BELINDA OF THE RED CROSS

BY ROBERT W. HAMILTON

FRONTISPIECE BY
A. O. SCOTT

NEW YORK
SULLY AND KLEINTEICH

Copyright, 1917, by
SULLY AND KLEINTEICH

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

BELINDA

CONTENTS

BELINDA OF THE RED CROSS

CHAPTER I

A YOUNG MAN OUT OF THE AIR

Two white-uniformed orderlies guided the stretcher on its rubber-tired wheels into the corridor—the corridor which was all white tile, marble, enameled steel and glass.

The military-looking surgeon stalking ahead had not adjusted his mask; the jetty, cropped beard he wore on his full chin gave his countenance an especially sinister expression. His black eyes—their glance of a peculiarly penetrating quality—embraced the two immaculately dressed nurses on the settee beside the door of the operating room. Sue Blaine and Belinda Melnotte had just been speaking of the Herr Doktor; perhaps they looked conscious under his swift, keen scrutiny.

Sue Blaine had begun tragically: "Belinda, I hear the elevator creaking again. It's either you or me to assist the Herr Doktor. And I'm so tired of it all!"

"Yet you took upon yourself the novitiate of a trained nurse for two years." Belinda Melnotte's laugh was low, full, delicious. It was no saccharine giggle, but came from a splendid chest in a robust body with a bell-like tone to it that delighted the ear. "Two whole years, Sue! Still, I wish I were just entering, after all."

"What?" gasped the other. "Why! when I am through here I shall incinerate my apron, cap and first-aid kit with appropriate ceremonies in our back-yard. I'll refuse even to do up my little brother's finger if he cuts it. No, I am through—through!"

"Hush! The Herr Doktor!" Belinda Melnotte breathed.

The black-browed surgeon arrived.

"You will please to act with me, Miss Belinda. It is perhaps an important case."

Belinda Melnotte's cheeks burned warmly. It secretly angered her that she should blush when Doctor Herschall looked at her or spoke to her. But she almost always betrayed that mark of confusion. He was the only member of the great hospital's medical staff who called her by her given name.

He was quite a wonderful man, she knew, this tall and broad-shouldered surgeon. Many of the nurses admired him immensely, for he was not unsocial in spite of his stern and aggressive appearance.

He was a keen and analytical surgeon, with ten years of practice in the city to add to his first fame gained in his own country. He was but thirty-five. Others of the medical staff of the hospital, ten years his senior, were of sprightlier manner than Doctor Herschall and seemed to Belinda far younger. Then there were his personal peculiarities—the boring glance of his black eyes, the almost feline touch of his hand—which were obnoxious to the nurse.

Having been called into consultation as a specialist in her father's case, Doctor Herschall had met Belinda in her own home. Therefore he assumed a familiar manner toward her from the very beginning of her hospital training that incensed her, yet it was too indefinite for her to show open resentment.

Had she wished to do so, this was not a time to display her private distaste for the Herr Doktor, as he was called throughout the hospital. The rolling stretcher was at hand. Under the canvas sheet was a still form; but a high, querulous voice—the unmistakable tones of delirium—babbled like a running brook:

"What d'you think of her, Doc? And after all I'd done for the old girl! Talk about ingratitude! Nursing her along all this way—clear from the Hempstead grounds; and then, when I had to land her, doing it as though I were putting her to sleep in a feather-bed—cranky old thing! I hopped out to see what was wrong with the propeller, and what does she do to me? Slapped me! That's what she did. Slapped me—and I never did a thing to her——"

His shaking, querulous voice trailed off into indistinct mutterings. The two nurses looked curiously at the face of the man on the stretcher while the surgeon was opening the door and the wheeled conveyance was rolled into the spotless operating room.

The nurses were not usually curious regarding the cases brought in by the ambulances. There were so many each day that Belinda Melnotte, with all her interest in the work, thought of them only in numbers. There is little variety in city accident cases.

But the babbling of this young man, whose strained, flushed face appeared at one end of the ambulance sheet, caught her attention. It suggested something out of the ordinary; the victim might be an extraordinary person.

"Oh, Belinda!" whispered Sue Blaine, suddenly seizing Belinda's arm. "I know who he is. Sandy Sanderson!"

Belinda repeated the name questioningly. "You know him?" she asked.

"From his pictures in the papers. Don't you remember? The flying man—Sandy Sanderson they call him. He won one of the flying events at the Sheepshead Bay maneuvers only last month. Surely you remember?"

Belinda shook her head negatively; but her eyes remained fixed upon the face of the victim of the accident. "He is feverish," she murmured, following the stretcher into the operating room. This was indeed no ordinary case. She half understood already the meaning of the young man's muttered phrases. He might be seriously injured. An aviator!

"This way," said the surgeon gutturally, speaking to the men who lifted the patient. The latter screamed weakly as he was moved; then he fell silent and into a syncope.

"Much fever here. Hum!" muttered Doctor Herschall, straightening the limbs of the young man on the high table. The attendants departed. The nurse had been arranging the stand of instruments, and now wheeled it to the doctor's hand. The cone, sponge, and can of ether were ready. The surgeon continued to examine deftly the body before him.

"The left shoulder blade. Hum! Much laceration—scraped to the bone. Hum! Fine physique. An athlete, this fellow, though he won't weigh a hundred and twenty pounds. Hum! We must save this torn cuticle if we can. If we must graft—hum!—well, we must."

