A GERMAN ALLY
“=ELIZABETH=!” Lucy’s lips could hardly frame the word, as with
bewildered gaze she stared into the face so close to hers.
There were the same bright dark eyes, filled with shrewd kindliness, and
the smiling, patient mouth. Lucy seized hold of the hands that held her
shoulders to make sure she was not dreaming, and the touch of
Elizabeth’s thin work-roughened fingers made her presence real. The
strangeness of their meeting was for that moment quite forgotten. Lucy
felt nothing but an overwhelming relief and joy as her kind old nurse’s
arms once more went around her. She was no longer alone with her sad
thoughts in the gloomy twilight. Elizabeth, who had loved her and shared
her worries for ten years back, who had said good-bye to Bob with tears
that day on Governor’s Island, was here to help and comfort her. Lucy
forgot Karl’s treachery,[2] remembering only that Elizabeth had saved
Bob from her husband’s hands. How often had both Lucy and her mother
longed to tell her of their gratitude! She leaned against Elizabeth’s
kind shoulder and shed a few tears of weariness and joy, giving way to
her feelings for a brief comforting moment. Then she sat up and wiped
her eyes.
Footnote 2:
See “Captain Lucy and Lieutenant Bob.”
“How did you get here, Elizabeth? Oh, if things go on happening this way
I won’t be surprised at anything!”
“Many days have I been here, Miss Lucy,” Elizabeth answered, as she too
wiped away tears of quiet rejoicing. “Since the Germans hold the town
before, was I here, but only to-day have I come to ask if I may help in
the hospital.”
“And, Karl—where is he?” Lucy stammered over the question.
“He is with his regiment, not far off.” Lucy thought that Elizabeth
hesitated before she added, “I could not follow him, so here I came from
Petit-Bois, working with the wounded, when the Germans take
Château-Plessis the first time. Already I saw you once, Miss Lucy, the
day of the battle—when you watched the airplanes in the square.”
In a flash Lucy remembered the face among the crowd, and the eyes she
had fancied were watching her. “That was it! I saw you, too, Elizabeth.
At least I felt sure that some one was looking at me. Why didn’t you let
me see you?”
“I thought better not, Miss Lucy. The Germans must keep very quiet while
the French and Americans were here.” Elizabeth’s voice shook a little as
she spoke, and in spite of herself, Lucy felt an unreasoning pity for
her as the little German woman went on, “I thought maybe you learn from
Mr. Bob that I was here,—but you have not seen him, no? I saw him once,
about a month back.”
The words were on Lucy’s lips to tell Elizabeth of Bob’s visit to
Château-Plessis the day before the town’s capture, but before they were
spoken she checked herself. The trust and affection of nearly ten years’
companionship were not ties lightly cast aside, but now, her first
childish delight at Elizabeth’s presence over, a barrier rose between
them—strong and impassable. Elizabeth was a German, and the wife of a
German soldier. Summoning the prudence she had so nearly forgotten, Lucy
kept silent, and pressed her lips close together. The vision of the
German officer questioning the young Englishman came before her eyes.
What might her unconsidered words mean to Bob?
Elizabeth’s expressive face looked both hurt and downcast at Lucy’s
sudden silence, of which the meaning was plain enough. But she made no
complaint, and, pointing toward Colonel Gordon’s cot, beside which they
sat on the floor, said softly, “Your father wakes now, Miss Lucy.
Already have I talked with him to-day.”
“Did you stay with him this afternoon, Elizabeth?” asked Lucy, reaching
out to clasp her old nurse’s hand in sudden remorse at her own
suspicion. For had not Elizabeth saved Bob’s life?
“Yes,” Elizabeth nodded. “I stay with him a little while.” She rose to
her feet, looking toward the cot where the wounded officer had begun to
stir in waking. “I leave you with him now,” she said, and with a
lingering glance at Lucy from her brown eyes, went quietly out of the
room.
Lucy turned eagerly to her father, hardly waiting for him to open his
eyes before she exclaimed, “Oh, Father, I’ve seen Elizabeth, and she
said she had talked to you! Isn’t it wonderful to find her here?”
Colonel Gordon smiled, settling his big, lean shoulders among the
pillows as he gave an understanding nod to his daughter’s quick words.
