christmas, 1918, and peace on the western front. that was the thought in everyone’s mind at the little badheim hospital—that for the first time since 1914 the guns were silent on christmas day. but lucy’s happiness was not what she had hoped for, though she seemed as gay as the others as she helped decorate the bare hospital halls with evergreen forest boughs, dark against the bright background of allied flags. michelle guessed her secret longing, nevertheless, with the quick sympathy which made the french girl so readily understand the joys and sorrows of those she loved.
“it is not the same for you as for me—this no?l,” she said to lucy as they worked together to make the long tables cheerful for the homesick soldiers’ eyes, “for you have not your brother back.”
“it isn’t only that i miss him, michelle,” exclaimed lucy, glad to put her troubled thoughts into words for michelle’s friendly ear, “it’s that he’s still in danger. they say he is only scouting over the bolshevik lines, but you know what that means. the enemy is there—i can’t help worrying.”
“i know you cannot,” agreed michelle, without offering useless consolation. “it is very hard. i thought maman and i were of all the most unlucky when armand was shot on the day of l’armistice, but now he is almost well and we have no more to fear.”
so much and so deeply had michelle lived and suffered in the past four years that she did not even think to bewail the loss of home and fortune that the war had brought. the germans were defeated and her mother and armand spared. that seemed just now the granting of all she had to wish for.
lucy had found herself more than once watching her friend’s face in the few days since michelle and her mother arrived at badheim. on armistice day she had realized that michelle could not respond to the joyful news with any abandon of light-heartedness. the bitter suffering of the long years of war had made the little french girl grow up before her time. even now, with her blackest cares behind her, with hope and confidence in the future, michelle’s lovely face was still serious in repose, and her dark blue eyes held a lingering sad watchfulness that did not suit her sixteen years. only now and then, when the two friends ran into the forest to collect the fir boughs, when michelle’s black hair was loosened about her neck and her radiant smile chased away all memories from the happy present, did lucy catch a glimpse of that careless gayety which the war had stolen from her.
in spite of lucy’s troubled thoughts of bob she found unlimited pleasure and consolation in michelle’s company. together the two worked as they had worked in the old days at chateau-plessis, to brighten the wounded men’s gloom. only now they were among friends, with no sharp-eyed german surgeons on the watch. this thought somehow made lucy almost resigned to being in germany.
“we have to be here, instead of at home, but at any rate we can do what we please. it’s we who give the orders now,” she said to michelle the morning of christmas day. a german farmer from beyond badheim village was unloading supplies from his cart beside the hospital steps, and some of the convalescents with awakening interest were gathered around.
“yes, the german trees can’t take us prisoner,” said michelle with whimsical gravity, looking up at the great sighing pines closing in around them. “they are lovely—these forest trees. it was not the germans, but god who planted them.”
lucy felt again a touch of the enchantment that had caught her the first day she had entered the forest stillness. but at thought of the cottage in the clearing—now familiar ground—the face of the german woodcutter came before her once more to spoil the beauty. and yet there was nothing about the man, silent or quietly civil with the hospital workers, to make so definite an impression on her mind. she spoke her thoughts aloud.
“i can never see that franz without remembering all the hatefulness of every german i’ve known in the past two years. while he’s about i can’t forget i am in germany.”
“he does not forget it either,” was michelle’s reply.
“oh, i don’t think he bears us any grudge, miss. he’s pleasant enough when we walk to the spring or the clearing,” remarked a young convalescent soldier sitting on the steps. “he’s old and soured by a hard life. poor, too, to judge by the rags the kids wear.”
michelle looked up at the soldier’s face, a boyish one, with pale cheeks rounding out with returning health and frank, merry gray eyes.