He had removed the ambulance surgeon's bandages. Those over the left shoulder and the bandage about the victim's head seemed to indicate all the injuries the young man had suffered. Yet Doctor Herschall was thorough in his examination. His attention to detail in even the least important case was characteristic of the man. He possessed the exact German mind, as well as the Prussian bearing and look.

"Fever—fever," he repeated. "Much fever. And not entirely induced by these wounds. He has only just now been brought in from Van Cortlandt Park and, the interne tells me, could not have been long injured when he was found beside his fallen machine."

Doctor Herschall had this habit of talking while at work—even after adjusting his mask. At first, when Belinda chanced to assist him, he had addressed his remarks directly to her. She never replied if she could help it; therefore of late he merely carried on a monologue of comment as though he were addressing a class in the operating auditorium. His final words on this occasion startled the nurse into speaking.

"A flying machine, Doctor? Did he fall?"

"He came down, at least," growled Doctor Herschall. "Ach, these American airmen are mere amateurs! No training. Everything is haphazard in this country. Anybody reckless and bold enough is allowed to ascend in an aeroplane. Not like European methods—especially our own army methods. In Germany a man must be trained for his work ere he is allowed to pilot even a taube."

The deft-handed nurse made no further comment, feeling that she had already been unwise in opening the way for his direct address. Doctor Herschall went skilfully about his work; nor did the nurse fail in the least of her duties. A murmured word—even a gesture—brought the required instrument, or whatever was needed. She watched the doctor closely, rather than looked at the raw wound he was at work upon. She had never got over that first feeling of creeping horror that clutched her when she beheld a gory wound. Yet she possessed such splendid control that few suspected Belinda Melnotte even owned nerves. She approached almost every operation with reluctance and aversion. Abundant physical health and perfect mental poise enabled her to hide her real feelings.

The shoulder was dressed. The cut upon the head just at the roots of the hair, where the scar might easily be hidden, was superficial. The head bandage being removed, the nurse gained a better view of the airman's countenance.

There was a roach of reddish, sandy hair over the broad brow; but the eyebrows and lashes were dark enough to lend to his features a certain dignity. These features were sharp rather than noble of outline; yet he possessed a good mouth and a firm chin. The twenty-four hours' growth of beard gave unmistakable reason for his being dubbed "Sandy" by his friends and admirers.

Belinda thought him a particularly interesting-looking young man. It was seldom that she so quickly felt concern in the personality of a patient.

"This fever, superinduced by the wounds, has a deeper foundation, however," muttered Doctor Herschall. "Watch his temperature, Miss Belinda. Speak to Doctor Potter—although I shall make a note of the case myself."

The attendants were summoned and the Herr Doktor went away to wash his hands and remove the spotted rubber apron. The superintendent of nurses—by courtesy "matron"—bustled in as the still unconscious patient was lifted to the stretcher.

"Let Miss Blaine clean up here and boil the instruments," said the brisk little woman. "I want you to take this patient, Miss Melnotte. Room A-a. He's just been telephoned in about. Why, he's quite a public character!"

"I understand," Belinda said, "that he is a flying-man."

"Yes. Mr. Frank Sanderson. Quite famous, in a way. He fell with his plane over Van Cortlandt Park in the night. There must be something behind it—more than a mere practice flight, it would seem to me. They do not usually go up at night, do they?"

"I really do not know, Mrs. Blythe."

"Well, he is to have the best of everything. And so young a man!" sighed the matron, gazing down upon the face of the aviator. "Give him your best attention, Miss Melnotte. I really feel safe when I put a patient in your care. I wish you were not going to leave us so soon."

"I wish, too, that there might be an opening here," the girl said wistfully.

"Do you, really? It is always the way," sighed the matron. "We graduate so many more nurses than we can possibly use. But you will have small trouble in getting placed, my dear. So many are going into Red Cross work just now."

"I had thought of that," murmured Belinda dreamily.

"Not you!" the matron cried. "You have too much sense, I hope, my dear. Those who go to France for service on the battlefields take their lives in their hands."

"But so we do if we go into some of those East Side tenements to nurse contagious cases," the girl said quietly. "And the Red Cross nurses do such a noble work—don't you think so?"

"Sentimentalism!" snapped Mrs. Blythe. "I hope all my girls have too much sense."

Belinda shook her head, but made no rejoinder, although she could not subscribe to the matron's tenets.

At the moment, too, her mind was given to thoughts of the young man out of the air. She followed to the private room engaged for his comfort, and helped the attendant put him to bed.

CHAPTER II

THE WRECK OF HIS HOUSE OF CARDS

Sanderson awoke with the sun streaming in through the high window and lying like a golden mantle flung across the floor and bed. Otherwise everything in the room seemed glaringly white. It was mid-afternoon, and the westering orb had full command of this side of the hospital wing.

He knew at once where he was. There was no wild start and "Where am I?" cry. He merely looked up at the rather sturdy figure in voluminous apron and cap standing within the range of his vision, and grinned.

"I say," he croaked, "that must have been some bump. How hot I am! Can I have a drink, Nurse?"

She seemed to have foreseen this first request. In a moment the glass and tube were at his lips. She would not allow him to raise his head from the pillow. As he drank slowly the refreshing contents of the glass he examined her face with deeper appreciation than Belinda Melnotte imagined.

