OVER THE FRONTIER
Six weeks of imprisonment had brought few changes to Bob, and those few
were not of a pleasant sort. The only bright spot in the dark monotony
of his life was Sergeant Cameron's companionship, for repeated requests
had finally obtained it for him, in a qualified degree. His captors had
no objection to the sergeant's waiting on the American officer in place
of a German orderly, so after the usual hesitation and delay, Sergeant
Cameron was allowed to visit Bob and attend to his simple wants in
the short periods during which the doors remained unlocked. Bob still
shared Bertrand's room, and most of Sergeant Cameron's ministrations
were by now directed, together with Bob's, to making the unfortunate
officer as comfortable as possible. The two or three weeks which were
to elapse before his transfer to better quarters had lengthened to
five, and still the fever came and went, each time leaving the patient
sufferer thinner, weaker, and less able to fight for his life. As Bob
knelt beside his cot one cold, dark morning, with a bowl of coffee in
his hands, he turned a weary, anxious face to Sergeant Cameron, who
was trying to blow the few sticks on the hearth into a lively blaze.
"It's no use, Sergeant," he said, sombrely. "I can't make him take
anything. He won't be roused at all. Confound that doctor! He hasn't
been near us in three days."
"He's off at another camp, sir, so I heard from the guard," said the
sergeant, pausing in his work to look at Captain Bertrand's flushed and
unconscious face as he lay heavily breathing. "I think he'll be along
to-day. He has more to do than he can manage, but he seems a pretty
good sort, for a Boche."
Bob gave a grunt of angry helplessness. "Then why doesn't he get this
poor fellow moved? Can't he see that he's dying on his hands? I don't
care if their hospitals are jammed with wounded--one Frenchman is worth
a dozen of them!"
Bob spoke with a bitterness that was new to him, and his frowning brows
did not unknit themselves as he rose from the floor, carefully drawing
the blanket over Bertrand's shoulders. Sergeant Cameron finished
mending the fire in thoughtful silence. The old soldier had suffered
heavy disappointment in being captured and removed from the fighting
line so early in the struggle, during a trifling raid on a bit of
exposed German trench. Since then, too, he had known hard privation
in the prison camp, but at least half of the anxiety and depression
that had paled his ruddy face was for the son of his old Major, whose
every word and gesture showed the strain of indignation, hunger, and
rigid confinement unwillingly borne. He could not do much to alleviate
Bob's misery, but stories of Major Gordon's old regiment, which had
been honored by an early place in the first line trenches, were always
welcome to Bob's ears, and even a little talk would sometimes cheer
him, for he was too young to be gloomy all the time.
"They say there's been a big British advance, Lieutenant," he began,
rubbing his blackened fingers against each other as he turned from the
hearth. "There's a new lot of prisoners come in early this morning.
They're in the next barrack to me, so I'll have a word with them if
possible at dinner-time."
"What did you hear? Where was the push made?" Bob asked, his eager
interest smoothing out the wrinkles in his forehead and giving him back
his boyish look. He was standing by the table, stirring a bit of bread
in his bowl of acorn coffee.
"It was near a place the French call Cam-berray, or something like
that," said the sergeant, diffidently. "The advance was led by General
Byng. I got that much last night through a knot-hole in the wall, from
a Frenchman who's chummy with me and speaks a bit of English."
"Cambrai, I guess," exclaimed Bob, forgetting his breakfast as he
stared into space with thoughtful eyes. "I wonder how much it means!"
"Don't know, sir, but I'll find out all I can," promised the sergeant,
relieved to see the look of bitter depression gone for the moment
from Bob's face. "They can't prevent the men talking together a good
bit--we're so crowded up like, in our barrack."
The last two weeks had brought a crowd of French and British prisoners
to the camp until it was filled to overflowing. But with every new
arrival, rumor stole about that the Germans on the western front had
paid a deadly price for each man captured, and that a far greater
number of soldiers from the German lines were in the hands of the
Allies.
But this was as much good news as Bob and Sergeant Cameron could summon
to cheer them. No letters had reached them, nor any news that their own
had been sent on. They might have been on a desert island for all the
communication they could obtain with America. The little money Bob had
hoarded was spent at last, and he suffered greatly from the monotonous
and meagre diet. His repeated requests for advances of money from
the Commandant had met with no reply, and he had long since ceased to
expect any.
Sergeant Cameron at first had put a cheerful interpretation on this
indifference and neglect of the prisoners. "It's plain they are hard
up, Lieutenant," he said hopefully, "for they can't spare us a word or
a thought. They have to keep the war going at all costs."
