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CHAPTER XI
The Journey to Coblenz

"I WANT a doughboy and not an officer to be first across that bridge."

This command from an American officer was issued one morning in December, just as the sun broke through the grey mist. A little later, the American Army of Occupation, which had been led to victory by General Pershing, crossed the Moselle river. Beyond lay Germany.

There was no loud cheering, no blare of bands, or signs of the conquering hero, when the American soldiers set foot on the land they had crossed the ocean to conquer, only before their eyes floating in the morning breeze were the stars and stripes.

The advanced guard continued the ascent over winding roads and past villages onward toward the Rhine. First marched the infantry, then followed the artillery, engineers, signal battalions and last the hospital units. And accompanying one of the final units was Sonya Clark and her Red Cross group.

Never were any of them to forget their journey into the city of Coblenz, which, situated midway between Mayence and Cologne, just where the Moselle flows into the Rhine, was to form the chief city for the American Army of Occupation.

As a matter of fact Sonya and her Red Cross unit had not dreamed of being able to form a part of the army on their first approach to the Rhine, believing that the time spent by them in Luxemburg would delay them too seriously. But, because the German army was slower in accomplishing its retreat than had been anticipated, the Third American Army did not draw near the city of Coblenz until the close of the second week of December.

It was Sunday when they started their victorious march from the French country, it was Sunday when they entered the valley of the Rhine.

Every acre of the valley appeared to be under cultivation; there were fields of winter wheat and walled vineyards lining the roads. Beyond, the hills were covered with dense forests, farther on were the tall summits of the ancient castles of the Rhine.

Varying impressions the journey into Germany made upon this particular group of American girls.

"I declare it is unendurable to me to see how prosperous and peaceful the German county appears in comparison with the French!" Nona Davis exclaimed, staring out of the window of their Red Cross automobile, as their car drove through one of the small towns not far from the larger city.

Not many grown persons were in sight, but children were swarming everywhere and blonde heads were sticking out of the windows of nearly all the little houses along the road.

"I don't think the children look nearly as hungry as we had been led to expect," she added with a bitterness of tone unlike Nona's usual attitude of mind. But then she had been nursing in Europe for four years, since the very outbreak of the war and had been an eyewitness to untold suffering and privation.

"I don't think I would be resentful about the German children, Miss Davis," Nora Jamison argued unexpectedly, as she rarely took part in any general conversation among the Red Cross girls.

Nona glanced in her direction. Sitting next Nora was the little French girl, Louisa, who had been in her care ever since their withdrawal from France. There had been no one along the way to whom they could entrust the child.

In the little French girl's expression at the moment there was something which seemed to Nona to justify her point of view. Her face was white and her lips trembling as she too gazed out at the little German village.

At the instant she had beheld a former German soldier walking along one of the streets. On his head was a round civilian cap and he had on a pair of civilian trousers, the rest of his costume was an old German uniform. And it was the sight of the uniform which had brought the terror to the child's face.

Sonya saw the look and understood it at the same moment. In order that there might be no further argument she said gently:

"Girls, I don't often preach, but perhaps I shall make the effort now. We are going into an extraordinary new experience for which I sometimes wonder if we are either mentally or spiritually prepared. During the past four years we have felt an intense bitterness against everything German; they represented for us all the forces of evil against which we were fighting. Now we are going to live among them and I suppose must not feel the same degree of hatred. Yet it will be difficult to change, impossible at first. I think it may be a number of years before we can learn to accept them as our friends. And yet I do not wish any of us to stir up fresh antagonism. One has always heard that the soldiers who have done the actual fighting have never the same hatred toward each other as the noncombatants, and perhaps we Red Cross workers stand somewhere in between the two. And yet Germany has only herself to thank that she has earned the distrust of the civilized world!"

As no one replied, after remaining silent a moment, Sonya went on: "You know our soldiers have been given the order that they are to be as polite as possible and not to make trouble, but also they are not to fraternize with the Germans, even if living in their homes. I think the same order holds good with us."