"I say," he sighed finally, "that was great! When did they bring me in?"

"This morning."

"I—I can't remember it," he murmured. "But I must have come down before daylight."

"You were brought downtown at nine o'clock," she told him cheerfully. "They found you and your machine in Van Cortlandt Park."

"Is that as far as I got?"

"And quite far enough, I should say," she quickly commented, and with disapproval. "Flying at night! What reckless creatures you airmen are!"

His face was suddenly twisted into a grimace of pain, but he managed to chuckle.

"Oh, some of us expect soon to be regular 'fly-by-nights.'" Then, quickly: "Ah, I remember. By jove, she slapped me!"

The nurse recalled his babblings when he was brought in, and laughed her low, delicious laugh.

"I suppose it was only a lover's quarrel," she suggested.

His eyes twinkled, too. "She's a cranky old thing. I ought to jilt her. And after this—well, she slapped me with that propeller good and plenty. How much will it set me back, Nurse? How long must I lie here? Is that shoulder seriously hurt?"

"Nothing is broken," she assured him cheerfully.

"Except my head," and he felt the bandage tenderly.

"Oh, that's nothing."

"Ow! I bet that hurt me," he grinned. "So complimentary——"

"Now I must take your temperature. You may talk no longer," she said severely.

He watched her with a rather quizzical gaze as she moved about the room while he "smoked the glass pipe." If she apprehended his scrutiny she was so careless of it—or so well balanced of mind—that she displayed not the slightest self-consciousness.

He found himself cataloging in his rather hazy thoughts the several attributes of person and manner that made Belinda Melnotte an attractive and most refreshing personality to him. Her calm was matronly; but her exquisite complexion, her ripe lips, the tendrils of hair that clustered about the edge of her cap, her full and brilliant eyes, were all virginal.

She moved with an air of perfect self-confidence. Her hand was not small, but was very soft, very beautifully formed, and had the firm clasp of a man's. Her bared forearm and wrist, tapering from the elbow, was worthy of being modeled. The shadows that lay in the curves of her neck lent the appearance of ivory to the flesh.

Sanderson was distinctly not given to worship of the feminine; but this very capable-looking and particularly beautiful nurse held his interest from his first conscious moment. It was not mere prettiness or sex-charm; she was, in truth, downright beautiful.

"Magnificent!" the patient told himself, and then wandered off into a feverish state of half-slumber in which the nurse was only one of many characters that flitted across the screen of his imagination.

He was conscious at one time of a grave-looking man standing at the foot of the bed and pulling his Vandyke beard while he talked in jerky sentences to the calm-faced nurse.

"Yes, it is malarial without doubt. I know what those aviation grounds are like. A swamp on one side—all undrained land thereabout. Full of malaria. He likely had a high temperature when he went up in his machine."

Sanderson thought he burst out laughing. He tried to tell the doctor that going up in a cranky aeroplane would give anybody a high temperature.

"With the complication of his wounds he is likely to have a siege of it," the physician said to the nurse. "Are you in charge?"

"Day duty for the present, Doctor Potter."

"Ah—yes. When you are relieved, impress upon the night nurse that she is to call the doctor on duty if there is the least change. I fancy he is quite out of his head."

He was out of his head. He next awoke in the night and a plain-featured nurse endeavored to give him his medicine.

"Say," he demanded, "where's the peach?"

"Still hanging on the tree, boy, as far as you are concerned, I fancy," she replied, and tried again to give him his medicine. He knocked the spoon and glass to the far side of Room A-a.

But Miss Trivett was a very capable nurse, if lacking in personal pulchritude. She patiently prepared the draught again and, seizing his nose suddenly between thumb and finger, forced the dose down his throat.

"What do you know about that?" sputtered Sanderson. "You—you are own sister to that cranky old machine of mine! She slapped me——" and he rambled off into a repetition of the story of his accident.

His temperature was high, and Miss Trivett reported this to the doctor. It was a fight then for the aviator's life; but he did not realize how ill he was until, after a week or more, he came out of the Vale of Delirium in which he had wandered and beheld Belinda Melnotte clearly again.

"Say!"

The weakness of his voice so startled him that he almost lost consciousness before he could express his desire. The nurse was quickly at his side and, stooping, placed a firm hand upon his breast. Later he realized that the gesture betrayed the fact that the strong, beautiful hand had often held him down on his pillow while he was delirious.

"Say! I—I——When do I eat, Nurse?"

She smiled upon him, and Sanderson thought her face fairly glorified thereby.

"You may eat now if you feel like it."

"Bully!" he whispered. "Porterhouse steak and a mug of musty——"

"In liquid and concentrated form," she interposed, and soon the glass of milk and Vichy water was at his lips.

It wearied him even to swallow that. He lay and watched her moving quietly about. When she laid a cool palm upon his brow to mark if the fever had subsided, he could have asked her to keep it there.

He had never experienced such a sense of weakness before—at least, within his adult remembrance. It was a curious thing—this sense of dependence upon a woman. And a woman so much stronger physically than himself.

Previous to this time many girls had seemed to Frank Sanderson soft little things—rather useless "play-toys"—were the truth to be told. He could not remember his mother. He was the youngest of a family of boys brought up in a somewhat haphazard fashion by a father who had loved their mother too well to bring another woman into his life.

