the home sector,—that was what larry eaton called it, a little irony beneath his irrepressible cheerfulness, when he had been ordered to coblenz with the american army of occupation. he had called it so with his eyes on the stars and stripes already floating over the general’s headquarters in the old german city, and after a sidelong glance at lucy gordon’s sober face. “it’s the first step on the way home, lucy,” he said, as the two walked along the grassy banks of the river, the pale december sunlight shining on the water and, at their left, on the low houses at the outskirts of coblenz. “don’t look so downhearted, old pal.”
lucy smiled and shook off her depression. it was hard ever to be gloomy for long in larry’s company. the young aviator had something invincibly gay and hopeful in his nature, and a philosophic acceptance of things, until they could be bettered, that often quieted lucy’s rebellious moments. “i’m not downhearted, larry,” she protested. “at least not very. but i did want to go home,—not after a while, you know, but right away, when the armistice was signed. i know it’s wonderful to be at peace, and to have father safe and stationed here, but,—i don’t care very much about living in germany.”
“don’t you?” asked larry, laughing. “as beattie would say, you’re jolly right.”
“and there’s no use thinking we’ll all be together,” lucy persisted. “even though father has his quarters here and mother will finish her work and come, where will bob be?”
“scouting over the bolshevik lines in the frozen north,” said larry, a tinge of envy in his voice. “i’d change with him if i could.”
“would you? oh, larry, i should think you’d had enough.”
“so we have, but so long as there’s fighting to be done i’d rather be there than cooling my heels along the rhine. and our men aren’t having an easy time,—that poor little force at archangel.”
“oh, i know there’s lots of work to do!” lucy exclaimed, suddenly roused from her childish depression, and involuntarily she opened the woolen cape she wore and glanced at her nurse’s aide’s uniform. “i’ll stop growling and try to help.”
“i don’t think you’ll have much trouble doing it,” said larry, smiling down at her, “judging by what you’ve done so far. only this time you’ll have an easier job of it,—no prisoners to set free. you can’t imagine a peacefuller spot than that little hospital you’re going to. it’s lost in the forest, and even the village near it looks half asleep and as though it might tumble any minute down the hillside.”
“the peacefuller it is the better i’ll like it,” said lucy with something of a sigh. “i’ve had enough of war.”
although general gordon was stationed with the fifth army headquarters in coblenz, where already, a month after the armistice, american troops had taken possession of houses in the german city and were preparing for their long stay in the occupied territory, lucy herself was still on duty elsewhere. with the end of the fighting, need for war workers of all sorts had not grown less. mrs. gordon could not yet leave her hospital at cannes, and lucy had been urged to keep on as nurse’s aide with an insistence that could not but fill her with honest pride and satisfaction. the army surgeons spoke to her of the increasing need of nurses among the convalescents, and miss pearse frankly begged lucy not to abandon her.
“you can go to coblenz in the spring, lucy dear,” the young nurse persuaded, when new plans and changes of base occupied every mind in the joyful week after the armistice. “we have to garrison coblenz for fifteen years, they say, so your father will probably be there a good while. but perhaps he won’t,” she added, smiling at lucy’s face, grown disconsolate at her words. “anyway, while you’re over here i know you’d sooner be helping. there’s almost more to do than ever. the men have been rather let down by the war’s end and all the delays following. they don’t know what to do with themselves, especially the wounded who are slow in getting well. we’ve got to give them a christmas that will stifle their homesickness a little. and i can’t half work without you, lucy. i’m so used to having my little aide to call on. you’ll stay, won’t you?”
this was not the sort of persuasion lucy could resist, when her heart was already in the work that she had learned in such a hard school of suffering and anxiety. she eagerly consented to follow miss pearse wherever her father would allow her to go, which ended by being a little convalescent hospital outside the village of badheim, ten miles west of coblenz on the banks of the moselle. cold breezes from the two rivers swept it, and the air was pure and sweet with the odor of pine. after the shell-torn villages of france, badheim hospital, as miss pearse described it, seemed lovely and inviting to lucy in its woodland stillness. yet something, she felt, would keep her from yielding to its peaceful spell: it was a part of germany. it was unspoiled because france was desolate. she could not forget this long enough to look about her at any german landscape with untroubled eyes.
even now, walking with larry along the rhine, she watched the smooth flow of the river and looked across at the vineyard-clad slopes and at the great old fortress towering opposite coblenz with coolly critical gaze. all at once she turned to larry, with sudden recollection that this was her last day of freedom and perhaps her last chance in weeks of talking with bob’s friend, to ask longingly:
“larry, can’t you tell me anything more of what bob is doing at archangel? he doesn’t write much about his work, and the letters are so slow. i know it’s hard up there. and they don’t get ahead. the bolsheviki are strong.”
