However, she felt it would be impossible to refuse Doctor Herschall admittance when he called. She could easily imagine what the visit would be like. Aunt Roberta would refuse to sit in the room with him. To the little Frenchwoman the big Prussian doctor was pariah. Nor could Belinda play neutral between them.
Therefore she gladly seized the opportunity offered the next evening to escape from the house. Somebody called her up and asked her to attend a neighborhood Red Cross chapter meeting.
"Just to countenance the affair, you know, my dear. We are endeavoring to get dollar members and interest people in our work in France."
Tante was willing to attend, albeit in a critical spirit. She did not believe that anything of real worth was being done by Americans for "the dear poilus of la belle France."
Belinda went, however, with an open mind. Already she had contemplated Red Cross work, although she really knew very little about it. To-night an earnest man, just from the battlefields of war-wrecked Northern France, addressed the rather apathetic audience. In the summer of 1916 it was difficult to find an audience in America that was otherwise regarding any phase of the great war. The speaker was a grim-looking little man, ugly and in earnest; yet there was a saving twinkle in his eye.
"I am here for the specific purpose of getting as many dollar bills out of your purses as I can to-night," he said in the course of his remarks. "A dollar bill is a little thing after all. You pay it over and it does its work. But the thrill of giving it does not last long.
"Do you want—" he cried, rising on his toes and suddenly smiting the table before him with a clenched fist—"do you want to get a lasting thrill—one that may last a year—two years—perhaps to the very hour of your death? Then, enlist with us. We need men and women alike—men and women of pluck and who possess sanctified common sense.
"You are needed—needed right in the battlefield hospitals I have tried to tell you about to-night. We want men and women of some experience and proven ability—not failures; for those who are failures in one walk in life are almost always failures in any other position. Our recruits must be modest, even-tempered, inventive and enterprising, ready to go anywhere and do anything upon the shortest possible notice.
"We need the best of you, and the best there is in you. Nor can we pay you, or offer you anything but a modicum of fame. You will hear of the Red Cross doing much; but the names of the actual doers of these things are seldom exploited.
"It is, indeed, an enlistment in an army of peace, working to alleviate the horrors of armies at war. There are no medals, no honorable mention, no promotions on the field of valor by brevet or otherwise. And we demand perfect obedience to stern rules, and that each enlisted man and woman shall give every ounce of strength of mind and body he or she possesses.