The Camp Fire Girls in Glorious France

CHAPTER I

A March Day

One afternoon in March, the windows of an old French farmhouse stood open, the curtains blowing in the breeze like white flags of truce, while from indoors came the murmur of a number of voices, girls’ voices, gay and animated and speaking in English, not French.

The next moment there was a brief silence; afterwards one of them began singing, with an odd foreign accent, a song strange to hear in this French countryside, the song of an American camp fire:

A murmur of applause, and then a group of girls in Camp Fire costumes stepped out of the house and into the front yard. The March afternoon was unusually warm with a flood of pale sunshine covering the landscape, the sky was a delicate blue, the clouds changing into fantastic shapes. Beyond, the open country was showing little patches of green in the upturned fields; on the branches of a few newly planted fruit trees were tiny buds.

“I want to congratulate you, Bettina, on your original Camp Fire song,” one of the girls declared. She had dark hair with red lights in it, a slightly tanned skin, a little slender figure, as forceful and erect as a young boy’s. Indeed both in her appearance and manner Mary Gilchrist gave one the impression at this time in her life that she possessed certain qualities of mind and character which are not supposed to be essentially feminine.

Bettina Graham, who was a tall, fair girl, older than her companion, smiled.

“It is good of you, Gill, to congratulate me, when I realize that you were longing to be outdoors and at work during all our Camp Fire ceremony. If there was any value in my song it was due to Yvonne’s singing.”

Standing close beside the two American girls was a young French girl who apparently had not heard their conversation. Her expression was troubled, there was a frown between her brows. It was as if she were listening, straining her ears for the sounds of battle which had been resounding through France for almost four years.

It was now the memorable spring of the year before the last desperate German drive and the final victory of the Allies.

Slipping her arm through Yvonne Fleury’s, Bettina Graham made an effort to distract her attention.

“Try not to be unhappy, Yvonne. Even if the Germans are winning an unexpected success in Flanders, surely you cannot think they will ever reach the valleys of the Marne and Aisne a second time! I don’t believe our work of reconstruction will go for nothing. Of course it is hard for you to be compelled to give up your brother after so brief a time together when for so long you had supposed him killed. Yet he has scarcely had opportunity to have rejoined his regiment at the front, since he was first to report at Soissons. We must do our best to continue our efforts here at our farmhouse on the Aisne until his return. Surely the war cannot last much longer!”

At this instant Bettina’s conversation was interrupted.

“Behold a sight to banish all gloom!” exclaimed Mary Gilchrist, pointing over toward a field which adjoined the farmhouse yard.

There in truth was an amazing spectacle to be seen in a quiet French countryside!

Mounted upon an American tractor, which was ploughing vigorously through the earth, was an elderly American woman. She was wearing the usual blue blouse of the French peasant made slightly longer and showing underneath an unmistakable pair of full trousers of the same material. Upon her head was a large straw hat, tied under her chin with a bright red ribbon.

Forgetting their anxieties the three girls laughed in chorus.

“Count upon Miss Patricia Lord’s doing and saying exactly what she pleases at any time or place,” Mary Gilchrist continued. “As it happens I promised Miss Patricia to run our tractor over that particular field some time this afternoon, as soon as our Camp Fire ceremony closed. But you see she has preferred not to wait for me. In regard to her present costume, I heard Mrs. Burton say to Miss Patricia the other day that such a costume was not to be endured, France having already suffered enough without being compelled to behold Miss Patricia looking as she does at present. She even suggested that the influence of our Camp Fire organization in this neighborhood might be affected if Miss Patricia persisted in wearing so ridiculous an outfit. Yet observe Miss Patricia! Recently she has been acting as if she intended to plow and sow every acre in the devastated regions of France within the next few weeks, as if actually she were racing with fate. I don’t believe the German army itself will be able to stop her, certainly not for long. But I must go to fulfill my promise.”

Concluding her speech, Mary Gilchrist left her two companions, and at the same time the two girls turned to greet a newcomer.

