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The New Magdalen

Page 3

The 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

wounded men in here?"

"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

the candle to betray my headquarters to the German scouts. How is the

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

nobility in the carriage of this woman's head, an innate grandeur in the

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.

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