THE PLAN OF THE DEFENSES
=IT= was a dull, gloomy day, with rain clouds dissolving into showers at
intervals, and the half-ruined streets of Château-Plessis looked sad and
sodden in their battered abandonment. Only an occasional German soldier,
wrapped in his poncho, or a woman hurrying by with a shawl over her head
passed in front of the hospital. Within, things looked dreary too, Lucy
thought, as in her little cap and apron she helped Brêlet wheel the last
of the convalescents into the hall off the old court of justice. For the
past three days she had undertaken the task of finding amusement and
occupation for fifteen or twenty men on the road to recovery, and she
had found it the hardest kind of work, since her own spirits were none
too high or hopeful. Some of the convalescents were Germans, too, and
Lucy had not quite mastered the Red Cross motto of “Neutrality,
Humanity.”
But to-day she was cheerful and felt equal to doing her very best. The
most trying work grows easier if it is done in pleasant company, and
Major Greyson had obtained from the German senior surgeon an indifferent
consent for Michelle de la Tour to help occasionally among the
convalescents at the American hospital. There Michelle sat now, by one
of the windows opening on the garden, talking to a French soldier with
bandaged eyes. Lucy smiled across the room at her, and in her gratitude
for her friend’s presence on this dark and depressing morning, she
seated herself by the side of a young German, who leaned languidly back
in his chair, still weak from fever.
“What would you like, Paul?” she asked, kindly. “Some water? All
right—in a moment.”
She rose to bring the water and, after satisfying half a dozen other
demands for it, helped Brêlet distribute the few books and papers
available among those well enough to read. Some of the men who felt too
weak to make any effort were wheeled in front of the windows, though the
outlook of driving rain on crumbling walls Lucy did not think
particularly cheering for the wounded poilus. It was extraordinary,
though, how little attention it took to brighten up a soldier’s tired
face. Often a few words were enough to start them talking among
themselves. Of the twenty in the hall eight were Americans, and the
poilus always got some amusement in practising their English on their
new allies.
Michelle, far more inventive and resourceful than Lucy, made up her mind
at once to help find occupation for the convalescents.
“Maman and I have already done so in our hospital,” she said eagerly.
“It is not so hard—though of course we can do little.”
“What, for instance?” asked Lucy, puzzling. “We can’t possibly get any
more papers—except German ones, and the German patients have too many of
those already.”
“No, but there are other ways,” Michelle insisted. “We have many willows
over by Mère Breton’s cottage. I have brought the young branches for our
poilus to cut with the knife and weave _paniers_. Oh, they are glad to
have work in their fingers! Also, Clemence and I dug the clay from the
little brook near the old château. It is far from here. They send a
Boche soldier with us. I know well the place, for Armand and I were
friends, in the peace, with the children of the château. The poilus can
make of the clay all kinds of cups and bowls. I know that is pleasant
work, for Armand and I have made them, when I was sick long ago and he
played with me.”
“I never thought of those things, Michelle,” said Lucy, but in the same
breath she added, doubtfully, “Who will show them how to make baskets?
Can you?”
“Oh, you will find more than one soldier here who already knows. Only we
have to bring the willow twigs, and they will make of them baskets in
one afternoon.”
“I’ll get some to-morrow. I can go to the meadows, if Elizabeth comes
with me. I must stay a while with Paul Schwartz now, Michelle. He is not
well to-day, and I said I would look after him.”
“I will come with you for a moment,” said Michelle, making a wry face,
but hiding her feelings quickly. “They will never let me come here to
help if I do nothing for the Boches. He looks not so _vilain_ as the
rest, I think—like a poor silly boy.”
The German to whom Michelle gave this unusual praise had certainly
nothing bold nor ferocious about him. As he lay weakly back in his
chair, his blue eyes wandered about the hall with a kind of vague
curiosity, his blond hair lying in uncut locks against his pale face.
For the little that Lucy had seen of him, he had been quiet and
melancholy, making few demands on her attention or on that of the
nurses. So far, she had not felt interested enough to ask him questions,
but this morning as she sat down beside him, with sewing in her hands,
she could think of no other way to amuse him.
“Where do you live, Paul?” she asked, wrinkling her forehead a little
over the effort of speaking German. Michelle laughed at her labored
accent, but the soldier understood her, and his dull, blue eyes lighted
up a trifle at her words.