The young man's social instincts were not well developed. He had been sent to a boys' school, and then to college. The athletic field had claimed his interest rather than fraternity life and social entertainments. And he had always looked with scorn upon those of his mates who allowed themselves to be lionized by silly women.

For two years now he had been devoted to aviation. With a moderate income at his disposal, and no expensive tastes to gratify, he was able to follow this bent. The elder Sanderson was dead. Frank's brothers were scattered—all in business in various cities. Aside from his fellow aviators, the members of the two or three clubs he belonged to, and a few boyhood friends, he was a man alone.

Now began for him a series of incidents that were both strange and delightful. He had never been so near, or so familiar with, such a girl as this before.

"So different from Stella!" he murmured to himself. "Vastly different from Stella!"

The wound in his shoulder was healing nicely; but as an aid to this improvement he had to be moved with extreme care. Belinda Melnotte's strength, as well as her unstinted attention, was of great assistance—greater than the mere medical skill expended upon the case.

The black-bearded, black-eyed surgeon came occasionally and examined the wound; but it was the nurse who always dressed it. The cut upon Sanderson's forehead was of course soon healed.

"We might graft a bit on this shoulder," the surgeon suggested, "and so leave a less puckered scar. But the wound heals nicely. Hum!"

"'Hum!' it is, Doc," quoted Sanderson with a grin. "That would keep me here longer, wouldn't it?"

"Yes."

"And I've been here too long already. It is now a month. The other boys must have sailed. I guess we'll let it go as it lies, Doc. I shall not dress décolleté, so the scar won't show," and he grinned again.

He noted how this stern and rather sour-visaged surgeon treated the nurse. It was with a measure of familiarity that seemed to betray an association beyond daily intercourse in the wards of the hospital. The nurse seldom spoke to the Herr Doktor; but the latter watched her continually, and Sanderson was troubled in his mind.

Belinda Melnotte was the most companionable of nurses—bright, joyous, kind. When she was alone with him, or if the matron or other nurses or members of the medical staff were in the room, she was the life of the company. But upon the entrance of Doctor Herschall she changed. She seemed to droop, or close within herself. She listened to the Herr Doktor respectfully, and had nothing to say to the patient. The latter grew more and more puzzled.

"How came you to take up nursing, Miss Melnotte?" he asked her one day.

"Because I had nursed my father so long that, when he died, I was lonely with nothing in particular to do. Besides, one must have some occupation. Why did you take up aviation, Mr. Sanderson?"

"For somewhat the same reason," he said, smiling. "One must have some occupation, as you say. But going up in the air—and falling down again—seems to me a more exciting way of passing the time than this," and his gesture included the almost bare and rather cheerless room.

"Ah, but we nurses live the other side of it," and she laughed. "We do not suffer the pain, or live altogether within these sanitary and immaculate walls."

"You serve long enough hours, I fancy," Sanderson said, with appreciation. "And the draft upon your sympathies! Or am I exceptionally favored, Miss Melnotte? Do you treat all your patients so sweetly and generously as you do me?"

A warmer color flooded into her cheeks; but she still smiled.

"That is a part of our trade, Mr. Sanderson. Cheerfulness is more potent than drugs."

"Does Doctor Herschall say that?"

She had turned away so that he could not see her countenance. But he knew she resented the remark, for she changed the topic of conversation instantly.

"Tell me what it feels like to be up in the air, Mr. Sanderson."

"Just like that," he chuckled. "You know you're up in the air, and if you think of how far below the earth is, you won't think of much else, I assure you."

"Oh, it seems very dangerous."

"Not in every way. The driver of a racing auto is in much greater danger. Little chance of collision up yonder, unless two pilots allow their planes to draw so near to each other that the suction of the propellers causes a catastrophe."

"Just as the suction of a passing train may draw one under the wheels?"

"Exactly. But I feared all manner of things when I first went up as a passenger," he pursued. "The pilot was so matter-of-fact that I thought him reckless. I was scarcely seated and my belt hooked when we were off. I heard the wheels bounding along the ground. Then the noise stopped—we were in the air."

"Oh!"

"Yes. I thought I should feel vertigo, as I often did when at an altitude. I dared not look out of the machine until we were perhaps five hundred feet up. Then, to my surprise, I felt not the least sensation of height. The ground seemed merely moving slowly under and away from me. We kept climbing. I could see the country for miles and miles."

"How wonderful!"

As the days passed and Sanderson grew stronger, there was less danger of his exhausting himself by talking. Nurse Melnotte was really having an easy time.

"A soft snap," little Sue Blaine declared enviously. "And such an interesting patient, too! You always do have all the luck, Belinda."

"Do you think so?" came, with her quiet smile.

"He's an awfully nice fellow. Believe me—I'd set my cap for him if I'd had the luck to be detailed on the case. Think! An aviator!"

"It's a very pretty cap—and on a very pretty head, dear," laughed Belinda.

If she felt any interest in Sanderson other than interest in the young man out of the air as a patient, she did not betray it to either her fellow nurses or to the patient himself. But if she was out of the young man's sight in the daytime, he missed her. Nor did he succeed in hiding his admiration from other eyes. One evening when she left him in Miss Trivett's care, the night nurse remarked his gaze fixed upon Belinda as she departed.

Miss Trivett was a good nurse, but she was brusque. The patients never made love to her.

"I often wonder," she scoffed on this occasion, "if all the soft-headed men are brought to this hospital. Or does bringing them here make them soft-headed?"

