishman, his bandaged head lying on Sister Eila's shoulder.
Through the heavy, suffocating cloud of dust, group after group of fugitives loomed up ahead, coming toward them, parting right and left to let the basket cart and the little, plodding donkey pass through. Sheep were driven aside for them; cattle swung out into the roadside ditches on either hand, halting there with stupid heads turned toward them while the basket cart took right of way.
Once, from the toiling procession behind them, distant shouts arose, and the ground began to quiver and shake; and Warner called out a sharp warning to Philippa and drew the donkey cart out among the dusty weeds of the ditch, while everywhere ahead of them people, cattle, vehicles, were being hurriedly turned out and crowded aside along the grassy roadside gullies.
Louder grew the clamour behind; heavier the jarring of the ground; a mounted gendarme--a _marechal de logis_--appeared, alternately cantering and galloping his superb horse, and sweeping the crowds aside with vigorous gestures of his white-gloved hand.
Behind him trotted six more gendarmes, sabers sheathed, their single rank stretching the entire width of the road from ditch to ditch. And behind these, in a writhing storm of dust and flying gravel, came the field artillery on a swift, swinging trot, drivers erect in their saddles, kepis strapped tight, sun-scorched faces sweating under masks of dust.
Tan-colored limbers, guns, caissons drawn by powerful, dust-whitened teams, rushed past thudding and clanking, escorted by galloping pelotons of artillerymen armed with saber and carbine, flanked by smart officers flashing all over cherry red and gold.
Battery after battery, with forges and wagons, passed; a fanion with trumpeters sped by; a squadron of remount cavalry in clearer blue jackets followed, then came two squadrons of galloping dragoon lancers, their steel helmets covered with brown holland slips, and the pennons streaming wildly from their lance heads. A gendarme or two galloped in the rear, mere ghosts in the driving dust. And the flying column had passed.
Sister Eila, covering Gray's mouth and nose with her grey-blue sleeve, bowed her head and closed her eyes while the storm of dust and pebbles lasted; then Warner nodded to Philippa, and between them they led out the donkey cart once more and pushed slowly ahead into the oncoming torrent of vehicles--cattle, men, women, and children.
It was nearly noon when they arrived at the Chateau des Oiseaux. A footman aided him to carry Gray upstairs to the room prepared for him.
"Are you all right?" asked Warner doubtfully.
Gray opened his haggard eyes.
"All right, thanks.... May I have a little water, if it's not too much trouble----"
Sister Eila entered the room with a carafe and some lemons; and Warner withdrew.
In the hallway below he encountered Madame de Moidrey and Peggy Brooks in earnest consultation with the village physician--an old man crippled from 1870, and wearing the Legion and an empty sleeve.
Warner shook hands with Dr. Senlis and told him what he knew of Gray's condition. Sister Eila came down presently and everybody greeted her with a warmth which unmistakably revealed her status in Sais.