“Living where he left them—well—and if they know he’s alive, happy. It’s been months since they’ve had news. Stana had almost lost hope. This will be wine to her. May I tell her Miss Cowder is nursing him?”
The old man gulped. “I suppose,” he said, “it would give her more hope. If you don’t mind, I’ll go out with you. If Nancy has adopted Nikola, I guess I’ll take the family.” And so, for the first time in his life, Reuben Cowder entered the house of a miner, bringing glad news and honest sympathy.
The summer of 1915 came and passed slowly. News came regularly. Nikola was gaining strength, was sitting up; they had made him crutches, he was learning to walk; and then, in September, that which gladdened Reuben Cowder’s sore heart as he had not believed it ever again would be gladdened—Nikola could take care of himself now. Nancy really needed a rest, and they were all insisting she take it. They would leave Serbia as early as possible in October, couldn’t Reuben Cowder meet then in London? They would cable when they reached Salonika, and he would have ample time.
It was wonderful to Dick to see the change in the man with the coming of the news. His silent tongue was loosened. For the first time in their lives, his business friends heard him talk freely of his daughter. For the first time Sabinsport learned in details of what Nancy Cowder had been doing, for when the seal he had put on his lips was broken by Reuben Cowder’s change of heart, Dick told both Patsy and Mary Sabins the story, omitting no heroic touch and cunningly enlarging on two widely separated details—the romantic discovery, cure and expected return of Nikola Petrovitch and the continued support of Nancy’s unit by Lady Barstow and her circle!
The story was quickly set loose, as Dick had expected it to be. The Woman’s Club, the War Board, all High Town seized it as one more personal connection with the Great War. It is safe to say that the location of Serbia on the map of Europe had never been known to the tenth of one per cent, of Sabinsport up to the day that Dick confided the adventures of Nancy Cowder in that land to Patsy McCullon and Mary Sabins; but before a week had passed the library had it penciled in blue on a fresh outline map, with Valievo marked probably within fifty miles of the true location, but quite as exact as the maps which amateur cartographers of the press were publishing; the Woman’s Club had engaged a lecturer to tell it what he knew of Serbia; a subscription had been started, and in the alley on the South Side Jimmy Flannigan’s goat had been harnessed to Benny Katz’ two-wheeled cart, and Reuben Cowder, coming through as usual, found the gang in white paper caps, marked with a crayon red cross, receiving Nick Brown who, limp and groaning, was impersonating Nikola Petrovitch’s first appearance at the Valievo sanitarium. Here again it was Jimmy Flannigan’s big brother who, listening to Patsy at high school, had inspired the play.
The keenest interest was taken in Reuben Cowder’s trip—for of course he was going. He was settling things for as long an absence as necessary, doing it feverishly, joyfully—he who had always stuck night and day at his post and grumbled at every business trip that he could not escape. He would be ready to start as soon as the cablegram came; Nancy had said early in October.
But October came. The first week passed—and no cablegram. The second week, and none. And then there fell on Reuben Cowder with crushing force the news of the second invasion of Serbia. From north and west came the Austro-Hungarians—from the west the Bulgars—hordes of them. This time there was to be no mistake. Serbia was not merely to be conquered; she was to be crushed, and the remnants swept into the sea.
The suddenness, the mass, the extent of the attack, left no doubt in Reuben Cowder’s mind that whatever Serbia’s fate might be—and that was as nothing to him—Nancy had been trapped. Unless she had reached Salonika before the advance, she’d have hardly a shadow of a chance. And he told himself, too, that if she saw need, she would not leave. His forebodings were so black that Dick urged him to go at once to London, as he had planned, not waiting for a cablegram: “I will send it when it comes. You’ll be there to greet her when she does get out. If she doesn’t come, try to arrange to go to Serbia yourself.”
And it was on this advice that late in the month Reuben Cowder acted. Before sailing, he had in Washington used every official channel to get information of his daughter, but to no avail. When it seemed certain that for the time being—and he was everywhere assured it was only for “the time being”—that he could not get news, he sailed, having first made elaborate arrangements with Dick about informing him if anything was heard.
By the time he reached London, the completeness of the disaster to Serbia was known. Her armies had been defeated on every side—they, and practically the entire population, were in retreat; had embarked for Corfu. For the moment the little island held the only organized remnant of the Serbian nation.