He had been born with the harelip, of course; but the twisted foot he had suffered as a boy. A heavy truck had run over it, he told Belinda. He could not, of course, serve in the trenches; but no more patriotic son of France ever lived, it seemed.
"Just now," Erard said, "mademoiselle will find it easy. Only eighteen of the beds are filled. There are thirty-four blessés when the ward is full."
Erard watched at night. He gave the patients their breakfasts; he washed them; he lifted them when the nurse dressed their wounds; he fetched and carried; he had so many duties that Belinda wondered if the little man with the harelip ever slept—if he ever found time to eat.
The blessés in the care of the American recruit were just at the "fussy stage." They were inclined at first to be critical. They resented losing a nurse they had got used to, to have foisted upon them "a greenie." Too, she was an American, it was said, and these wounded poilus had their doubts concerning the good intentions of les Américains.
"Why, they tell me the sales Boches are just as welcome in that America as we French," one said.
During these first few weeks, there were not many new cases brought into Salle III. Just enough to keep the number up to the average of eighteen or twenty. Quite as many were discharged to go back to the trenches, or died, or were sent to the base hospitals as being practically unfit for "gun fodder," as were brought in from the front. Just now there was a lull in this sector. The French and the Germans seemed merely watching each other.
The wise ones said a great battle was in preparation. But it was very monotonous, this waiting. The guns growled and thundered, but in the distance. Belinda was not sure she would have found an occasional shell bursting near by hard to bear.
From the doorway of her hut where she found time occasionally to stand to breathe the pure air Belinda could see the huge captive balloons, wagging lazily back and forth at their tethers. Sometimes a smaller shape darted across the horizon—an aeroplane of some kind—occasionally chased by black bursts of smoke, the shells fired by the German aerial guns.
Somewhere over there, perhaps eight or ten kilometres away, were the trenches. At any time—at first the thought made Belinda very nervous—a battle might break out along this sector. Like leashed dogs the French and the Germans were tugging to get at each other—ready to fly at each other's throats.
The aeroplanes she watched with particular interest. She wondered if Frank Sanderson had as yet joined the Flying Corps. Was he already assigned to work on the battle front? Was he one of those whom the French acclaim the greatest heroes, the pilot of a battleplane? She had heard nothing from him—nor of him—since they had parted at the little Paris café.