But Lucy had paused suddenly in her outburst of joy over Elizabeth’s
presence. She remembered Miss Pearse’s warning, and with a pang of fear
lest some unconsidered word escape her, realized that her father was
still ignorant of the town’s capture. Unless Elizabeth——But her father’s
first words put her mind at rest on that score.
“I saw her for only a minute after I woke up,” he said, turning on his
side with a slight painful effort, to look into Lucy’s face. “But that
was long enough to thank her for what she did last year. She told me
that she had been allowed to help in the hospital, and that she hoped to
see you. How she got here I can’t imagine, nor why they trust her to
work among the wounded—though we both know there couldn’t be found a
better nurse.”
Lucy was silent, afraid to answer, since she could not tell the
truth—that Elizabeth was trusted because the hospital was in the hands
of her compatriots. Colonel Gordon did not notice her confusion as he
continued earnestly:
“I’m very glad she’s here—however she came—for your sake, Lucy. She is
devoted to you, beyond all doubt, and I won’t be quite so uneasy with
her here to look after you. Greyson seems almighty slow about getting
you off to Calais. I suppose he can’t help it. I can imagine what the
state of transportation is, but surely you won’t have to stay much
longer. Of course, if it were possible to get right on, your mother and
Henry would have been here long ago.”
He paused, breathing a little hard, and frowning, unreconciled, as he
silently considered the obstacles to Lucy’s departure.
Lucy sat wretchedly silent, knowing the truth to be a hundred times
worse than what already greatly troubled him. In a moment he found
breath to speak again.
“Lucy,” he said thoughtfully, “I said I knew Elizabeth was devoted to
you, and so she is. But don’t forget for a moment, however kindly we
feel toward her, that her country is our enemy. We have good proof that
she would not harm Bob, even at Karl’s command, but that is a personal
affection with her. It does not mean she would not harm the Allies’
cause. You must be on the watch lest you speak a word that might be
repeated to the enemy’s advantage.”
Lucy murmured her agreement as her father, his emphatic tone changing to
one of wonder, said again, “Why they allow her to work here I can’t
imagine. I must ask Greyson.”
“You’re tired, Father,” said Lucy, getting up after a moment from the
floor beside the cot, as Colonel Gordon lay wearily back after his
prolonged talk. Her voice shook a little with threatening tears, for it
seemed dreadful to her that he should not know the truth, and that she
should help to deceive him, though common sense told her it was wise and
necessary. He would certainly sleep more peacefully that night thinking
the Allies in possession of the town. But it was a deception which could
not be kept up much longer.
She bade him good-night with a brave attempt at cheerfulness, and went
out into the big ward, which was just dimmed by approaching twilight.
Elizabeth was carrying a heavy basket of Red Cross supplies across the
hall to the storeroom, and Lucy, without asking permission, ran up to
her and seized one of the straw handles, taking half the weight on her
own arm. “Go on; I’m going to help,” she said briefly. Elizabeth obeyed,
glancing back with troubled solicitude at the serious, determined face
of the little girl she knew so well, while Lucy, with that familiar
figure before her, bringing swift memories of happy days at home, looked
down the rows of wounded men and wondered again if this could all be
real.
That night, in spite of the welcome silence of the guns, Lucy’s natural
fear and dread at the strange fate that had befallen her brought
wakefulness and feverish dreams. But she was too worn out to lie awake
long, and Miss Pearse’s footsteps, moving about in the gray dawn, roused
her from deep sleep. She struggled at that moment with desperate
drowsiness, intensified by the longing to fall back where the bitter
truth could be forgotten. But she fought hard against her weakness and,
fearful of yielding, sprang out of bed and plunged her face into cold
water. Her sleepy eyes blinked stupidly back at her from the shadowy
mirror as she vigorously rubbed away the drops, but her resolution was
triumphant. To-day she meant to work, that by nightfall she might feel
the satisfaction of having done what she could to help—the only thing
that was worth doing here.
The guns had commenced again with intermittent bursts of firing, but
they were not so close now, and the vibration of the air not so
terrific. The Allied guns were turned toward Château-Plessis since the
capture, and the German batteries had found new emplacement outside the
town’s western edge; the edge nearest to the railways and the channel.
