FROM RUSSIA INTO GERMANY
The snow-storm that began on Christmas afternoon raged for five days
before the grey skies lightened and the wind died down. And it was but
the first of a long series that during all of January kept Archangel and
the surrounding country buried beneath an impenetrable blanket which
effectually put an end to fighting, other than small raids and
infrequent air battles.
It was a world of snow; snow-covered roofs, paths dug between
snow-walls, trees bent down with the burden of their snow-laden
branches. Even a shout given in the open seemed dulled and deadened. The
air, ice-cold though it was, had no tonic sting to it. It penetrated,
chilling and dispiriting, to the soldiers’ very bones. The sun peeped
out from behind the everlasting clouds only to disappear again before
its pale warmth was felt, and in its place fog descended over the
snow-fields, shortening the brief hours of daylight still more, so that
sometimes the noon dinner hour was no more than over before darkness
began to fall.
The snow kept Alan Leslie in the American hospital for weeks after
Christmas, and when he and Bob were well on the road to convalescence it
prevented them from moving beyond the hospital’s small, crowded rooms,
where they shivered in draughts or crouched by the stove, longing for
sunshine and a chance to hobble about outdoors a little without plunging
into snowdrifts.
“This is no place for you to get well, Bob. We’ll send you away,” said
Major Greyson one morning.
As a result of his friend’s negotiations Bob received news about the
first of February which raised his spirits with a joyful leap from their
tired level.
“It’s all fixed, Bob,” the surgeon told him, coming into the room,
papers in hand. “You’re to go south at once, and what’s better, they
have consented to your father’s request. You are to go to the
convalescent hospital at Badheim, near Coblenz. Captain Leslie will
travel with you on his way to England. This climate won’t do any longer
for that foot of his.”
“Greyson, it’s you who fixed it all for me. I’ll never forget it!” Bob
glowed with delighted anticipation, walking on his mended leg with
sudden boldness and confidence. What were the eternal grey skies to him
now, or the darkness of early afternoon that already began to fill the
room? He forgot the hardships of the long journey before him, the weary
painful days he had just passed through, as well as the lingering
weakness of his body. “And Alan can go with me!” he exclaimed, hardly
believing his own good fortune. “When do we start, Greyson? My leg feels
as strong as iron.”
“Next week if all goes well. I shall send a Hospital Corps man with you.
Remember you’re not a well man yet, and have a long way to travel. Do
you feel strong enough to undertake it? From here to Moscow—to Warsaw—to
Berlin?”
“Around the world, if you like, so that it lands me somewhere out of the
Arctic Circle,” said Bob, undashed in spirit by any prospect of hardship
ahead. “Greyson, I’d like to go where the sun’s hot enough to sunburn
me, and where oranges would drop off the trees into my lap.”
“Coblenz won’t quite come up to that, but it’s a big improvement on
Archangel.”
“I wish you were coming, Greyson. As Alan would say, 'Horrid
beasts—Bolshies.’”
Ten days later Bob and Alan left Archangel to begin their journey south.
Toward the end of February, after weeks of slow, interrupted,
uncomfortable travel, they reached Berlin, and realized with a swift
reaction after days of discouragement, that the worst of the way lay
behind them.
“The longest part, you mean,” remarked Alan when Bob made this
observation. “Don’t know about the worst.”
He said this as they emerged from the Friedrichstrasse station onto the
broad avenue Friedrichstrasse.
While the Hospital Corps man who accompanied them went in search of a
taxicab the two young officers stood looking curiously about them. Alan
had but once in his life passed through Berlin and Bob had never set
foot in it, but this was not the reason for their motionless absorption.
There was something strangely restless and uneasy about the crowd
surging through the streets, hurrying in every direction, or stopping
short to exchange excited words. A kind of suspense hung over the city,
a tense expectation of disaster, perceptible even to strangers casually
entering the capital.
