Ruth stood galvanized for a second. The man, beyond doubt, was a
German agent; he had addressed her as a spy. There was no other
possible explanation.
When the woman at Mrs. Corliss’ had disclosed herself as an enemy,
Ruth had balanced the harm the woman might do to America against the
harm she, herself, might do Germany, and Ruth had decided, rightly
or wrongly, to remain quiet. Now she could not do so. A German spy
in Chicago was a distant, only indirectly dangerous person; a spy in
Paris did most direct things--such as setting colored lights at the
bottoms of chimneys to guide the great black-crossed _Gothas_ which
bombed Paris by night, blowing down those buildings in the ruins of
which Ruth had seen men frantically digging by the early morning
light; they did things such as ... Ruth did not delay to catalog in
that flash the acts of Germans in Paris. She knew that man must be
arrested at whatever cost to herself.
She started after him down the Rue St. Jacques in the first spur of
this impulse. Fortunately, after leaving her, he did not gaze back,
but proceeded alertly along the street. A man and a woman spoke to
him; he bowed. Another passer-by bowed to him with the deference
shown a gentleman of importance and position. And Ruth slowed her
pursuit and followed a little distance behind him. He turned to the
Boulevard St. Michel, where others bowed to him, crossed the
boulevard and went into the Ecole de Médecine.
Ruth halted a man who had spoken to him and inquired, please, the
name of the gentleman who had just passed. The Frenchman informed
politely, “Monsieur de Trevenac.”
“The entire name, please?” Ruth pressed.
“Monsieur Louis de Trevenac,” the name was repeated as of one well
known. Ruth proceeded to the door of the Ecole de Médecine, where
inquiry confirmed the name; M. de Trevenac had just entered.
Ruth abandoned the pursuit. She was shaking with excitement under
her trim, khaki uniform and cape; but coolness had come to
her--coolness and that calm, competent thought which always
succeeded the irresponsible impulse with her. The German agent, M.
Louis de Trevenac, was not trying to escape from Paris; his
business, undoubtedly, was to remain here, and not in hiding, but
prominent and well known. If she accused him to a gendarme the alarm
would go at once to his confederates; it would be the stupidest and
clumsiest action she could take. Now that she knew him, she could
move most effectively by indirection; she need not betray herself at
all, either to the French or to the Germans.
She returned across the Seine and went to her work while she thought
it out. She could accomplish her purpose partly, perhaps, through
Hubert Lennon. She might accomplish it more safely through the aid
of other men whom she now knew; or through Mr. Mayhew. But she could
accomplish it best through Gerry Hull.
Accordingly she telephoned to Hubert that afternoon to meet her at
the _pension_ as soon as possible; and when he came, she asked him
if he knew where Gerry Hull was.
He was in Paris, Hubert had to confess; he had been in Paris for two
days.
Ruth could not help coloring. “I need to see him, Hubert. Tell me
where I can find him and I shall go there.”
“I’ll see that he comes here,” Hubert offered, a little
belligerently.
“Perhaps that is better,” Ruth accepted. Her orders from the Germans
had been to cultivate her acquaintance with Gerry Hull; yet, if they
were watching her now, it was better to have them see him come to
her. “But you must get him at once,” she said.
Hubert succeeded within the hour, for it was not yet five in the
afternoon when Gerry Hull appeared on the Rue des Saints Pères,
found the little _pension_ and rang. Ruth had him ushered into a
small private parlor, where she and Milicent entertained; she saw
him there alone.
He did not pretend that he had been about to call upon her when she
summoned him; nor did he apologize for not having called before. He
was glad to see her, particularly when it became plain that she had
sent for him for help in an emergency.
“I have received information, which I am quite sure is reliable,”
she said to him after she had closed the door and they sat down,
“but which I wish to have used anonymously, if it is at all
possible.”
“Information against someone?” he asked.
“Against a man who goes by the name of Louis de Trevenac,” she said
in a low voice. The placards all about Paris warning, _Be on guard!
Enemy ears listen!_ influenced her even behind the closed doors.
Gerry Hull started. Not greatly, for he had been in France long
enough to hear accusations--false or true--against almost anyone.
“You know him?” Ruth asked.
“He is well known,” Gerry said. “I’ve heard of him.”
“I am absolutely certain that he is a German spy.”
“How do you know?”
