A Good Woman

Chapter 16

Annabelle’s departure went unnoticed the day she left the hospital at the Abbaye de Royaumont in Asnières. She had gone to say good-bye to Dr. de Bré, and to thank him, the day before, and also made her farewell to the head nurse. Other than that, she had no one to say good-bye to, except Edwina, whom she saw for a few minutes that morning. They wished each other luck, and said they hoped to meet again. And then Annabelle got into the truck that drove her to the station. She was taking the train to Nice, which was a long, drawn-out process. All the routes that went too near the front had been rerouted in circuitous ways, and most of the trains had been commandeered by the army.

It took her a day and a night to get to Nice, and when she finally arrived, she found two taxis at the train station, driven by women. She climbed into one of them, and gave the driver the address of the medical school. It was just outside Nice, on a hill, looking out at the ocean, in a small château that belonged to the family of the school’s founder, Dr. Graumont. And with its peaceful gardens and orchards around it, it was hard to believe that there was war or strife anywhere in the world, let alone nerve gas, shattered bodies, or people dying. She felt completely sheltered from the real world here. It was the most tranquil place she had seen since Newport, and in some ways reminded her of it.

A stern-looking housekeeper showed her to her room, handed her the sheets to make her own bed, and told her to be downstairs at eight o’clock for dinner. The first-year medical students lived in a dormitory. The more senior students, all of them men, had individual rooms. Since she was the only woman she had gotten one of their rooms, a comfortable chamber that looked out at the sea. There were forty-four students living at the château, all of whom had been exempted from military service for some reason. There was an Englishman, a Scot, two Italians, and the rest of them were French. Annabelle was the only American. She had been told that she could practice medicine when she went back to the States by taking an exam there, but she wasn’t thinking that far ahead yet. For the next six years, she would be here, and it felt like the right place for her to be. She was certain of it as soon as she saw it. She felt safe and protected.

She washed her face and hands, put on a clean black dress, one of the nicer ones she had brought with her, and tied her hair back in a discreet knot. Looking immaculate, she went down to dinner promptly at eight.

The students met in the large drawing room of the château before dinner every night. They talked quietly among themselves, usually about medical matters, and all of them had been there since September. Annabelle was the interloper who had arrived late, and as she entered the room, all eyes turned to her. Then the other students turned away and kept talking and ignored her. She was startled by their cool reception, but she sat quietly by herself until dinner, without trying to break into their conversations. She saw them stealing glances at her, but not one of them came over to talk to her. It was as though she didn’t exist, and as though they believed that if they didn’t acknowledge her, she’d disappear.

An ancient man in an even more ancient tailcoat called them in to dinner, and the groups then shifted into the dining room and sat down at three long refectory tables that were as old as the château. Everything there was worn and threadbare, but it had a kind of faded grandeur that looked very much Old France.

Dr. Graumont, the head of the school, came to greet her and invited her to sit down next to him. He was extremely polite when he introduced himself, but then spent most of the time speaking to the young man on his other side, who looked to be about thirty. They were conversing about an operation they had both observed that day, and made no attempt to include Annabelle in the conversation. She felt like a ghost, invisible to all.

Later in the meal, Dr. Graumont spoke to her briefly of Dr. de Bré and asked how he was, but he said little more to her than that, and then he bade her good evening, and the others went to their rooms. Not a single one of her fellow students had introduced themselves to her or asked her name. She went up to her room alone, and sat down on her bed, not sure what to make of it, and not nearly as sure as she had been about her decision. It was going to be a long six years if no one ever spoke to her at the château. It was more than obvious that they were not pleased to have a woman in their midst, so they had decided to ignore her. But she wasn’t there to socialize, she had come to learn.

She was in the dining room the next morning, at precisely seven o’clock, as she had been told. Breakfast was sparse, due to the war, and she ate very little. The others came and left without a word to her, and she found her classroom in time for her eight o’clock class. The entire château had been dedicated to the school, which had allowed the family to keep it, and support its upkeep. And once the class began, she remembered why she was there. It was fascinating. They were studying diseases of the kidney, and were shown diagrams of surgeries. And they were to go to the hospital in Nice the next day, where they did all their surgical observations and work with patients. She could hardly wait.