"Why for the slam?" Sanderson asked chuckling. The night nurse and her caustic speeches amused him.

"Oh, I see you making sheep's-eyes," she declared. "You fall for a pretty face like the rest of them."

"Oh! Miss Melnotte? But she possesses more attractions than a pretty face," corrected the young man coolly.

"True. And do you suppose you are the first man to find it out?"

The thought had not before impressed him.

"I suppose if she is attractive in my sight, she must be in the sight of others," he said slowly.

"I should say! She's probably made desperate love to by an average of a patient a week. That's the meaning of my 'slam,' as you call it. It's just a bit of a warning, my boy," went on Miss Trivett cheerfully. "Beauty is more of a liability than an asset to a nurse—a nurse who is really in earnest, I mean. And Miss Melnotte does not scamp her work. Why, she is the most popular of us all with the surgical staff!"

Sanderson was quick to seize the opportunity to ask a question that had long been trembling on his lips. Yet he put it carelessly.

"That black-browed German seems to be mighty fond of her."

"The Herr Doktor? Now you've said something, boy. Anybody can see that."

"Are they engaged—or anything?"

"Shouldn't wonder," Miss Trivett said briskly. "She's almost through here at the hospital, you know. The Powers That Be frown upon anything sentimental between the doctors and members of the nursing force. So they're very whist about it. She's likely to remove her cap and apron for good in a few days—and become, perhaps, Frau Doktor."

Sanderson fell silent, and Miss Trivett shortly screened the night lamp from his eyes, thinking he had fallen asleep. Behind the young airman's closed lids a jumble of thoughts were beating in his brain. When Doctor Potter came to read the chart at the head of his bed in the morning he scrutinized it for a second time.

"Tut! tut!" he muttered. Then: "What is the meaning of this sudden rise in temperature? Didn't you sleep well last night, Mr. Sanderson?"

CHAPTER III

CROSSED WIRES

There was a tiny apartment not too far from the hospital that Belinda Melnotte called home for these two years of her hospital training. It was presided over by Aunt Roberta.

Aunt Roberta was a short woman of brown complexion, with a buxom figure laced tightly into corsets that kept her very erect even in a "sleepy hollow" chair. She was always neatly gowned, neatly shod, and displayed well-kept hands and a spotless apron. She did the work of the apartment herself.

One afternoon and evening in each fortnight Belinda spent at home. There was a great contrast in character between aunt and niece. Aunt Roberta was all French; her niece displayed some Teutonic traits of character.

Grandfather Melnotte and Grandfather Genau had both come to America as young men. Belinda, as a second generation American girl, held few prejudices of either nation. But Aunt Roberta had no good word now for the Genaus.

"Alboche," she frequently said. "A brutal, stupid people. Your Grandfather Genau was a gross man—he ate and drank e-nor-mously. He died of an apoplexy."

"Poor man!" sighed her niece.

"And your Grandmother Genau was huge—she suffered of an avoirdupois. She would have won a prize for flesh in a street fair—cer-tain-lee!"

"I fear I may be too stout," Belinda would say mildly.

Aunt Roberta had spent all her girlhood in a French convent at Montreal. Then, for many years, she had lived in Paris. Until of late she had spoken English so seldom that she used the language in a way all her own—not brokenly or with much accent, but with most amusing transpositions. She would have gladly spoken French altogether, only when she undertook to do so Belinda would not reply.

"I am American—American, I tell you, Auntie!" the girl would cry. "We speak English here in New York. That I am both German and French by blood is enough. I will speak neither of those languages now—unless I am obliged to."

She had refused to listen to her aunt's diatribes against the Germans since the war had begun; but in truth she felt the two nationalities of her forebears warring within her heart. She pitied both peoples with all her sympathetic nature. She thought much on the unfortunates struggling in the battle lines. Her hospital work broadened her sympathy for all suffering. It is not always so. Some it makes callous.

As the end of Belinda Melnotte's two years of hospital probation drew near, she felt stronger cords drawing her toward those centers of activity, the field hospitals of France and Belgium. But she had not mentioned this feeling to any one.

Those related to her by ties of blood were fighting on both sides in the great struggle. There were two young cousins in the German ranks in Northern France whom she had known and played with when they were all three children—Paul Genau and Carl Baum. Her mother had taken her to Germany several times.

In America Belinda had few relatives now save Aunt Roberta. After her father's death she would have been quite alone had it not been for the brisk, taut little tante. Mr. Melnotte had left no great fortune to his only child; merely a comfortable income from well-placed investments, enough for her simple needs and to spare for Aunt Roberta.

Although Aunt Roberta's tendencies were strongly aristocratic, she admired Belinda's independent and practical nature. She was proud of her niece for taking up a profession. Not that she expected Belinda would remain in the work after obtaining her diploma.

"If we were in our own suffering coun-tree," she sighed frequently, "your training and experience might be of value—yes! The poor soldiers of France! Ah, they need the nurses! This great and rich United States, that owes so much to la belle France, doles out a little money and a few blankets to our poilus—like giving coals and bread to beggarwomen while France fights the battles of the world!"

Between such opinions as these of Tante Roberta and those expressed by Mrs. Blythe, the hospital matron, Belinda was puzzled. Practical as she was, her temperament was not ordinarily assertive. She was not given to forming logical opinions for herself, save on moral topics.

Aunt Roberta she knew would be delighted to return to France.