“our force is hardly of a size to accomplish much. it ought to be enough men or none,” declared larry, with the troubled, puzzled look that sometimes came over his face, making him look extraordinarily sober and thoughtful by contrast with his usual cool cheerfulness. “but don’t worry too much about bob,” he added, putting aside the doubts which had made him speak so earnestly. “he’s doing scouting work. he’s far safer than he was on the german front. the cold is the disagreeable part.”
“i know. i’ve knitted him everything i thought he could pile on. he doesn’t say much about it, but i looked up archangel on the map and, larry, it’s near the north pole.”
“not quite, but i won’t say it’s a pleasant climate. perhaps they won’t stay there much longer.”
“well, i thought on armistice day that it was over, really over,—the war, i mean. but here it seems to be tailing out in every direction.”
“yes, it has rather a nasty way of refusing to be finished,” larry agreed, looking around him as he spoke at the passers-by, for they were now re-entering the town. “to judge by their manner these boches seem to think it’s quite over and that we’re friends again. yet some of them, i’m sure, are very far from feeling that way.”
“what do you really think?” asked lucy curiously. “they smile at us and are eager to sell things. but larry, how can they feel friendly?”
“i can’t fathom them,” said larry, not much given to analyzing character at any time. “most of them seem spiritless enough, but i’ve seen a few bitter looks, all the same, and some eyes that shone with hate at sight of us. i don’t trust one of them.”
“oh, they’ll have to take it out in hating us,” said lucy easily. “they can’t do any worse now.”
lucy had had enough of plotting and conspiracy. she was determined to put german treachery out of her mind and live in confident simplicity once more.
“fed-up with the war, eh, lucy?” captain beattie had remarked, when lucy and the young britisher met by chance in cantigny soon after the armistice. “well, you know, i rather am myself. let’s cross the channel and leave it all behind.”
and that was what lucy longed to do, putting the atlantic in place of the channel, in spite of trying to persuade herself of the contrary after miss pearse’s urging. all through the war she had looked forward to that day, the fighting ended, that would see the gordon family on board the first ship bound for america. even adventurous spirits have their homesick moments. foreign sights and sounds had, while this mood lasted, lost their charm for her. she looked around her now at the old gabled houses of coblenz, at the germans passing, who paused to stare with blank curiosity at the americans, already a familiar part of the city’s inhabitants, and she felt no sympathy with her surroundings.
“i’m going to bury myself in that forest and work so hard at the hospital that i’ll forget i’m in germany,” she told larry, as they neared the house commandeered for general gordon’s quarters. “you might come out and see me once in a while, though, larry, and tell me how peace is getting on.”
“i’ll be out every year or two and bring you the news,” larry promised. “maybe i’ll feel the need of a little rest cure myself. i’m pretty well exhausted.”
lucy laughed as she met the blue twinkling eyes above his tanned cheeks. an orderly opened the house door as larry held out his hand in good-bye.
the following day lucy joined miss pearse and half a dozen other red cross workers to travel by motor-lorry to badheim. the road ran along the moselle, a lovely woodland countryside which went far toward bringing back lucy’s lost serenity.
“i love the country, don’t you, miss pearse?” she said, breathing deep breaths of the piney air. “i should think sick men would get well quickly here.”
“i hope they will,” the young nurse responded. “but i’m sure they’d get well quicker if these woods were in maine or in michigan,—anywhere at home.”
her voice betrayed her and lucy looked at her friend with a quick thrill of sympathy. miss pearse was as homesick as she herself, in spite of her stoic calm. and, meeting the glance of an orderly who sat on a case of supplies in one corner of the lorry, lucy read the same longing in his eyes even before he exclaimed almost involuntarily, “or not even woods or rivers, miss. just the docks at hoboken would look good enough to me.”
the little village of badheim was perched upon a hillside, the road winding at its foot. the lorry turned sharply away from the moselle to begin a long climb up a heavily wooded slope. the forest now closed in on both sides,—majestic oaks, mixed with pines and hemlocks which sang and murmured as the river breeze swept over them. rabbits darted across the road and squirrels chattered in the overhanging branches. all at once the hospital appeared, a big frame building in a clearing near the top of the hill, its roof in spreading gables, like a swiss chalet, and the stars and stripes floating over it.
behind it were half a dozen cottages for the staff. the whole had a weather-beaten look, for it had stood there more than fifty years, and an air of solitude enveloped it, as though it were much further removed from town and village than it really was. lucy decided in one glance that it needed sunlight and cheerful voices to keep from being a gloomy spot where the murmur of the swaying pines would change to sighs of loneliness.
