Eileen O’Connor had gone back from the convent to the rooms she had
before her trial and imprisonment. I was glad to see her in a setting
less austere than the white-washed parlour in which she had first
received us. There was something of her character in the sitting-room
where she had lived so long during the war, and where with her
girl-friends she had done more dangerous work than studying the
elements of drawing and painting. In that setting, too, she looked at
home--“The Portrait of a Lady,” by Lavery, as I saw her in my mind’s
eye, when she sat in a low arm-chair by the side of a charcoal stove,
with the lamplight on her face and hair and her dress shadowy. She
wore a black dress of some kind, with a tiny edge of lace about the
neck and a string of coloured beads so long that she twisted it about
her fingers in her lap. The room was small, but cosy in the light of a
tall lamp, on an iron stand, shaded with red silk. Like all the rooms I
had seen in Lille--not many--this was panelled, with a polished floor,
bare except for one rug. On the walls were a few etchings framed in
black--London views mostly--and some water-colour drawings of girls’
heads, charmingly done, I thought. They were her own studies of some of
her pupils and friends, and one face especially attracted me, because
of its delicate and spiritual beauty.
“That was my fellow-prisoner,” said Eileen O’Connor. “Alice de
Villers-Auxicourt. She died before the trial. Happily, because she had
no fear.”
I noticed one other thing in the room which was pleasant to see--an
upright piano, and upon a stool by its side a pile of old songs which
I turned over one by one as we sat talking. They were English and
Irish, mostly from the 17th century onwards, but among them I found
some German songs, and on each cover was written the name of Franz
von Kreuzenach. At the sight of that name I had a foolish sense of
embarrassment and dismay, as though I had discovered a skeleton in a
cupboard, and I slipped them hurriedly between other sheets.
Eileen was talking to Wickham Brand. She did not notice my confusion.
She was telling him that Marthe, Pierre’s sister, was seriously ill
with something like brain-fever. The girl had regained consciousness
at times, but was delirious, and kept crying out for her mother and
Pierre to save her from some horror that frightened her. The nuns had
made enquiries about her through civilians in Lille. Some of them had
heard of the girl under her stage name--“Marthe de Méricourt.” She had
sung in the _cabarets_ before the war. After the German occupation she
had disappeared for a time. Somebody said she had been half-starved and
was in a desperate state. What could a singing-girl do in an “occupied”
town? She reappeared in a restaurant frequented by German officers and
kept up by a woman of bad character. She sang and danced there for a
miserable wage, and part of her duty was to induce German officers to
drink champagne--the worst brand for the highest price. A horrible
degradation for a decent girl! But starvation, so Eileen said, has
fierce claws. Imagine what agony, what terror, what despair must have
gone before that surrender! To sing and dance before the enemies of
your country!
“Frightful!” said Brand. “A girl should prefer death.”
Eileen O’Connor was twisting the coloured beads between her fingers.
She looked up at Wickham Brand with a deep thoughtfulness in her dark
eyes.
“Most men would say that. And all women beyond the war-zone, safe, and
shielded. But death does not come quickly from half-starvation, in a
garret without fire, in clothes that are worn threadbare. It is not
the quick death of the battlefield. It is just a long-drawn misery....
Then there is loneliness. The loneliness of a woman’s soul. Do you
understand that?”
Brand nodded gravely.
“I understand the loneliness of a man’s soul. I’ve lived with it.”
“Worse for a woman,” said Eileen. “That singing-girl was lonely in
Lille. Her family--with that boy Pierre--were on the other side of the
lines. She had no friends here, before the Germans came.”
“You mean that afterwards----”
Brand checked the end of his sentence, and the line of his mouth
hardened.
“Some of the Germans were kind,” said Eileen. “Oh, let us tell the
truth about that! They were not all devils.”
“They were our enemies,” said Brand.
Eileen was silent for another moment, staring down at those queer beads
of hers in her lap, and before she spoke again I think her mind was
going back over many episodes and scenes during the German occupation
of Lille.
“It was a long time--four years. A tremendous time for hatred to hold
out against civility, kindness, and--human nature.... Human nature is
strong; stronger than frontiers, nations, even patriotism.”
Eileen O’Connor flung her beads back, rose from the low chair and
turned back her hair with both hands, with a kind of impatience.
“I’ve seen the truth of things, pretty close--almost as close as death.”
“Yes,” said Brand in a low voice. “You were pretty close to all that.”