She was a woman between thirty and forty years of age, slender, with brilliant blue eyes and dark hair; seated in a wheeled chair she was evidently recovering from a serious illness. About her there was a look of extreme delicacy, nevertheless her expression was gay, almost challenging.

“Do please let me get out of this absurd chair at once,” she demanded of the two girls who had charge of her. “After a little more of this I shall feel like a mummy! I am just as well as I ever was before that small piece of German shell chose me for its victim and turned Aunt Patricia into a true prophet of evil. How persistently she did object to my journey into southern France! But what an exquisite afternoon! I think one never appreciates the true value of sunshine until one has been shut away from it. And how peaceful the French country about us seems! Surely the Germans will never again overrun this portion of France!”

To understand the present scene, one must know that a number of months before, Mrs. Richard Burton, the famous American actress, had arrived in one of the devastated districts of France near the river Aisne, bringing with her a group of American Camp Fire girls to help with the restoration work and also to originate the first Camp Fire organization among young French girls. Accompanying them was Miss Patricia Lord, an American spinster of great wealth.1

At the end of her speech, the Camp Fire guardian, arising from her chair, stood up a little shakily, resting her arm upon that of her niece, Peggy Webster.

The young girl was like and at the same time unlike her, as she was the daughter of Mrs. Burton’s twin sister.

At the present time Peggy was about eighteen years old, with vivid dark coloring, a short, straight nose and a firmly modeled chin.

There was a suggestion of splendid physical vitality in contrast with the older woman’s frailty. Yet the woman and girl had the same look of a determined will hidden beneath natural sweetness and gaiety.

“Perhaps it may be as well for you not to recover too promptly, Tante. We may all be driven from this area of France as soon as you are strong enough to travel. I believe there is no reason for immediate anxiety, yet recently the news from the front is not encouraging. I believe the French authorities are beginning to feel it may be as well to send the women and children back from the Marne and Aisne a second time to some place of greater security. But I agree with you, the idea seems impossible. To think of the Germans again overrunning the dear little French villages which have so recently been restored is a nightmare. Personally I won’t even consider it. Suppose the Germans are enjoying another temporary success, they will be thrust back eventually.”

As if anxious fully to absorb the beauty and tranquility of the scene about them, until they were really convinced that there was no further danger threatening the Allied lines in France, the Camp Fire guardian and the group of girls surrounding her remained silent a moment, after Peggy’s speech.

Nevertheless, each one of them concealed a nervousness, impossible under the circumstances to confess.

Rumors, none of them especially reliable, but gaining strength through their number, had recently been reaching the Camp Fire farmhouse on the Aisne that the German attack against the British line further north was meeting with unexpected triumph. This did not mean that the victory would continue, or that the enemy would ever reach the neighborhood of the Aisne.

Yet each one of the present group of Camp Fire girls had lately faced this possibility.

Peggy’s words may have been intended to reassure them as well as herself.

Perhaps with an effort to interrupt an unhappy train of thought, suddenly, with a smothered exclamation compounded of amusement and horror, Mrs. Burton pointed toward Miss Patricia Lord.

At the instant Miss Patricia was descending from her tractor and was soon standing in the center of her freshly plowed field. In this situation her costume appeared more remarkable than ever. Yet one had to accept the fact that it represented a new order of American service in France.

“What impression do you think our French neighbors receive of Aunt Patricia?” Mrs. Burton demanded. “I know most of them are puzzled by her and a few of them are genuinely afraid of her and yet she has accomplished more for their happiness in the last few months than half a dozen other persons. Yet she will wear the clothes she likes and she will not attempt to speak French that any human being can understand.”

A little in the French fashion, since one is apt to be influenced by the mannerisms about one, Mrs. Burton now shrugged her shoulders.

“At least, girls, you know no one can move Aunt Patricia!”