“I come from the _Schwarzwald, Fräulein_,” he answered, nodding his head
slowly as he spoke, as though for him the simple fact was full of
meaning.
“Oh, do you?” said Lucy, suddenly reduced to silence. His words held a
strange meaning for her, too. The Black Forest, in which she had never
set foot, was familiar ground, nevertheless. All Elizabeth’s stories in
the old days had been about it. It was full of gnomes and elves—that she
knew. The people you first met when you ventured into it were Hansel and
Gretel, going toward the house built of cake and candy. She had never
thought of German soldiers living there.
“What did you do in the forest, Paul?” she asked vaguely.
“I lived there,” said the soldier, his interest growing with awakening
recollection, “in my little house with my family, just inside the
forest’s border. I am a wood-cutter and we had a fine herd of pigs. The
market town is not three miles away—I had a donkey, too.” The light died
out of his eyes as he looked gloomily down at his injured leg. Lucy
thought she had never seen a man so unfitted to be a soldier.
“How long have you been fighting?” asked Michelle, her eyes lifted
suddenly to his face.
“About—three years.” The German seemed uncertain. “Yes,” he added,
nodding thoughtfully, “it must be all that time since the day I got my
papers and was told to join my regiment. At the village I heard how the
Russians were getting ready to invade the Fatherland. Then how the
English would attack us on the other side. At first my wife hoped they
would not call me—there were so many others. They said, too, that we
could quickly beat the enemy. But they did call me.” He ended with a
dull melancholy that took the little life out of his face. “I had to
leave everything and go. I don’t know how things are with Hedwig now.”
“But the Russians weren’t invading Germany,” said Lucy indignantly,
while Michelle flashed a warning glance at her. She lowered her voice,
but finished obstinately, “Nor the English, either.”
“Yes, that is what we heard,” maintained Paul, indifferently. “Our
Kaiser called us to defend the Fatherland. It was all strange to me, for
we don’t get much news there in the forest.”
Michelle smiled at Lucy’s flushed and angry face. “It is no use to talk
with him of that,” she said in English, with a shake of the head. “He
would not understand you—not in many days. The Kaiser told him.
_‘Allons! Marchez!’_—that’s all he knows.”
Lucy was silent a moment. “Were you ever in the Black Forest, Michelle?”
she asked, giving up her argument.
“Oh, yes, often. Two summers I have been there. It is beautiful—so big
and still.” Michelle’s eyes shone with the words, as though at the
remembrance of happy summer days gone by.
“What are there in it besides Germans?” Lucy asked, smiling to herself
at the question.
“Bears,” said Michelle, laughing—“and many animals. Herds of pigs, too,
like this man’s. Many wood-cutters live near the border. And, further
in, are lodges for huntsmen.”
“I’ve always wanted to go there,” said Lucy rather sadly. “I don’t care
so much about it now.”
“Oh, it is lovely still,” Michelle objected. “Perhaps when the war is
ended the Germans will not be so many there.”
“I have a pretty little girl,” Paul interrupted them. “She has hair like
yours, Fräulein.” He pointed to Lucy’s corn-colored head with one
upraised finger. “She must be four—five years old now.”
Lucy smiled faintly. She tried to imagine this man on the battle-field,
engaged in a fierce hand-to-hand fight for the Allies’ trenches. He was
the very opposite to Karl’s brutal and aggressive type, yet he was
driven forward by the same irresistible force of blind obedience.
Perhaps more than one Allied soldier had met death by his hand.
The vision of the firing-line led her thoughts back into another
channel, with a quick pang at her heart that was half fear and half
eager anticipation. The coming night Elizabeth would be off duty, and
the time had come for a second visit to Captain Beattie’s prison. The
evening promised to be dull and rainy. Lucy was thankful at the prospect
of cloudy darkness in place of summer starlight. Michelle had crossed
the hall to visit another convalescent, and Lucy rose, too, nodding
good-bye to Paul, who had relapsed once more into silent apathy. Her
mind was so filled with the evening’s expedition, and with her desire to
talk to Michelle about it, that her thoughts wandered for a moment. The
American soldier, by whom she had sat down to translate a French paper
of a month back, remarked shrewdly as he glanced at his little nurse:
“Got somethin’ on your mind, Miss?” He bent down to her ear and spoke in
a loud whisper. “They haven’t pushed on again? Look here, you don’t want
to believe all these Fritzes tell you!”