The girl seemed to be anxious to plunge deep into the truth of the
things she had seen.
“The Germans--here in Lille--were of all kinds. Everything there was in
the war, for them, their emotion, their pride in the first victories,
their doubts, fears, boredom, anguish, brutality, sentiment, found a
dwelling-place in this city behind the battlefront. Some of them--in
the administration--stayed here all the time, billeted in French
families. Others came back from the battlefields, horror-stricken,
trying to get a little brief happiness--forgetfulness. There were lots
of them who pitied the French people, and had an immense sympathy with
them. They tried to be friends. Tried hard, by every sort of small
kindness in their billets.”
“Like Schwarz in Madame Chéri’s house,” said Brand bitterly. It seemed
to me curious that he was adopting a mental attitude of unrelenting
hatred to the Germans, when, as I knew, and as I have told, he had been
of late on the side of toleration. That was how his moods swung, when
as yet he had no fixed point of view.
“Oh, yes, there were many beasts,” said Eileen quickly. “But others
were different. Beasts or not, they were human. They had eyes to
see and to smile, lips to talk and tempt. It was their human nature
which broke some of our hatred. There were young men among them, and
in Lille girls who could be angry for a time, disdainful longer, and
then friendly. I mean lonely, half-starved girls, weak, miserable
girls,--and others not starved enough to lose their passion and need of
love. German boys and French girls--entangled in the net of fate....
God pity them!”
Brand said, “I pity them, too.”
He walked over to the piano and made an abrupt request, as though to
change the subject of conversation.
“Sing something.... Something English!”
Eileen O’Connor sang something Irish first, and I liked her deep voice,
so low and sweet.
“There’s one that is pure as an angel
And fair as the flowers of May,
They call her the gentle maiden
Wherever she takes her way.
Her eyes have the glance of sunlight
As it brightens the blue sea-wave,
And more than the deep-sea treasure
The love of her heart I crave.
Though parted afar from my darling,
I dream of her everywhere.
The sound of her voice is about me,
The spell of her presence there.
And whether my prayer be granted,
Or whether she pass me by,
The face of that gentle maiden
Will follow me till I die.”
Brand was standing by the piano, with the light of the tall lamp on his
face, and I saw that there was a wetness in his eyes before the song
was ended.
“It is queer to hear that in Lille,” he said. “It’s so long since I
heard a woman sing, and it’s like water to a parched soul.”
Eileen O’Connor played the last bars again and, as she played, talked
softly.
“To me, the face of that gentle maiden is a friend’s face. Alice de
Villers-Auxicourt, who died in prison.
‘And whether my prayer be granted,
Or whether she pass me by,
The face of that gentle maiden
Will follow me till I die.’”
Brand turned over the songs, and suddenly I saw his face flush, and I
knew the reason. He had come to the German songs on which was written
the name of Franz von Kreuzenach.
He turned them over quickly, but Eileen pulled one out--it was a
Schubert song--and opened its leaves.
“That was the man who saved my life.”
She spoke without embarrassment, simply.
“Yes,” said Brand. “He suppressed the evidence.”
“Oh, you know?”
I told her that we had heard part of the tale from the Reverend Mother,
but not all of it. Not the motive, nor what had really happened.
“But you guessed?”
“No,” I answered, sturdily.
She laughed, but in a serious way.
“It is not a hard guess, unless I am older than I feel, and uglier than
the mirror tells me. He was in love with me.”
Brand and I looked absurdly embarrassed. Of course we _had_ guessed,
but this open confession was startling, and there was something
repulsive in the idea to both of us who had come through the war-zone
into Lille, and had seen the hatred of the people for the German race,
and the fate of Pierre Nesle’s sister.
Eileen O’Connor told us that part of her story which the Reverend
Mother had left out. It explained the “miracle” that had saved this
girl’s life, though, as the Reverend Mother said, perhaps the grace of
God was in it as well. Who knows?
Franz von Kreuzenach was one of the Intelligence officers whose
headquarters were in that courtyard. After service in the trenches with
an infantry battalion he had been stationed since 1915 at Lille until
almost the end. He had a lieutenant’s rank, but was Baron in private
life, belonging to an old family in Bonn. Not a Prussian, therefore,
but a Rhinelander, and without the Prussian arrogance of manner. Just
before the war he had been at Oxford--Brasenose College--and spoke
English perfectly, and loved England with a strange, deep, unconcealed
sentiment.
“Loved England?” exclaimed Brand at this part of Eileen’s tale.
