A month in bed brought me the period when I was declared out of danger,
and was allowed to sit up in a chair near a window overlooking a
little garden bright with hollyhocks and sunflowers. Then came the day
when, leaning on the arm of Sister Madeleine--the name under which,
she said, I was to know her--I took my first walk and descended into
that garden, to lie there for the best hours of the day on a _chaise
longue_, conversing with her, or, when she was occupied with other
wounded, reading and reflecting. It was Sister Madeleine who told
me of passing events. But, oh! how discreetly she broke the news of
the triumphant march of the German armies southward to Dinant and
westward to Maubeuge! It required no great psychological insight on
my part to detect where her sympathies lay. Her looks when, the wind
being favourable, the faint sound of cannon reached us, the tone of
her voice when France was named, her significant reticence on certain
occasions, told me much more than actual words. One of these occasions
stands out in my mind with particular prominence, owing to my having
read in her words a warning, and conceived for the first time the idea
of escape.
"The Herr Doktor is immensely pleased with the progress you are making,
Captain X----," said Sister Madeleine, rising from my side to pluck
some Michaelmas daisies from an adjoining border. "He says you may be
allowed soon to take a little gentle exercise in the garden, and do a
little gardening, too, if you are a flower-lover, as I doubt not. Are
you inclined that way?"
"I shall be delighted to turn my hand to weeding and planting," I
replied. "The garden indeed needs attention!"
"_N'est ce pas?_ Poor Jean, our gardener, now with the French colours,
would be heartbroken if only he could see the wilderness his little
earthly paradise has become. How grateful he will be to you when he
returns--if he ever should return after this dreadful war--and finds
that someone has been tending his beloved chrysanthemums and dahlias.
When the mobilization order reached him he was in the midst of potting
slips of geranium in the tool and potting shed yonder"--motioning to a
little wooden construction at the end of the garden--"and everything
there is just as he left it. A heap of withered slips lies side by
side with rows of empty flower-pots, whilst in a corner I saw his
working-clothes, which he hastily changed before he came to the house
to wish us good-bye and passed into the unknown."
"I must try to prove myself to be a worthy successor to the brave
fellow," I said. "Don't you think, Sister Madeleine, that in one
respect--my unkempt appearance--I shall not make a bad substitute?"
Walking back to me with her bouquet, she gave me a critical look and
laughed. Certainly, no one at home would have recognized me as I now
was, with my long beard and moustache and uncut hair. All at once her
face became serious, and, without replying to my question, she said:--
"There is no reason why you should not start to-morrow. But don't do
too much to begin with. Though I should like to have you here much
longer, it would grieve me if that were the result of a relapse.
You must get back your strength by degrees. And I fear you will
need every ounce of it in the future. No; do rather too little than
too much. I have no wish to hear that the Kommandatur at Charleroi,
who, I understand, is showing great severity just now towards French
prisoners, should decide that you have recovered sufficiently to be
included in the next batch to be sent into Germany."
And with these significant words Sister Madeleine left me, to carry her
flowers to the bedsides of her other patients, and, possibly, to allow
me to reflect.
Was it not clear that, indirectly, she had indicated a means of escape?
A feeling of quasi-loyalty towards those who had enabled her to nurse
one of her countrymen back to health and strength prevented her from
bluntly saying: "There is a tool-shed, in which you will find a suit of
old clothes; disguise yourself in them and flee." But her meaning was
plain. The key to freedom had been placed in my hands, and it was for
me to use it.