“What’s wrong with them, anyway, Alan?” asked Bob, completely puzzled.
“They look frightened. What can they be afraid of?”
“There’s something going on, that’s certain,” Alan responded, doubtfully
too. “Here’s our taxi, anyway. Let’s get to the hotel.”
Miller, the Hospital Corps man, had managed, with the aid of a
policeman, to find a ramshackle old vehicle, much the worse for wear,
driven by a man who looked as frightened as the rest of the population
and almost ran into the curb as he drew up before the station.
“A nice car you picked out, Miller,” remarked Bob as they got in. “Hotel
Adlon,” he told the driver.
“Best I could do, sir,” declared Miller, getting in after them. “There’s
some sort of a row on here.”
To Bob’s and Alan’s surprise the policeman climbed up beside the driver
and began talking volubly to him, evidently silencing the man’s uneasy
protests. The taxicab started off jerkily, the motor missing explosions
so frequently that Bob pricked up his ears, thinking of his airplane the
night he had fallen. “We shan’t get far in this,” he prophesied.
Alan was staring through the dirty window. A light snow had fallen over
the city, but now the sky was clearing and the sun shone from behind
drifting clouds. The same hurrying, debating, anxious crowd filled the
streets as the taxicab turned into the fine avenue of Unter den Linden
and approached the Pariser Platz and the more populous part of the city.
Half a mile from the station shots echoed from beyond a building close
at hand. A group of men ran out from behind a wall. The crowd shrieked,
and some soldiers, suddenly appearing, plunged after the fugitives.
The policeman beside the taxi driver shouted in his ear. The man shook
his head with every sign of unwillingness, but put on speed
nevertheless, and drove rapidly through the disorderly throng, dodging
the people as best he could.
“There’s a bit of a tittup here, Bob, and no mistake,” said Alan, his
face toward the window. “Do you 'Sprechen sie Deutsch’ enough to ask the
bobby to explain?”
“Yes, but why explain now? Let’s get to the hotel. It looks like a riot.
I’m not a bit anxious to get into a German quarrel.”
“Neither am I,” agreed Alan fervently. “Jove, it seems to be getting
thicker here.”
He pointed to a new congestion in the crowd which, apparently divided
into conflicting parties, swayed back and forth across the thoroughfare.
“Beg pardon, Captain Gordon,” broke in Miller, who sat grasping the two
hand-bags as though prepared to jump out at any emergency, “I understood
the policeman to say that there’s a fight on between the government
party and the rebels. Nobody knows yet who’s got the upper hand.”
Bob and Alan listened uncomprehendingly. No news had reached them in
Archangel of the serious outbreaks of Bolshevism in Berlin and elsewhere
in Germany. The name of Spartacans which the rebels had taken was an
unknown word to them. But the terror of the people, the disorder in the
once strictly governed city, was plain enough to their eyes.
The taxi continued to force a difficult way through the crowds
clustering about the streets, drawn into frightened groups that
dispersed into mad flight at each new alarm. Suddenly more shots rang
out, this time from the roof of a building bordering the great square
called Pariser Platz. The taxi came to an abrupt stop, and, before the
policeman could impede him, the driver had sprung from his place and was
running headlong across the square toward shelter.
Shots from rifles and machine guns placed on the roofs rained down on
the open. The people fled in screaming panic, leaving some of their
number stretched on the pavement. A company of soldiers, sheltered
behind improvised breastworks of tipped-over wagons, returned the fire,
but ineffectually, for the rebels were lying flat on the roofs, nearly
invisible. Shots pattered over the taxicab and a bullet smashed a window
and buried itself in the cushion behind Miller’s back.
“We can’t stay here!” Bob shouted. “Come, both of you. We’ll run for
it!”
“You can’t run, sir,” protested Miller, at his wits’ end. “Get behind
the cab, sir. Won’t that protect some?”
The policeman was already down and crouching against the cab, calling
out unintelligible orders to people who did not stop to heed him.
