3
For some time, perhaps for as long as five minutes, the Herr Doktor stood on the stone jetty. He did not like to step down upon the barge and at once take possession of it, as it was his undoubted right, almost his duty, to do. Also, though in no way a coward, his nerve had been shaken by the terrible things he had seen, and by the long fatiguing hours of desperately hard work he had lately gone through. Horrible stories were whispered as to what the French were capable of doing to an unarmed enemy. The inside of this big, roomy barge might contain youths and old men armed with knives and scythes.... Perhaps his wisest course would be to go up the hill again, and, together with his patient, return with an armed escort who would deal in summary fashion with any evil-intentioned inmates of the Red Cross barge.
While he was thus hesitating, there suddenly floated towards him the stifled sounds of hurried whisperings. They were followed, a moment later, by the lady of the barge herself. But her fair hair was now almost entirely hidden by the severe, unbecoming head-dress of a French Red Cross nurse; and the hard white coif and flowing veil obscured the free, graceful, rather haughty poise of her head.
As at last she faced him squarely, he became painfully aware of the mingled terror and anger which made her face turn from white to red, and filled her blue eyes with a dreadful look of haunting fear.
The Herr Doktor was well read in the great Romantics of the world, and quite involuntarily he thought of Rebecca and a certain scene in 'Ivanhoe.'
Just behind the tall, slender figure, forming at once a guard and an escort to the Red Cross nurse, came a short, sturdy-looking, elderly woman, clad in a dark blue-and-white check gown, and an old man, dressed in a shabby black suit.
Stepping forward alone, Mademoiselle Rouannès stood close to the plank which connected the stone jetty with the barge, and while the Herr Doktor was trying to compose the right form of words, at once firm and conciliatory, with which to address her, she suddenly spoke.
'How many wounded have you?' she asked, in a low, clear voice. 'I must tell you, Monsieur, that we have not room for many here, for we already have eighteen.' As he remained silent, she went on, a little breathlessly, and he saw that her under-lip was quivering, 'We have one empty cabin, but it is not very large; it will not hold more than six.'
And then at last the Herr Doktor found the French words he wanted with which to answer and to reassure her.
'I have but one wounded man, gracious demoiselle. It is his Highness Prince Egon von Witgenstein. You may of him have heard?'