“Why not?” asked Eileen. “I’m Irish, but I love England, in spite of
all her faults, and all my grievances! Who can help loving England that
has lived with her people?”
This Lieutenant von Kreuzenach was two months in Lille before he spoke
a word with Eileen. She passed him often in the courtyard and always
he saluted her with great deference. She fancied she noticed a kind of
wistfulness in his eyes, as though he would have liked to talk to her.
He had blue eyes, sad sometimes, she noticed, and a clean-cut face,
rather delicate and pale.
One day she dropped a pile of books in the yard all of a heap, as he
was passing, and he said, “Allow me,” and helped to pick them up. One
of the books was “Puck of Pook’s Hill,” by Kipling, and he smiled as he
turned over a page or two.
“I love that book,” he said, in perfect English. “There’s so much of
the spirit of old England in it. History, too. That’s fine about the
Roman wall, where the officers go pig-sticking.”
Eileen O’Connor asked him if he were half English--perhaps he had
an English mother?--but he shook his head and said he was wholly
German--_echt Deutsch_.
He hesitated for a moment as though he wanted to continue the
conversation, but then saluted and passed on.
It was a week or so later when they met again, and it was Eileen
O’Connor who said “Good morning” and made a remark about the weather.
He stopped, and answered with a look of pleasure and boyish surprise.
“It’s jolly to hear you say ‘Good morning’ in English. Takes me
straight back to Oxford before this atrocious war. Besides----”
Here he stopped and blushed.
“Besides what?” asked Eileen.
“Besides, it’s a long time since I talked to a lady. Among officers one
hears nothing but war-talk--the last battle, the next battle, technical
jargon, ‘shop,’ as the English say. It would be nice to talk about
something else--art, music, poetry, ideas.”
She chaffed him a little, irresistibly.
“Oh, but you Germans have the monopoly of all that! Art, music, poetry,
they are all absorbed into your _Kultur_--properly Germanised. As for
ideas--what is not in German philosophy is not an idea.”
He looked profoundly hurt, said Eileen.
“Some Germans are very narrow, very stupid, like some English, perhaps.
Not all of us believe that German _Kultur_ is the only knowledge in the
world.”
“Anyhow,” said Eileen O’Connor, “I’m Irish, so we needn’t argue about
the difference between German and English philosophy.”
He spoke as if quoting from a text-book.
“The Irish are a very romantic race.”
That, of course, had to be denied by Eileen, who knew her Bernard Shaw.
“Don’t you believe it,” she said. “We’re a hard, logical, relentless
people, like all peasant folk of Celtic stock. It’s the English who are
romantic and sentimental, like the Germans.”
He was amazed at those words (so Eileen told us) and then laughed
heartily in his very boyish way.
“You are pleased to make fun of me. You are pulling my leg, as we said
at Oxford.”
So they took to talking for a few minutes in the courtyard when they
met, and Eileen noticed that they met more often than before. She
suspected him of arranging that, and it amused her. By that time she
had a staunch friend in the old Kommandant who believed her to be an
enemy of England and an Irish patriot. She was already playing the
dangerous game under his very nose, or at least within fifty yards of
the blotting-pad over which his nose used to be for many hours of the
day in his office. It was utterly necessary to keep him free from any
suspicion. His confidence was her greatest safeguard. It was therefore
unwise to refuse him (an honest, stupid old gentleman) when he asked
whether, now and again, he might bring one of his officers and enjoy
an hour’s music in her rooms after dinner. He had heard her singing,
and it had gone straight to his heart. There was one of his officers,
Lieutenant Baron Franz von Kreuzenach, who had a charming voice. They
might have a little musical recreation which would be most pleasant and
refreshing.
“Bring your Baron,” said Eileen. “I shall not scandalise my neighbours
when the courtyard is closed.”
Her girl-friends were scandalised when they heard of these musical
evenings--two or three times a month--until she convinced them that it
was a service to France, and a life insurance for herself and them.
There were times when she had scruples. She was tricking both those
men who sat in her room for an hour or two now and then, so polite,
so stiffly courteous, so moved with sentiment when she sang old Irish
songs and Franz von Kreuzenach sang his German songs. She was a spy,
in plain and terrible language, and they were utterly duped. On
more than one night while they were there an escaped prisoner was in
the cellar below, with a German uniform, and cypher message, and all
directions for escape across the lines. Though they seldom talked
about the war, yet now and again by casual remarks they revealed the
intentions of the German army and its _moral_, or lack of _moral_. With
the old Kommandant she did not feel so conscience-stricken. To her he
was gentle and charming, but to others a bully, and there was in his
character the ruthlessness of the Prussian officer on all matters of
“duty,” and he hated England ferociously.