"I think they just don't care what becomes of us," returned Bob, in one
of his hopeless moments. He had nerved himself to endure his captivity
bravely, but the everlasting monotony and privation were harder for his
active nature to bear than the fiercest battle. A letter from home,
telling him that they knew where he was and trusted to his pluck and
endurance would have done wonders for him, but none took the trouble
to forward a letter into the heart of Prussia, to a prisoner from the
nation that Germany now hated even beyond her hate for England--because
it had foiled her imagined victory.
However, no one who is in reasonable health and not suffering keenly
can be miserable all day long. At any rate Bob could not, and the fits
of brooding that worried Sergeant Cameron did not last more than an
hour or two. After breakfast Bob went outside and took a walk along his
wired-in alley in the not very cheerful company of a British colonel
who had recently been captured and couldn't get over the exasperating
annoyance of being taken away just when he was most needed. He occupied
Bob's old room and met his advances with friendliness, but had not
recovered spirits enough to do more than talk about the beastly bad
luck of his having managed to run right against that Boche patrol. Bob
told him the rumors of General Byng's advance and awakened a spark of
real interest in the Britisher, as well as another burst of anger at
his own impotence.
"To think I might have been there!" exclaimed the captive colonel with
longing eyes, a flush coming over his lean, weather-worn cheek. "We're
out of luck, young fellow, and that's the truth--but I had some of it,
at any rate."
"Yes," sighed Bob, vague thoughts of some desperate attempt at escape
floating through his mind, to be impatiently dismissed at sight of the
endless sentries patrolling their lengths of wire alleys. "A kangaroo
with a machine gun might get away," he thought idly, "but I certainly
can't."
The sun had not appeared for the past two days, hiding behind thick,
gray clouds which gave a melancholy tone to the dreary winter
landscape. Bob felt inclined to blame it as being a Prussian sun and
unsympathetic to shivering young Americans whose fire-wood was not
furnished in sufficient quantities. But it peeped out, mistily, an
hour later when Bob went back to Bertrand, hoping for a change in his
comrade's heavy, feverish stupor. The sick man still lay with closed
eyes, breathing fast and hard, but as Bob approached him, his lids
flickered open and his bright eyes fixed themselves upon Bob's face.
"A little water, comrade," he murmured, the ghost of his old
graciousness of manner lingering in his feeble voice.
Bob rejoiced at his words, his first sensible utterance in many hours,
and hastened to obey his request. As he bent over the bed, raising
the Frenchman's thin frame with one arm to hold the water to his hot
lips, Bertrand whispered, "You have been a friend, _mon garçon_,--many
thanks, while I have breath to say it!" He panted as he spoke, but his
bright eyes turned to Bob's with a glance of affectionate gratitude,
and their intelligence was for the moment unclouded. "If I must die in
prison--in an enemy's country--it is something, comrade, to have your
friendly face so near at hand. We are true Allies,--France and America."
He fell back gasping, while Bob, his own eyes blurred with quick tears
of pity and understanding, dipped a handkerchief in the cold water and
laid it over Bertrand's burning forehead.
"You're not going to die," he said, doggedly, though his voice was
choked as he spoke and his grim face belied his hopeful words. "I'm
going to get that doctor now, if I have to storm the Commandant in his
own den." This he announced with a determination that took no thought
as yet of ways and means.
He rose from beside the cot, where Bertrand lay exhausted after his
battle for breath to speak with, and strode toward the door. Outside
he could hear the prisoners marching toward the kitchen and the German
guard was unlocking the officers' rooms for dinner. Bob waited for
his own door to open, his purpose unwavering to demand attention for
Bertrand's desperate need, no matter what retribution any violence
might bring upon himself. He did not intend to wait for a word with
Sergeant Cameron, but rapidly pieced together his German to address the
guard as soon as the door opened. But when it did open, Bob's set face
wavered almost to a smile with the quick relief of it. He would not
have to engage just then, anxious and hungry as he was, on the doubtful
struggle with the powers above him, for behind the guard stood the
short, alert figure of the doctor, wrapped in a gray uniform overcoat,
his face reddened by the frosty air.
Bob felt almost as though the German were a friend as he stepped
eagerly forward, fearful lest he should somehow escape him, saying,
"Doctor, thank Heaven you've come! Captain Bertrand is very ill. Why
haven't you had him taken away?"