"This coun-tree, pah!" the taut little Frenchwoman would say, her gestures vigorous, "is too commercial. There is little art here, nor do the women even know how to dress. Their bonnets—pooh! They are built by the tens of thousands to sell for ten dollars each. Oh, oui, and their gowns! They are sold by the gross, all of one pattern. These Americans have no air about them—no chic."

"I am an American," stoutly maintained Belinda in answer to this.

But she sometimes wondered if, after all, she was truly American. The two hereditary natures within her seemed tugging in opposite ways. She really had but small affiliation (so she thought) with America and its citizenship.

The great milestones of history venerated by Americans of ancient lineage meant little to her. She had journeyed with college friends to Plymouth Rock and felt no thrill. The tall shaft of the Bunker Hill Monument was to her merely an observatory point. The spot where the first American blood was shed in the Revolution inspired her with no pride of race.

All that had followed in the later decades of United States history after all seemed of small moment to Belinda Melnotte. The years of struggle to maintain the Union and to free from slavery the whites as well as the blacks of the South were merely incidents she had read about in school. Her two grandfathers had come to the country while the Civil War was in progress; but the struggle had meant nothing to them save as it offered greater opportunity to make money. And it meant little now to Belinda.

This country—these United States of ours—is indeed a melting pot for the nations of the earth; but the fire under the pot sputters like a handful of green thorns and the brew of citizenship infuses slowly. Love of country seldom develops solely from gratitude; it is when one is called upon to give that one learns to love. And Belinda Melnotte had never given much of even her thought to this, her native land.

She felt a strange and growing unrest as the time of her graduation from the hospital drew near. She secretly feared, however, that this uncertainty and indecision had something to do with her interest in the private patient she was nursing.

The Aero Club had ordered everything done for Sanderson that could be done to make comfortable a person in his situation. When he was well enough to have visitors there were several men who came to see the aviator who were either fellow-airmen or were interested in flying.

Belinda suspected that Sanderson was one of a number of courageous young men who were schooling themselves for aviation work of a particular character and for a particular purpose. Just what this special work was she did not know, for Sanderson and his friends were secretive.

She found these visitors to Room A-a very interesting, however; and they made much of Sandy's pretty nurse. Gay as she was with them, Belinda kept a sharp oversight of her patient; and if she saw him growing tired she hurried the visitors out without much ado.

One of the young aviator's brothers, who lived near enough to visit the patient on more than one occasion, intimated he suspected Frank of feeling more than a passing interest in the nurse. She, however, was not supposed to overhear the observation.

"Who wouldn't?" Frank Sanderson stoutly responded.

"Look out!" his brother warned him. "If Stella hears of it——"

"Stella! What Stella doesn't know will never trouble her," the man in bed said quickly, and in no very pleasant tone. "By the way, how is she—and the kiddies?"

"All right. Hasn't she been to see you?"

"I should hope not!" The nurse at the window, busy with the work in her lap, covertly glanced at her patient. His face was flushed and beclouded. "I won't have her come here—now remember that, Jim! But you might assure her that I am all right."

"Humph! Play buffer for you, is it?"

"Well, give a look in at the kiddies, anyway. They are not to blame."

"Right-o!" agreed Jim, and soon departed.

From that hour Sanderson found his nurse not quite the same as she had been. He soon recovered his usual cheery manner. Not so Belinda. She had raised a certain barrier between them, and that barrier he was unable to surmount.

Still sick, he peevishly laid it to the influence of the black-browed surgeon. Or was it that, now he was better, the nurse was merely following her usual method of "freezing" a too ardent patient?

He ventured a query to Miss Trivett one night; for although one could not really like the night nurse, she was trustworthy.

"I don't know what I've done to offend Miss Melnotte," Sanderson said honestly. "But she keeps me at a distance——"

"Oh, my! Little-boy-crying-for-the-moon!" the nurse said, half in scorn and half in sympathy. "Are you going to prove yourself no wiser than the rest of them? And you an aviator! Bah!"

"Well, I'm hanged if that ugly Dutchman's half good enough for her, even if he did fix me up!" Sanderson growled.

"Of course he isn't. What man is ever good enough for a woman?" was the tart rejoinder.

"The Lord help the fellow who gets you, Miss Trivett!" Sanderson said with feeling.

"No. You are wrong. I know my own weakness," sighed the wise, if plain, nurse. "If I should marry, I would love him so much that he might walk upon me if he wished."

It was not by any determined and set method that Belinda Melnotte kept Sanderson at a distance. She merely followed the calm path of her duty as usual, betraying nothing to her fellow-nurses of what fretted her spirit.

A few days more and The Head would put into her hand the certificate for which she had served two hard years. A dozen besides Sue Blaine and herself were to be graduated.

As there was some operating-room work to be done, Belinda was excused from attendance on the convalescent in Room A-a. Sanderson discovered this when another nurse came to his call in the morning. She was a probationer and had a year yet to serve.

"Say, where's Miss Melnotte?" he demanded.

"She's busy." The nurse told him why.

"Isn't she coming back to me?"

"I don't suppose so. She's not going to work in this hospital any more."

The aviator spent a gloomy forenoon. Then he wrote some letters, called for Mrs. Blythe, and arranged with her for his departure from the hospital the next day.

When Belinda stopped at Room A-a the second evening to learn how he was getting on, the room was empty save for the attendant who was cleaning up. Sanderson had been gone an hour.