With Franz von Kreuzenach it was different. He was a humanitarian,
and sensitive to all cruelty in life. He hated not the English but
the war with real anguish, as she could see by many words he let fall
from time to time. He was, she said, a poet, and could see across the
frontiers of hatred to all suffering humanity, and so revolted against
the endless, futile massacre and the spiritual degradation of civilised
peoples. It was only in a veiled way he could say these things, in the
presence of his superior officer, but she understood. She understood
another thing as time went on--nearly eighteen months all told. She
saw, quite clearly, as all women must see in such a case that this
young German was in love with her.
“He did not speak any word in that way,” said Eileen when she told us
this, frankly, in her straight manner of speech, “but in his eyes, in
the touch of his hand, in the tones of his voice, I knew that he loved
me, and I was very sorry.”
“It was a bit awkward,” said Brand, speaking with a strained attempt at
being casual. I could see that he was very much moved by that part of
the story, and that there was a conflict in his mind.
“It made me uneasy and embarrassed,” said Eileen. “I don’t like to
be the cause of any man’s suffering, and he was certainly suffering
because of me. It was a tragic thing for both of us when I was found
out at last.”
“What happened?” asked Brand.
The thing that happened was simple--and horrible. When Eileen and
her companions were denounced by the sentry at the Citadel the case
was reported to the Kommandant of the Intelligence office, who was
in charge of all anti-espionage business in Lille. He was enormously
disturbed by the suspicion directed against Eileen. It seemed to him
incredible, at first, that he could have been duped by her. After that,
his anger was so violent that he became incapable of any personal
action. He ordered Franz von Kreuzenach to arrest Eileen and search her
rooms. “If she resist, shoot her at once,” he thundered out.
It was at seven o’clock in the evening when Baron Franz von Kreuzenach
appeared at Eileen’s door with two soldiers. He was extremely pale and
agitated.
Eileen rose from her little table, where she was having an evening meal
of soup and bread. She knew the moment had come which in imagination
she had seen a thousand times.
“Come in, Baron!”
She spoke with an attempt at cheerfulness, but had to hold to the back
of her chair to save herself from falling, and she felt her face become
white.
He stood for a moment in the room, silently, with the two soldiers
behind him, and when he spoke it was in a low voice, in English.
“It is my painful duty to arrest you, Miss O’Connor.”
She pretended to be amazed, incredulous, but it was, as she knew, a
feeble mimicry.
“Arrest me? Why, that is--ridiculous! On what charge?”
Franz von Kreuzenach looked at her in a pitiful way.
“A terrible charge. Espionage and conspiracy against German martial
law.... I would rather have died than do this--duty.”
Eileen told us that he spoke that word “duty” as only a German
could--as that law which for a German officer is above all human
things, all kindly relationships, all escape. She pitied him then,
more, she said, than she was afraid for herself, and told him that she
was sorry the duty had fallen to him. He made only one other remark
before he took her away from her rooms.
“I pray God the evidence will be insufficient.”
There was a military car waiting outside the courtyard, and he opened
the door for her to get in, and sat opposite to her. The two soldiers
sat together next to the driver, squeezed close--they were both stout
men--with their rifles between their knees. It was dark in the streets
of Lille, and in the car. Eileen could only see the officer’s face
vaguely, and white. He spoke again as they were driven quickly.
“I have to search your rooms to-night. Have you destroyed your papers?”
He seemed to have no doubt about her guilt, but she would not admit it.
“I have no papers of which I am afraid.”
“That is well,” said Franz von Kreuzenach.
He told her that the Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt and Marcelle Barbier
had been arrested also, and that news was like a death-blow to the
girl. It showed that their conspiracy had been revealed, and she was
stricken at the thought of the fate awaiting her friends, those young,
delicate girls who had been so brave in taking risks.
Towards the end of the journey, which was not far, Franz von
Kreuzenach began speaking in a low, emotional voice.
Whatever happened, he said, he prayed that she might think of him with
friendship, not blaming him for that arrest, which was in obedience
to orders. He would ever be grateful to her for her kindness, and the
songs she had sung. They had been happy evenings to him when he could
see her, and listen to her voice. He looked forward to them in a hungry
way, because of his loneliness.