Lucy looked from the window toward the eastern sky, where the clouds
were gleaming with a soft, pearly light. There were no bursting shells
to mar the sunrise to-day. All was quiet on this side now. She glanced
down at the street, along which a dozen German soldiers were strolling.
A few shouted words reached her ears, and once more she wished with all
her heart she did not understand that language of which every word had
grown hateful. Then suddenly she remembered Captain Beattie and the
possibility of help to him which that knowledge had put into her hands.
It would give her glorious satisfaction to bring the enemy’s own tongue
to use against them. She had first, though, to learn the whereabouts of
the old prison to which he had been taken.
She quickly finished dressing and joined the two nurses, who saw her
with surprise and a little protest on Miss Pearse’s part against her
early rising. She did not scold much though, and seemed glad of the
promise of Lucy’s help. “I’ll give you work to do the minute you are
ready for it,” she said in answer to Lucy’s eager demand, as they
crossed the street and climbed the hospital steps under the inspection
of the gray-uniformed sentry. “Go in and speak to your father first, and
then we’ll see.”
Lucy entered the little room softly, mindful of the other wounded
officers as well as of her father, and found Colonel Gordon awake, with
eyes turned toward the door. He looked rested and stronger with the
improvement each day now brought, but his lips were firmly set, as Lucy
had often seen them when he was thinking out a hard piece of work, and
his smile was but a faint one as he greeted her.
“Did you sleep well, Father? Are you all right?” she asked, stammering a
little because she hated to remember the unhappy secret between them.
Colonel Gordon’s keen, far-seeing eyes studied her flushed and anxious
face as he answered quietly, “Yes, I’m all right, little girl. You may
drop the camouflage now. I know we’ve lost the town.”
“Oh, Father, who told you? I didn’t,” cried Lucy, dropping down beside
him, a great rush of relief overpowering all her fears. He knew the
worst and they could share it together, and he had borne the news with
his old, unshakable courage. Lucy thought of what Bob had said more than
four years ago at Fort Douglas, when the Mexican rebels rose over night,
threatening the border. “Father may get excited if breakfast is late,
but when anything is really wrong, he’s all right.”
“Greyson told me,” said Colonel Gordon. “I suppose he thought I should
guess it anyhow, when I began asking him about Elizabeth. Funny idea—not
letting me know.” He spoke with a faint scorn for the ways of the
Medical Corps, forgetting, as a man on the road to recovery is apt to
do, how ill he had been only a few days before.
“I wondered what in thunder was the matter that they couldn’t get you
off,” he went on. “Poor little daughter—it’s pretty tough luck.” His
face was drawn with anxiety as he reached out a hand and caught hers in
a strong clasp, but she broke in eagerly:
“I’m all right, Father! Please don’t feel so worried. I’m working in the
hospital, and, honestly, you don’t know how glad and proud I am—now the
scary part is getting better—that I can be of use here.”
“It can’t be helped,” was her father’s slow and almost unheeding answer.
“Greyson tells me the enemy has left the hospital pretty much in our own
hands. They are rather too tired to bother us,” he said, a flash of
satisfaction lighting his face. “I know that much from the action in
which I was hit. Their advance is made with a desperately driven force
that leaves them limp and done for when it is over. A couple of million
Americans will turn the great tide. Long before that time our
counter-attack should free the town—but meanwhile, you poor little girl,
you’re in the German lines.”
“I’m quite used to it now!” Lucy insisted, not realizing the absurdity
of her words in her longing to reassure her father’s keenly suffering
mind. “And Elizabeth is here, you know—she will take care of me.”
“Yes—how thankful I am for that,” said Colonel Gordon quickly.
“Here comes Major Greyson, so I’ll leave you,” said Lucy, rising from
her place as the surgeon entered for his morning visit. “I’ll go and get
my breakfast.”
In the little dining-room she found Elizabeth setting the table with
plates and spoons. The sight was such a reminder of breakfast-time on
Governor’s Island that, forgetting all her repugnance to Elizabeth’s
German sympathies, she threw her arms around her old nurse’s thin,
little shoulders, and gave her a hug for a morning greeting. Elizabeth
turned a delighted face toward her, exclaiming:
“Good-morning, dear Miss Lucy! How early you are up! Come, in this chair
sit, and I will get you the best I can.”