CHAPTER IV

A DECISION

There was a florist's box in Belinda's little sleeping room on the last day of her occupancy of it. She was almost afraid to open it at first, for she feared the card within might bear Doctor Herschall's name.

However, when she had opened it, the roses it contained, which had cost a dollar a stem, she distributed with lavish hand among the graduating class. That popular piece of fiction, just then being discussed by the book reviews, "The Flying Faun," with Frank Sanderson's autograph on the flyleaf, she hid away, showing it to nobody.

She was unable to put an accusing finger upon a single thing he had done or said that was discourteous. He was by no means one of those hybrid creatures—neither flesh, fowl, nor good red herring—known as "a lady's man." He owned to merely a natural gentleness in his conduct toward women; and by nature he possessed much of the cheerful awkwardness of a Newfoundland pup.

Belinda's instincts of motherliness—largely developed in all girls of her placid and sweet temperament—had really drawn her toward her patient at first because of these boyish traits. He seemed to her quite unspoiled; there was nothing artificial about him. If his glances boldly betrayed his admiration for his nurse, his lips uttered only the most considerate expressions of approval. He had never taken advantage of his situation as so many of her patients did. Miss Trivett was right. Beauty in a nurse is not always an asset.

Yet Belinda felt in her heart that Frank Sanderson had not been honest with her. Had she not overheard his brother's remark she would never have suspected the aviator of being a married man.

The "Stella" mentioned by the brothers, though the aviator's wife and evidently the mother of the "kiddies," was plainly not beloved. Either the couple were legally separated, or their married life was a farce. Only on that single occasion had Sanderson mentioned the woman—and never to his nurse.

The discovery had halted instantly any advance Belinda might have contemplated toward a closer friendship with the aviator. There had already been intimate moments between them when youth had called strongly to romance—when each had lifted for a little the veil which hid those secret lives we all live.

Belinda had thought she saw what lay behind Frank Sanderson's reckless bearing and volatile spirits—and approved. There were deeper currents in the aviator's soul than the shallows he showed to the world in general. She felt that he had a far more serious reason for taking up the perilous work of aviation than he was willing ordinarily to admit.

On the other hand, she had hinted at some portion of her doubts and uncertainties for the future in her disclosures to Sanderson. He did not understand entirely what she meant; had he done so he would never have hastened away from the hospital, accepting the night nurse's observations for facts, and leaving only the flowers and the book as a reminder of his friendly intercourse with Belinda.

When the girl bade the matron and her particular friends among the nursing staff good-by that last evening and left the hospital by the side exit with her bag, it was her fate to meet Doctor Herschall likewise going out. Or had he waited for her?

"We lose you, do we, Miss Belinda?" he said, taking her bag with his usual assurance. "We shall miss you—none more than I, Fräulein, I do assure you."

"You are very kind, Doctor," murmured the girl, wishing that she might rid herself of him.

But she had no inspiration for his dismissal. His way could not possibly lie in the direction of her home, yet he took that turning as a matter of course.

She could not afterwards have repeated their desultory conversation, even in part. She was confused and nervous—as she always was in the surgeon's company.

"I shall do myself the honor of calling upon you and your good aunt, Fräulein," declared he, "and at an early date."

"I—I think I may go away for a change and rest," she stammered.

"All the more reason for my making my call soon, then," said Doctor Herschall coolly. "I have something of importance to say to you."

"Oh, I feel you would better not come, Doctor Herschall!" she cried desperately. "Really, I do not feel fit for—for company. I am quite done up."

"I hope I shall not miss you when I call, Miss Belinda," he repeated, his keen eyes searching her averted face. She was looking at his empty right hand, its long, pliant fingers working spasmodically, as they did when he was in earnest. She realized that they were wonderfully able, dexterous fingers; yet when she saw them work in that nervous manner she always thought of them as clutching in a horrid way for an enemy's throat.

"If I should miss you," purred the Herr Doktor, "I shall come again and yet again. My time is not altogether my own, as you know; but no sacrifice would I count too great, Miss Belinda, for the pleasure of your society."

He left her at the door and strode away. Belinda's cheeks burned furiously and she bit her lip to keep back the sobs. She was both enraged and afraid.

He took so much for granted! There was no use in trying to show the Herr Doktor his place.

"I hate him!" she gasped.

His assurance and masterfulness almost cowed the girl's spirit. Belinda Melnotte was not one who ordinarily shrank before any human being; the influence of the black-browed surgeon upon her mind was almost uncanny.

"I hate him!" she repeated. "I wish I might never see him again!"

However, she felt it would be impossible to refuse Doctor Herschall admittance when he called. She could easily imagine what the visit would be like. Aunt Roberta would refuse to sit in the room with him. To the little Frenchwoman the big Prussian doctor was pariah. Nor could Belinda play neutral between them.

Therefore she gladly seized the opportunity offered the next evening to escape from the house. Somebody called her up and asked her to attend a neighborhood Red Cross chapter meeting.

"Just to countenance the affair, you know, my dear. We are endeavoring to get dollar members and interest people in our work in France."

Tante was willing to attend, albeit in a critical spirit. She did not believe that anything of real worth was being done by Americans for "the dear poilus of la belle France."