“If I wanted to tell how I know, I would not have sent for you. It
was not easy,” Ruth said with a gentle sweetness which caught him
with a flush. “I thought it was possible that you would know a
method of starting inquiry regarding one without having to give
details of the cause of your suspicion.”
Gerry nodded. “That’s possible.”
“Then please do that in regard to M. Louis de Trevenac. At once!”
He regarded her, conscious of having to make an effort to consider
what she asked without feeling for her. The attraction to her which
instantly had given him curiosity about her that first time they
met--attraction not merely to her warm, glowing vitality, but to the
purpose which imbued her and to the challenge of her eager, honest
mind--was swaying him. He got for a moment, and quite without his
will, the feeling of her lithe, round little form warm against him,
though she was drenched by the sea, that time he carried her. He
banished that deliberately by recalling the offense she had given
him of the criticism, as he had taken it and as he still took it, of
his comrades, and of himself, and of the great beliefs for which and
in which he lived.
He could not possibly question the whole loyalty of this girl; he
was not even considering that as he gazed at her. He really was
watching the pretty, alluring, all unconscious pulsations of color
in the clear, soft skin of her cheek and temple; he was watching the
blue of her eyes under her brown brows; watching the tiny tremblings
of her slender, well-shaped hands; and--as Sam Hilton used to do--he
was watching the hues of light glint in her hair as she moved her
head.
“I can try that, Miss Gail,” he said at last. “If there’s nothing
found out, there will be no particular concern for the source of
suspicion; but if what you say’s true, I may have to ask you a good
deal more.”
He left it thus when he went away a little later; for, though he
would have liked to stay, she did not wish him to, insisting that he
must proceed against Louis de Trevenac at once.
He did so; with results which brought him back to her at the end of
the second day.
“What else do you know in connection with De Trevenac?” he demanded
of her as soon as they were alone.
“You’re satisfied that he’s a spy?”
“The French found,” Gerry said, “a most astonishing lot of things.
They’ve mopped up about twenty more besides De Trevenac--twenty
they’d never even looked into. How did you know about him?”
The discoveries had brought Gerry to her almost in awe; and there
surged through her an impulse to tell him how she knew and all about
herself--to end to him and with him the long, every-waking-minute,
every-sleeping-minute strain of being an impostor, of facing
exposure, of playing a part. She had not let herself feel how that
strain pulled upon her, how lonely and frightened she was at times,
how ill it made her--sick physically as well as sick at heart--to
write her cheerful, newsy letters to Cynthia Gail’s parents, and to
read the letters written by mother and father to Cynthia, and to
which she must again reply; to write to the little boy in Decatur as
his sister would write; to write also--and in ways this was the
hardest--to the man who had loved Cynthia Gail and who, believing
that Cynthia was alive and she was Cynthia, was pouring out his love
to her in letters to which also she must reply and either make him
think that the girl whom he loved, and who had loved him, still
lived, and would not forgive him a single hasty word, or else that
she lived, and still loved him, and would be his in his arms again.
For a moment the impulse almost overmastered Ruth; but then she had
the better of it. If she told even this man who might trust
her--might, but how could she be sure?--she put the direction of her
fate in other hands. If she had told him about herself at Mrs.
Corliss’ or upon the boat, he would have prevented her from
proceeding alone as she had; he would have believed her unable to
best accomplish things by herself, or he would have thought the risk
too great; or some obstacle would have arisen to prevent her doing
that not inconsiderable thing she already had done.
If she was willing to give up now--to relieve herself of further
risk and become merely what she seemed, an ordinary girl worker, in
France--why she could tell him. But if she was to go ahead into the
greater hazards of which she dreamed, she must go of herself.
“I could tell you,” Ruth said, gazing up at Gerry, “that when I was
on the street I happened to overhear a conversation which made me
sure that he was a spy.”
“But it would not be the truth.”
“No; not quite.”
“I knew so.”
She looked down and he saw her suddenly shiver. He put a hand
quickly upon her and then the other hand; he held her by her slender
shoulders, her round arms quivering under his fingers. His pulses
leaped with warm, thrusting waves which seemed to start in his hands
holding her and to shake his whole body.
“What is it?” he asked.
She raised a hand and gently with her fingers, released one hand of
his from her shoulder; he removed the other.
“What have we done with De Trevenac and the rest?”
“They’re in a safe place for further investigation; nothing else,
yet.”
“But we’re going to?”
“Give ’em a trial, of course; and then shoot some of ’em anyway.”