Another company of infantry reached the square on a run and went to the
help of their comrades. But the rebels’ increasing fire now made the
place almost untenable.
“We can’t stay here like rats in a trap,” Bob panted, furious at his
helplessness. “We can run if we take it slowly, Alan. Go ahead, Miller.
No need for you to dawdle, too.”
“Take the cushions, Bob! Hold them over us! Better than nothing,” cried
Alan.
He seized one of the heavy, hair-lined seats from the cab, tossed it to
Bob, picked up the other and, holding it above his head, began to run
slowly and limpingly across the square. Bob followed, groaning once in
spite of himself at the pain in his leg from this unaccustomed speed. He
heard bullets strike the pavement around him, and every second expected
one to penetrate the cushion, but desperately he ran on, following as
best he could the zigzag course Alan led to put the Spartacist riflemen
off their aim. In five minutes they reached the shelter of the houses on
the east side of the square and, spent and breathless, sank down on the
first threshold their steps encountered.
Miller, pale with alarm for his charges, opened one of the bags he had
doggedly clung to and thrust a flask into Bob’s hand. “We can’t stop
here but a moment, sir. The shots still reach us.” He pointed to a
bullet which had just clanged against the pavement.
“Alan!” said Bob, suddenly aghast. He seized the Britisher’s hand,
pushing back the sleeve from the wrist about which Alan was hurriedly
winding a blood-stained handkerchief. “You’re wounded!”
Alan shook his head. “Nothing but a flea-bite. A grazing bullet nipped
off a bit of skin. Honor bright, Bob.” He let Miller fasten the
handkerchief more securely. “Wounded upholding the German Empire,” he
remarked scornfully. “Not much glory to be got out of this.”
At the moment that he spoke a fresh burst of firing from the roofs on
the opposite side of the square sprayed the pavement in front of the
threshold where they sat with bullets. The square was now deserted,
except for the two companies of infantry crouched behind their shelter.
“Come on,” cried Alan, starting to his feet. “We’re done for if we stop
here.”
He glanced out into the square, then at the houses on each side of them.
“No chance out there,” said Bob. “Inside a house,—it’s the only way.”
Alan nodded, his keen eyes on the closed windows. Bob ran to one near
the street level, cold with a prickling dread of bullets in his back,
climbed upon the stone coping and tried to force up the sash. The window
was locked.
“Inhospitable beggars,” muttered Alan. He sprang on the coping and
grasped the window shutters. “Push me up, Miller—on to the sill!” he
ordered.
The orderly offered his shoulder for support. Alan reached the
window-sill, clung there kneeling, and, driving his elbow through the
glass of the upper frame, thrust in his hand and unlocked the catch. He
threw open the window, pushed back the heavy curtains and stepped into
the house. “All right,” he cried, holding out his hands to his
companions.
The next moment all three were standing inside a luxuriously furnished
room, leaving behind them the deadly rain of bullets and the wounded
lying in the sunlit square.
“What now?” inquired Bob, glancing about him uncertainly. “We look
uncommonly like housebreakers, but Heaven knows we had excuse enough.”
“Yes, my conscience doesn’t trouble me,” said Alan, closing the broken
window. “I tell you, Bob, I had the shakes at thought of coming all
through the war only to be brought down in the cross-fire of a silly
Boche quarrel. You’ve found out something on your journey at any rate,
my lad—the answer to one of those questions that are always worrying
you. Whether or not there are Germans with the Bolsheviki at Archangel,
there are certainly Bolshies in Germany.”
“I say, Alan, we’d better go and explain ourselves to somebody,”
suggested Bob, smiling in spite of himself at the cool casualness which
allowed Alan to stand and converse at his ease in any and all
circumstances.
“Right-o. Shall we go on through the house? Doesn’t seem to be anyone in
it. Pretty taste in furniture.”