She was still excited by the lecture when they went to lunch, and she was more grateful than ever to Dr. de Bré. And forgetting how unfriendly her classmates had been, she broke into conversation with the Englishman, and commented about the lecture. He stared at her as though she had just taken off all her clothes.

“I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?” she asked innocently.

“I don’t recall speaking to you,” he said rudely, looking down his nose at her in an icy way, which told her in no uncertain terms that he had no interest whatsoever in her comments.

“No, but I spoke to you,” she said calmly, refusing to be daunted. She had heard him say that he came from four generations of doctors. He was obviously very full of himself, but like her, he was only a firstyear student, although considerably older than she was. He mentioned to someone else that he had gone to Eton and then Cambridge, which explained the discrepancy in their ages. He clearly thought he was a great deal better than she was, and had no desire to waste his time talking to her. The fact that she was also beautiful seemed to have made no impression on him whatsoever. He was far more interested in being unpleasant to her and putting her in her place.

“I’m Annabelle Worthington,” she continued pleasantly, refusing to be bested by him. She wanted to hit him over the head with her plate, but she smiled politely and then turned to the student on her other side, and introduced herself to him. He looked at the young man across from him, as though waiting for a cue from the others, and then smiled in spite of himself.

“I’m Marcel Bobigny,” he said in French, and with that the others looked at him like a traitor, and stared into their plates as they ate.

Annabelle and Marcel struck up a conversation about the lecture they’d had that morning, and for most of lunch there was silence in the room. She was clearly not welcome, and even the head of the school ignored her. She took her notebook and pen, and went to her next class, after thanking Marcel for chatting with her. He bowed politely, and she could hear his cohorts scolding him for talking to her, as she walked away with her head held high.

“I don’t give a damn if she’s great-looking,” she heard one of them whisper to the others. “She has no business being here.” But she had as much right to be there as they did. She had paid her tuition, and was as anxious to be a doctor as they were, possibly more so. But clearly they had made an agreement among themselves to stonewall her.

Their shoddy treatment of her continued through four weeks of classes and three-times-weekly visits to the hospital in Nice, where they heard lectures and saw patients, and she saw that she was being keenly observed by professors and students alike. She sensed that any mistake she made, or incorrect statement she uttered, would be used immediately against her, so she was extremely careful of what she said. So far, she had made no obvious mistakes, and the two papers she had written about diseases of the urinary tract and kidneys had gotten perfect grades.

And it was when visiting patients, and speaking to them, that her jealous classmates hated her most. She had a gentle, compassionate way with them, asked them intelligent questions about their symptoms, and made them feel comfortable with her immediately. The patients much preferred speaking to her, and looking at her certainly, than her colleagues, and those patients who saw her more than once were delighted to see her again. It drove her male classmates insane.

“You’re far too familiar with the patients,” the Englishman, who was systematically unpleasant to her, criticized her one day.

“That’s interesting,” Annabelle said calmly. “I think you’re very rude to them.”

“How would you know? When have you ever been in a hospital before?”

“I just spent three months working near the front in Asnières, and I’ve worked as a volunteer in hospitals for six years, the last two with newly arrived immigrants at Ellis Island in New York.” He said nothing to her after that, and wouldn’t have admitted it to her, but he had been impressed by her three months at Asnières. He had heard from others how rough it was. Marcel Bobigny caught up with her after class, and asked what it had been like working at the Abbaye de Royaumont. It was the first real conversation she’d had with anyone there in a month. And she was grateful to have someone to talk to at last.

“It was hard,” she said honestly. “We all worked about eighteen hours a day, sometimes more. It’s run and staffed by women, which was the original concept, but a few male doctors have come from Paris now. They need all the help they can get.”

“What kind of cases did you see there?” he asked with interest. He thought the others were wrong to give her such a hard time. He liked her. She was good-humored, a good sport, worked hard, and lacked their pretensions.

“We saw mostly lost limbs, a lot of gangrene, explosions, nerve gas, dysentery, cholera, pretty much what you’d expect so close to the front.” She said it simply and matter-of-factly, with no attempt to impress him or brag about herself.

“What did they let you do?”