Talking without any special significance, the Camp Fire guardian had observed that Miss Lord and Mary Gilchrist were no longer standing alone in the freshly plowed field not far from the farmhouse yard.

Running toward them across the heavy furrows was old Jean, the French peasant who had been assisting Miss Patricia with the work of the farm.

A little in advance of him was a French boy of about fourteen.

Ordinarily old Jean’s back was bent with age and long years of outdoor toil, yet at the present time he held himself nearly erect. He was panting and seemed nearly exhausted. The boy was running like a young race horse, and under the influence of an intense excitement.

Hearing their approach both Miss Patricia and Mary Gilchrist started toward them.

“Suppose we go and find out what news old Jean is bringing us,” Mrs. Burton suggested, her voice as controlled and quiet as usual. “He looks as if he had something important to say!”

As she was compelled to walk slowly and as the Camp Fire girls would not desert her, before they had gone any distance, Miss Patricia was seen to turn from old Jean and to come stalking toward them, followed by Mary Gilchrist.

She appeared like a general about to assume command of his troops.

“Polly Burton, within twenty-four hours you must be ready to leave our farmhouse and to take the Camp Fire girls with you. Jean has just arrived with the story that the Germans will soon begin an attack in this neighborhood. There is a possibility that they may push forward a certain distance. Personally I don’t believe a word of it, yet I can’t have you and a group of girls here on my hands. Besides, Jean says we are to have no choice. The French authorities insist that all women and girls, children and old men, move further back from the battle line.

“You will go first to Yvonne Fleury’s château, which is nearer the road to Paris. As Jean says there is no immediate danger, you will wait there for a few days until I can make arrangements to join you. If the Germans ever arrive at our farmhouse – and understand I don’t believe for a moment this will occur – why they will find very little for their refreshment.

“I shall probably keep Vera Lagerloff here with me, as she is the most sensible of the Camp Fire girls. But, Polly Burton, will you kindly not stand there staring at me as if you did not grasp what I have just told you. I assure you the Germans are again laying waste this beautiful French country. It really seems to me that I cannot endure it.”

And half leading, half carrying Mrs. Burton, Miss Patricia Lord entered the old French farmhouse.

CHAPTER II

The Château Yvonne

It was night in the Château Yvonne.

The old house was unlighted and extraordinarily still. Now and then from the recesses of a vine-covered wall, a screech owl sounded his lament, while from the banks of a small lake nearby a company of frogs croaked their approval.

Otherwise the château appeared deserted, and in the moonlight one could see that portions of it were in ruins and that only the oldest part, which originally had been built of stone, remained intact.

Nevertheless, at present the old château was not uninhabited. It was now after midnight and a figure, carrying a candle, moved through the wide hall of the second floor. So silently the figure moved that unless one were listening intently, one would have heard no footfall.

The apparition was a woman, with her hair bound in two long braids, her figure slender and agile as a girl’s. Yet she had a look of courage, of hardly fought anxiety, which, together with her delicacy, held no suggestion of youth.

As she entered one of the bedrooms, one saw that she was not alone in the old house, two girls lay asleep in a large, old-fashioned French bedstead, a third girl in a cot nearby.

Their sleep must have been partly due to exhaustion, because as the light of the candle flickered across their faces, no one of them spoke or stirred.

A moment later, slipping as noiselessly into a second room, there was a faint movement from one of a pair of sleepers. A girl’s lips framed a question, but before the words were spoken the intruder had moved away.

Now she walked to the front of the house and stood before a tall French window whose shutters were tightly closed; through the slats came faint streaks of light.

She seemed to be hesitating. Then blowing out her candle and with difficulty opening one of the heavy shutters, she climbed out upon a small balcony. The balcony, which was only a few feet in width, commanded an unusual view of the surrounding country.

As there were no large objects to obstruct the vision, one could see an extraordinary distance in the clear and brilliant moonlight. Not a single tree of any size guarded the old French château, although one might reasonably have expected to find it surrounded by a forest of a century’s growth.

