THE MYSTERY OF THE FOREST
General Gordon expected Bob’s arrival in Coblenz from day to day, but
this did not prevent his surprise when, on leaving the house one
February afternoon, he met Bob, Alan and Elizabeth descending at his
door-step.
“Bob!” cried the elder officer, catching his son’s hands in his, and
scanning face and figure for signs of the ravages of pain and illness.
“You don’t look so bad, my boy. I’m no end glad to see you. Who’s this?”
He had turned toward Alan, but at one glimpse of Elizabeth he forgot the
Britisher entirely and stood mutely staring.
“Major—I mean to say—General—I with Mr. Bob come,” Elizabeth faltered
flushing with painful uncertainty as to the welcome that would be
accorded her.
Bob, too, looked at his father a little anxiously, wondering if he would
be obliged to send the little German woman back to Berlin, but General
Gordon’s first words, as a slow smile lighted up his face, at once
reassured him.
“Well, Elizabeth, I think you’re destined to stick by the Gordon family.
You’ve come back to us?”
“General—could I—can I—for you work once more again?” Elizabeth
entreated, her English deserting her as it always did in moments of
strong feeling or excitement. Her gentle, pleading eyes were raised to
Bob’s father, who did not hesitate to reply, as he laid a friendly hand
on her shoulder.
“Do you think I could refuse you, after what you have done for my
children? Stay here and welcome.”
Suddenly remembering Alan, who stood silently watching this scene, to
him somewhat incomprehensible, General Gordon broke off to say:
“Bob, ask your friend to excuse my bad manners. What is your name,
Captain?”
“Alan Leslie, Cousin James, so please you,” replied Alan, his eyes
twinkling with a childish, never-failing love of surprising people.
“There’s no limit to what Bob can bring home with him.”
After this meeting only a few hours elapsed before General Gordon took
his son out to Badheim hospital, where Bob was expected to complete his
convalescence. The long, tedious journey from Archangel, especially the
day spent in Berlin, had set him back more than he liked to admit, and
he foresaw that active duty would have to be postponed a few weeks
longer. Alan, likewise, found his leg and foot very painful and
willingly enough accepted an American surgeon’s advice to delay his
departure to England.
“Now that I know I’m sure to get there, I can be patient,” he said to
Bob, all his old, care-free spirits restored at the near approach of
home and freedom. “It won’t be half bad to stay on a bit with you, and,
besides, I’d like to see your sister. Arthur’s always talking about her.
When you all come back to England to stop with us I don’t want to be the
only one of the family who doesn’t know her.”
There were more introductions to be made at Badheim hospital, when Lucy
had got over her first delight at seeing Bob so nearly well and at
actually having him there in her charge. A few gay words from Alan’s
careless lips swept away the momentary seriousness that fell upon her in
her boundless gratitude at Bob’s return. She presented her brother and
Alan to Armand and Michelle, a thrill of pleasure warming her from all
the sad misgivings of past days.
Bob had to describe Elizabeth’s reappearance and all that followed. Lucy
could not curb her impatience long to hear the whole of her brother’s
adventures since the unlucky twenty-third of December—or so Bob
accounted it, thinking regretfully of Rittermann still flying free. Lucy
inwardly rejoiced at the disaster that had brought him out of the frozen
North. In less than a day she had gleaned from him the greater part of
the happenings of the past two months. Also, not strange to anyone who
knew the extent of Bob’s and Lucy’s confidence, she had told him of her
selfish repinings at the delayed return to America, and as many
incidents as she had time for of the daily life at the little hospital
buried in the forest.
In the midst of one of these conversations, as Bob lay back in solid
comfort on a long chair by a window overlooking the clearing, Lucy
started up at seeing a well-known figure mount the hospital steps.
“Oh, Bob, look—it’s Larry.”
Bob was out of his chair in a second and, unmindful of Lucy’s cautions,
made for the door and met his friend on the threshold.
“Well, Bob! And all right, too—not a thing wrong with you,” cried Larry,
catching Bob’s shoulders and giving him a shake in his relief and
satisfaction. “If I’d listened to Lucy, some of these days we’ve been
through, I’d have imagined you’d come back in little pieces. She’s a
pessimist where you’re concerned. Come in and sit down, idiot—I’ll be
giving you a relapse,” said Larry, all in one breath, as he led Bob back
to his chair.
