Castaigne. He was a member of the old nobility, but too democratic in his ideas to use his title. He has since disappeared and is either dead or a prisoner in Germany. I don’t think Madame Castaigne knows. But she has kept on just the same with her hospital work and has been helping to organize the new hospitals for our American soldiers in France. Eugenia has a great deal of money, and, except what she uses for her husband’s mother, she is devoting everything she has to the Red Cross. I only hope we may not find her too much changed.” [49] But Nona stopped talking because of an interruption. Someone had just come to the door of their compartment and knocked, and Barbara was opening it. Outside stood two figures, Lieutenant John Martin and his companion, Lieutenant Hugh Kelley. The first officer’s manner betrayed the impression that although intending to be polite, he was greatly bored. As a matter of[50] fact, he believed that women and girls had no part in a soldier’s life and except that men were necessary for other work, even Red Cross nurses were superfluous. [50] But by chance Lieutenant Martin and Nona Davis had a slight previous acquaintance. Lieutenant Martin was a native of Georgia, but had been educated at the Charleston Military Academy before going to West Point. In Charleston he had known some friends of Nona’s and had been introduced to her, meeting her, perhaps, only a few times afterward. For even as a boy, Jack Martin had been supposed to be either very shy or very disdainful of girls. He did not seem to have the least natural interest in them. Yet he really knew almost nothing of women, having been brought up by a bachelor uncle, who was himself a soldier, and this may have accounted for his ungraciousness. Both he and Nona were surprised, upon seeing each other, into acknowledging their former acquaintance. Neither really intended it. Afterward, Lieutenant Martin had really regretted the accidental meeting,[51] since it had drawn him into situations a little like the present one. [51] Hugh Kelley and he were on the railroad platform, when the sight of four American Red Cross nurses, standing together and apparently waiting to take the same train, had attracted their attention. Yet introducing Hugh had been the real complication. He could scarcely be
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