The windows of the big drawing-room which they had entered were draped
with red velvet and white lace curtains and its floor was covered with a
red plush carpet. The cushions and upholstery of the massive chairs and
sofas were of the same color, and on the chimneypiece stood huge gilt
vases filled with artificial flowers. An air of gloomy richness pervaded
everything.
The young officers and the orderly went on into a hall, across from
which was a closed door. Carpeted stairs led to the second story. Behind
the closed doors sounded the murmur of voices.
“Shall we beard the Prussian in his den, Bob, or go out again and be
shot at?” asked Alan, jerking his head toward the door.
For answer Bob knocked at the door, put his hand on the knob and turned
it, Alan close behind. “You might wait here, Miller,” said Bob. The door
opened and the two officers entered a large library, around the center
table of which sat half a dozen grave, bearded, pompous-looking men,
engaged in excited discussion.
At sight of Bob and Alan several of them sprang to their feet in
startled haste. One or two showed signs of terror, the rest looked
puzzled, which feeling changed to something like indignation as the
young men’s uniforms identified them to the Germans’ eyes.
“What do you wish here, _meinen Herrn_?” demanded a beetle-browed,
professorial-looking person, whose worn frock coat curved tightly over
his rounded form. “Have you mistaken your way?”
“We came into this house to escape being shot in the square outside,”
said Bob without apology. “We have no other desire than to reach our
hotel in safety.”
“You haven’t noticed that there’s shooting going on, Herr Professor?
Take a short walk about the city,” suggested Alan, eyeing the group.
His German was so bad that he was scarcely understood, but something of
veiled contempt in his tone penetrated the Germans’ wits. Resentful
glances were turned on the intruders. The man who had spoken before said
sharply, his bushy brows drawn closer together:
“We regret extremely that you were exposed to danger. I and my
colleagues, the Herrn Councillors, are gathered here to decide how to
restore order.” Casting an unfriendly eye at the young officers’
immovable faces he added with gloomy bitterness, “This anarchy is the
result of a long and cruel war.”
“Yes, too bad you started it,” remarked Alan, losing his temper.
Bob nudged him to be silent. “Could you give us a police escort, or a
vehicle of some sort, _mein Herr_?” he asked. “We want to reach the
hotel as soon as possible. Our train goes out this evening.”
“Certainly. That is reasonable,” acceded the German, pompously. He sat
down before a telephone on the table and for five minutes vainly tried
to get any communication. One of his colleagues muttered angrily:
“The Spartacans have cut some of the wires. I doubt if you can get a
police station.”
The man at the telephone shook his head. “No, no. It’s the current
that’s weak. The power houses are not——” He broke off to say to Bob,
with a sort of exasperated dignity, “I will send a servant to fetch you
a taxicab and an escort.”
“Very well,” agreed Bob. “Shall we wait in the drawing-room across the
hall?”
“Yes, yes—_sehr gut_.” The German walked with the officers to the
library door, his face showing all the angry annoyance he was powerless
to conceal. “Cursed rebels,” he growled, more to himself than to his
listeners. “I will inform you, gentlemen, when the taxi arrives.”
“He’s more put out because we saw his helplessness than at the real
state of things,” said Alan as they sank down into the depths of a red
plush sofa to wait.
“It’s funny,” pondered Bob, looking out between the heavy curtains at
the square, where the firing had slackened. “In spite of Berlin’s former
good government they don’t seem to have any resources at a time like
this. Those old codgers talking in there aren’t going to accomplish
much.”
“They only know how to govern by force. Their leaders have no real
influence over the people,” commented Alan, in one of his rare
thoughtful moments. “I expect that burly chap who talked with us is lord
and master of all this grandeur.” He waved one hand about the
drawing-room. “How can he think at all, Bob? Wouldn’t even your lively
brain be stifled in this wilderness of plush and lace? Why,
hello—they’ve sent a woman for the taxi! Isn’t that just like them?”