“It’s great to see you, Larry,” declared Bob, sinking down obediently,
though he added, as a protest against further coddling, “I’m not so
helpless, you know. A little tired now because Alan Leslie and I had to
run and dodge through Berlin to escape Spartacan bullets.”
“No! Let’s hear about it. Are things so bad there? Coblenz seems as
quiet as a graveyard.”
“I’ll tell you the whole yarn presently. I want you to meet my cousin.
Lucy, see if Alan’s anywhere around. I think you and he will get along,
Larry. There’s something wonderfully alike in your way of looking at
things—a sort of happy-go-luckiness——”
“I suppose you mean that he doesn’t expect to shoulder the
responsibilities for his regiment, or to capture the entire Bolshevik
army by himself,” retorted Larry. “He was with you in Berlin, you said?
Now I see why you got out alive.”
Bob laughed at him. “It sounds natural to hear you going for me, Larry,”
he said. “I don’t mean that Alan won’t plunge into danger—you do it,
too, in spite of that cautious talk. I mean he won’t bother to think
things out, but takes them calmly as they come. He’s a fine chap to have
along in a tight place. You can’t phase him—he’s always prepared for the
worst.”
“Like Lucy,” remarked Larry, looking toward the door through which she
had disappeared. “That girl has no end of sand, Bob. She went on working
without a murmur—except once in a while to me—when no one knew just how
things were with you. She’s been through a lot in the past two years. I
hope you can all go home soon.”
“We can’t, though—not Father nor I. And what is the use in Lucy’s going
home when Father is stationed here? But we’ll go to England before long.
The Leslies want us to come.”
“Hooray, will you?” cried Larry, with what seemed quite disproportionate
satisfaction until he explained, “I’m going there myself in a month or
two. They’ve offered me the chance to finish at Oxford the year I lost
at Yale when war began.”
* * * * *
On the Sunday following Bob’s and Alan’s arrival the two convalescents
declared themselves longing for a little exercise. Lucy and Michelle,
finding it hard work to keep them quiet inside the hospital, proposed a
short walk through the forest.
“Seems to be your one idea of amusement here—a walk in the forest,” said
Larry, who had come out to dinner and, together with Armand, volunteered
to join the party.
“It is,” said Lucy. With faint irony she added, “Perhaps you’d rather
take a walk around and around the clearing?”
“You will see it is pleasant in the wood,” put in Michelle. “And there
we often meet the little Boche children of Franz the _bucheron_.”
“You and Bob and Lucy have all sorts of queer friends, Mlle. de la
Tour,” observed Alan, walking cautiously on the uneven ground, for his
foot hurt him. “When I first saw Bob in Archangel he was having an
all-day talk with a wild-looking Bolshevik who pretended to be something
different——”
“He was, too, if you mean Androvsky,” interrupted Bob.
“And no sooner do we get to Berlin,” continued Alan, unheeding, “than he
finds an old German friend and fetches her along to Coblenz.”
“Oh, but Elizabeth is pro-Ally, Alan,” protested Lucy eagerly. “She has
been for two years. Can’t you get that through your head?”
“It took me a long time to do so,” said Michelle, smiling. “You
remember, Lucy, how I would not believe?”
“Yes, I don’t blame you.” Lucy caught her friend’s arm with swift
recollection of Château-Plessis and the days of captivity. “But once you
knew her you couldn’t help trusting her.”
“Poor old thing, she felt lost in Prussia,” said Bob, remembering the
entreaty of Elizabeth’s eyes and voice in the midst of the Berlin
hurly-burly. “She wants awfully to go back to America.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have her bring friend husband along, if I were you,
Bob,” advised Larry. “I didn’t take much to Karl.”
“Even before the war I hated him,” said Bob thoughtfully. “He’s given me
some awful moments! I never want to set eyes on him again.”
“That Franz isn’t so unlike him—he has the same sly look,” commented
Larry. “And a kind of sour smile as though he had swallowed something
bitter.”
“Perhaps smiling at American officers gives him a sick feeling,” said
Alan. “What do you have to do with him?”
“Nothing,” said Lucy, “except that he supplies the hospital with wood.
But he lives in the forest near the mineral spring, so we often see him,
for Michelle and I like to play with his children. They are children,
you know Boche or not—and quite cunning.”
“Cunning—I wager they are. Cunning as foxes,” declared Alan, feeling a
fresh grudge against his late enemies as the old wound in his knee gave
him a sharp twinge.
“No, I mean cunning in the American sense,” explained Lucy, laughing.
“For us it means—well—pretty, amusing—or, what else, Bob?”