“Chloroform in the operating theater, once in a while. Mostly I emptied surgical pans, but the chief surgeon was very nice about showing me things as I went along. The rest of the time I was in the surgical ward, taking care of the men after surgery, and a couple of times I drove an ambulance to pitch in.”

“That’s pretty good for someone who has no official training.” He was impressed.

“They needed the help.” He nodded, wishing he was there himself. He said as much to Annabelle, and she smiled. He was the only one of her fellow students who had been civil to her, and even nice. Most of them ignored her.

In February, a month and a half after she’d gotten there, everyone was animated at dinner, discussing the Battle of Verdun, which had begun several days before, and already caused enormous loss of life on both sides. It was a vicious battle that upset them all, and Marcel drew her into the conversation. The others were so involved in the discussion, they even forgot to frown when she spoke, or ignore her.

The Battle of Verdun was the main topic of conversation every night at dinner, until two weeks later, in early March, the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo, in Italy against Austria-Hungary, took precedence. The conversation ricocheted equally between medical issues and the war. It was a cause of deep concern to all.

Eventually the Englishman asked her about when America might join the war. President Wilson was still assuring everyone they wouldn’t, but it was an open secret that the United States was supplying both sides, and being criticized heavily for it. Annabelle said clearly that she thought that that was wrong and so did they. She thought the U.S. should get into the war, and come to Europe in aid of their allies. The conversation led to the Lusitania then, and everyone’s belief that she had been blown up because of war supplies she was secretly carrying, which had never been officially disclosed. Talking about the Lusitania somehow led to the Titanic, and Annabelle grew quiet and looked pained. Rupert, the Englishman, noticed and made a remark. “It wasn’t our finest hour,” he conceded with a smile.

“Nor mine,” she said quietly. “My parents and brother were on it,” she said, as the whole table went quiet and stared at her.

“Did they make it through all right?” one of the French students asked, and she shook her head. “My mother got off in one of the lifeboats, but my father and brother went down with the ship.”

There was a chorus of I’m sorry’s and Marcel discreetly turned the conversation to other things, trying to make the awkward moment easier for her. He liked her and wanted to protect her from the others. But little by little, they were softening toward her too. Her kindness, simplicity, intelligence, and humility were hard to resist.

Two weeks after that, the French passenger ship Sussex was torpedoed, which brought it all up again. By then, the situation at the front had worsened, and almost four million people had died. The toll was mounting day by day. At times, it distracted them all from their studies and they could talk of nothing else. But they were all working hard. There were no slackers in the group, and with their classes so small, every student stood out.

Without actually meaning to, they had all relaxed about Annabelle by April, and by May many of them were actually willing to speak to her, have conversations with her, and even laugh with her. They had come to respect her quietly voiced intelligent questions, and her bedside manner with the patients was much better than theirs. Her professors had all noticed it, and Dr. Graumont had long since written to Dr. de Bré to assure him that he hadn’t made a mistake. He told him that Annabelle Worthington was an excellent student, and would make a fine physician one day. And to Annabelle, compared to the Abbey in Asnières, the hospital in Nice was extremely tame, but interesting anyway. And she finally got her wish. They had begun dissecting cadavers, and she found it as fascinating as she always thought she would.

News of the war continued to distract them, as they followed their classes through the summer. On July 1, the Battle of the Somme began, with the highest number of casualties in the war so far. By the time the day was over, there were sixty thousand dead and wounded. The numbers were horrifying. And as the summer went on, it just got worse. It was hard to concentrate on their studies at times as a result. There was such a shocking loss of life as the war wore on, seemingly with no end in sight. Europe had been at war for two years by then.

In August, she tried not to let herself think of her anniversary with Josiah. It would have been their third, and she had been in Europe for eleven months. It seemed hard to believe. Since she had come to the medical school in Nice, time had flown. They were doing so many things, and trying to learn so much. They were working with patients more frequently now, and spent three full days a week at the hospital in Nice. The war wounded were even finding their way there, as injured men who would not be returning to the front were being transferred closer to home. She even came across two men she had taken care of in Asnières. They were thrilled to see her, and she stopped by to visit them whenever she could.