Only a few years before, the trees on this French estate had been famous throughout the countryside. An avenue of oaks bordering either side the road to the house had been half a mile in length and of great age and beauty. Strangers in the neighborhood were driven through the grounds of the château, chiefly that they might admire its extraordinary old trees.

Tonight, looking out from the little balcony down this selfsame avenue, one could see only a few gnarled trunks of the once famous trees, still standing like sentinels faithful at their posts till death.

When, soon after the outbreak of the European war the Germans swept across the Marne, the Château Yvonne and its grounds had been made an object of their special mania for destruction. Such trees as had not been destroyed by bursting shells and poisonous gases they had deliberately set afire.

Yet at present, Mrs. Burton, as she stood on the little balcony and looked out over the country, was grateful for their loss. She was thus able to observe so much more of the surrounding landscape. There was no human being in sight.

For the past four days she and five of the Camp Fire girls had been in hiding in the Château Yvonne, and within these four days the face of the world seemed to have changed.

Already it has grown difficult for some of us to recall the last week in March in the year 1918, when the Germans again appeared to have a chance of victory and the Allied lines were seen to waver and then recede from northern to southern France.

It was within this fateful week, with the channel ports and Paris again threatened, that the Camp Fire guardian and her group of American girls, had been vainly awaiting at the Château Yvonne the arrival of Miss Patricia Lord, Vera Lagerloff and Sally Ashton, in order that they might continue their retreat to Paris.

As Mrs. Burton now gazed out over the landscape, shining serenely in the clear beauty of the moonlight, she was interested in only two problems. What had become of Miss Patricia and her companions and how far away from the Château Yvonne at this hour was the German army?

In leaving the farmhouse on the Aisne and journeying to the château, instead of withdrawing from danger, they seemed to have approached nearer it. Yet no one possessed exact information concerning the results of the last few days of the great struggles. The persons admitted within the château had brought with them conflicting stories. One of them reported that the enemy was nearing Soissons, another that the French and American troops were holding the Germans at Château-Thierry. It was impossible to reach a definite decision. Yet always there was this conclusion. The French refugees were all hurrying on toward Paris; Mrs. Burton and her companions should join them at once.

Now as Mrs. Burton considered the situation for the hundredth time within the past twenty-four hours, she was as far from a conclusion as ever.

Against her will, but agreeing with Miss Patricia’s wish, she had gone on ahead, Miss Patricia firmly declining to leave the farmhouse until her livestock and farming implements, acquired with such difficulty and of so great use to the French peasants, could be safely hidden from the approaching enemy.

At the time there had seemed no immediate danger to be feared. In proof of this Vera Lagerloff had not only remained behind, but by her own request, Sally Ashton, and Sally had always insisted that she was the least courageous of her group of Camp Fire girls.

Expecting to make the same journey later, now four days had passed without word of any kind from them.

There was the possibility that, upon learning there might be greater danger along the route which Mrs. Burton had traveled, Miss Patricia had decided to take some other road.

Yet considering this suggestion, again Mrs. Burton remained unconvinced. Miss Patricia Lord was a woman of her word; having told her to await her coming at the Château Yvonne, she would reach there finally if it were humanly possible. Otherwise Miss Patricia would fear that they might stay at the château indefinitely and so become involved in another tragedy of the Marne.

Finally, however, Mrs. Burton crouched down in the ledge of the window jutting out into the balcony. Having reached a halfway decision she at last could admit to herself her own fatigue.

In the morning the Camp Fire girls, who were her present companions, must start off alone toward Paris, leaving her at the château.

She could plead the excuse that she had become too exhausted to travel further until she had an opportunity to rest.

In the midst of her reflections, Mrs. Burton was even able to smile a little whimsically. Since the hour when Jean had brought the news of danger to the quiet farmhouse on the Aisne how completely she seemed to have ignored, if not to have forgotten, her own invalidism. And yet until that hour no one of her household had believed her equal to the least exertion!