“Anything that children are—or kittens or puppies,” supplemented Bob
vaguely.
“Captain Beattie always objected to my using cunning that way,” said
Lucy, “but he never could give me the right word to take its place. Oh,
look, here comes Adelheid.”
They had no more than left the hospital clearing to enter the forest,
through which the bright afternoon sun fell in delicate shafts on the
snow-covered ground, but Adelheid had grown bolder now, and sought her
friends almost at the hospital doors.
“Good-day, young ladies,” she greeted Lucy and Michelle, running up with
a beaming smile, her flaxen braids streaming. “And _meinen Herrn_,
good-day to you,” she stammered, bobbing a stiff little curtsey to the
four officers, her fluent tongue checked by a sudden return of shyness.
“Where are the boys, Adelheid?” asked Lucy, taking her hand. “Have you
lost them in the woods again?”
“Ach, no, Fräulein, I will not do that any more, for Papachen whipped
me,” cried the child, looking up with friendly confidence into Lucy’s
face. “He is cross now, Papachen. I think he is angry about something. I
don’t know what.”
Larry asked Michelle, “Is Franz as afraid as ever of leaving Adelheid
alone with you? Something funny there.”
“Yes, Captain Eaton, he calls her often away from us—although when he
himself is with her he lets her stay as long as she pleases. He even
smiles and approves Lucy’s kindness to the little ones.”
“What is it he’s afraid she will tell?” Larry pondered.
“She has told us all sorts of tales, but nothing he could fear to have
known, unless he is ashamed of his poverty,” Michelle answered
thoughtfully. “What most puzzles me is the sad, anxious face of the
children’s _maman_. She has some grief more than everyday cares. She
looks frightened.”
“Probably the old Boche beats her as he does this poor little
Bocheling,” surmised Alan, who had listened to Michelle’s words. “You
speak English very well indeed, Mademoiselle. Have you ever been in
England?”
“Yes, before the war,” Michelle nodded, “but not for very long. Armand
speaks better than I.”
“It’s time you both came again,” suggested the Britisher. “The war’s
over.”
“Is it, I wonder?” said Bob with sudden misgivings.
Alan gave him an exasperated glance. “Are you going to beg in again, you
trouble-hunter?” he demanded. “Will you believe it, Captain Eaton, I had
no sooner got my feet unfrozen, up in that beastly Arctic hole, than
this bally cousin of mine began asking me questions about the
organization of the enemy and who was leading them. As though I wasn’t
fed-up enough with Bolshies not to discuss them in my leisure hours.“
“He’s always like that,” said Larry, laughing. “You think you have a
peaceful moment only to find he’s discovered some horrid mission and
embarked on it. He has a future before him—I don’t deny that. But we’ll
have the easier time of it.”
“You have a right to speak feelingly, Larry,” said Bob, smiling. “You’ve
been my rescuer more than once.”
Bob was growing light-hearted, except for his moments of doubt and
uncertainty. His leg was really better to-day. Larry and Alan were
getting on together as well as he had prophesied, and he foresaw a
pleasant fireside for Larry at Highland House during his year in
England.
[Illustration: Larry Stood With Lucy by the Door]
They approached the woodcutter’s clearing and came to the spring, which
still bubbled clear, though a thin film of ice clung to the edges of the
stone. Bob bent over the basin, watching the water spurt up endlessly
from the sandy bottom, where grains of sand danced in the rapid stream
and green mosses stirred their delicate tendrils. Larry stood with Lucy
by the door of the rustic shed. From the cottage chimney rose a waving
white smoke-column.
“Hello, who’s that?” he asked, pointing.
“Oh, oh!” cried Adelheid, who had peered out too, and now shook her
little head sadly, a cloud dimming her brightness. “Mamachen will not be
pleased. It is the Herr Johann.”
At the child’s earnest words the whole party looked curiously through
the trees at the man who was nearing the threshold of Franz’ cottage,
treading the snow with a quick, light step. He was tall and blond,
dressed like a hunter, with straight knickerbockers, short jacket and
Tyrolean cap. His clothes seemed good, his manner assured, and as he
reached the cottage door he called, “Franz! Franz! It is I.”
The woodcutter appeared from behind the cottage, brushing off the bark
which clung to him after piling up his fagots.
“Good-day, Herr Johann,” he said, his loud voice carrying far in the
winter solitude. Hurrying to the cottage door he flung it open and
signed to the stranger to enter.