Belinda went, however, with an open mind. Already she had contemplated Red Cross work, although she really knew very little about it. To-night an earnest man, just from the battlefields of war-wrecked Northern France, addressed the rather apathetic audience. In the summer of 1916 it was difficult to find an audience in America that was otherwise regarding any phase of the great war. The speaker was a grim-looking little man, ugly and in earnest; yet there was a saving twinkle in his eye.

"I am here for the specific purpose of getting as many dollar bills out of your purses as I can to-night," he said in the course of his remarks. "A dollar bill is a little thing after all. You pay it over and it does its work. But the thrill of giving it does not last long.

"Do you want—" he cried, rising on his toes and suddenly smiting the table before him with a clenched fist—"do you want to get a lasting thrill—one that may last a year—two years—perhaps to the very hour of your death? Then, enlist with us. We need men and women alike—men and women of pluck and who possess sanctified common sense.

"You are needed—needed right in the battlefield hospitals I have tried to tell you about to-night. We want men and women of some experience and proven ability—not failures; for those who are failures in one walk in life are almost always failures in any other position. Our recruits must be modest, even-tempered, inventive and enterprising, ready to go anywhere and do anything upon the shortest possible notice.

"We need the best of you, and the best there is in you. Nor can we pay you, or offer you anything but a modicum of fame. You will hear of the Red Cross doing much; but the names of the actual doers of these things are seldom exploited.

"It is, indeed, an enlistment in an army of peace, working to alleviate the horrors of armies at war. There are no medals, no honorable mention, no promotions on the field of valor by brevet or otherwise. And we demand perfect obedience to stern rules, and that each enlisted man and woman shall give every ounce of strength of mind and body he or she possesses.

"Now, this is the opportunity I offer you, besides the chance to give dollars to the Red Cross. We want men and women who will work without salary and without hope of seeing their names or pictures in the papers. Come on and sign up for the work. But don't crowd."

He sat down suddenly amid the half nervous titter of a part of his audience. They did not crowd. The workers circulating through the hall gathered some harvest of money and several promises of future contributions. When the meeting was adjourned Belinda left Aunt Roberta to have a word with the lean little hospital-worn man.

"I wish to serve," she said.

"Yes—Miss——?" He scrutinized her with growing approval.

"Melnotte. I am my own mistress. I hold a nurse's diploma." She told him the name of the hospital. "I can afford to pay my own expenses."

"And you wish to serve—where?"

"In France. I speak the language."

"When can you be ready, Mademoiselle?"

"To-morrow."

"Good! The Belle o' Perth sails the day after. There are others of our forces going by her. It can be arranged. You know that the crossing will be dangerous?"

"More dangerous than the work on the battlefields?" she asked him quietly.

"Gad! No, Mademoiselle."

"Tell me what to do—how to go about it," she said simply.

Afterwards, when the girl had gone back to Aunt Roberta, the man most heartily congratulated himself.

"If I haven't done anything else on this trip, I've netted a good one there!" he thought.

But how much he influenced Belinda's decision, how much her dislike and fear of Doctor Herschall urged her into the work, or how much her disappointment in Frank Sanderson had to do with it, it would be difficult to say. Most important decisions arise from mixed motives. She did not discuss this phase of it at all. She merely said to Aunt Roberta:

"We are going."

"Ma foi! Where?"

"To France—to Paris first."

"Oui! Oui! My child, those are the sweetest words you have ever said to me!"

Aunt Roberta asked no further questions.

CHAPTER V

THE RUNAWAY SHIPMASTER

Frank Sanderson rode to the North River pier in a taxicab and Jim, his next older brother, who had always been a good chum of the aviator's, rode with him.

"Good of you to leave everything to see the last of me, Jim," the sandy one observed.

"By Jove, boy! I've a feeling that maybe it is the last I shall see of you. I wish you were not so headstrong, Sandy."

The latter grinned at him.

"Seems to me I've heard something like that before. But it isn't that I'm so headstrong, old chap. You'd do the same if you were in my place. I'm foot-loose——"

"How about Stella and the kids?" put in Jim wickedly.

"They are amply provided for, as you know. I shall miss the kiddies, of course—cunning little busters! But Stella——"

"Is going to take on some when she knows you have gone."

"As long as the steamship is off Sandy Hook when she learns the Great Secret, what care I?" returned the aviator, shrugging his shoulders. "And do, for goodness sake, talk of something else. There may be a swift and messy end before me, but at least I sha'n't be talked to death by a Flora McFlimsey over there in France."

"No," Jim admitted. "There is something in that, I allow. However, I'll not weep over you yet, my boy. You've pulled through many a tight place and escaped many a threatened danger."

The other nodded. "I don't expect anything more serious to happen to me serving in the Lafayette Escadrille than might occur if I remained here and continued to make exhibition flights. Over there I'll be with the finest bunch of fellows in the world, and be doing something."

"Ye-es," hesitated his brother. "But what are you going to do it for Sandy?"

"Mixed reasons," returned the aviator frankly. "It's exciting, of course. Then, there is one's desire, when one can, to pitch in and help people who are putting up such a tremendously plucky fight as the French are. There's another, too."

"Yes?"

"It's coming to us. Before this thing is settled—war, I mean—and settled for good and all, Uncle Sam is bound to get into it."

"I'm afraid you are right, Sandy," sighed the more conservative Jim. "But I hate to see it come."

"Of course. All you conservative business men do. But you'd better be prepared," the younger man said, wagging his head. "And that's my main object in going to the war zone, after all."