I want to tell you, Ruth, that you have the right to feel that your work contributed to the arrival of our marines at the right moment, at the right place. You are familiar enough with war now to know that troop dispositions must be made far ahead. Your information was, of course, not the only warning to reach the general staff that the attack was to come where it did. But I am now permitted to tell you that your information was believed to be honest; therefore it had weight, and its weight was sufficient undoubtedly to make our command certain, a few hours earlier than they otherwise might have been certain, of the direction of the German attack; and, throughout the front, reserves were started to the threatened points a few hours sooner. Yours ever,
Gerry.
The day after Ruth received this the Germans started their attack of the fifteenth of July; three days later the allied counter attack was striking in full force and the armies of the German Crown Prince were fighting for their lives against the French and Americans, to get back out of the Marne “pocket.” Then, in the north, the English struck and won their greatest victories. It was August; September, and still, from Switzerland to the sea, the allies advanced; the Germans went back. And still from across the sea, three hundred thousand American soldiers arrived monthly.
CHAPTER XXII
“THE WAR’S OVER”
Ruth was working in a canteen with the American army now—or, rather, with one of the American armies. Her particular army occupied the bending front about the St. Mihiel salient, east of Verdun. Gerry—she heard of him frequently, but from him only when the chances of the mails brought letters along the lines of the shifting armies—Gerry was doing combat flying again with the American forces operating farthest to the west. She was close behind an active battle front again, as by secret night marches the American First Army with its tanks and artillery concentrated on the south side of the salient from Aprémont to Pont-à-Mousson.
Ruth went about glowing with the glory of the gathering of the fighting men of her people. Many times when she looked up at the approach of a tall, alert figure in pilot’s uniform, her heart halted with hope that Gerry had come among the flyers to aid in this operation; then she heard, with final definiteness, that he was still kept at his combat work farther west. The gathering of the army, however, brought Hubert Lennon.
Ruth had not seen him since March; and his manner of reappearance was characteristic. On the evening of the eleventh of September, the sense of the impending had reached the climax which forewarned of immediate events; and the troops who were to go “over the top” at some near hour, and also the support divisions which were to follow, were being kept close to their commands. The canteen where Ruth was working was deserted long before the usual time, and Ruth was busy putting away dishes when someone entered and coughed, apologetically, to attract her attention. She glanced up to see a spare young man in the uniform of an ambulance driver and wearing thick spectacles. His face was in the shadow, with only his glasses glinting light until he took off his cap and said:
“Hello, Miss Alden.”
Ruth dropped the dish she was holding. “Hubert! I didn’t know how much I’ve needed to see you!” And she thrust both her hands across the counter and seized his hand and squeezed it.
He flushed ruddy under his brown weather-beatenness, and she held tighter to the hand he was timidly attempting to draw away—still her shy, self-effacing Hubert. By hailing her by her own name, he had informed her at once that he knew all about her; and he had not assumed to replace his former familiar “Cynthia” with “Ruth.”