“No, no,” said Lucy, smiling, “they haven’t got on an inch. Major
Greyson says he can tell by the guns, when he goes to the depot at that
end of the town. Shall I read you this?” she asked, looking over the old
paper again. “You’ll have to be patient, though, for I can’t translate
French very fast.”
At noon she got the moment with Michelle for which she had been waiting.
She caught her friend by the arm as she was returning to the nurses’
room to take off her cap and apron.
“Michelle, wait a minute! What about tonight?” she asked eagerly.
Michelle darted a look of angry reproach from her blue eyes. She drew
Lucy after her in silence into the room and over to a window opening on
the deserted garden.
“Oh, Lucy,” she faltered, “will you not be careful?” She caught Lucy’s
hands in hers and looked entreatingly into her downcast face. “Do you
know it is my brother’s life—his life, that is in danger if they should
suspect me? There are Germans all around us here, waiting to learn of
any help given to their enemies. If they suspect me they will watch our
house—they will catch Armand if he come——” She spoke so low Lucy could
hardly hear her, but she understood and hung her head in sharp remorse
and shame.
“I’m sorry, Michelle. I’m an idiot,” she said humbly.
Lucy had not Michelle’s long and bitter experience to develop her powers
of caution and concealment. She was not made for a conspirator, and her
frank and candid nature did not easily get used to a life in which walls
had ears as truly and as perilously as in any old story of intrigue and
adventure.
“Can we talk safely here, do you think?” she asked timidly.
“Yes, but speak softly,” said Michelle, flashing a forgiving smile. “You
wish to tell me the hour when I should look for you?” she asked, once
more growing grave and earnest.
“Yes. We will be there as near to nine o’clock as possible. Of course we
can’t be sure.”
“Come to the door by the garden path—you know? I will have ready all
that we can spare. It is little.”
“Oh, he’ll be glad to get it. I can’t bring much from here,” said Lucy.
She had nothing to give but a part of her own scanty food, but
remembering the young Englishman, half-starved in his dismal captivity,
how trifling her sacrifice seemed.
“I will watch for you. Oh, Lucy, I hope all goes well!” Michelle’s eyes
were troubled as she spoke, but Lucy, feeling courageous at that moment,
smiled back at her, saying:
“Don’t worry. The night will be too dark for any one to see us. Look,
there’s Clemence.”
The old Frenchwoman, returning from the food-depot with her basket, was
standing outside the garden gate, glancing doubtfully past the sentry
toward the hospital window. Michelle bade Lucy a hasty good-bye and,
drawing her pass from the pocket of her dress, made for the door into
the garden.
Elizabeth had taken on herself the task of setting the nurses’ table and
bringing in their food, so as to watch over Lucy and see that she had
enough to eat. It was lunch-time now, and Lucy left the window to help
in carrying in the meagre supplies. A platter of baked potatoes, a pot
of coffee and two slices apiece of coarse black bread, was what the
nurses sat down to after a hard morning’s work; but they were hungry
enough to find it good. Lucy was, too, but curbing her appetite, she
managed in the course of the meal to slip her two potatoes and a slice
of bread into her apron pocket unnoticed. It was little enough, she
felt, to take a hungry man, but the dairy supplies were strictly
reserved for the wounded, and she saw no chance of getting to Mère
Breton’s cottage that day. She could only hope, with Michelle’s help, to
eke out a tolerable meal.
She felt the injustice of not confiding in her faithful companion the
real need for their visit to the prison. But she had promised Michelle
not to reveal a word of her brother’s possible coming to any one but
Captain Beattie.
As on the night of their first visit, Lucy made a pretense of going
early to bed. She had no difficulty in leaving the empty house
unobserved, and ten o’clock found her and Elizabeth on their way to the
eastern edge of the town. The rain still fell and the wind blew in gusts
around the street corners, and, sweeping through the shell-holes in the
walls, brought down loose bricks which fell with a sodden crash. Lucy
and Elizabeth had coats wrapped closely about them, but in a few moments
they were drenched by the warm pelting downpour. Their feet stumbled
among loose stones and splashed into puddles. Lucy stared helplessly
ahead into the darkness, trusting entirely to Elizabeth for guidance.
