The little house was not hard to find. It looked out over the valley with its red-tiled roof and its suggestion of a distant time when the Turks were in the country as conquerors and built houses with overhanging eaves and trellised windows. It was from this little house that they started out for their work in what was then one of the most pitiable spots of all the many—oh, so many—on an earth which lifts a friendly face to man and begs of him to take of its fruits in peace and in content.
Their first day’s work had brought them back, white and anguished. What were they in all this thing? It was sweeping back the waves of the sea with a broom, dipping it dry with a teaspoon, as they told one another. And so, indeed, it seemed at first sight. Valievo was one big hospital—its schoolrooms, public halls, churches, cafés, had been turned into wards—and such wards! The only beds were piles of straw on the floor. The only utensils the helter-skelter articles the doctors and nurses could pick up. And to meet this misery, there were just six doctors! Everything that they could do they had done to bring something like order and cleanliness into the situation, but it was a task manifold beyond the most tremendous effort of which they were capable. Hundreds of wounded men lay for days on their straw beds unattended save for some rude first aid—and always lumbering ox-carts were jolting over the cobbled streets bringing from the hills more and more victims.
The condition was so shocking that Nancy and her friends cringed in horror at the sights and in despair at their own inadequacy. Yet what they could do they would. From daylight to dark they went from one group to another, cleansing and dressing wounds, changing straw often stiff with blood and filth, fumigating garments, letting in fresh air, furnishing nourishing food, doing a thousand little things to improve the conditions and to simplify the care of the stricken groups.
Regularly every week Nancy Cowder had written her father and she had taken always the greatest care possible that the letters got out. More than once she had sent a messenger with them to Nish or Belgrade. Because of this precaution, he had received with fair regularity news of her life and health for the past twelve months—and such wonderful letters as she wrote; the first appalled cry at the suffering—suffering so out of proportion to their puny efforts—was never repeated. The girl had plunged into steady work, and it was of what they did that she wrote—letters often actually gay in their triumph over their difficulties. They had not, to begin with, the commonest articles; basins, bed clothing, shirts. It took the most determined and continued efforts to supply themselves, but they never were discouraged, never downcast.
“Oh, Father, if you knew what we do without. Nothing matters, we know, if we can keep them clean and warm and fed. Straw on the floor doesn’t matter—sheets don’t matter, spoons and bowls don’t matter. It takes so little if the little is right. We wage one long campaign to get things. I never knew how wonderful money is before. You mustn’t mind if I spend a great deal—if I overdraw—if I cut into my principal. There couldn’t be a better use for it. If it all goes I can work. Why, I could earn my living as a hospital orderly now, Father. You ought to see what I can do—what I do do. I sweep floors and change straw. I cook and clean and drive nails. I’ve made what we call bedsteads with my own hands—and proud of it! I never knew that work—work with one’s hands—could be so good. I feel as if I’d just begun to live. What a pity that it takes a war to teach idlers like me where the essence of life is found!
“Don’t you worry, dear. I shall come back to you another person, and I shall know when I get there how much of real life there is to be had in Sabinsport.”
“I don’t understand,” said Reuben Cowder.
“I do,” said Dick.
“If she will only come back!” groaned Reuben Cowder.
“She will,” said Dick.