in fact the convalescent soldiers seated on the verandas or strolling over the grassy clearing and in the borders of the woodland looked sober and purposeless, their idle steps leading vaguely from one spot to the other, without any spur of hopeful energy. lucy understood at last miss pearse’s eloquent persuasions, and seeing how sorely help was needed here, she forgot her own repinings and was herself again.
miss pearse and lucy installed themselves in a room in one of the cottages beside the hospital,—a sort of shed built of heavy unpainted planks, with sloping roof and leaded window-panes. a stove fed with pine-boughs warmed the drafty interior somewhat from the december cold.
while the two newcomers were unpacking and settling themselves in their narrow quarters the hospital’s head nurse came in and talked to them, dropping down on the nearest chair to do so; for she was tired and glad of a moment’s rest.
“you will think there is terrible confusion here, for we are all at loose ends,” she told them. “we haven’t enough nurses nor orderlies, and nothing is in smooth running order. i hope you won’t mind, for a few weeks, not having a regular routine but doing whatever presents itself.”
“that will just suit me,” remarked lucy, brushing her corn-colored hair before the little mirror. “send me on all the errands you can think of, miss webster.”
the head nurse laughed, looking kindly at lucy’s pretty face, lighted by the smile that her unaffectedness made very attractive. “i’ll find plenty for you to do, don’t worry,” she said confidently. “when nothing else turns up, go about among the convalescents and talk to them of home.”
“are there bad cases here? what sort, mostly?” miss pearse asked.
“some are men who have been gassed and their lungs are injured. those are the discouraged ones who think they can never get well. then we have a good many with broken limbs slowly mending, and some recovering from pneumonia and trench fever. there are about eighty in all, and most of them getting on splendidly, if they would only forget their homesickness and that they must spend christmas in germany.”
“u-um, but it’s not so easy to forget that,” murmured lucy, understandingly. “and, though of course this hospital has fine air and all that, it’s not a very cheerful place, do you think? with all these german woods shutting it in?”
“german woods are just like any other woods, lucy,” said miss pearse laughing. “don’t be making trouble. we’re ready now, miss webster.”
the hospital wards were nearly empty for a part of the day, during which almost all the patients got up and sat on the verandas, or were wheeled about if they could not walk. lucy was surprised to see a good number of french soldiers scattered among the americans, and looking a good deal more cheerful than her own countrymen, as though they knew that their return home could not be much longer postponed.
miss webster explained to her: “these frenchmen were in need of special treatment—we have mineral baths here. or else they were in american hospitals and were brought along with other convalescents. they will almost all go before christmas.”
lucy was put to work in the diet kitchen, which she left at lunch time to carry trays to those of the convalescents whose capricious appetites needed special encouragement. the trays were numbered and so were the chairs in which the invalids reclined, but as lucy, carrying a tray holding chicken broth and biscuits and numbered forty-five, approached the chair bearing that number, the occupant got up and, walking slowly down the veranda steps, strolled off toward the edge of the clearing.
the man was a french officer, a blond of tall and powerful build, though now his blue uniform hung loosely on his shrunken frame and his slow steps were a trifle uncertain. lucy put down the tray and ran after him, calling out, “quarante-cinq! quarante-cinq!” then as she neared him and saw the insignia on his uniform she changed her form of address to, “monsieur le capitaine! attendez, s’il vous plait?”
the frenchman turned around and seeing lucy pointing with expressive gesture to the veranda where the soup was cooling on the deserted chair he smiled and took off his cap, saying with quick apology, “pardon, mademoiselle.” then changing into good english he continued, “i am sorry to have made you follow me. thank you very much.”
lucy walked beside him in silence, stealing glances at his face in puzzled amazement. where had she seen that face before? it was not really familiar, yet she knew beyond a doubt that she had seen the man and spoken to him and, more than that, at a moment of great fear and anxiety. almost a shiver caught her now at the dim remembrance. where had it been?
“you have just arrived here, mademoiselle?” the officer inquired, turning pleasantly toward her.
all at once lucy knew. she saw in her mind’s eye the de la tours’ little house in chateau-plessis, the german soldier entering the dining-room and michelle’s cry of joy and terror.
“captain de la tour!” she exclaimed in vivid recollection, and as the officer looked at her in surprise she went eagerly on, “you don’t remember me? of course not—how could you? i’m michelle’s friend, lucy gordon. i was in your mother’s house when you came into chateau-plessis as a spy. for a moment i couldn’t remember. oh, tell me, how is michelle?”
the frenchman looked at her closely, his blue eyes shining with pleasure. “i remember you now, mademoiselle! and that day—will i ever forget it! i am happy to see you, my sister’s very dear friend.” he held out his hand as he spoke—a thin, bony hand from which fever had taken the strength and firmness. “can you stay a moment? i will give you good news of michelle.”