In half an hour, not having met even a sentry, they stole up the garden
path to the side door of the de la Tours’ house, and Michelle instantly
admitted them.
“Oh, poor things! But you are wet like from the river! Sit down, Lucy,
_ma pauvre amie_. Stay one moment by the kitchen fire,” she exclaimed at
sight of the soaked and bedraggled visitors.
“Oh, no, we can’t wait,” said Lucy, pushing her wet hair from her face,
eager to get on and accomplish her purpose before her courage failed.
“It’s only a warm rain, anyhow—I rather like it.”
“Let me go with you?” begged Michelle, bringing out a little basket she
had got ready and looking entreatingly at Lucy. “Maman has gone to bed.
She will not know to be afraid for me. I do not want that you should
have all the danger.”
“No, no, Mademoiselle!” Elizabeth hastily interposed. “Enough it is that
I fear for Miss Lucy. You can nothing do to help, and much better you do
not go.”
“She’s right, Michelle. There’s nothing you could do. I’m going to bring
the paper he gives me here to-morrow so that if—so it will be safe.” She
had almost blurted out Captain de la Tour’s name. When Elizabeth was
risking so much to help them, it seemed absurd to Lucy that Michelle
should still suspect her. A startled look sprang into the French girl’s
eyes, but Lucy gave her a reassuring smile to show that she had not
forgotten her promise, and cautiously opened the door. “Good-bye,
Michelle,” she whispered.
In another moment they were out in the rain again, with the little
basket of food carefully protected beneath Elizabeth’s shawl. It was but
half a mile further to the prison and after fifteen minutes’ walk
through the empty streets, Lucy stood once more before the barred
windows in the wall. The drip, drip of the rain against the stone was
the only sound except the occasional boom of a cannon from the watchful
German lines. Elizabeth had taken up her post commanding the window of
the guard-room, but to-night a curtain was drawn to shut out the rain,
and all was silent inside. Even German guards relax their vigilance with
so little to fear as in deserted and ruined Château-Plessis. They knew
their prisoners were securely barred and bolted in.
Lucy grasped the wet iron and pulled herself up a step to the window’s
level, softly calling the young officer’s name. No sound came back but
the steady drip of the rain which fell upon her upturned face.
“Captain Beattie!” she said again, imploringly.
Some one stirred on a rustling straw bed and footsteps sounded on the
stone floor. Then the Englishman’s voice from just inside the bars asked
uncertainly, “Is that you, Lucy Gordon?”
Then with a little more of its natural energy the voice out of the
darkness added, “But you poor child, what a night to be out! Why did you
come again?”
“I told you I would,” said Lucy, peering through the bars in a vain
attempt to see beyond them. “This sort of night is the safest to come.
The rain doesn’t hurt me. I have something for you, Captain Beattie. I
can’t get the basket through the bars. Will you hold out your hands?”
“You’ve brought me some grub, you little friend in need!” exclaimed the
prisoner with a sudden shake in his low voice. “Can you honestly spare
it? I bet you can’t.”
“Oh, yes indeed; I have plenty. Here, I’ll put the things into your
hands. They are only two baked potatoes, some bread and eggs and a
little chocolate. Be careful—all right, I see now where your hand is.”
“I hate to be a funker, but I’m horribly hungry,” admitted the young
officer, as his careful hands drew in the contents of the little basket.
“They give us the most beastly food. I’m all right, though—I get along.
But it’s jolly to have a friend like you.”
The attempt at cheerfulness in his sad voice struck at Lucy’s heart.
“I’ll come often, Captain Beattie. I’ll bring you all I can,” she
promised eagerly.
“No you won’t, Lucy. You mustn’t. You don’t mind if I call you Lucy?
I’ll tell you why I like to. I have a little sister named Lucy—at least
she was a kid like you before the war, when we used to be together. Now
she’s eighteen, and learning to be a nurse; but I always think of her as
a little girl.”
“Of course you may call me that. I’m so glad if I can cheer you up the
least bit. Didn’t I tell you that my brother Bob was in a German
prison?”
“Yes. See here,” said Captain Beattie suddenly, “how about that brother
of yours? I don’t suppose he’s been able to pull off that stunt again?”
