They were, indeed, like children, these wounded, for the most part. They called Ruth “sister” in their tenderest moments; even “maman” when they were delirious. The touch of her hand often quieted them when they were feverish. She read to them when she could. And she wrote innumerable letters—intimate, family letters that these wounded men would have shrunk from having their mates know about.
Ruth, too, had to share in all the “news from home” that came to the more fortunate patients. She unpacked the boxes sent them, and took care of such contents as were not at once gobbled down—for soldiers are inordinately fond of “goodies.” She had to obey strictly the doctors’ orders about these articles of diet, however, or some of the patients would have failed to progress in their convalescence.
Nor were all on the road to recovery; yet the spirit of cheerfulness was the general tone of even the “dangerous” cases. Their unshaken belief was that they would get well and, many of them, return to their families again.
“Chère petite mère,” Louis, the little Paris tailor, shot through both lungs, whispered to Ruth as she passed his bed, “see! I have something to show you. It came to me only to-day in the mail. Our first—and born since I came away. The very picture of his mother!”
The girl looked, with sympathetic eyes, at the postcard photograph of a very bald baby. Her ability to share in their joys and sorrows made her work here of much value.
“I feel now,” said Louis softly, “that le bon Dieu will surely let me live—I shall live to see the child,” and he said it with exalted confidence.
But Ruth had already heard the head physician of the hospital whisper to the nurse that Louis had no more than twenty-four hours to live. Yet the poilu’s sublime belief kept him cheerful to the end.
Many, many things the girl of the Red Mill was learning these days. If they did not exactly age her, she felt that she could never again take life so thoughtlessly and lightly. Her girlhood was behind her; she was facing the verities of existence.
CHAPTER XVII—AT THE GATEWAY OF THE CHATEAU
Ruth heard from Clare Biggars and the other girls at the Lyse Hospital on several occasions; but little was said in any of their letters regarding Mrs. Mantel, and, of course, nothing at all of the woman’s two friends, who Ruth had reason to suspect were dishonest.