At this instant Bianca Zoli who had appeared to be almost asleep opened her eyes and yawned.

"But I thought fraternizing meant becoming like brothers," she remarked irritably. "I don't see how there is any danger of our becoming too brotherly with the Germans, Sonya."

The laugh at Bianca's speech, although annoying to her, helped to clear the atmosphere.

In truth at the time the Red Cross girls were weary and anxious to reach the end of their journey, in order that they might establish their Red Cross headquarters.

Bianca was in a particularly discouraged frame of mind. She was distinctly grieved at saying goodby to the little Luxemburg countess, whom she happened to have liked more than any girl she had ever known; she also cherished a grievance against Sonya Clark, because Sonya had refused to consent to bring Charlotta away with them secretly.

Moreover, Bianca was anxious to have some word of Carlo Navara. Not a line, no news of any kind had she been able to receive since Carlo's regiment began its march toward the Rhine. And Bianca had never a very comfortable sense of Carlo's enduring friendship. It was only when she had been able to help Carlo in the past that he had seemed especially fond of her. She did not blame him particularly; he was a good deal older than she was, and his gift of a wonderful voice made other people spoil him, beside adding to his own vanity. He had once thought he would always care more for Sonya Clark than any one in the world, but Bianca had seen in the last weeks they were together in the hospital near Château-Thierry that Carlo was becoming far more reasonable upon this subject.

Sonya's marriage had of course made all the difference, although in his absurd fashion Carlo had protested that it could never alter his affection.

With a little sigh, Bianca now made an effort to go to sleep again.

She was not in the least interested in continuing to stare out the car window as the other girls were. She had been doing nothing else for days.

Whether she slept or not, Bianca did not realize. But suddenly she heard Sonya murmur.

"Don't go to sleep again, Bianca dear. We are just about to enter Coblenz and I want you to remember it all your life. See it is a splendid, prosperous city along the bank of the Rhine."

But Bianca would not rouse herself until their automobile had entered the centre of the city and gone by the Coblenzhof, one of the finest hotels in the city, and then past the mammoth statue of Wilhelm I the grandfather of the deposed Kaiser.

Then Bianca decided to display a mild interest in her surroundings.

Coblenz is known as one of the most beautiful cities in the world and the German defeat had dimmed none of its outward glory.

Finally the Red Cross automobile drove to the outskirts of the city and entered a large court yard. On a hill beyond the courtyard rose an old castle which was to be the new American Red Cross hospital.

The building itself was grim and forbidding with its square, serrated towers and heavy, dark stone walls.

Bianca gave an instinctive shiver.

"The castle looks more like a dungeon than a hospital," she whispered to Sonya, "I wish they had given us a more cheerful place for our headquarters. Perhaps our soldiers will not mind, but I should hate to be ill in such a dismal place. Yes, I know the outlook over the Rhine is magnificent but just the same it depresses me."

Then Bianca's manner and expression changed.

Standing in the yard before the castle were a group of their friends waiting to receive them.

Dr. Clark had arrived in Coblenz a number of hours before his wife and had already taken command of the new Red Cross hospital for American soldiers. He and his wife had not seen each other in nearly a month, as they had made the journey to the Rhine with different portions of the army.

With Dr. Clark were other members of his Red Cross staff and several representatives of the German Red Cross, who were to turn over certain supplies.

Unexpectedly a private soldier formed one of the group, who must have received permission from his superior officer to share in the welcome to his friends.

The young man was Carlo Navara.

Bianca extended her hand like a child for Carlo to assist her out of the car.

"I was never so glad to see you before," she announced. "I don't care what the other Red Cross girls may say, but I have found the journey to the Rhine since we left Luxemburg extremely tiresome."

CHAPTER XII
New Year's Eve in Coblenz

THERE was no great difficulty in establishing the American Red Cross hospital at Coblenz. Dr. Clark had a large and efficient staff who were accustomed to working with him and naturally the demands were not so severe as in time of war.