“He said--other things,” added Eileen, and she did not tell us, though
dimly we guessed at the words of that German officer who loved her. At
the gate of the prison he delivered her to a group of military police,
and then saluted as he swung round on his heel.
The next time she saw him was at her trial. Once only their eyes
met, and he became deadly pale and bent his head. During her
cross-examination of him he did not look at her, and his embarrassment,
his agony--she could see that he was suffering--made an unfavourable
impression on the Court, who thought he was not sure of his evidence,
and was making blundering answers when she challenged him. She held him
up to ridicule, but all the time was sorry for him, and grateful to
him, because she knew how much evidence against her he had concealed.
“He behaved strangely about that evidence,” said Eileen. “What puzzles
me still is why he produced so much and yet kept back the rest. You
see, he put in the papers he had found in the secret passage, and
they were enough to have me shot, yet he hushed up the fact about the
passage, which, of course, was utterly damning. It looked as though he
wanted to give me a sporting chance. But that was not his character,
because he was a simple young man. He could have destroyed the papers
as easily as he kept back the fact about the underground passage, but
he produced them, and I escaped only by the skin of my teeth. Read me
that riddle, Wickham Brand!”
“It’s easy,” said Brand. “The fellow was pulled two ways. By duty
and--sentiment.”
“Love,” said Eileen in her candid way.
“Love, if you like.... It was a conflict. Probably his sense of duty
(I know these German officers!) was strong enough to make him hand up
the papers to his superior officers. He couldn’t bring himself to burn
them--the fool! Then the other emotion in him----”
“Give it a name,” said Eileen, smiling in her whimsical way.
“That damned love of his,” said Brand, “tugged at him intolerably, and
jabbed at his conscience. So he hid the news about the passage, and
thought what a fine fellow he was. Mr. Facing-Both-Ways. Duty and love,
both sacrificed!... He’d have looked pretty sick if you’d been shot,
and it wasn’t to his credit that you weren’t.”
Eileen O’Connor was amused with Brand’s refusal to credit Franz von
Kreuzenach with any kindness.
“Admit,” she said, “that his suppression of evidence gave me my chance.
If all were told, I was lost.”
Brand admitted that.
“Admit also,” said Eileen, “that he behaved like a gentleman.”
Brand admitted it grudgingly.
“A German gentleman.”
Then he realised his meanness, and made amends.
“That’s unfair! He behaved like a good fellow. Probably took big risks.
Everyone who knows what happened must be grateful to him. If I meet him
I’ll thank him.”
Eileen O’Connor held Brand to that promise, and asked him for a favour
which made him hesitate.
“When you go on to the Rhine, will you take him a letter from me?”
“It’s against the rules,” said Brand, rather stiffly. Eileen
pooh-poohed these rules, and said Franz von Kreuzenach had broken his,
for her sake.
“I’ll take it,” said Brand.
That night when we left Eileen O’Connor’s rooms the Armistice was still
being celebrated by British soldiers. Verey lights were rising above
the houses, fired off by young officers as symbols of their own soaring
spirits. Shadows lurched against us in the dark streets as officers and
men went singing to their billets. Some girls of Lille had linked arms
with British Tommies and were dancing in the darkness, with screams of
mirth. In one of the doorways a soldier with his steel hat at the back
of his head and his rifle lying at his feet, kept shouting one word in
a drunken way:
“Peace!... Peace!”
Brand had his arm through mine, and when we came to his headquarters he
would not let me go.
“Armistice night!” he said. “Don’t let’s sleep just yet. Let’s hug the
thought, over a glass of whiskey. The war is over!... No more blood!...
No more of its tragedy!”
Yet we had got no farther than the hall before we knew that tragedy had
not ended with the Armistice.
Colonel Lavington met us and spoke to Brand.
“A bad thing has happened. Young Clatworthy has shot himself ...
upstairs in his room.”
“No!”
Brand started back as if he had been hit. He had been fond of
Clatworthy, as he was of all boys, and they had been together for many
months. It was to Brand that Clatworthy wrote his last strange note,
and the Colonel gave it to him then, in the hall.
I saw it afterwards, written in a big scrawl--a few lines which now I
copy out:
“_Dear old Brand_,
_It’s the end of the adventure. Somehow I funk Peace. I don’t
see how I can go back to Wimbledon as if nothing had happened
to me. None of us are the same as when we left, and I’m quite
different. I’m going over to the pals on the other side. They will
understand. Cheerio!_