The street door had closed before he spoke and a slight figure came into
view in front of the house—a woman with head and shoulders wrapped in a
shawl, who hesitated, visibly frightened, though the firing had ceased
and a few citizens again ventured abroad. Bob went to the window and
looked down at her as, having evidently summoned up her courage, she
stepped off the curb, only to hesitate again on the edge of the square.
“What a beastly shame! Let’s stop her,” he exclaimed, fumbling with the
window-catch beyond the layers of curtain.
“Out the front door’s the best,” said Alan, making for the hall. “She
won’t hear you from inside.”
He unbolted the house door, pulled it open and ran down the steps. “You
speak to her, Bob,” he called back as his cousin followed him. “My
German is rather worse than yours.”
Though all was quiet in the square, an uneasy silence, and the
crouching, watchful figures of infantrymen below and Spartacans above
suggested that the firing might recommence at any moment. Bob ran to the
woman’s side and touched her arm just as she started at last to cross
the square.
“You need not go, Frau,” he said, close to her ear. “It’s no time for
women to be out. Tell me where the police——” He paused, staring into her
face, struck dumb with amazement.
“Mr. Bob!” The woman’s voice quivered. Her thin hands clasped the young
officer’s arm in her overpowering excitement. “Oh, Mr. Bob—you here!”
She spoke in English and Bob abandoned his halting German, though now he
hardly knew what he answered in the shock of his astonishment.
“You—Elizabeth! Wait, you can’t go on. Come back into the house.”
“I say, she speaks English? She knows you?” demanded Alan, staring.
Bob had not time to reply before the machine guns on the opposite
roofs, as though they had received a fresh supply of ammunition-belts,
reopened fire. The silence of the square was rudely shattered.
Put-put-put-put-a-put the machine guns hammered, and the rifles
cracked in scattering shots sent by both rebels and loyalists. Cries
resounded from neighboring windows, and from the Spartacan stronghold
on the roofs came faint shouts of triumph.
Bob caught Elizabeth’s shoulder and pushed her toward the house door.
“Go back! Hide!” he ordered. “We’ll run for it.”
The bullets were not yet falling dangerously near. Both Bob and Alan
felt so unwilling to return to the Herr Councillor’s drawing-room for an
indefinite wait that in silent agreement they began running along the
street bordering the square, to the first corner, down which they
turned.
The firing sounded fainter, though even here few passers-by were to be
met with, their pale, frightened faces, and the locked and shuttered
windows of every house showing a state of fear bordering on panic. At
the next corner Bob and Alan paused uncertainly, looking vainly about
for a policeman.
“Not that way, Mr. Bob! To the right side turn,” cried a panting voice
just behind.
Elizabeth came up running, her thin little figure shivering in the poor
shawl wrapped about her, her quick breath puffing into the cold air.
“Elizabeth!” Bob’s voice held sharp reproach. “Why didn’t you go back to
your master’s house? What are you doing here?”
“You cannot the police find, Mr. Bob. I will show you,” declared the
German woman, still panting. “This way come!” She led the way across the
street and around a corner. The officers followed, Alan’s curiosity no
longer to be suppressed.
“Who is she, Bob? Are you in league with the enemy?”
“She’s not the enemy, poor old soul. She’s as pro-Ally as we are. She’s
done the Allies more than one good turn. She was our servant at home in
America before the war. Which way now, Elizabeth?” he asked, as the
German woman paused for a second, undecided.
“This way, I think.” She hurried on down another street, evidently
avoiding open places and crowded thoroughfares. In ten minutes more the
three emerged on to Unter den Linden and saw the colored lamp of a
police station over a door a few steps away.
“Now, Elizabeth, we’re all right. Go back, won’t you? Get under shelter
before the firing grows worse. Else you may not be able to get into the
house at all,” entreated Bob, pausing on the sidewalk by the police
station door.