The touch of indignation in his last words was acknowledged by the
German with a slight shrug of the shoulders as he stepped inside the
room and laid his medicine case on the table. "I cannot perform the
impossible," he said shortly, giving a keen glance in Bertrand's
direction. "He is not the only sick man in Germany."
Bob checked his resentment at this cool retort, and gave all his
attention to helping the doctor make the sick man more comfortable. It
was evident to both of them that there was little to be done, for the
medicine case was not able to furnish the doctor with what he wanted,
and Bertrand, sunk again into feverish slumber, gave no answer to the
questions put to him. At last the German put on his gloves and prepared
to take leave, but before doing so he forestalled Bob's obvious
intention of protesting against Bertrand's remaining any longer in the
prison by saying irritably:
"Yes, yes! He shall be moved. Soon, too--he has been here far too long
already." He glanced at Bob with a look of angry dissatisfaction,
whether at the young American himself, the sick man, or the German
medical staff's mismanagement, Bob did not know; but after a curt nod
he departed, leaving Bob in a state of painful uncertainty during
the few moments he passed alone with Bertrand before Sergeant Cameron
brought in his meagre noonday meal.
Just what the doctor meant to do Bob was far from feeling sure, and
Sergeant Cameron had little to say, after his five weeks' experience
with German promises which lacked the merit of ever being performed.
At five o'clock that afternoon Bob heard the guard at his door, and
rising from a dreary revery by Bertrand's side, he went to meet him.
Sergeant Cameron was due with his supper and Bob was anxious for a word
with him. Their patient was still just lingering on the borderland of
unconsciousness. Sergeant Cameron was not yet there, but behind the
guard came four soldiers, stretcher-bearers, who advanced stolidly into
the little room with their unwieldy burden.
Bob's heart gave a sudden strange pang. The longed-for relief had
come, but it was not so easy now to see his comrade of the long weeks
just passed go out among strangers, too ill to wish him even a word of
farewell. Almost dazed he stood aside, while the doctor followed in the
stretcher-bearers' wake, and ordered the French officer lifted from the
cot. Then Bob sprang forward and helped with gentle hands that shook a
little as he adjusted the blankets for the last time over his friend's
thin shoulders. He said huskily to the doctor, "You'll do your best for
him, won't you, Herr Doctor?"
The German gave a nod of assent, but said nothing more. He gave Bob an
odd glance once or twice, and seemed more than ordinarily severe and
constrained, giving the soldiers short, sharp orders which they made
haste to obey. Bob said no more to him, and in another moment Bertrand
had been carried out, and he was left alone.
He sat down, looking at the empty cot, and mumbled angrily to himself,
in the midst of his black depression, "Don't be an ass. Buck up! What a
slacker you are, anyway--can't you grin and bear it, as other fellows
do?" And all the while he was wondering painfully at his own weakness,
and despising it, yet utterly unable to rise above it, or to take his
imprisonment courageously as only one of the many evil chances of war.
When Sergeant Cameron came in at last he was still struggling with
himself, and not even the sergeant's cheerful words of thankfulness
that poor Bertrand was at last to be placed in competent hands--or so
they hoped--could bring a ray of brightness to Bob's weary brain. He
drank some of his bitter coffee and went to bed--free for the first
time in weeks to sleep the night through without rising to see if
Bertrand slept--but this night he lay awake and wished for even the
sick man's companionship.
When the first streaks of dawn stole through the little window Bob
sat up and looked curiously at the ashes on the hearth. His fire was
out--that was the curious part of it, because he was not cold, though
the window pane was covered with frost and his breath puffed into vapor.
"I'm hot--hot as anything," he muttered, rubbing one hand over his
aching forehead. "Funny, for I was cold enough all night." He lay down
again to ponder it.
When Sergeant Cameron came with his breakfast Bob was still lying on
the cot. The sergeant laid down the bowl of coffee and the armful of
wood he carried to look keenly at the young officer's flushed checks,
as he lay blanketless in the cold room. "Don't feel well, Lieutenant?"
he faltered, trying to speak naturally, but reaching for Bob's hand as
he spoke and starting at the burning dryness of it.
"Queer," said Bob, trying to emerge from the dim, feverish phantoms
that obscured his thoughts, "but I'll be better after a while." He
spoke more cheerfully than he had done the night before. All present
worries had suddenly faded from his mind. He could not seem to think of
anything but what was very vague and far away.