“Monsieur de Trevenac?”
“Him pretty surely.”
A shudder jerked her shoulders together in a spasm; he wanted to
still her under his hands; but he did not. He knew why she asked
particularly about De Trevenac; she had seen him, heard his voice,
perhaps; she could picture him standing blindfolded to be shot--upon
her information. He would be her first slain.
Gerry had been a bit more brutal in his way of telling her than he
had intended; indeed, now he did not understand himself. He had
acted upon instinct to torment, rather than spare her, to see how
she took it.
She raised her head proudly. She’s beautiful, he thought. The poise
of that well-shaped head always was pretty; her shoulders, even
under the khaki, were pretty; they were well-formed, firm shoulders.
His gaze had dropped to them from her eyes; but now went back to her
blue eyes again.
“Did you ever see--before--a man you had to kill?” she asked.
“A few times,” he said.
“The first man you killed?”
“The first man I ever was certain that I killed was when I was in
the foreign legion,” he said. “We were advancing, using bayonets.
The Huns weren’t expecting an offensive there; it was the first year
after they’d failed in France and were using their best troops in
Russia. We found a Landsturm regiment against us--middle-aged men,
married mostly, I suppose; fathers. I saw the face of one a second
or so before I put my bayonet through him. A couple of times since,
maneuvering for position in the air, I’ve got a good glimpse at
chaps I was lucky enough to shoot down afterwards. I’d rather have
not, you know,” he confessed.
“I know,” Ruth said. “But we’re going to kill them--kill men, men,
and more men! We have to. I’ll not be too soft, don’t fear! I’ve
been all this month among women--girls and children, too--from the
departments they’ve overrun! Not that they’ve told me much which I
didn’t believe before; but--well, getting it direct is different.”
“Yes.”
He was thinking, she knew, of their initial encounter; was she so
pleased and proud of the tardiness of America now?
“I found out a remarkable thing from some Belgians,” she said, half
in answer to this unspoken challenge. “They told me that after the
Germans took complete possession of their country and forbade them
to wear Belgian colors or even rosette symbols, they took to wearing
American colors. We were neutral then; and the Germans didn’t dare
stop it; so they all wore, as their symbol of defiance, our flag!”
“That was when everyone thought always that we must come in,” he
rejoined. He was not thinking about what she was saying, but of her.
“You’ve had more in your mind all along than just coming here to do
relief work,” he announced his thought aloud to her.
“Yes, I had.”
“Can I ask what it is?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“But you’ve been doing some of it?”
“Some.”
“You’re going to keep at it?”
“If you’ll let me.”
“You mean by not making you tell how you found out about De Trevenac
and by keeping you out of that?”
She nodded.
“But you must tell me anything else of that sort you know.”
“I don’t know anything more of that sort except this: he had orders
to see that someone be sent to the vicinity of Roisel to observe
particularly dispositions of the British Fifth Army--their reserve
strength and whether there were signs that they will extend their
front.”
“That’s absolutely all?”
“Absolutely all--except that I think that was a particularly
imperative order.”
“They’d be sending people all along that front,” Gerry said. “We
know they’re to try an offensive where the armies join; the only
doubt is when. I say, I’ll report for you that you just overheard
something on the street; and I’ll try to get past with it. If I
can’t, you’ll see me here soon again; and soon anyway, if you don’t
mind, please.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Ruth said simply, “but I’ll not be here. I’m
leaving Paris in the morning.”
“Ho! Where to?”
“I applied day before yesterday for field work and got it; so I’m
going to Picardy.”
“That’s no address. What part?”
“Roisel.”
“Hmm!”
Was he evolving--she wondered--the fact that De Trevenac’s order to
someone to go to Roisel had been delivered to her?
Gerry had not got that far. He was thinking that this strange girl,
so unlike any other one whom he had known well, was evidently
determined to watch for herself the outcome about Roisel. He was
thinking, too, that Roisel was decidedly an inconvenient place for
him to visit. To be sure, it was in that direction that Agnes Ertyle
would be at work, for the hospital units, to which she was attached,
were caring for casualties from the Fifth Army; but till she would
be about that part of Picardy, he would have no errands likely to
take him there. And he wished that he had; or that this girl would
soon again be where he could see her.
The days when he could be free from duty were few and brief now; and
with the swift onset of spring they were certain to be fewer. For
tremendous movements--the most stupendous in all human history--were
clearly imminent; men, and women too, were certain to be called upon
to die in number beyond all past calculation.