It seemed very pleasant to sit down and be waited on by Elizabeth’s deft
fingers, but the strangeness of her being there had not yet passed from
Lucy’s mind and she said, wistfully, “Oh, Elizabeth, if we were only
back at home. Father and Mother and Bob and William and you and I.
Wouldn’t it be great?”
“That will come again, Miss Lucy,” suggested Elizabeth hopefully. But
Lucy, unable to say frankly, “Not while there are enough Germans left
alive to fight,” lifted a spoonful of weak cocoa to her lips in silence.
“And William—how he is?” asked Elizabeth, stopping her work to make the
inquiry with eager affection in her eyes.
“He is well, and, thank goodness, safe at home,” sighed Lucy, seeing
again before her the forlorn, stumbling little children of the refugees
from Château-Plessis.
Miss Pearse came in presently and joined her, famished after an hour’s
hard work. “I have a job all ready for you, Lucy,” she said, when she
had taken a sip of hot coffee and eaten a piece of black bread. “It is a
tiresome one, but very necessary.”
“I’ll do anything,” said Lucy quickly.
“Our hospital garments are falling into rags, and no one has any time to
mend them. Elizabeth has been helping, but I am going to send her for
Mère Breton’s supplies this morning while you stay here and sew in her
stead.”
Miss Pearse had heard all about Lucy’s adventure of the day before, and
did not wish her sent on the same errand again, until the Germans should
have their own interpreters, or officers who spoke the barbarous English
tongue. In any case, Elizabeth could serve their purpose. Lucy had also
told Miss Pearse of the years the German woman had spent with the Gordon
family, and of the never-to-be-forgotten service she had rendered them.
Miss Pearse had shown both interest and sympathy, wondering much, like
Lucy, at the strange chance of war which had brought these two old
friends together, on such hard terms for friendship. Like Colonel
Gordon, she warned Lucy repeatedly against speaking unguardedly before
her old nurse. “She is the most German person I ever saw,” she said with
conviction. “She has all their good qualities, so I shouldn’t be
surprised if she had some of their bad ones. Anyway, you may be sure her
husband could make her try to worm out information about the troops. You
don’t know what trifling little facts they can make use of. Don’t answer
any questions about what troops were in the town, or anything like
that.”
“She hasn’t asked me any,” said Lucy. “She has been here herself since
the last German occupation, anyhow. But I’ll be careful.”
She was thinking over these warnings as she sat, half an hour later, by
the narrow windows of the nurses’ room, mending long rips and tears in
pillow-cases and pajamas. Outside the window the German sentry paced the
little garden by the budding rose-bushes and crumbling walls, and within
the hospital the workers continued their never-ending task. While she
meditated, Elizabeth came out from the side door into the garden,
carrying two baskets on her arms, and with a nod to the sentry passed
quickly out through the ruined gate.
She could have obtained Brêlet’s company and assistance, but she had
started off alone with her big baskets. Lucy, as she looked after her,
thought she guessed why. The little German woman suspected that the
poilu would have gone with her most unwillingly.
Outside the gate Elizabeth turned east through the same deserted streets
which led toward the cottages in the lanes and to the meadows beyond the
town. She walked quickly, for the supplies were urgently needed.
Besides, she had worked so hard all her life that active occupation had
become second nature to her. Bob had once said, “Elizabeth never sits
down to rest—only to work more easily that way.” She found a path among
the broken stone with patient care, for her shoes were old and gave
little protection to her feet. Once she stopped to exchange a word with
a German sentry during a lull in the firing. When she neared the edge of
the town she was challenged by the guard in front of the Headquarters
building, but her German tongue and written permission won her ready
passage. At the border of the meadow stood a little improvised shack,
put up to accommodate a guard and a field telephone, in case of any
alarm from this side of the town. In front of it a corporal was idly
walking about, stopping to stare at Elizabeth as she hurried by. She
called out a good-morning to him, which he answered with the inquiry:
“Where are you going, _Frau_, to fill those big baskets?”