The next few days, during which Bob grew steadily worse, were hard
almost beyond endurance to Sergeant Cameron's anxious and devoted
spirit. He stayed tirelessly by Bob's bedside, until the German guards
grew weary of ordering him away and let him be. Never did a sick man
receive more faithful care or more earnest watching, and the doctor,
at his rare visits, looked curiously more than once at the pale,
unshaven, eager face of the old "non-com," as though he wondered at
such persistent faithfulness.
Bob was not suffering just then. For the first time in many weeks he
was free, and his hot aching body, lying on the narrow cot, did not
much trouble the real self that was back again on the firing line,
hovering over the German trenches in Benton's biplane, or swooping back
to safety from pursuing guns. In quiet moments, when Sergeant Cameron
fell into a doze by his bedside, Bob dreamed he was back in his barrack
room at West Point, planning his graduation leave. Then Lucy's face
would come before him and her voice sound in his ears. His mother's
eyes would smile at him, with their old cheerfulness, and the war
seemed very dreadful, but very dim and far away.
Once, after a long time during which he had lain still, not even
dreaming, too weary and weak to do more than lie dully half-asleep,
Bob opened his eyes with a sudden clearing of his senses. Voices were
close beside him, and he wanted to hear what they said, but he could
not understand them. Then he realized they were speaking German, and
felt a light-headed sort of joy at his own cleverness in discovering
it. He looked up from the knees of the man who stood beside his cot,
and found his face with a difficult, slow gaze. It was the doctor, and
Bob's troubled eyes fell from his face, for it was stern and frowning.
He met another glance, as a second man bent over him, and this face
arrested his attention by its difference from the doctor's light hair
and fair skin. The stranger had black smooth hair, dark, sparkling
eyes, and an olive complexion. Bob could see his face plainly, for it
was near him as the unknown bent over him from his short height. He
wanted to ask, "Who are you?" but the effort seemed too great to make,
and before he had summoned strength for it, the two had left his side
and their boots were clumping off across the room.
Half an hour later, in the office of the Commandant, the secretary
of the Spanish Embassy at Berlin urged his case strongly. He had an
ally more powerful than his arguments in the fever itself, which was
bringing a look of worn anxiety to the doctor's face. He had not time
nor medicine enough for the few patients the camps now held, and the
prospect of a wide-spread epidemic was horrible to his harassed and
order-loving soul. The conference was a short one, but the Spanish
Secretary went back to Berlin with a signed recommendation for Bob's
removal in his pocket, and a strong confidence that success awaited his
Ambassador, in his friendly prosecution of Mr. Leslie's demand.
Of all this neither Sergeant Cameron nor Bob knew anything, but on the
same day Bob's faithful nurse had cause for more tempered rejoicing.
One of the lulls in the fever, during which Captain Bertrand had been
used to go about with languid footsteps, came to Bob's relief. To his
bodily relief, for his mind felt almost as though he would rather have
stayed in the delirium when he awoke again to the dingy darkness of his
prison. But for the time he was much better, and the joy on Sergeant
Cameron's face told plainly what his desperate anxiety had been. Bob's
stammered thanks were quite inadequate, but without words a new bond of
friendship had been forged between the two, which they knew could never
break.
Bob ate a little bread, soaked in water, and wondered at the weakness
that would hardly let him lift his hand to feed himself. "I'm pretty
worthless, aren't I?" he asked, with a faint smile, then, with a sudden
recollection of his ministrations to poor Bertrand he added, "I wonder
what they've done to Bertrand! How I'd like to know."
"You haven't had any letters from home, Sergeant? Nothing for me?" was
another repeated question. The sergeant's reluctant denial cast Bob's
spirits down heavily, but in spite of all he convalesced--only, as both
he and Sergeant Cameron knew, he would succumb again as Bertrand had
done unless his youth and health could fight more strongly for him.
"Funny dreams I had," he said one day to Sergeant Cameron, as he sat
over his meagre breakfast. "I used to think I was at home, then I'd be
fighting again--I never got back to prison, there was some comfort in
that. One time I thought I saw a man here with the doctor--a stranger
with dark hair and eyes. He looked so different from these Germans--not
like a Frenchman either. I wonder what I was dreaming of?"
"Have a little of the bread, sir," suggested Sergeant Cameron. He was
rather non-committal that morning. A new British prisoner had just
whispered to him of General Byng's forced retreat from a part of his
hard-won gains, and the old soldier was torn with longing to get back
on to the field. "I might have done more if I'd stayed with the Major
on Governor's Island," he thought bitterly, then remembering Bob's need
with a quick rush of generosity he took back his own words.