Gerry Hull did not think of himself as one of those certain to die;
neither did he think of himself as one likely to live. Long ago he
had attained that new imbuement of being, independent of all
estimates of continuance of self, which was content with disposing
of the present hours as best might be. So he had been spending his
hours, whenever possible, with Agnes Ertyle; his next distant day
was to be with her. And heretofore there had been no other desire to
disturb him.
Now he was conscious--not of any inclination to spend an hour away
from Agnes when he might possibly be with her--but only of concern
for this blue-eyed, light-haired, warm, ardent girl from among his
own people.
“I don’t know what else you’re doing, Cynthia Gail,” he said both
names as he had that time he had carried her, “but I suppose it’s
dangerous. That’s all right,” he added hastily, “if the danger’s
necessary; if it’s not--well, it’s foolishness, you know. I wouldn’t
ask you to stop doing anything which could catch us another haul
like De Trevenac; but that may be more than a deadly game.” He held
out his hand to her and, when she placed hers in his, he held her
fingers firmly. “Don’t be foolish, please!”
“Don’t you!” she pleaded to him in return; and the sudden broaching
of the passion which had been below astounded her as much as it
dumfounded him. “You take no regard for yourself--none, none at
all!”
“That’s--newspaper nonsense,” he managed. He released her hand, but
her grasp held him now and he could not break it except violently.
“It’s not! I’ve talked to men who know you, who’ve flown with you!
They all say the same thing; and they all love you for it; you’ve no
regard for yourself, numbers against you or anything when you’ve
something you’ve determined to do! You do it! Oh, I wouldn’t have
you not--I wouldn’t want you different. But the same need now
doesn’t exist!”
Her fingers had slipped from him and they stood back a bit, both
breathing hard and very flushed as they faced each other.
“We’re outnumbered in France this spring as never before,” he
informed her soberly. “It’s not generally--discussed; but, since
Russia’s absolutely out, that’s the fact.”
“I know,” she said. “But what I meant was that you, and just a few
others, aren’t the only Americans here now. Oh, I’ve been able to
understand why you’ve flown and fought as you have, why your friends
are almost all fallen now and you, only by the grace of our God, are
left! I think I understood some of your feeling even before I knew
you and heard you speak. You and your friends whom you thought I
insulted--you, for a while, had to do the fighting for all America;
a score or so of you had to do, you felt, for a hundred million of
us who wouldn’t come in! But we’re coming now; a good many of us are
here!”
“Many?” he repeated. “A couple of hundred thousand among millions.
And the German millions are almost ready to strike! Forgive me, I
didn’t mean to scold you ever again for America; but--oh, you’ll
see! The husbands, and fathers, and the boys of France, the
husbands, and fathers, and the boys of England taking the blow
again, giving themselves to the guns to save us all while our young
men watch!”
She gazed up at him, but stayed silent now. Terror seized her that
she had done only harm, that she had stirred him to greater
regardlessness. His anger against her people, whom she defended,
had--as at that first time--banished his feeling for her. When he
gave her his hand again, he barely touched her fingers; and he was
gone.
Returning that night to his squadron at the front, he wrote her an
apology; but, after reading it over, tore it up. His squadron was
stationed far to the east and south of Roisel; and there was at that
time nothing in the military situation to give him greater concern
for that particular sector. Yet when news arrived he scanned it
quickly for report of operations about Roisel. However, though he
twice got leave of a day, he did not on either occasion penetrate
farther into Picardy than the little city where Lady Agnes now
lived.
All along the front, from Switzerland to the sea, the calm
continued; but few on either side of that line held illusions as to
the nature of that calm. Then, as all the world knows, suddenly upon
a morning the storm broke.
Gerry Hull received the bulletins which came over the military wire
which brought him also his orders. These orders were for his
squadron at once to move and report for service at the earliest
possible moment at a certain point in Picardy--which orders, as
orders usually go, were unexplained except as the news bulletins
gave them meaning.
The news, however, left no loopholes for doubt. The great German
assault, which had begun the morning before, already had developed a
complete break-through of the British front. The Germans, in one
tremendous dash, had overrun the first lines of defense, the second,
and the third; they were advancing now in open country with only
remnants of an army before them; and the center of this huge wave of
the enemy advance was what had been the French village of Roisel.