"Father, stand up! Look at me! Listen to me!" The very essence of determination was in her voice and manner, and he obeyed her. "You are not to stir one step from this town. Sarah Butler and I are going to France to be with Pen; we have talked it over and decided on it; and you are going to stay right here at Bannerhall, where you can be of supreme service to us, instead of burdening us with your company."
He looked at her steadily for a moment, but he saw only rigid resolution and determination in her eyes; he was too unstrung and broken to protest, or to insist on his right as head of the house, and so—he yielded. Later in the day, however, a compromise was effected. It was agreed that he should accompany his daughter and his daughter-in-law to New York, aid them in securing passage, passports and credentials, and see them safely aboard ship for their perilous journey, after which he was to return home and spend the time quietly with his niece Eleanor, and make necessary preparations for the return of the invalid, later on, to Bannerhall.
He carried out his part of the New York program in good faith, and had the satisfaction, three days later, of bidding the two women good-by on the deck of a French liner bound for Havre. He had no apprehension concerning the fitness of his daughter to go abroad unaccompanied save by her sister-in-law. She had been with him on three separate trips to the continent, and, in his judgment, for a woman, she had displayed marked traveling ability. His only fear was of German submarines.
"A most cowardly, dastardly, uncivilized way," he declared, "of waging war upon an enemy's women and children."
He was in good spirits as the vessel sailed. His parting words to his daughter were:
"If you should have occasion to discuss with our friends in France the attitude of this nation toward the war, you may say that it is my opinion that the conscience of the country is now awake, and that before long we shall be shoulder to shoulder with them in the destruction of barbarism."
CHAPTER XIV
For twenty-five years there has stood, in one of the faubourgs of Rouen, not far from the right bank of the Seine, a long two-story brick building, with a wing reaching back to the base of the hill. Up to the year 1915 it was used as a factory for the making of silk ribbons. Rouen had been a center of the cotton manufacturing industry from time immemorial. Why therefore should not the making of silk be added? It was added, and the enterprise grew and became prosperous. Then came the war, vast, terrible, bringing in its train suffering, poverty, a drastic curtailment of all the luxuries of life. Silk ribbons are a luxury; they go with soft living. So, then; voilà tout! Before the end of the first year of the conflict the factory was transformed into a hospital. The clatter of looms and the chatter of girls gave place to the moanings of sick and wounded men, and the gentle voices of white and blue clad nurses. It was no longer bales of raw silk that were carted up to the big doors of the factory, and boxes of rolled ribbon that were trundled down the drive to the street, to the warehouses, and thence to the admiring eyes of beauty-loving women. The human freight that was brought to the big doors in these days consisted of the pierced and mutilated bodies of men; soldiers for whom the final taps would soon sound. If they chanced to be of the British troops, and held fast to the spark of life within them, then they were close enough to the seaport to be taken across the channel for final convalescence under English skies.
It was to this hospital that Lieutenant Penfield Butler was brought from the battlefield of the Somme. His battalion had done the work assigned to it in the fight, had done it well, and had withdrawn to its trenches, leaving a third of its men dead or wounded between the lines. Later on, under cover of a galling artillery fire, rescue parties had gone out to bring in the wounded. They had found Pen in the shelter of the shell-hole, still unconscious. They had brought him back across the fire-swept field, and down through the winding, narrow trenches, to the first-aid station, from which, after a hurried examination and superficial treatment of his wounds, he was taken in a guard-car to a field hospital in the rear of the lines. But space in these field hospitals is too precious to permit of wounded men who can be moved without fatal results, remaining in them for long periods. The stream of newcomers is too constant and too pressing. So, after five days, Pen was sent, by way of Amiens, to the hospital in the suburbs of Rouen. He, himself, knew little of where he was or of what was being done for him. A bullet had grazed his right arm, and a clubbed musket or revolver had laid his scalp open to the bone. But these were slight injuries in comparison with the awful wound in his breast. Torn flesh, shattered bones, pierced lungs, these things left life hanging by the slenderest thread. When the médecin-chef of the hospital near Rouen took his first look at the boy after his arrival, he had him put under the influence of an anaesthetic in order that he could the more readily and effectively examine, probe and dress the wound, and remove any irritating splinters of bone that might be the cause of the continuous leakage from the lungs. But when he had finished his delicate and strenuous task he turned to the nurse at his side and gave a hopeless shake of his head and shrug of his shoulders.