“Been heaping up your fagots, eh?” inquired Herr Johann, lingering a
moment at the door-step to glance at the neat piles of wood, fruits of
the woodcutter’s daily toil. “Ah, Franz, my good fellow, you’ll be rich
yet.”
“Be pleased to enter,” invited Franz, holding open the door. The two
disappeared inside and the door was closed.
“Who is Herr Johann, Adelheid?” asked Bob. “Do you know him?”
“Yes, Herr Officer,” the little girl responded, her face still troubled.
“He is a gentleman whom Papachen has served for many years. Oh, in the
war, and long ago! But now when he comes—I don’t know why—my mother is
more than ever unhappy. She cries and Papachen grows angry. The last
time Herr Johann came she begged Papachen not to go with him into the
forest, but he would go and said only, 'Do you want always to be poor
and hungry?’ Herr Johann heard and laughed. And he gave Wilhelm a mark,
but Mamachen took it from him.”
“Is that all you can tell?” inquired Larry. “Hasn’t he another name
besides Herr Johann?”
“I am sure he has, but I do not know it. I have never dared talk to him.
He seems a great man, very proud.”
“She’s hit it there,” remarked Larry. “What is the great man doing here?
I don’t suppose he comes after wood.”
“That straight figure has worn the uniform of a Prussian officer,” said
Armand, still looking toward the cottage door. “And he seems not to have
lost the habit of giving orders.”
“What is a hunter doing in the winter forest?” asked Alan. “The chance
of finding a few rabbits in a hollow can’t allure our friend Boche from
very far.”
“Gives us something to wonder about, anyway,” said Larry.
“Still, if he is hunting, it’s not so strange that he should stop to get
warm in Franz’ cottage,” declared Lucy, unwilling to be disturbed.
“No, but why should the child’s mother feel badly about that?” objected
Bob.
“And the man has been here often. He had the air of coming to a
rendezvous,” added Armand.
“He spoke to Franz like a master,” said Michelle, leaning against a pine
tree, her clear, grave eyes looking off into the distance.
“Adelheid,” Bob demanded, “how do you know that Herr Johann is a
gentleman? How do you know he is not a poor hunter, or a woodcutter like
your father?”
“Ach, Herr Officer, no!” protested Adelheid, visibly shocked. “He is a
Herr, a rich man to be treated with respect. You have only to hear him
talk——”
“A great man, in her eyes, is someone in a good coat who gives orders in
a loud voice,” said Alan.
“This wonderful Johann looks to me like a cocky young lieutenant who
doesn’t yet know he’s demobilized. Adelheid, you’re shivering.” He
dropped on one knee to the child’s height and, studying the little
figure wrapped in its tattered shawl, added in fragmentary German, “Run
home and don’t stand here in the snow.”
“I’ve made her new stockings,” said Lucy, taking Adelheid’s cold little
hand. “But the boys seem to wear everything and leave Adelheid only the
old rags. They are terribly poor.”
“Are you coming to the cottage, Fräulein?” coaxed Adelheid. Then,
suddenly remembering Herr Johann, she cried fearfully, “Oh, no, no, do
not come now! The Herr Johann fills both rooms, walking up and down to
talk, and it is better not to disturb him.”
“Much better,” agreed Bob. “Though I’d rather like to ask him a few
questions. Shall we go back to the hospital? I’m getting cold standing
here in ambush.”
“Here comes the quarry, I expect,” said Alan as the cottage door
reopened.
He and the others, about to turn back through the wood, paused a moment
to watch the unknown come out, still talking to Franz, who followed at
his heels. The two little boys peeped timidly around from behind their
father’s legs.
“_Sehr gut!_” exclaimed Herr Johann, a touch of impatience in his tone,
in spite of his words. “Till Tuesday, then——” He approached the
woodcutter and spoke close to his ear. Franz shook his head, denying
something with energy. Herr Johann appeared satisfied, gave Franz a curt
nod and started briskly off across the clearing, leaving the woodcutter
bowing to his back, his old cloth cap in his hand.
“He’s politer to Herr Johann than to us,” remarked Larry, watching the
German’s clumsy courtesies with surprised amusement. “'Till Tuesday.’ I
can’t see the attraction.”
“Good-bye!” cried Adelheid, with a sudden prick of conscience at seeing
her father glance inquiringly about the clearing. She flashed a brief
smile at her friends and ran through the trees into the open, to where
Franz stood awaiting her beside the cottage door.