Indeed Dr. Clark had no idea of asking the same degree of energy and devotion which the last six months of fighting had required of every human being in any way engaged in the great struggle in Europe. A reasonable amount of work and of discipline was as necessary for the hospital staff as for the soldiers and officers of the American Army of Occupation engaged in their new duty of policing the Rhine. Yet whenever it was possible opportunity was given for freedom and pleasure.

There were but few of the expected difficulties between the Americans and the Germans which the people of both nations had feared. A certain friction of course and suspicion and gossip about secret plots, but no open quarreling or dissension.

The new Red Cross hospital occupied an old castle which had formerly been used as a German hospital, although the last German wounded had been removed before the arrival of the American army.

The castle itself stood on a hill with a drop of a hundred feet to the bank of the Rhine, a path led down the hill to the river's edge. Crowning the summit were two old Roman towers which commanded a wonderful view; through the windows one could see many miles up and down the historic stream and on either side other castles famous in ancient legends long before the foundation of the modern German empire.

Within view of the American Red Cross hospital was the famous German fortress of Ehrenbreitstein across the river from Coblenz. The fortress was set on a rocky promontory four hundred feet above the river and surrounded by a hundred acres of land. From its flagstaff, where for a hundred years the German standard had waved, now floated the stars and stripes.

On New Year's day at about four o'clock in the afternoon Sonya Clark stood waiting just outside the hospital for the appearance of her husband. It had become their custom for the past two weeks, whenever there was no real reason to prevent, to take a walk every afternoon at about the same hour.

However, on this afternoon, Sonya and Dr. Clark had a definite destination.

A New Year's eve entertainment for the amusement of the soldiers was to take place at the Red Cross headquarters about a mile from the hospital and both Sonya and her husband had promised to be present. As a matter of fact as many of their Red Cross nurses as Miss Blackstone had been able to release from their duties had been spending the afternoon at the headquarters and an equal number of the hospital staff of physicians and orderlies.

A light snow was falling when Sonya and Dr. Clark set out. The court yard in front of their hospital sloped gradually to the road, so that the steep incline was only in the rear.

To her husband at least Sonya looked very young and handsome in her long fur coat and hat, which had been one of his gifts since reaching Europe.

Their walk was to lead through a number of quiet streets and then along one of the main thoroughfares of the German city.

At first Sonya and Dr. Clark spoke of nothing of any importance and then finally walked on for several moments in silence.

At the end of this time, Sonya glanced toward her husband and smiled.

"What is it you wish to talk to me about?" she inquired. "I don't know why, but I always seem able to feel a something in the atmosphere when you have a problem on your mind which you can't quite decide to discuss with me."

Dr. Clark laughed.

"Well, you see, Sonya, when I married you I was under the impression that you were unsuited to Red Cross work and that so far as possible, since you would insist upon working with me, you must be saved from as many difficulties as possible. At present, although I have not yet quite reached the state of advising with you upon my professional responsibilities, when my problems are human, you are the only person to whom I can turn. Miss Blackstone is an admirable superintendent of a hospital along the same lines that I have been a fairly successful physician and surgeon, but when we have to deal with personal equations we are both hopelessly unfit."

"And all this long speech, which may or may not be complimentary, leads up to just what human equation at present?" Sonya queried.

"Can't you guess and tell me first, Sonya?" Dr. Clark demanded. "I always feel so much better satisfied if you have noticed certain situations yourself before I speak to you of them. Then I am convinced that I have not made a mistake in my own sometimes faulty observations."

"I suppose at this instant you are considering the problem of Hugh Raymond and Thea Thompson, aren't you, if problem there is in which any outside human being has a right to interfere? No, don't interrupt me until I finish," Sonya protested.