“franz has not forgiven,” she said again. “don’t you see he has not?”
the young soldier did not much care one way or the other. “maybe you’re right,” he agreed peaceably. “we’re going to have some dinner,” he added, following with his eyes the packages being carried toward the kitchen. “gee, it’s great to be hungry again.”
christmas dinner was more of a success than anyone had hoped for. the convalescents could not help responding to such kind efforts, and in doing so they forgot their homesickness and began to appreciate their real good-fortune. then, returning strength gave a good share of them hearty appetites, which found a reasonable number of german or american good things for their satisfaction. and the bright flags, the soft green of the fir branches, and the red berries which lucy and michelle had searched for in the forest, made the dining-room and tables gay and almost homelike to the young americans gathered there. some were still in wheeled chairs, with hollow cheeks and no interest in the food before them, but even these cheered up a little as talk and laughter grew louder, as songs of home were sung and toasts offered with cheers or laughter.
larry eaton was there, at lucy’s invitation, and he, madame de la tour, armand, michelle and lucy sat together at one end of a table. larry was in wonderful spirits, or else he tried with all his kind heart to make lucy forget bob’s absence. madame de la tour, in the midst of the noisy, crowded roomful, said little. her eyes were upon her son as he smiled and talked and tried to coax his feeble appetite for her pleasure.
all at once it seemed to lucy that the christmas gayety had more of the pathetic than the merry about it, and that the toasts drunk were bantering and would-be light-hearted ones, because reminders of home brought some of those weak, white-faced convalescents close to tears.
after it was all over and the men scattered, some wheeled away to rest after too much excitement, lucy, michelle, armand and larry walked into the forest, where the sinking sun had begun to send its slanting beams.
“i’d like to come here to get well,” remarked larry, sniffing the piney air. as he spoke a cold wind, rising with the approach of sunset, swept through the trees and made the girls draw their capes closer. larry added thoughtfully, “i mean i’d like it here now—the war over and all. it’s not a place to come to as a german prisoner. rather spooky, if you were inclined to be down on your luck.”
“do you find it that way too, larry?” cried lucy, delighted to hear her own thoughts put into words. “i’ve felt that so often about this forest in the two weeks i’ve been here. have you ever read silly books where, when the hero feels desperate about anything, a thunder-storm comes up to give him a background? well, this forest never changes, yet however i feel, it makes me feel more so.”
“say it once more, please,” said larry grinning, while armand turned amused eyes on lucy’s serious face.
“i can’t say it properly,” she protested, flushing a little. “i mean that the forest makes me feel everything more deeply. if i’m happy when i come into it, it looks beautiful and i am twice as happy, but if i come here anxious, not having had a word from bob in days, it’s gloomy and unfriendly, so that i don’t stay any longer than i must.”
“i understand very well,” said michelle in her pretty, quiet voice. “it is that here, beneath the trees, one can think very clearly, and when the thoughts are sad ones——”
“you’d rather they were interrupted,” put in larry, pulling off bits of pine-bark to throw at two squirrels chattering on a limb overhead. “seems to me we’re getting dismal for christmas day. whose idea was this, anyway, to make a call on the boches?”
“michelle’s and mine,” said lucy. “we promised franz’ children some fruit and candy. poor things, they have hardly anything. franz is awfully poor, or else he is a perfect pig.”
“the children—they look cold, captain eaton,” added michelle. “do you know if all the peasants around coblenz are very poor?”
“some are. of course many suffered in the war, though nothing in comparison to the french. but there’s a real scarcity of food and clothing here now.”
“they have plenty of wood to burn,” said lucy. “but when the children run out-of-doors they shiver in those rags they wear.”
“the maman looks sad and hopeless. she seems not at all to care,” remarked michelle wonderingly.
“the father is your special friend, isn’t he, lucy?” asked larry, his eyes twinkling.
“yes, he’s my favorite,” she agreed, refusing to be teased. “he makes me think of the good old days last year in chateau-plessis.”
“truly, he is not a joli type,” said armand. “there is something hard about his eyes and smile.”
“does he act sulky with the hospital staff?” asked larry.
“oh, no,” said lucy. “he supplies us with wood. probably he can’t help looking the way he does. he’s just german.”