“He is always afraid that she has gone to the hospital to see us,”
declared Michelle, as Adelheid with slowing steps followed her father
into the cottage. “Oh, there is something strange about it all.”
“Why, Michelle, it can’t be anything. It seems queer to us because we
can’t follow it,” Lucy protested, half amused and half annoyed at her
friend’s seriousness. “What could happen here? It’s so peaceful I
sometimes forget we are in Germany.”
“Yes, that’s the trouble. We forget it too easily,” said Bob, as they
walked back through the forest. “It’s safer in these days to keep your
eyes open.”
This time Alan had no fault to find with Bob’s suspicious tone, and he
echoed Michelle’s words of a moment before, “It looks queer. But I give
it up. They can’t be plotting to recruit an army of pine trees.”
Larry seemed unwilling to commit himself, though he did not share at all
Lucy’s impatience and apprehension. He walked along the forest aisles at
her side, his eyes raised thoughtfully to the tree-tops, where the last
rays of sunset still lingered, though twilight had begun to deepen
between the trunks and touch with violet shadows the snowy ground. The
profound stillness seemed to augur future troubles.
However, Herr Johann had no power to dampen anyone’s spirits for long.
The officers were conscious enough of the upper hand now in any dealings
with the Boches. Their only lingering dread was that some last trick on
the enemy’s part might delay the settlement of peace and the troops’
home-coming. That indefinite alarm thrust aside, they were inclined to
treat Franz’ little schemes lightly, and to be mildly amused at the
prospect of discovering his secret.
“Leslie, you ought not to leave us yet,” said Larry to Alan. “You’ll
miss all the fun. There’s a mystery in this forest now. I think I’ve
solved it, though. Franz is the Kaiser, incognito; Herr Johann is the
Kronprinz, and Wilhelm is the heir of the Hohenzollerns.”
“Some weak points there, Eaton,” said Alan, laughing. “Since when does
the All-Highest treat his wayward son so politely?”
“Anyway, Adelheid couldn’t have kept it all to herself,” said Lucy,
smiling. “She would have told us, just as she did about the little farm
in Alsace. That must have been hard for those children, leaving their
home.”
Armand flashed a quizzical glance at her. “So it was, Mademoiselle. And
very hard, too, for the French when Germany wrested Alsace from France
and gave the French people their choice between exile or German
dominion. The woodcutter’s children must help pay the debt.”
Lucy was silent. Once more she felt, as she had often done in the old
days with Michelle, that the French had suffered and endured beyond the
power to rally and forget their wrongs as young America could do.
In a moment Alan said lightly, “The only way, Eaton, for me to go home
in peace, leaving the mystery unsolved, is for you all to promise to
come over before the year is up and tell me the whole tale. We’ll sit
around a roaring English fire——”
“Or on an English lawn,” put in Lucy, thinking of Janet Leslie and
Highland House. “The winter won’t last forever, Alan.”
“Whichever you like,” Alan nodded. “And we’ll forget for an hour that
German forests, occupied cities, surly woodcutters and proud Herrs exist
on earth. Is it a promise?”
“Promises are queer things,” said Lucy thoughtfully. “I’ve promised to
do lots of things that never happened.”
“If wishing is a promise, you have our word,” said Michelle, with the
pretty, unaffected warmth that sometimes lighted her gravity.
“But, Alan, if we should go there I’m afraid you’ll still be
disappointed,” Lucy insisted. “We shan’t have a thing to tell you,
unless Larry makes it up.”
“I can always do that,” agreed Larry. “But perhaps I shan’t have to.
What’s got into you lately, Lucy? You used to be as keen as Bob in
scenting trouble and looking for dark days ahead at sight of a Boche
whisker. Now there’s no stirring you. You’re stodgy. Good English word,
Leslie?”
“Scotch, old bean,” said Alan. “Perhaps Lucy’s a bit fed—up with it all
and wants to turn her back on it. That’s my feeling.”
“Is it, Alan? That’s just how I feel!” cried Lucy in eager agreement.
“I’m sick of it. I don’t long for any more adventures. I want to go
home.”
“If your dog were around now, he’d begin to howl,” said Larry. “Don’t
look so dismal, Lucy. Why, we have all sorts of luck.”
“Oh, I know. I’m not dismal,” said Lucy, smiling at her own earnestness.
“Only I hate to hear you talking as though the Germans weren’t really
beaten. If the war commenced again I think I’d be the biggest coward on
either side.”
“Don’t worry,” said Larry. “It will take more than Franz to recommence
it.”