Margaret Vandercook - The Red Cross Girls with Pershing to Victory

The old peasant shrugged her shoulders, as she continued banging on the door and talking at the same time.

"There have been so many things to endure. One more forsaken, half starved child! What would you do? Her family was not well known in our village; they had moved here from Paris a short time before the war and were said to have been wealthy people who had fallen into misfortune. So after a time, it may not seem kind, but life has been too hard some of the days even for kindness, so finally we left the little girl alone. Neighbors have given her food when there was food to give. Even a few of the enemy soldiers have sometimes tried to make friends and persuade her to eat, but always she would rush away from them with the great fear."

Not altogether sure of what the old French peasant was trying to make plain to her, yet convinced enough of the tragedy of the story, Sonya laid her hand on the old woman's arm.

"Don't you think we had best not frighten the little girl then by trying to enter her house. Some one else in the village I feel sure will offer us hospitality. And yet something should be done for the little girl, now the war is past she must be made to understand she need not be afraid," Sonya expostulated.

However, the French woman continued knocking.

She also had been calling out in French, reassuring the little girl inside, pleading with her. "La petite Louisa."

And now Sonya heard footsteps drawing near the closed door. The next moment the door partly opened, disclosing the most pathetic child's figure she had ever seen.

The little girl was perhaps twelve years old and did not look like the usual French child, for though her hair was coal black, her eyes were a violet blue, fringed by the blackest lashes, her skin almost an unearthly pallor. In spite of her look of hunger she was clean and not only scrupulously, but exquisitely dressed in a little silk and serge frock made with care and taste.

The child's eyes were what held Sonya, however, they were at once so terrified and so sad.

Looking past the two women at the crowd outside, she would have fallen except that Sonya's arm went swiftly around her while she tried to explain that they were friends.

Afterwards Sonya and the Red Cross nurses discovered that the little house was furnished very differently from the ordinary French farmhouse, with possessions which must have come from some handsomer home.

In the dining room they ate their luncheon on a French oak table with beautiful carved feet and found that the sideboard and chairs were also of handsome French oak.

The little room soon became crowded, not only with the Red Cross girls and physicians, but with a number of the French people who came in to assist in the celebration. Beyond gifts of chocolate and bread, they refused to accept other food, explaining that the portion of the American army which had passed through their village earlier in the day had given them supplies.

Yet the little French girl in whose home the celebration was taking place would neither eat nor speak to her French acquaintances or to the strange Americans.

Sonya and Miss Blackstone confided to each other their impression that the little girl was probably unable to speak, fright and exhaustion having oftentimes this effect upon highly nervous temperaments.

However, in the midst of the luncheon, suddenly the little French girl slipped over beside the new Red Cross nurse, Nora Jamison, and took tight hold of her hand. She even allowed her to tempt her into eating small morsels of food.

By accident the new nurse was sitting next Sonya Clark and Sonya turned to her, mystified by the little French girl's impetuous action.

"I wonder how you managed that, Miss Jamison?" she inquired. "I have been trying to make friends with our little French hostess ever since my meeting with her and she would have nothing to do with me. You seem not to have noticed her and she has given her confidence to you."

Still holding the little French girl's hand Nora Jamison nodded.

"You will find I am a kind of Pied Piper, Mrs. Clark. I had always nursed children before I began war work and am especially fond of them."

Sonya shook her head.

"It is Peter Pan I thought of when I first saw you. I wonder if you are one of the lucky persons who never grow up? I've an idea you will be a great help to us when we finally reach Germany. We don't want the German children to think of us as ogres and one wonders what stories their parents may now be telling them of our American soldiers."

Then so many things distracted Sonya Clark's attention that she thought no more of the little deserted French girl until she and Bianca looked for her to say goodby and found that the child had disappeared.

IN the afternoon, traveling in the direction of Belgium, there was an unexpected movement under the broad seat of the Red Cross car which startled its occupants.

The first exclamation came from Bianca Zoli who happened to be sitting just over a space where a large box of provisions originally had been stored. The box had been removed, however, and the food eaten at luncheon.

"I am absurd!" Bianca exclaimed, clutching at Nora Jamison's hand, as she was sitting beside her. "But I thought I felt something stir. I wonder if the excitement of our journey is having a strange influence upon me?"

"I don't think so," the older girl returned, "I have been conscious of life, a movement of some kind underneath us ever since we left the little French farmhouse. I say I have been conscious, no, I have not been exactly that, only puzzled and uncomfortable."

Leaning over, Nora at this instant lifted the curtain, and Bianca bending forward at the same time, they both became aware of the figure of the little French girl who had vanished a few moments before their departure from her home.

"Sonya!" Bianca called.

This was scarcely necessary, since by this time every occupant of the car knew equally well what had happened and curiously enough, without discussion, understood the explanation for the child's action.

The little girl had believed that this group of women and girls, wearing the Red Cross of service, were her friends and if possible would protect her from what she feared most in all the world, the grey uniformed German soldiers. Also they were leaving the neighborhood where she had lived under a burden of terror.

Her one desire was to escape from the captured town where the Germans had been in authority so many weary months. As Nora Jamison and Bianca both struggled to assist the child, they found she could scarcely help herself, so stiff had she become from her uncomfortable position.

Yet she managed with their aid to climb up and sit crowded close between Bianca and Nora Jamison.

"What are you going to do with this child, Sonya?" Bianca demanded, more sympathetic than she cared to reveal, remembering her own childhood, which had been more lonely and difficult than any one had ever realized. Not even Sonya, who had come to her rescue in those past days in Italy, more from a combination of circumstance than from any great affection for her, had ever understood.

In response Sonya bit her lips and frowned. There was something about the little French girl which had attracted her strongly at the first sight of her, an attraction she could not have explained, unless it were compassion, and yet she had seen many pathetic, forsaken children during her war work in France.

"I am sure I don't know, Bianca," she replied finally. "I suppose we can leave the child with some French family along our route. However, most of them have responsibilities enough of their own, without our adding a child whose last name we do not even know and who appears unable to tell us anything about herself."