It was strange how one was able to see he had been a gallant gentleman and soldier of France in spite of his misfortune. There was something in his appearance which fairly haunted Barbara. He hung his head now and every movement of his body was uncertain, yet in the once slender, graceful figure, the small, well-shaped head, the hands and feet, one could see that Jeanne’s officer had been a man of breeding and distinction.
“Why don’t his own people look for him? Surely something should be done,” Barbara murmured, almost indignantly. “Jeanne, you must do your best to help your Captain find his friends. There must have been some mark upon him, his number, the uniform of his regiment.”
But before Jeanne could reply, the train upon which the American soldiers and the four Red Cross nurses were traveling, began pulling away from the station, and Jeanne stood waving farewell.
During the entire experience Agatha Burton had remained quiet and uninterested. She was a surprisingly calm and self-possessed person.
Several times since her own introduction to Agatha, Barbara had recalled Bianca’s unexpected speech in her drawing-room. Barbara occasionally felt she agreed with Bianca. However, she did not intend to be prejudiced against anyone, and Agatha certainly had tried to be kind and considerate of her, more so than Nona, who was her old friend. Agatha had a fashion of doing one small, unexpected favors; it was almost as if she deliberately intended to make you like and trust her.
“Would you mind telling me something of Madame Castaigne?” Mollie Drew asked, after the slight pause which usually follows a train’s leaving a station. “As she is to have charge of the new American hospital where we are to work, I am interested. Is she difficult to work under? I feel a little afraid of her, she seems to be so wonderful herself.”
Nona smiled and shook her head. “Oh, don’t feel afraid of Madame Castaigne, although I confess that Mildred Thornton, Mrs. Thornton’s sister-in-law, and Barbara and I were very much so in the days when we’d just met Eugenia on our first trip to Europe for the Red Cross nursing. She had not married then. But Madame Castaigne has been through a great deal since. About a year or more after our work in Europe she married a French officer, Captain Henri Castaigne. He was a member of the old nobility, but too democratic in his ideas to use his title. He has since disappeared and is either dead or a prisoner in Germany. I don’t think Madame Castaigne knows. But she has kept on just the same with her hospital work and has been helping to organize the new hospitals for our American soldiers in France. Eugenia has a great deal of money, and, except what she uses for her husband’s mother, she is devoting everything she has to the Red Cross. I only hope we may not find her too much changed.”
But Nona stopped talking because of an interruption. Someone had just come to the door of their compartment and knocked, and Barbara was opening it.
Outside stood two figures, Lieutenant John Martin and his companion, Lieutenant Hugh Kelley.
The first officer’s manner betrayed the impression that although intending to be polite, he was greatly bored. As a matter of fact, he believed that women and girls had no part in a soldier’s life and except that men were necessary for other work, even Red Cross nurses were superfluous.