The New Magdalen
Page 3The captain shrugged his shoulders. The surgeon persisted.
"Surely you ought to know?" he said.
"I know that we are in possession of the village for the present,"
retorted Captain Arnault, "and I know no more. Here are the papers of
the enemy." He held them up and shook them impatiently as he spoke.
"They give me no information that I can rely on. For all I can tell to
the contrary, the main body of the Germans, outnumbering us ten to one,
may be nearer this cottage than the main body of the French. Draw your
own conclusions. I have nothing more to say."
Having answered in those discouraging terms, Captain Arnault got on his
feet, drew the hood of his great-coat over his head, and lit a cigar at
the candle.
"Where are you going?" asked the surgeon.
"To visit the outposts."
"Do you want this room for a little while?"
"Not for some hours to come. Are you thinking of moving any of your
"I was thinking of the English lady," answered the surgeon. "The kitchen
is not quite the place for her. She would be more comfortable here; and
the English nurse might keep her company."
Captain Arnault smiled, not very pleasantly. "They are two fine women,"
he said, "and Surgeon Surville is a ladies' man. Let them come in, if
they are rash enough to trust themselves here with you." He checked
himself on the point of going out, and looked back distrustfully at the
lighted candle. "Caution the women," he said, "to limit the exercise of
their curiosity to the inside of this room."
"What do you mean?"
The captain's forefinger pointed significantly to the closed
window-shutter.
"Did you ever know a woman who could resist looking out of window?" he
asked. "Dark as it is, sooner or later these ladies of yours will feel
tempted to open that shutter. Tell them I don't want the light of
weather? Still raining?"
"Pouring."
"So much the better. The Germans won't see us." With that consolatory
remark he unlocked the door leading into the yard, and walked out.
The surgeon lifted the canvas screen and called into the kitchen: "Miss Merrick, have you time to take a little rest?"
"Plenty of time," answered a soft voice with an underlying melancholy in
it, plainly distinguishable though it had only spoken three words.
"Come in, then," continued the surgeon, "and bring the English lady with
you. Here is a quiet room all to yourselves."
He held back the canvas, and the two women appeared.
The nurse led the way--tall, lithe, graceful--attired in her uniform
dress of neat black stuff, with plain linen collar and cuffs, and with
the scarlet cross of the Geneva Convention embroidered on her left
shoulder. Pale and sad, her expression and manner both eloquently
suggestive of suppressed suffering and sorrow, there was an innate
gaze of her large gray eyes and in the lines of her finely proportioned
face, which made her irresistibly striking and beautiful, seen under any
circumstances and clad in any dress. Her companion, darker in complexion
and smaller in stature, possessed attractions which were quite marked
enough to account for the surgeon's polite anxiety to shelter her in the
captain's room. The common consent of mankind would have declared her to
be an unusually pretty woman. She wore the large gray cloak that covered
her from head to foot with a grace that lent its own attractions to a
plain and even a shabby article of dress. The languor in her movements,
and the uncertainty of tone in her voice as she thanked the surgeon
suggested that she was suffering from fatigue. Her dark eyes searched
the dimly-lighted room timidly, and she held fast by the nurse's arm
with the air of a woman whose nerves had been severely shaken by some
recent alarm.