"I realize that you are very seriously opposed to the least personal relation existing between any of your Red Cross nurses and physicians and so far we have been remarkably successful. But it has been more luck I think than my distinguished husband's objection to the possibility. One can't arrange, when young persons are more or less intimately associated with each other and living under the same roof, that they always maintain a friendly and yet highly impersonal attitude. Of course I also understand that you have great hopes for Hugh Raymond's future, and that as he is extremely poor you would dislike to see him marry a poor girl before his position is more assured. I also understand that neither you nor I especially like Thea Thompson. She has rather a curious history and is not herself an ordinary person. One thing I have noticed. At the beginning of their acquaintance it was Thea who made an effort to interest Hugh, since then I don't think she has been particularly interested in him. The interest has been on his side. It is to me rather unfortunate because Ruth Carroll might have liked Hugh, and, oh well, I must not speak of this! All I wished to say was that whatever our personal feeling in the matter it will be wiser, my dear husband, for you to say nothing to Hugh at present and for me to say nothing to Thea, which is what you rather had in mind to suggest. Moreover, nothing has so far developed between them for which you need have cause to worry! Thea told me the other day that she was happy here in Coblenz because she has been able to have a relief from the constant strain of the hospital work, which she confesses was becoming a little hard to endure, by dancing with the soldiers at the Red Cross headquarters in her free hours. She has been helping one of the Red Cross managers, a Mrs. Adams, to teach some of the soldiers folk dancing. I believe she has a gift for it and the soldiers are getting a good deal of amusement out of their own efforts to learn. A good thing for all of them! We must remember our years and realize that young people need all kinds of relaxation."

"Thanks, Sonya, for including me along with your youthful self, even if we are in a class apart," Dr. Clark returned. "I wonder if you will be as severe with me concerning my other complaint. As a matter of fact I am ashamed of this myself and do not honestly consider it gravely. But you know we are in a curious position here in Coblenz. On the outside apparently everything is going well. As comfortable a relation as one could expect has been established between our former enemy and ourselves. Yet Coblenz is full of rumors. There is a very strong pro-Kaiser element in the city, which means there is a party deeply in opposition to all American thought and feeling and to the establishment of any new form of government in Germany which shall not include the Kaiser.

"The point of all this is that I insist there be no display even of conventional friendliness between any member of our Red Cross unit and a single German resident of Coblenz. The information has been brought to me that Nora Jamison, one of our own nurses, has been making friends with a group of German children. They meet her and the little French girl, Louisa, in one of the city parks every afternoon and there they play together. Of course, this appears innocent, but knowing the children in a too friendly fashion may mean knowing their families later. The army officers tell me there has been this same problem among our soldiers. No one seems to have been able to prevent their getting on intimate terms with every little Hans and Gretel who makes their acquaintance. But I do wish you would protest mildly to Miss Jamison. It is true that we know little of her history except that her credentials must have been satisfactory to the Red Cross. I confess I agreed to have her form a part of our Red Cross unit rather on an impulse, when I learned Barbara Thornton was forced to return home. Besides, Miss Jamison herself attracted me. She has some unusual characteristic which I cannot exactly explain, but which nevertheless – "

"Ah, well, you need not try to explain it, David, because the thing is 'charm,' which I believe no one has successfully explained so far," Sonya answered. "I presume this same charm is what endears her to the German children; it has kept the little French Louisa close beside her since we left France. The little girl is getting all right too, talking and behaving like a normal person. But of course I'll ask Miss Jamison to be careful that her friendship with the German children does not lead to any intimacy in their homes. She told me that she was a kind of Pied Piper of Hamlin. Do you remember how the Pied Piper led the German children away into some undiscovered country when their parents refused to pay him his just dues? But I think the girl is Peter Pan instead and has some childish quality which we cannot understand but which children recognize and love in her. You see the young soldier to whom she was engaged was killed in the fighting near Château-Thierry and apparently children are her one consolation. She is friendly with all our Red Cross unit, but not intimate with one of us."

When Sonya and her husband finally reached the Red Cross headquarters, already the large building was lighted, as the darkness fell early in the winter afternoons.