“I don’t want to go back, Mr. Bob,” said Elizabeth, her voice shaking
with some emotion that was neither fear nor weariness.
Bob looked into her face and saw that the soft, dark eyes were shining
with a sudden hope and joy that illumined her thin, worn face and
brought almost a smile to her pale lips.
“I want to stay with you, Mr. Bob. Oh, don’t leave me behind, dear, kind
Mr. Bob! Take me back to America! Surely God put me in your path!”
The objections trembling on Bob’s lips were too many to find expression
at that moment. He could not bring himself to speak a curt refusal. The
little German woman’s face touched him too deeply with all its gentle
reminders of old days. He hesitated, glanced around him at the avenue,
along the sidewalks and pavements of which disorderly crowds were
strolling, arguing, fighting, shouting and gesticulating—occasionally
broken up by groups of harassed policemen charging fiercely into their
midst. Bob felt Alan’s hand on his arm and put Elizabeth off for the
moment by saying:
“Elizabeth, we can’t talk now. Wait until we find a taxi and get to the
hotel. You can come that far, anyhow.”
Elizabeth nodded, her habitual patience overcoming her eager longing to
be answered. She followed the two young men into the station, where a
red-faced, worried-looking police sergeant was seated before a desk, his
ear to the telephone, his hand fingering reports lying in scattered
heaps in front of him. He spoke into the telephone:
“_Ja, ja._ You can do nothing? Himmel! Then call out men from the next
precinct. There are none? You ass, what is the use in telling me that?
Wait? Yes, yes—hurry!”
He hung up, breathing fast, caught sight of his visitors, stared, then
rose to his feet, demanding, in a voice still unsteady with anger, “What
do you wish, Herrn Officers?”
“A taxi, please, and a policeman to escort us to our hotel,” requested
Bob.
“Everybody’s shooting at us. They don’t seem to know the war’s over,”
added Alan, looking without any trace of sympathy at the sergeant’s
frowning, troubled face.
Alan had suffered much during the war, and, in the course of many
gallant exploits, had been three times wounded, and left with a bullet
buried in his knee which hurt him atrociously when least expected. Human
nature forbade that such mild revenge as this should not be sweet to
him.
The sergeant grew a deeper crimson, casting a sour look at the young
Britisher. “I will get you a taxi, Herr Officer,” he said to Bob. “But a
policeman—where are they? I haven’t a man left here.”
“All right, a taxi will do,” said Bob. “Only, please tell the driver to
stick to his job and not run away at the first shot.”
“And if I tell him, will he do it?” grumbled the sergeant. He picked up
the telephone once more.
It was half an hour before he succeeded in getting hold of a taxi, and
he probably never would have done so if Bob had not told him to offer
double tariff to pay the driver for his fear of death. In that half hour
Elizabeth drew from Bob as much of the Gordon family’s recent history as
he could collect his wits to impart. At the news that General Gordon was
stationed at Coblenz she gave a little cry of joyful thanksgiving.
“I could go there with you, Mr. Bob? Say yes! I could the house of your
father keep? I will the hardest work do!”
“Elizabeth, don’t be in a hurry,” Bob fenced, casting about for decisive
objections. “How can you run away from Berlin like this? It’s idiotic.
You may be sorry. Why, you’ve no baggage nor anything.”
“My baggage, Mr. Bob? The best clothes I have are on my back. No people
in Berlin have good clothes now, not even the rich.”
Alan said in Bob’s ear, “Boche and all, I feel sorry for her. Let’s buy
her a new shawl, if nothing else.”
Bob gave up the struggle of trying to harden his heart against
Elizabeth’s pleadings. With Lucy in his mind he said, as the slow taxi
neared the hotel, which after all this delay turned out to be on the
Pariser Platz itself, some hundred yards from the councillor’s house.
“All right, Elizabeth, I’ll take you to Coblenz. I don’t say to
America.”