But Bob was more fortunate in his illness than he or Sergeant Cameron
could guess. Before long it was made plain to them. A German officer
visited Bob's room and told him with brief phrases in uncertain English
of the negotiations for his exchange.
It was almost too much joy for one so weak and ill as Bob, and in
the midst of his rejoicing his thoughts turned sadly to his faithful
companion.
"Oh, Sergeant," he said the night the good news came, "I can't bear to
have all the luck! It isn't fair."
"Never mind that, my lad," answered the brave old veteran, forgetting
all titles of respect in the earnestness of the moment. "I'll do well
enough here, but you'd not have stayed with me long. Thank God you can
get out in time."
* * * * *
Ten days later, on a bright frosty morning, Mr. Leslie stood waiting
at a little railway station on the Swiss frontier. He took little heed
at first of the crowd around him, whose voices, high and low pitched,
stern, anxious, hopeful or merry, as they spoke for busy government
officials, Red Cross workers, or for the mothers, wives or children of
returning prisoners, sounded in his ears. In a babel of French, German,
Flemish and English they were giving voice to their impatient hopes
and lingering fears, until Mr. Leslie's tumultuous thoughts seemed
to become a part of theirs, and he turned to look at the picturesque
waiting groups with an understanding sympathy in his kind eyes.
His face was rather weary, and his ready smile a little slower than
when he had left America such a short while before. Even in peaceful
Switzerland some of the great war's tragedy had been vividly unrolled
before him. His search for Bob, through the Spanish Embassy at Berlin,
had been a short one, for American prisoners were few and easily
identified, but after that had come hopeless days of waiting in which
he had looked failure in the face. The German government showed no
inclination to set Bob free, and Mr. Leslie would have gone home
unsuccessful if the prisoner he sought had not become a trial and
menace to the prison camp that harbored him. Mr. Leslie blessed the
fever as he waited for the train that was bringing Bob to the frontier.
This realization of his highest hopes brought a warm flood of joy to
his heart as he thought of the message that was even then winging its
way across the sea.
Suddenly a little commotion rose among the crowd of people. They
cried out and pointed around the bend of track, among the trees. At
Mr. Leslie's side a little girl begged to be raised to her mother's
shoulders, and the woman, as she lifted her, had tears streaming down
her pale young face. The puff of smoke around the bend thickened, the
engine whistled, and slowly the long train came into view. A wild cheer
went up from men's and women's throats along the platform. Mr. Leslie
swallowed hard and winked the mist from his eyes. His heart was beating
faster than was comfortable as he went forward, as near as the watchful
guards allowed, to meet the slowing train.
Inside, stretchers were made ready for those prisoners--and they were
many--who could not walk from their places; others, who had lain on
their stretchers on stationary racks along the car, were lifted out by
willing and tender hands. But all who by any exertion of courage and
strength could walk out unassisted made shift to do so, and with these
Bob Gordon stood up wearily and tried his legs to make sure they would
hold him.
"No, I'm all right--I don't need you, _merci_," he told a waiting
attendant, not caring whether he spoke French or English. He was only
afraid that his head would burst with the rush of joy that came at
sight of that little station, with the far-off mountains behind it,
that spot outside of Germany which told him he was free. He saw his
feelings reflected in the worn faces about him--no pain had power to
check it for that moment--and with a sudden return of some of his old
agile strength, Bob walked from the car and stepped down upon the
platform.
Mr. Leslie saw him before he reached the ground. Through the crowd of
sad and joyful welcomers he made a swift way to his side. He had not
seen the boy for a year or more--not since furlough--he told himself,
desperately forcing back the shock of pity and distress that smote him
at sight of that thin, white young face and slow-moving figure. Was
this Bob, who had never been able to move quickly enough?
"The boy's had a fever, of course," Mr. Leslie muttered, though his
heart refused to think it a quite satisfactory explanation.
But just then Bob saw and recognized him, and the old merry smile came
swiftly to his lips. He raised his cap and waved it in a weak hurrah.
All Mr. Leslie's conflicting emotions vanished in the swift rush of one
thought--whatever he had been through, Bob was free! "Hello! Hello!" he
shouted, hardly knowing what he said.
"You, Cousin Henry! How on earth----" cried Bob, thrilling between
astonishment and utter happiness as Mr. Leslie, carefully avoiding a
wounded French soldier's toddling little son, reached past the guards
to grasp Bob's outstretched hand.