By then, she and Marcel were good friends. They chatted every night after dinner, and often studied together. And the other students had finally accepted her in their midst. She was well thought of, liked, and respected by her peers. Some of her fellow students even laughed about how unpleasant they had been to her in the beginning, and Rupert, the pompous Englishman who had been the rudest to her, had slowly become her friend. It was hard for any of them to find fault with her work, and she was unfailingly pleasant to all of them. Marcel called her the godmother in their midst.

They were walking through the orchards one day, after classes, when he turned to her with a curious look.

“Why is a beautiful woman like you not married?” he asked her. She knew he wasn’t pursuing her, since he had just gotten engaged to a young woman in Nice. She had been a friend of his family’s for years. He was from Beaulieu, not far away, and went home for visits, or even dinner, as often as he could. His fiancée visited him at the school, and Annabelle liked her very much.

“I don’t think I can be married and be a doctor. Do you?” she responded, deflecting the question. In her opinion, it was different for a woman than a man. It took so much more sacrifice and commitment for a woman to be a physician.

“Why do I have the feeling that you came to Europe with a broken heart?” He was a wise man, and could see it in her eyes. “I’m not so sure this is so much about sacrificing your personal life for your profession, but perhaps because you’re afraid to have a personal life, and are hiding in medicine. I think you can have both,” he said gently as he looked into her eyes.

She avoided responding to him for a long moment and took a bite out of an apple. She had turned twenty-three that May. She was beautiful and alive, and terrified of being hurt again. Marcel was right. He knew her well.

“Underneath the laughter and gentle smiles,” he went on, “there is something very sad, and I don’t think it’s about your parents. Women only look that way when their heart is broken by a man.” He was sorry that had happened to her. She, more than anyone he knew, deserved a kind and loving man.

“You should have been a fortune-teller instead of a doctor,” she teased him with a grateful smile, and laughed. But he knew, even without her confirming it, that he was right. And she had no intention whatsoever of telling him that she was divorced. She wasn’t willing to admit that to anyone, not even Marcel, once they became friends. She was too ashamed.

She had had a letter from her bank the month before, advising her that her final divorce papers had come. She and Josiah were now divorced. She had had only one letter from him in the last year, at Christmas, telling her that he and Henry were still in Mexico. She had no idea now if he was still there, and she hoped that he was well. She could deduce from what he had written to her that they were both very ill. She had written back, concerned about him, and hadn’t heard from him since. Her letter got no response.

“Am I right?” Marcel persisted. He liked her, and often wished he knew more about her. She never spoke about her early childhood or her history at all. It was as though she didn’t have one. All she wanted now was a clean slate and to begin again. He could sense whenever he spoke to her that there were secrets in her past.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m here now, broken heart or not.”

“Do you think you’ll ever go back?” He was always curious about her.

She grew quiet as she thought about it, and answered him honestly. “I don’t know. I have nothing there, except a cottage in Rhode Island.” Her parents’ servants were still there, taking care of the house, and hoping she’d come back. She wrote to Blanche from time to time, and no one else. “My family is gone. I have no reason to go back.”

“You must have friends,” he said, looking at her sadly. He hated to think of her alone. She was such a warm, gentle, kind person that he couldn’t imagine her not having friends, even if she was shy. “You grew up with people. They must still be there.” What he said made her think of Hortie, and she shook her head. She had no friends left. However good his intentions, Josiah had seen to that. He had been naïve in thinking he was doing the right thing for her, in freeing her. All he had done was make her an outcast in her own world. The only friend she had now was Marcel.

“No. Everything in my life changed. That’s why I came here.” But even she wasn’t sure if she would stay. She belonged to no one and nowhere now. Her only life was medical school, and would be for the next five years. Her home was the château. Her only city Nice. And the men she was going to school with were the only friends she had, particularly him.

“I’m glad you did,” he said simply, not wanting to pry too much or revive old hurts.

“So am I.” She smiled at him, and they walked slowly back to the château. Marcel was amazed that none of their classmates had a romantic interest in her. But Annabelle put an unspoken message out that said “Don’t come too close.” There was a wall around her now. Marcel could sense it, but had no idea why, and he thought it was a shame. Keeping her distance as she did seemed to him the waste of a lovely woman. He thought she deserved to have a man, and hoped she would in time.