Elizabeth nodded over toward Mère Breton’s cottage, hidden behind its
little grove of apple and plum trees, of which many were reduced to
blackened and leafless trunks. The cottage itself had been twice struck,
but the sturdy old Frenchwoman refused to abandon it, and in the deadly
rain and thunder of bursting shells had gone on cultivating her garden,
and coaxing her frightened hens to eat and fatten for the wounded poilus
in the hospitals. Now she feared they would nearly all go down German
throats, but Lucy had the day before tried her best, in her halting
French, to convince Mère Breton that only by feeding the Boches could
their own people expect a share.
Elizabeth looked up at the blue, cloud-flecked sky, away from the
shattered trees of the wood in front, as she crossed the meadow. Her
eyes, always anxious and watchful these days, felt a relief in turning
from the scarred earth to the untroubled heavens. But this war is not
only on the earth, as she realized with a swift start, when out from
behind the clouds darted two flying specks which hung poised above the
meadow, the sun just touching their tiny wings. She hurried on, reached
Mère Breton’s house, and found the old woman in the garden among her
cabbages. Elizabeth did not know a word of French, but she held out the
hospital baskets with a pleasant nod and smile to cover the deficiency
of language. Mère Breton’s sharp blue eyes, from beneath her white cap,
gave the German woman a look of bitter hostility, quite untouched by the
smile, which faded from Elizabeth’s lips unanswered. Mère Breton took
the baskets, trudged off to fill them, and presently returned them in
silence. Her thoughts were as plain as though she had spoken. She knew
that not an egg nor a fowl would go to her poilus with a Boche for
messenger. Elizabeth nodded good-bye without attempting any further
friendly advances, and started on her hot walk back, this time weighed
down with a heavy load. She looked quickly up at the sky again as she
came out from beneath the trees, for the noise of an airplane was now
distinctly heard as it circled not more than half a mile above her head.
As she stared up, squinting in the sunlight, the machine dived suddenly
and flew around the meadow, hardly two hundred yards above the earth.
Elizabeth stood paralyzed between an impulse to drop down upon the grass
and another to run for shelter. At the observation post behind her the
corporal had rushed inside to the telephone. No batteries were stationed
at this point, for the Germans counted on the Allies not caring to drop
bombs on Château-Plessis, but a telephone call could bring anti-aircraft
guns to bear on intruding planes from the north of the town. While
Elizabeth stood frozen to the spot, the airplane above her, as though
scorning to recognize the fact that Château-Plessis was in German hands,
flew over her so close that she could see the glistening paint of the
American emblems on its wings and tail, and the pilot, sitting alone in
his little monoplane, leaned over the side and looked at her.
Elizabeth let fall her baskets, heedless, she who was always so careful,
of the fragile provisions within. The face looking down with eager eyes
from a hundred feet above her was Bob Gordon’s. He reached toward his
feet, and, through the roaring of the propeller, Elizabeth heard a wild
shout of warning directed to her from the observation post behind. But
no bomb was flung from the plane which had her at its mercy. Instead she
was suddenly enveloped in a shower of papers fluttering down toward the
grass from the pilot’s hand. As she brushed them dazedly from her
shoulders, Bob leaned out once more and threw a last paper, only this
one was crushed into a ball with a hasty pressure of his fingers. Then
the anti-aircraft guns crashed out, and the Nieuport rose like a bird
and winged its way toward the sun, dropping another shower of papers as
it mounted, which scattered over the green, daisy-starred surface of the
field. The balls whistled through the air, but before any accurate shot
was possible, the daring little scout had disappeared behind a drifting
cloud beyond the reach of fire.
Elizabeth had picked up the ball of paper as soon as it touched the
grass. With trembling hands, while she watched the Nieuport make its
swift escape, she smoothed out the wrinkled sheet and held it against
the sunlight.
“What’s that you have there, _Donnerwetter_!” asked an angry voice
behind her, and the corporal, red-faced and panting, looked over her
shoulder, then stooped to pick up another of the leaflets.
“Some more of President Wilson’s talk,” said Elizabeth, still looking
with a critical air at the printed sheet before her. “But _Himmel_!” she
added, turning to the corporal with an anxious shake of the head. “For a
moment I thought I was done for. I did not know what to do!”
“It was no time to stand staring, like a dummy,” was the corporal’s
comment. “Come, _Frau_, help me gather up this trash, and I’ll burn it
and give the impertinent Yankee that for his pains.”