“a moment, yes. but don’t let your soup get cold,” said lucy, handing him the little tray as he sank down on his chair again, breathing hard. “and your mother—is she well, too?”
“not very well, but nevertheless she thinks more of her absent son than of her own health. i am not able to go home, they say, and maman fears i shall be lonely at this season, in spite of my kind american friends. she and michelle are coming to badheim for the no?l.”
at this lucy was struck so speechless with delight there was a pause before she could put into words her joyful amazement. “coming here? oh, captain de la tour, isn’t it good news? i can’t tell you—you can’t guess how glad i am!”
lucy’s hazel eyes sparkled with the words and her whole face lighted up. perhaps never until that moment had she realized the place michelle held in her heart. now at this lucky chance to review in peace and security the friendship woven among such sad and peril-haunted days she felt a thrill of happiness that raised her spirits almost to their old-time level.
captain de la tour watched her with quick sympathy, his pale lips touched for an instant by the brief, radiant smile which could so strikingly change both his and michelle’s faces from their thoughtful gravity. lucy longed to ask all about her friend, of whom she had caught so short a glimpse on the eleventh of november, but she had not another moment to spare. “when will they come?” she lingered to ask.
“this week, i think. i am waiting every day to hear,” said captain de la tour, his voice filled with eager hope. “i have not seen them since the war ended. i was shot through the lungs the day of the armistice.”
when the luncheon hour was over miss pearse said to lucy, “this is a good chance to do what miss webster asked me to find time for. she wants us to go with the orderlies to the spring in the forest and see to the bottling of the water. it won’t take long.”
lucy was thinking so much about all she would have to tell michelle that she hardly noticed what miss pearse said, but followed her in obedient silence across the clearing behind the hospital and into the woodland. in front of them went two hospital corps men drawing hand-carts filled with empty bottles.
there was no snow yet on the ground and, beneath the trees, it was carpeted with moss and pine needles so that footsteps were hushed and the sigh of the branches overhead made so deep and steady a murmur that the forest seemed all at once to have an atmosphere of its own. a great peace pervaded it so that even the soldiers spoke involuntarily in low tones, and glanced about them with a kind of solemnity at the tall trunks of the firs and hemlocks, with here and there an oak spreading its wide, bare branches. the sunlight shone down with a golden gleam into the dim greenness of forest aisles stretching endlessly on every side.
lucy walked on in enchanted silence. she thought she had never known anything more lovely than this murmurous stillness, the soft carpet beneath her feet, the great evergreen trees closing in around her and the cold, pine-laden air against her face. the mysterious scamper of shy woodland bird and beast delighted her. she would not have guessed that they had gone a hundred yards when, after half a mile’s walk, they came out suddenly into another big clearing, near the center of which stood a little cottage built of unplaned logs, its roof covered with pine boughs and smoke rising from its earthen chimney.
“it looks like a fairy story,” said lucy softly, remembering elizabeth’s old forest tales.
the soldiers led the way along the clearing’s edge for a hundred yards and then re?ntered the forest. almost at once the sound of water tumbling over stones broke the stillness and a little spring came into view, a bubbling basin with moss-lined, rocky bottom, and beside it a tiny rustic shed, its door fastened with a rusty padlock.
“that little shed held the bottling machine the germans used,” miss pearse explained to lucy as the men began to unload their carts, “but it got out of order toward the end of the war, so for a few weeks we shall have to bottle by hand. we are supposed to supervise but it’s quicker work if we help.”
all four knelt down on the mossy earth and began dipping up the spring water with ladles and pouring it through funnels into the big water-bottles. the spring bubbled up unceasingly, so crystal clear that no disturbance of the water could keep the rocky bottom from showing always in trembling outline.
“this is a mineral spring,” said miss pearse, setting aside a filled bottle which looked empty in its clearness. “the water is as wonderful as this forest air. hello, who’s this?”
a little girl five or six years old had crept silently up to the spring and was standing with big blue eyes fixed on the americans. her flaxen braids hung over her faded print dress, a ragged red shawl was clutched about her and her feet were thrust into clumsy sabots above which her stockings were slipping down. an uncertain smile that began to dimple her pink cheeks broadened as she met lucy’s friendly eyes.
“guten tag,” she murmured shyly.
and “guten tag,” repeated a man’s voice as the fir branches were brushed aside. a big german, close to middle age, blond and deeply sunburned, ax in hand, stood behind the child, his keen eyes fixed on the workers, a touch of sourness about his lips, though he spoke pleasantly enough.
lucy looked up at him and the enchantment of the great old forest, of the bubbling spring and the soft-footed little girl vanished in that one glance. she was back again in germany.