“No, but I want the plan of the defenses. Bob may not come again, nor I
get word to him, but I’ve found another way.” She stopped for a second,
looking fearfully back into the rainy darkness, then turned once more to
the window and told him of the chance of Armand de la Tour’s coming.
When she had finished her listener was silent for a moment, then he said
slowly, “It’s pretty doubtful that he will get into the town again.
Still, those French spies have incredible skill and daring. Anyway, it’s
a chance, and I’ll give you the paper. I have it all ready and hidden in
the straw of my bed.”
He went further back into the room and after a minute returned to the
window. “Can you put it where it will keep dry, Lucy? It’s only drawn on
a scrap of the paper they gave me to write home with.”
“Oh, yes, I’ll keep it dry,” Lucy promised, her heart beating high with
hope as she took the folded slip from the young officer’s hand.
“I don’t like to give it to you,” he said doubtfully. “It’s beastly
bringing you into danger. I’ve camouflaged it pretty well. You’ll see
that it looks like a little sketch of German soldiers changing guard,
here in the road. The crooked road I’ve shaped like the ridge at
Argenton, and each group of men stands for a battery. That’s all you
need tell the Frenchman. Of course it isn’t complete, for I couldn’t
learn everything, but it’s enough to give our airmen and gunners the
exact range. Oh, what luck, if you could really contrive to get it over!
I can’t help hoping, though it may be silly. You’ve managed to do so
much already under the Boches’ very noses.”
“I can’t make Captain de la Tour come,” said Lucy wistfully. “But if he
does I’ll surely get this to him.”
“Now go, Lucy. I can’t bear to have you out there in the rain, and I
don’t feel so sure of their not seeing you. It’s so jolly to have you to
talk to, I’m selfish and hate to let you go.”
“I’m coming again,” said Lucy, smiling with pleasure at his words and at
the happy knowledge of success in this much of her plan as, dripping
wet, she clung with aching fingers to the rusty bars. “What do you do
all day, Captain Beattie? How I wish I could make things better for
you.”
“I don’t do anything. I sit, and walk up and down and then sit again,
and wonder by the hour when we’ll begin to push the Germans back. Then I
look at these bars and convince myself I can’t get out, and end by
longing for the next meal—if you could call it a meal. I’ve tried
tapping on the wall to the soldiers next to me, but either they have
gone or the stone is too thick. They don’t answer.”
At this dismal picture Lucy sighed. She knew how such confinement had
tried Bob’s active spirit and overcome his power to resist sickness when
it came. She was about to offer some words of feeble encouragement when
a muffled step around the corner of the building made her hold her
breath in terror. The next moment she dropped to the ground and crouched
on the wet earth in the shadow of the wall. A German soldier came
sauntering by, looking up at the barred windows from under his rubber
hood. He seemed to have no particular duty here, for he walked along
humming to himself, as though on his way to bed. Before he passed the
window beneath which Lucy crouched trembling, another figure came up
behind him, splashing with heavy boots through the muddy pools.
“Is that you, Franz?” asked a guttural German voice.
“Yes,” responded the man in front, stopping to wait. “You off guard,
too?”
“For three hours—not time enough to sleep,” grumbled the first speaker.
“Why don’t they send enough men to garrison the place, if these empty
streets must be watched like treasure-chests?”
“Because the front line needs more watching still,” said the first man,
pausing to cover his rifle carefully with his rubber cape. “Those
American devil-dogs are getting nasty. You know the little hill with the
old _Schloss_ on it? There’s our weak point, if you ask me. How could we
hold the pond and swamp below when they won’t spare us artillery for the
hill? I’ve been on guard there to-night, and I tell you we couldn’t. I
know that much without wearing shoulder straps.”
“You seem to know a lot,” remarked the other man, still bad-humoredly.
“Suppose you tell me where we are to get supper to-night.”
They passed on out of hearing, and Lucy, breathing fast with terror,
sprang up from the ground. “Good-bye!” she whispered to the darkness of
the window, and fled swiftly but with infinite caution through the mud
and water of the road, toward the place where Elizabeth waited.
The talk she had just heard meant little at first, when her mind was
filled with the wild thought of flight. But the gruff words, spoken in
that language she had learned to hate, stuck in her memory as vividly as
did the two disconsolate figures standing in the rain before her
hiding-place.
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