Elizabeth nodded, leaning down to pick up the papers thickly scattered
over the grass. Her heart was beating so hard she could hardly conceal
her hurried breathing, in spite of her calm and docile exterior as she
obeyed the corporal’s orders. She gathered up the crumpled sheet
together with the others, crumpling them all into a wad before handing
them to her companion. She had seen all she wanted in those two or three
minutes while she held the paper against the sunlight. The printed
leaves were copies in English and German of a part of President Wilson’s
speech made in New York on the 18th of May. But the paragraph that
Elizabeth read had been pricked with pinholes[3] before it was dropped
at her feet. It was as follows:
There are two dut=i=es with which we are face to face. The fir=s=t
duty is to win t=h=e w=a=r. And the second duty, that goes hand in
hand with it, is to win it great=l=y and worthi=l=y, showing =t=he
=r=eal qualit=y= of our power no=t= =o=n=l=y, but the re=a=l quality
of our purpose a=n=d of ourselves. Of course, the first =d=u=t=y,
the duty that we must keep in the f=o=regrou=n=d of our thought
unt=i=l it is accomplished, is to win the war. I have heard
=g=entlemen recently say t=h=a=t= we must get five million men
ready. Why limit it to five million?
Footnote 3:
[TN] The letters that were marked with pinholes are marked here in
=bold=.
Against the glowing sunlight Elizabeth read Bob’s message: “I shall try
to land to-night.”
Back in the hospital Lucy worked hard at the big pile of garments with
their long, ragged tears. Her neck ached and her fingers, after two
hours, but she kept steadily at it, with the satisfying sense of being
one of the hospital workers; of doing, right where the product of her
hands was so urgently needed, what she had often done from far away.
When the morning was half over Elizabeth came back through the garden,
walking slowly with her loaded baskets, and presently she came
empty-handed into the room where Lucy was.
“Hello, Elizabeth!” exclaimed Lucy, tired of her own thoughts and
welcoming her old nurse with a smile. “Are you coming to sew with me?
I’d love some one to talk to.”
“Yes, for a few minutes I help you,” said Elizabeth in a quick, earnest
voice that made Lucy look up at her curiously as she continued. “Because
I something have to tell you that no one must hear, so I sit by you and
softly speak.”
Always when Elizabeth was excited her English grew worse, and now Lucy,
astonished at her words and manner, stopped sewing and asked hurriedly,
“What is it, Elizabeth? Oh, tell me quickly—there’s nobody to hear.”
Not convinced of this, Elizabeth gave a sharp glance outside the open
door and, taking a torn garment on her lap, drew her chair close to
Lucy’s by the window before she answered. “I have Mr. Bob seen, and he
gave me a message.”
“Bob!” gasped Lucy, her terrified eyes devouring Elizabeth’s face. “Oh,
what is he doing here!”
“He is not here now,” said Elizabeth quickly. “He has got safe away.”
With her needle poised between her fingers while she forgot all pretense
of sewing, she told Lucy in a voice just above a whisper of her
morning’s adventure.
Lucy heard her in stupefied silence, only her glowing cheeks and shining
eyes giving sign of her overpowering excitement. Other feelings, too,
beside joy at this news of her brother, showed in her face. A puzzled
wonder was strongest, with the realization of her old nurse’s German
sympathies. When Elizabeth came to the part of her story where Bob
contrived to drop his message and she to decipher it, Lucy could contain
herself no longer.
“But how did you _know_ there was a message hidden there? How could Bob
know you would find it?” she burst out, speaking but a part of her
confused thoughts aloud.
For answer Elizabeth first looked earnestly into her face, as though she
read clearly what Lucy would not say—that she wondered greatly at Bob’s
trust in her—then putting down her needle clasped her thin hands
anxiously together. “Miss Lucy,” she said a little shakily, “I hope you
believe me, because I nothing tell you but the truth. Did I not tell you
I saw Mr. Bob here a month ago, when the Allies take the town? At that
time we talk, and Mr. Bob explain to me a way that he could a message
send, if he needs. He have the charge to let fall those papers—you
know—with speeches of the president, over the German lines. He show me
how with a pin he could a message make that no one would see, if they
had no thought for it. When he said this he spoke of war news only—of
course he not think then that you be left here if the Germans take the
town.”