“this must be the son and heir,” said larry.
a little boy, just able to run alone, with a yellow thatch of hair above his eager face, and arms outstretched to help his stumbling feet, burst through the trees and made for lucy, panting, “guten abend, fr?ulein! fr?hliche weihnacht!”
“merry christmas yourself, mein herr,” larry responded, stooping to pick up the little german as he tripped and fell over a root in his excitement. “better look where you’re going.”
“hurt yourself, freidrich?” asked lucy in german, while michelle brushed pine-needles from the child’s hair.
“nein,” he answered, still panting, and, rising on tiptoe, tried to peep into the basket that larry carried, not quite daring to approach the young officer, though burning curiosity was fast overcoming his fear.
the next moment two more children came running from the clearing, the little girl whom lucy had first seen at the spring, and a boy about a year older than freidrich. all three wore torn cotton clothing over which ragged coats or shawls were held together by their cold, bare fingers. their flaxen heads were uncovered and their stockings slipped down over wooden shoes.
“?a m’étonne,” said michelle, shaking her head. “the german peasants are very careful with their children, as i remember them.”
“perhaps they can’t get clothes,” suggested larry. “wool is terribly high now in germany. they are rather nice-looking kids.”
“yes, a little above the peasant class,” remarked armand, patting the shoulder of the four-year-old boy, freidrich’s brother, who walked beside the french officer, casting eager, curious glances up at him. “what is your name, little one?” he asked in german.
the child hung his head in silence, but the little girl, her bright eyes turned for a moment from the basket, the center of all their hopes, answered promptly:
“his name is wilhelm, herr officer, and my name is adelheid. and our father’s name is franz kraft. i am seven years old.”
she ended with a smile and a bobbing curtsey. larry said, in a peculiar german something like bob’s, “thank you, my little maiden.” he was about to ask her if the cottage which now appeared in sight was her home, but his german failing him, he asked it instead of lucy in english, remarking, “he must do quite a business—this franz. he has enough wood cut already to last the hospital all winter.”
the woodcutter had heaped his fagots in neat piles over about one-half of the clearing, which covered perhaps two acres.
“he has men come to help him cut,” lucy explained. “they cart the wood away to towns and villages near here. he’s quite a well-known character, to judge by the visitors he has. if he’s popular, i don’t care for german taste.”
“now, fr?ulein? can we see now?” begged adelheid, dancing up and down in her impatience.
“yes, right now,” consented lucy, sitting down on a pine stump in front of the cottage and taking the basket from larry.
as she uncovered it a gasp of delight rose from three little throats, and lucy felt freidrich’s and wilhelm’s panting breaths against her face, as they bent toward her in irresistible excitement.
“pauvres petits,” murmured michelle, touching adelheid’s thin little shoulder.
there was nothing in the basket but fruit and red cross candy, with some bits of tinsel saved from the tree that had ornamented the ward where the men lay who were too sick to attend the christmas dinner. but as lucy distributed the basket’s contents the children’s cheeks flushed pink and their eyes shone as they stammered, “danke, gn?dige fr?ulein, danke.”
a step sounded on the threshold and adelheid held up her full hands to cry joyfully, “look, papachen, look!”
franz’ big, lean frame filled the doorway, his face heated from woodland labors. with a soiled red handkerchief he began, at sight of his visitors, to brush bark and dirt from his shabby clothing. his expression was somewhat grim as he glanced at the foreigners; but at the children’s insistence, after one quick, frowning contraction of his heavy brows, his sour lips curved in something like a smile. he stroked adelheid’s head, having made the visitors before his threshold an awkward bow, and, to their astonishment, addressed them in french—german french, remarkable in sound and accent:
“ponjour, messieurs et mestemoiselles. merci peaucoup. foulez-fous entrer tans ma bauvre maison?”
michelle was the first to decipher this utterance. she smiled faintly and shook her head. “we came only to see the children,” she explained, also in french.
franz’ keen eyes had left her face to scrutinize the two officers who stood behind her, though as soon as their glance met his he shifted his gaze to the children and summoned his difficult smile once more.