Only a short time before, her husband, Captain Burton, had at last considered her to have grown sufficiently strong for him to leave, in order that he might continue his Red Cross work in France. And afterwards how strictly she had been guarded by Miss Patricia and the Camp Fire girls!

There is a familiar axiom that necessity knows no law. At present Mrs. Burton did not believe that she felt any the worse from her recent experiences save an increasing weariness.

The Camp Fire girls would undoubtedly oppose her wish to wait for Miss Patricia alone, she must therefore summon the strength to enforce her will.

The March winds were growing colder. At this moment, although wrapped in a heavy coat, Mrs. Burton shivered, partly with apprehension and partly from cold.

She knew that the five girls were not far off and yet, in the silence and loneliness of the night, with no human being in sight, she suddenly felt desperately solitary.

She was frightened. Notwithstanding her fear was not so much for herself, though she dreaded being left perhaps to face an oncoming German horde, her greater fear was that the Camp Fire girls might meet with disaster, traveling without their guardian and with a horde of French refugees, toward greater security in Paris.

How greatly she longed at this moment for a sight of Miss Patricia Lord’s gaunt and homely figure, always a tower of strength in adversity.

Yet not only was there no sign of her approach, there was an ominous quiet over the entire countryside.

“Mrs. Burton!”

The older woman started, a cold hand had touched her own and a girl, climbing through the window, sat beside her.

“Yvonne!”

Mrs. Burton’s hand closed round Yvonne Fleury’s.

Nearly four years before the young French girl, who was now a member of Mrs. Burton’s Camp Fire, had been forced to escape from her home during the first victory of the Germans along the Marne. In the flight her younger brother had been killed and her mother had afterwards died. Her older brother, Lieutenant Fleury, whom she afterwards believed to have been killed at the front, was at that time fighting with the French army.

Small wonder that tonight, Yvonne, perhaps facing another flight from her home, was unable to sleep.

“I must talk, Mrs. Burton, if you don’t mind,” she whispered. “I will disturb no one. Tell me you do not believe the Germans will cross the Marne a second time. If they do, nevertheless, I mean to stay on here at my home. I have just concluded to beg you and the Camp Fire girls to leave the château in the morning and go on with your journey to Paris. I will be here when Miss Patricia arrives to explain and later she can follow the route you will take. If my home is to be destroyed a second time I shall be here when the destruction takes place.”

Understanding the young French girl’s mood too well to argue with her at this moment, Mrs. Burton answered:

“Perhaps the situation is not so tragic as we fear, Yvonne. But in any case you must remember that your brother, Lieutenant Fleury, is again at the front fighting for the honor and glory of France. You cannot of your own choice add to his sorrows. Besides, you and I never doubt for a single moment that the Allies will ultimately win. Then you will have your home and your brother restored to you again!”

At present Mrs. Burton was able to say no more. At this moment toward the southeastern line of the horizon, suddenly the sky had become a flaring crimson. The next instant there followed the noise of an explosion and a sound of distant firing.

CHAPTER III

The Retreat

“As soon as we finish breakfast I think it wiser that you girls make your arrangements to start on toward Paris at once.”

In the old kitchen of the French château the Camp Fire girls were seated about an ancient oak table, eating as quietly as if nothing had occurred to disturb them in the night.

The noise of the firing, which had interrupted Mrs. Burton’s and Yvonne’s conversation, had not lasted long, and no one knew from what source it had come, whether the Germans were making a surprise attack nearby, or the allied troops repulsing one.

At dawn, hearing a knocking at the kitchen door, Mrs. Burton had admitted an old French peasant woman and her small grandson. At present they were having their breakfast of coffee and bread in a corner of the big kitchen, having preferred not to sit at the table. With them they had brought the news that the Germans had endeavored to cross the river about ten miles from the Château Yvonne, but had been driven back. Also they reported that the roads were becoming constantly more crowded with refugees, and as soon as they had a little food and rest they wished to journey on.