“But, Elizabeth,” Lucy stammered, more at sea than ever, “he arranged a
cipher with _you_? He spoke to you of war news?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth nodded. “I know what you would say, Miss Lucy. You
wonder that he tell me, but it was first me who tell him something.”
Elizabeth’s dark eyes were filled with pain and sorrow as she looked
into Lucy’s face and whispered, “No longer do I wish for Germany to
win.”
Never in ten long years had Lucy doubted Elizabeth’s word, but now a
wretched fear shot through her. Did she dare trust blindly to Karl’s
wife? But even while she hesitated, the kind, steady, honest gaze of
those dark eyes swept her last doubts away. With impetuous remorse and
thanksgiving she reached out her hands and clasped Elizabeth’s closely,
while her tongue struggled for words to express her new-born joy and
confidence.
“Oh, Elizabeth, I’m glad! I’m so glad!” was all she said, but her face
spoke for her, and Elizabeth’s anxious eyes shone with relief and
friendliness.
“You believe me, dear Miss Lucy—you know I speak truth?” she asked
eagerly. Then at Lucy’s swift assent she continued earnestly, “I tell
you _all_ the truth, and then you see I do not deceive you. Miss Lucy, I
do not love France or England, or even America better than my
Fatherland. Germany I love, and always will I love her. Only, Miss Lucy,
now is no longer with us the dear country I before knew.”
A look of horror flashed into her kind face as she said heavily:
“I have things seen that never could I tell you of. At first I believe
my countrymen who say the English prisoners are guilty of crimes—for I
never any Englishmen knew. I think perhaps they deserve the deadly
punishment. But when America send her soldiers against us——” Elizabeth’s
voice trembled. “When Mr. Bob so nearly was given up to death; when they
tell me lies of how the Americans, they are worse than any—I believe
them not! Too long was I in America to be so fooled, and now I know it
is a cruel war that has brought her against us. For those men who have
put the world on fire, who have made to die those many innocent
children—oh, Miss Lucy, better they are beat and conquered by America,
and so may God let the old Germany live again!”
The little German woman’s low, cautious voice shook with earnestness.
Her clasped hands opened and closed in quick, restless gestures so
unlike quiet, steady Elizabeth that Lucy’s heart beat with pity and
understanding. In Elizabeth’s simple nature love of country was very
strong, and her disillusionment, at returning to war-time Germany, very
bitter. Yet she still found courage to hope for better things. Lucy
marveled at her patient faith, but she could not at all put her thoughts
into words, nor indeed find thoughts that would not hurt more than
console, so after a look of warm affection she sat silent. But in a
moment curiosity prompted her to ask:
“How about Karl, Elizabeth? Does he know how you feel?”
A shadow settled once more on Elizabeth’s face, but she answered
quietly, “Karl is very angry with me, Miss Lucy; but it is not that he
knows I would help the Allies now.”
“Then why is he angry?” But even as Lucy asked the question she knew the
answer. “Is it because of Bob?” she faltered, and, seeing she had
guessed, Elizabeth nodded.
“Somehow, Karl find out that it is my fault Mr. Bob was not taken as a
spy. Not yet will he forgive it, but I not think he feel so always; and
still if he need me I go to him.”
“Where is he now?” asked Lucy, thinking how little Karl deserved such
faithfulness and ashamed that she had ever wondered at Bob’s trusting
Elizabeth so entirely.
“He is in Brussels—cook in a hospital. He is safe, Miss Lucy. I not
think I could work to help America to win if Karl was in the trenches.”
Lucy had no sympathy for this feeling, but she dimly understood it.
Another desire had grown stronger than all else in her mind now; the
wish to make sure of reaching Bob’s rendezvous. The great meadows behind
the town were his only possible landing-place, but they were more than a
mile away, and sentries were on guard all night in the town.
“Oh, Elizabeth, how shall we ever manage to get there to-night?” she
questioned, in a torment of anxiety.
Elizabeth gave her a funny little smile—half-ashamed and yet resolute.
“You have forgot, Miss Lucy, that I am a German. Almost where I like can
I go, since the town is taken.”
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