Going unannounced into the big reception room they found it fairly crowded. The room must have been fifty feet in length and nearly equally wide and extended from the front of the building to the rear.

In one end was a giant Christmas tree, left over from the Christmas celebration for the soldiers which in honor of New Year's eve was again lighted with a hundred white candles according to a German custom.

There were few other lights in the room.

Up against the walls were double rows of chairs in which a number of persons were seated. Others were dancing in the centre of the floor.

Immediately Mrs. Arthur Adams, who was in charge of the Red Cross headquarters, came forward to speak to Dr. and Mrs. Clark. She was accompanied by Major James Hersey, who had entirely recovered from his attack of influenza and was now in command of his battalion in Coblenz.

A little later, after they had secured chairs, Bianca Zoli and Dr. Raymond joined them.

Nona Davis was dancing with Sergeant Donald Hackett, Thea Thompson with Carlo Navara.

Sonya noticed no one else at the moment whom she knew particularly well.

Yes, there standing up against the wall was Nora Jamison, with the little French girl's hand in hers and a line of children on either side.

Nona Davis changing partners, Sergeant Donald Hackett went over evidently to ask Nora Jamison to dance with him, but she must have declined as he continued standing beside her, laughing and talking.

"Have you been dancing, Bianca?" Sonya inquired. "You usually enjoy it so much."

Leaning over, Bianca whispered.

"Please don't discuss the question aloud, Sonya. No one has asked me recently, only Major Hersey and Dr. Raymond earlier in the afternoon. Dr. Raymond dances abominably."

"Not Carlo?" Sonya demanded.

And Bianca shook her head.

Something of their whispered conversation Hugh Raymond must have guessed.

"We are not to have any more of the ordinary dancing just at present, Mrs. Clark. Miss Thompson and Carlo Navara are to do a folk dance together."

Just as he was speaking, suddenly the music ceased and the dancers crowded into places along the wall.

A few moments later, standing in the centre of the floor and alone, were Thea Thompson and Carlo Navara.

This afternoon Thea did not look plain; she had on a simple black dress of some thin material, a bright sash and black slippers and stockings. Her red hair formed a brilliant spot of color.

Carlo was in uniform.

Their dance was probably an Irish folk dance, although it was comparatively simple yet the effect was charming.

Sonya believed she had never seen two more graceful persons than Thea and Carlo as they advanced toward each other and receded, later forming an arch with their hands above their heads and circling slowly in and out.

Sonya had known nothing of Carlo as more than an ordinary dancer, but evidently he and Thea must have been practicing together for the afternoon's entertainment. Naturally, Carlo's musical gifts would make him a more successful dancer than anyone without a sense of rhythm and time.

In any case the effect was charming and the applause at the close enthusiastic.

As soon as the dance was ended, Carlo came directly over to where Sonya and her husband were seated. Bianca and Dr. Raymond were standing close beside them.

"Carlo, you have not asked Bianca to dance, you won't forget, will you?" Sonya murmured as soon as she had the opportunity without being overheard. "I am afraid you have hurt her, but please don't let her guess I have spoken to you."

Carlo flushed slightly.

"I am sorry my dear lady," he returned, which had been one of his old time titles for Sonya. "I am afraid I have neglected Bianca. Miss Thompson is such a wonderful dancer, she is apt to make one forget any other partner."

But although Sonya smiled upon Carlo and forgave him, declining the honor of dancing herself, Bianca was not to be appeased.

"I suppose Sonya asked you to invite me to dance, since you waited until she arrived before you thought of me. Thank you just the same but I'd rather not," Bianca said later in answer to his invitation.

Afterwards, although Carlo pleaded for her favor and returned several times with a fresh request, nevertheless Bianca continued firm.

Then, a few moments before going back to the hospital with Sonya and Dr. Clark, she waltzed for a short time with Dr. Raymond, in spite of the fact that she had been right in declaring that he was a conspicuously poor dancer.