It was a long hot summer at the château, studying and visiting the hospital, and finally in August they got two weeks off to go home, or leave on vacation. Annabelle was the only student who stayed. She had nowhere else to go. She went on long walks, and shopped a little in Nice, although there wasn’t much in the stores because of the war. She bought a few things to replenish her wardrobe as so much of what she had brought was black, and she was no longer in mourning for her mother. And on an afternoon when she was able to borrow an old truck they kept at the school, she drove to old Antibes and the areas around it, and found an ancient, beautiful eleventh-century church, and stood looking at the view from high above the town. It was a perfect afternoon and a spectacular view.

She stopped and had dinner at a small café, and that night she drove back to the school. Even Dr. Graumont was away, and Annabelle was alone in the château with the two maids. She had a peaceful two weeks, and she was happy when the others came back, particularly Marcel. They all said they’d had a good time, although her English friend who had tormented her in the beginning, Rupert, came back devastated that he had lost his brother to the war. Several of them already had lost brothers, cousins, friends. It was a harsh reminder of the turmoil and anguish that was devouring Europe and never seemed to end.

When they began classes again in September, the Battle of the Somme was still raging on, as it had been for over two months. And the casualties mounted every day. It finally ended in mid-November, which was a huge relief to all. For ten days, there was peace at the end of a terrible battle, with well over a million men dead and wounded in the end. And only ten days after it was over, the Germans attacked Britain with airplanes for the first time. A whole new aspect of the war had been introduced, which terrified them all. By Christmas, they were all demoralized by the losses and constant attacks. Two more of the students had lost brothers. At the end of the month, Dr. Graumont assembled them in the main hall, with a letter from the French government, that he wished to read to them. It was a call to all trained medical personnel to lend their assistance at the front. They were badly needed in field hospitals all over France. He was quiet after he read the letter, and said it was up to them what they chose to do. He said that the school would grant them leave, if they wished it, without prejudice, and would automatically take them back whenever they returned. They had been getting letters from hospitals for months, including a recent one organized by Elsie Inglis again, this time in Villers-Cotterêts, northeast of Paris, closer to the front than Asnières and the Abbaye de Royaumont where Annabelle had been. Once again all of the medical units at Villers-Cotterêts were female, and Annabelle would have been welcome there.

All of the students talked about it that night over dinner, and the conversation was intense. By morning, half of them had made a decision, and went to see Dr. Graumont one by one. They were leaving within the next few days. In addition, it had been a bitter winter at the front, and men were dying of their wounds, illness, and exposure all over Europe. Those who were leaving couldn’t resist the plea for help. In the end, all but four students went. Annabelle made her decision on the first day. She was sad to interrupt her medical training, but she felt there was really no other choice. It would have seemed selfish to stay.

“You’re leaving us too?” Dr. Graumont asked with a sad smile, but he wasn’t surprised. In the past year he had come to like and respect her enormously. She was going to make an excellent physician one day, and in many ways already was.

“I have to go,” she said wistfully. She hated to leave the school at the château. “I’ll come back.”

“I hope so,” he said, and meant it. “Where will you go?”

“To the Inglis hospital at Villers-Cotterêts, if they’ll have me.” With the training the students had, they could all be medics. It was more than she had been able to do in Asnières, and she would be more useful to the men.

“Be careful, Annabelle. Stay safe. We’ll be waiting for you here,” he reassured her.

“Thank you,” she said softly, and gave him a warm hug. She packed her bags that night, left two of them at the château, and planned to take only one valise with her. By the next day, almost all but the remaining four students were gone.

They all hugged each other, wished each other luck, and promised to return as they left. Their good-byes to Annabelle were particularly brotherly and affectionate, and all of them urged her to take good care, and she did the same with them.

Marcel took her to the train before he left. She was carrying her small bag as she walked along beside him. He was her only real friend, and had been kind to her right from the first. She was still grateful to him for that.

“Take care of yourself,” Marcel said, as he gave her a last hug and kissed her on both cheeks. “I hope we’ll all be back here soon,” he said fervently. He was leaving late that afternoon.

“Me too.” She waved to him for as long as she could see him, as he stood on the platform waving to her. She watched him until he was out of sight. It was the last time she ever saw him. Two weeks later, he was driving an ambulance that ran over a mine. He was the first casualty of Dr. Graumont’s school, and Annabelle had lost another friend.