“let’s go,” said lucy, looking up from where she sat holding freidrich, and trying to persuade him not to cram all his candy into his mouth at once.
footsteps sounded again inside the cottage and a woman appeared behind franz, and, peering out over his shoulder, nodded to lucy with a smile as cheerless as her husband’s, but tired and spiritless rather than sullen. she was young, but sad and anxious looking. her light brown hair was twisted up anyhow on her head, and the sleeves of her faded calico were rolled above her elbows.
“thank you, kind fr?ulein,” she said, amiably enough. “the little ones are grateful. good-day to your young friend, and to each herr officer.”
with this greeting she shuffled back into the cottage, without a word to her husband, who was staring at the ground now, forgetting his attempts at civility.
“good-afternoon,” said lucy, getting up, still holding little freidrich’s hand. the others nodded to the german as they turned back toward the forest, the children tagging at their heels.
“we will walk a little way with you, shall we?” asked adelheid, dancing ahead. she had stuck the bits of tinsel that fell to her share into her flaxen braids, and looked, as she flitted about among the great tree-trunks, like a child come to life out of a german fairy tale.
“have you lived here always, adelheid?” asked larry, smiling at her.
adelheid’s bright eyes fixed his as for a second she puzzled over his bad german; then, understanding, she said quickly, “oh, no, herr officer. but we have lived here a good while. let me think. well, i can’t remember, but we came here when there was fighting. papachen left off being a soldier to bring us here. he said it was better so—then he need not fight any more. but our mother was not pleased.”
“need not fight any more because he became a woodcutter?” asked larry doubtfully.
“i don’t know, mein herr. that was what he said. he was sad and the mother was sad. we were poor, because we had no longer the farm.”
“you used to have a farm?”
“yes—a fine one, with pigs and a field. but the fighting came, and they took all that place.”
“who took it?” larry persisted.
adelheid glanced shyly at armand’s face, then, almost whispering, explained to larry, “it was the french. they said it all belonged to them. they let us stay where we were, but soon there was a battle and everyone had to run away.”
“what was the place called?” asked michelle with sudden understanding.
“it was the reichsland, fr?ulein,” said adelheid, proud of her attentive audience. “they sometimes talked french there.”
“alsace-lorraine!” exclaimed armand.
“that’s where he learned french,” said larry. “i thought it was strange in a german peasant.”
“he is not a peasant,” insisted armand. “he is just what the child says—a farmer. when the fighting in alsace-lorraine commenced his land was ruined, and he was too much leagued with the germans to face the french occupation.”
“but i wonder why the boches let him leave the army,” larry pondered. “was your father wounded, adelheid?” he asked.
“no, mein herr, i don’t remember it.”
“adelheid!” through the forest stillness franz’ voice sounded harshly. “komm hier schnell, adelheid!”
“ja, ja!” responded the little girl, shouting. with a skip, she seized her brothers by the hand, and, turning for a smiling farewell and a “come soon again,” ran back toward the clearing, the little boys stumbling along at her side.
“perhaps papachen suspected that we were hearing the family history,” surmised larry, watching the children disappear among the firs. “if he has any secrets to hide he had better keep adelheid locked up.”
“isn’t she a cunning little girl?” said lucy. “i wish they weren’t germans. i don’t know what is the matter with their mother. i suppose she’s poor and worried.”
“probably she’s thinking of the farm they lost,” said larry. then, putting franz and his family out of his mind as they began mounting the slope which showed the approach of the hospital clearing, “can’t you get a holiday and come to coblenz, lucy? i’m lonely without you or bob. i’m losing my morale.”
all three of the others laughed at his gloomy voice, and larry remarked with smouldering resentment, “it’s always that way when i get the blues. i’m laughed at. i’m considered a light-hearted soldier, and if i’m anything else i get no sympathy.”
“yes you do, larry—plenty from me,” lucy protested. “but, you see, i count on you a lot myself, so i have to laugh at the idea of your getting low in your mind, or i’d feel twice as lost as i do alone.”
“is that plain to you, captain eaton?” asked armand, amused, and larry, smiling in spite of himself, said more cheerfully:
“that’s a real lucy explanation. well, i’ll have to carry on in the home sector and play up to my part.”
“other people have had to,” said lucy, glancing at michelle. she could not yet look into her friend’s face without remembering with a warm thrill of admiration the almost hopeless days of captivity when michelle’s splendid courage and cheerfulness had spurred her to equal fortitude. “i’m afraid i don’t quite stand on my own legs when trouble comes,” she added, with some irrelevance for those who could not follow her thoughts. “i always need someone to keep me going.”
“i don’t know. you’ve stood up pretty well, i think,” said larry, more eager in her defense than in his own. “for instance, the time you——”
“escaped from chateau-plessis,” broke in michelle, with equal enthusiasm. “there was not anyone to push you to the lines of the alliés, or to shut the germans’ eyes.”
“and how about the night you flew with me into germany?” persisted larry. “i didn’t encourage you then, that’s sure.”
“i don’t mean all that,” lucy interposed, flushing warmly at having provoked this unexpected praise. “anyone can be brave once in a while. with me it’s more desperation than courage. if ever you hear that i’ve done anything you think took nerve, you may know i did it because something else frightened me still more.”
“you can’t take your motives to pieces that way,” objected larry, never good at argument. “you were brave, and that’s all there was to it.”
“but the sort of bravery that i admire,” lucy continued earnestly, “is the sort that lasts. i was more hopeless after five weeks at chateau-plessis than michelle after four years. i couldn’t have endured what she did.”
“oh, perhaps i saw fear and sorrow so often in those years i came to know well their faces and did not mind them,” said michelle, trying to speak lightly. “my courage was not very great—a prisoner has the same.” she slipped her hand through lucy’s arm as she spoke. “do not think i did not sometimes borrow strength from you, mon amie.”
“both kinds of courage are needed,” said armand, thoughtfully. “it took both to win the war.”
“you ought to know,” said lucy to herself, smiling as she looked up at the frenchman’s thin face, above his wasted frame. she thought of the times he had risked inglorious death as a spy in his country’s service.
“we have a visitor,” said michelle, as they left the forest and began to ascend the clearing behind the hospital.
she pointed to a gray army motor-car standing in the road. at the same moment larry exclaimed, “it’s general gordon’s car. your father has come, lucy.”
“yes, he promised to, as soon as the christmas celebrations were over in coblenz.” lucy quickened her pace and in a minute saw her father coming down the veranda steps to meet her.
“merry christmas, father! i’m so glad to see you!” she cried, hugging him. “you don’t look very gay,” she added, searching his face with her clear eyes. “father, are you homesick, too?”
“i’m all right, little daughter,” replied general gordon, smiling, though his face did not relax into its usual calm confidence.
“come and see michelle and her brother?” lucy urged. her eyes held a sudden anxiety which she tried to put from her as she made the introductions and listened to her father’s pleasant talk with her friends.
armand was looking tired and in a moment michelle led him away to rest. general gordon, lucy and larry walked over to the cottage and sat down in one corner of the bare little parlor.
almost at once lucy put the question trembling on her lips. “father, there’s something wrong! please tell me?”
“i’m sorry—on christmas day,” began general gordon reluctantly. then at lucy’s frightened eyes he added quickly, “it’s not so very bad, lucy. they say he’s all right. greyson telegraphed me to-day from archangel. bob had a fall in his plane and has broken his leg. greyson assures me there is no danger. he will send word again to-morrow.”
lucy’s cheeks flamed with the desperate effort to keep back her tears. her heart was pounding in her throat and she dared not try to speak. but in spite of herself the tears overflowed her eyes and glistened on her lashes when she heard larry’s troubled voice beside her and felt her father catch her hand in his warm, firm clasp. she gave a quick, grateful sob.
“you know how we feel, larry,” she said, looking up at him as she winked away her tears.
